PASTOR’S SERMON CLINIC

Many contemporary sermons are lacking in organization. Give your sermons the Connective Test. Listen to the tape of a recent discourse and check the number of times you have used the following:

1. And … aa-a-a-a-

2. And, as We were saying …

3. That, by the way, recalls an experience I had in …

4. Or, as the Irishman said when …

5. If I may return for a moment to the text …

To score, divide the number of occurences by the phrase number and multiply by the number of points, if any, in your sermon. If you have five or more instances of a phrase above, read the corresponding sentence below:

1. You have a strong feeling for structure. Your hesitation shows a commendable desire to choose words having some relation to what has been said.

2. Splendid organizational unity. You remember what you have said, and repeatedly echo it. Symphonic mastery of a motif.

(The We is the plural of a doctor of divinity.)

3. Deep thematic awareness. Each successive parenthesis (properly introduced ((note the shared experience (((should be revelant ((((but not necessarily to the first theme)))))))))) leads to an existential denouement.

4. This brilliant extemporized connection introduces the Jocular Parallel, known to Hebraists as the Wow Consecutive.

5. A dangerous redundancy. Returning to the text will not only interrupt the chain of association in your remarks, it may also raise extraneous questions in the minds of any wakeful hearers: what was the text? what does it mean? why did he leave it? You can readily imagine the embarrassment this might become to your liberties in the pulpit!

If your low score reveals weak structure, use this outline for two months:

Theme: A Cheering Thought

1. Illustrations of Cheering Thoughts

(Cheering Thoughts Cheer)

2. Illustrations of This Cheering Thought

(This Cheering Thought Cheers)

3. Concluding Illustrations

(How We Are Cheered!)

Various Cheering Thoughts must be supplied; at present we have none to offer.

EVOLUTION AGAIN

Gordon Clark’s appraisal of “the hypothesis of evolution” (Sept. 1 issue) provides a refreshing stimulus to Christian biologists at a time when Darwin and Darwinism are being re-evaluated from all sides. Prof. Clark’s most significant contribution is his emphasis on the varying and sometimes contradictory use of terms. It is important for Christians to realize that small changes—i.e. within a species or genus—are referred to as “evolution” as well as the amoeba-to-man, up-from-the-ape concepts. Likewise, it is good to hear a philosopher-theologian recognize that the kinds of Genesis are not identical to the species of biology and that the eighteenth century Linnaeus is not the final authority on the interpretation of Genesis 1. I feel that Prof. Clark’s article provides a good starting point for profitable discussion of both the facts and the fallacies of “evolution” by both creationists and evolutionists.

Assoc. Prof. of Zool.

Univ. of N. H.

Durham, N. H.

The true scientist as well as the true philosopher is searching for truth. So to assume that evolution must be atheistic is equivalent to Dobzhansky’s assumption that a Creator must be whimsical and capricious. To the biologist as a scientist the data with which he deals is thought of as being neither theistic nor atheistic in its own right. Such an interpretation must rest upon his presupposition as must his conclusions. In many cases the presuppositions make little or no difference in the actual conclusions. In others, however, the facts will support equally any of several conclusions, depending upon the basic assumptions.… That God could have created by evolution seems hard to deny in the light of either reason or Scripture (e.g. all the present races of man from Adam and Eve). But at present neither scientific data nor biblical exegesis gives us very clear cut limits as to where and when such a process might have been used for God or where and when (or if?) other creative processes were employed. Hence it seems to me that the Christian today can say only that his basic presupposition from Scripture is “God created the heaven and the earth” and that Christ is “both the First Principle and Upholding Principle of the whole scheme of Creation” (Col. 1:17, Phillips).… That there can be a scientific way as opposed to a biblical way is inconceivable, but that there can be a scientist’s view as opposed to a theologian’s view has been sadly demonstrated time and time again. But the scientist’s view—be it scientific or philosophical—no more changes the truth of the data of the Bible. Your editorial seems to be a bit derisive of science on the basis of this thinking as well as a bit smug theologically.… I couldn’t agree more than that our contemporary need is a real consistent evangelical philosophy of science that would not only convince Christian researchers that they can’t leave Christ at the door of their laboratory but would also suggest what difference He might make when they realized He was with them even there; that would give significance to both the correlations and the discontinuities; that would give satisfaction and relevance to the unknowable as well as the knowable.…

Prof. of Zool.

N. Dak. Agr. Col.

Fargo, N. Dak.

I was very much pleased to see this critique of evolution by our friend Gordon H. Clark. It seems to me that he does the Christian cause a real service by his analysis of the subject.

We as Christians need to realize that our reactions to evolution have not always been wise. We should also be aware of the fact that popular opinion favors evolution. Dr. Clark is careful to point out that the evolutionists sometimes betray certain hesitancies as when Howells admits that “there is also the mystery of how and why evolution takes place.”

I consider that the section, “A Lesson from Physics,” is especially pertinent in warning all of us that the results of science are always tentative and subject to constant revision. Also it is good to see that Dr. Clark points out difficulties in the argument due to the ambiguity of the term evolution.

On the negative side it should be said that whereas Dr. Clark makes it appear that evolutionists rule out God, it is still true that many do not. Darwin specifically mentions the Creator in The Origin of Species. Then too, many evolutionists do not state that their results are “assured” as intimated in the article.

Mankato State College

Mankato, Minn. Assoc. Prof. of Zoology

Clark has the facts straight and reaches a most valid conclusion. The kind of evolutionistic philosophy the Christian scientist rejects is the kind which claims that nature produces new basic types of organisms. We observe variation among organisms but neither the living nor the fossil record can demonstrate that all the processes of variation have ever produced anything basically new. I write this while attending the thirteenth annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution at Ann Arbor. About one hundred of the world’s leading evolutionists are present, but the only empirical evidence they present is for variation within already-existing, well-marked basic types. Only wishful thinking at the speculative level of science can produce an evolutionistic synthesis. The Christian scientist has the serious task of informing the masses that no demonstrable evidence exists for the bestial origin of man; instead, the evidence portrays divine creation of all basic types of life. I greatly appreciate Clark’s article and your publication of it. It is a timely contribution to a very needy cause.

Biology Prof.

Emmanuel Missionary Coll.

Berrien Springs, Mich.

To recapitulate from Christianity’s point of view: scientism’s social engineer can spawn an anti-Christ, belongingness can express its kingdom-consciousness, and togetherness will be its bible as written by the tyranny of the majority. The parallel with Genesis 11:4 will be evident throughout. There is the same fight for recognition in making a name for oneself. “Lest we be scattered” betrays the age-old motivation of mankind. And in the basic revolt against authority only to surrender to authority of another definition we see the central disease of man’s soul. Group cooperation becomes surrender of the individual in the name of what is best for him. Thus does man seek to escape from the burden of choice in being as gods knowing good and evil and the trying to decide so often between them (Gen. 3:5). But the utopian good which the organization so benevolently offers is that peace of mind which only Jesus Christ can validly offer. It is the folly of sin and the fruit of his predicament that makes any man accept insufficient substitutes.

If theologians will remember that “kind” is not exactly defined in Scripture, and scientists will be careful to claim for evolution no more than is actually proven, special and natural revelation will be seen to be in no such conflict as some supposed a century ago when The Origin of Species broke upon the world.

Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary

Pittsburgh, Pa.

The conflict with Christianity is obvious—even the conflict with naked truth … against the phony [evolution] which provides a “scientific” base for social tyranny and humanistic blasphemy!

Evolution Protest Movement

Henniker, N. H.

I … believe that the theory of evolution is the Pandora’s Box from which all kindred evils such as higher criticism (negative) have sprung.

Mount Pleasant Christian Church

Bedford, Ind.

The Cadillac of Christian magazines for candid, cultured Christians with discernment and direction.

Detroit, Mich.

It is the best religious magazine I have met in my 86 years.

Markethill, Armagh, U. K.

LAMBETH ACTION

The action of the Episcopal and Anglican bishops … at the recent Lambeth Conference [Sept. 15 issue] … in approving birth control as a means of easing overpopulation … is remarkable because not long ago the Anglican church opposed so-called artificial birth control as vigorously as the Roman Catholic church. World population is now growing by … 47,000,000 a year. The Population Division of the United Nations estimates that the present world population will more than double … in the next 40 years.… As a result hundreds of millions of people in the world are hungry.… In their desperation they are susceptible to Communist … infiltration.… While the H bomb is only being stockpiled, the fuse of the population bomb is already lighted and burning.

New York, N. Y.

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Religious Meetings

Endorsement of merger plans was the featured action at two big Lutheran conventions held simultaneously, though far apart, October 8–15. Two merger moves currently afoot in American Lutheranism are aimed at forming separate new churches with memberships of two and three million. No formal action, however, has been taken toward uniting the two big churches which are to result.

At Dayton, Ohio—Some 700 delegates at the 21st biennial convention of the United Lutheran Church in America approved provisional plans for merger with the Augustana Lutheran Church, the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod).

The ULCA is the nation’s seventh largest Protestant denomination with more than 2¼ million members. The other three churches, conventions of which have similarly approved the merger, are much smaller.

Most of the recommendations of the Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity were hardly questioned. The commission will now try to draft a constitution and by-laws to submit to 1960 church conventions. The union may be consummated by 1961.

Most serious objection to the commission’s recommendations was aimed at a statement which disallows ordination of individuals who are members of secret societies, but which says nothing against pastors who are already in such lodges.

A member of the commission, President Henry H. Bagger of Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said he was “not very much in favor” of the statement because “it violates evangelical freedom, establishes double standards for laity and clergy, and puts a matter of pastoral counseling into the field of discipline.”

Nevertheless, he said, ULCA representatives “found themselves faced with a very real question of whether or not we want the whole proposition of merger to go to the ground, and we decided the price was worth paying.”

A proposed resolution which would have required the commission to reconsider its secret society statement was overwhelmingly defeated. The commission’s statement on doctrine was not debated.

Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, ULCA president, said the new church “ought and undoubtedly will observe the evangelical and the representative principles in participating in the ecumenical movement.” Fry, a leading proponent of ecumenicity (he is chairman of the World Council of Churches Central Committee and president of the Lutheran World Federation), did not define his terms.

The convention’s preoccupation with merger talks was evidenced by Fry’s 18,000–word report, all of which was devoted to discussing union deliberations.

However, the convention also (1) instructed the ULCA executive board to appoint doctors and clergymen to study anointing and healing; (2) reversed a trend toward increasing centralization of the church body’s evangelism efforts by adoption of a statement which stressed that responsibility for evangelism must rest with constituent synods rather than with the church as a whole; (3) passed a watered-down version of a resolution calling for “Christian implementation of better race relations” after a protest by lay delegate E. Fritz Hollings, lieutenant governor of South Carolina; (4) authorized organization of at least 20 “Faith and Life Institutes” during the next two years; and (5) adopted a record budget of $26,596,560 and permitted its Board of American Missions to borrow 8 million dollars for church extension.

At San Antonio, Texas—Some 200 delegates to the 15th biennial convention of the American Lutheran Church voted unanimously to accept a resolution favoring merger with the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The American Lutheran Church, with nearly a million members, is the largest of the three bodies.

A move was rejected which took issue with a joint merger committee’s recommendation that the merged body be called the American Lutheran Church.

In an address to the convention, Dr. Paul C. Empie, executive director of the National Lutheran Council, noted that “we may often find times when because of doctrinal convictions we must say ‘no’ in certain areas of cooperation.”

“But let’s not stop there,” he added. “Rather let us find out why we must say ‘no’ and then have conversations as to what must be done to overcome the obstacles.”

[Evangelicals must often say “no” on scriptural grounds. And they cannot consider biblical imperatives as “obstacles.”—ED.]

Episcopalian Election

Down long aisles came acolytes bearing crosses, candles, and flags. White-robed ecclesiastics followed, marching to the martial strain of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The procession through Miami Beach’s new Exhibition Hall—turned cathedral for the night of October 5—signalled the beginning of the 50th General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The Protestant Episcopal Church is the United States’ fifth largest Protestant denomination.

The Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, presiding bishop, challenged some 800 official delegates and 15,000 visitors gathered for the 12-day, triennial meeting to face world problems realistically “in the light of the eternal truths of the Gospel.” And he emphasized an “even more primary aspect of the Gospel” than “the long tradition” of the “thought and practice” of the church, “namely the personal confrontation of the individual with the living Christ.”

In the convention’s first week, the House of Bishops faced the task of electing a successor to the distinguished Bishop Sherrill, who would reach mandatory retirement age in another month. The choice of the 146 bishops would be subject to confirmation by some 660 lay and clerical delegates comprising the House of Deputies, meeting in Miami Beach’s newly-opened Deauville Hotel. Indeed, there is constant interchange in messages between the two houses, for no legislation is final except it be approved by both. Under the bicameral governing system of the Protestant Episcopal Church, what may appear to be the mind of the church the first week may be negated the second.

After rejecting attempts to limit the term of the presiding bishop beyond the present retirement age restriction and defeating a perennial proposal to use the title of “archbishop,” the House of Bishops went into closed sessions early Saturday morning, October 11, to choose the church’s new leader from the unusually high number of nine nominees. After celebration of Holy Communion, a majority vote declared the presiding bishop-elect to be the Rt. Rev. Arthur C. Lichtenberger, Bishop of Missouri since 1952.

Somehow boyish in appearance, despite his gray hair and 58 years, Bishop Lichtenberger formerly served his church as a parish priest and rector, professor of New Testament in St. Paul’s Divinity School, Wuchang, China, and pastoral theology professor at Genetal Theological Seminary in New York City. He begins his new work November 15.

Describing himself to the press as a “middle-of-the-road churchman” with regard to the high and low church wings of Episcopalianism, he voiced strong sympathies for the cause of ecumenism—he is a member of the General Board of the National Council of Churches—and for the accomplishment of racial integration in church and school alike.

Meanwhile, the two houses headed for the second week’s important decisions, having resisted with much success the formidable temptations of sunny beaches, flights to Nassau, and NBC’s World Series.

F. F.

Protestant Panorama

• The West German government says refugees streaming in from behind the Iron Curtain represent their republic’s most “agitating” problem. Accordingly, the number of ministers counted among those who flee Soviet-controlled East Germany is a concern of church leaders. Last month the Council of the Evangelical Union warned clergymen that it is “irreconcilable” with ordination vows for pastors to leave parishes on their own account.

• The new Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was formally inaugurated at a meeting in New York last month. The commission replaces foreign missions boards and interchurch agencies of the two Presbyterian churches which merged last May. Its 66 members include lay men and women as well as clergy. Dr. Theophilus M. Taylor, Northern Presbyterian Church moderator, was elected chairman.

• The New York City Board of Hospitals, reversing an earlier decision by Commissioner Morris Jacobs, ruled that municipal hospitals may give birth control advice and provide contraceptive devices to women patients “whose health and life may be jeopardized by pregnancy and who wish to avail themselves of such health services.” The board had been under fire from many Protestant groups for refusing to allow the fitting of a contraceptive device for a Protestant diabetic woman patient.

• Dr. Christopher Dawson, noted British Catholic historian and author, took up new duties as Harvard Divinity School professor this month. He had been denied a visa, but it was finally granted … Dr. S. C. Eastvold, president of Pacific Lutheran college, said he has concluded after a visit with Dr. Albert Schweitzer that the famous philosopher and medical missionary is orthodox in his theology.

• Temperance leader Dr. Sam Morris begins a “Voice of Temperance” broadcast over the NBC radio network November 3. Morris says he has been trying to get a network temperance broadcast for 20 years … Jarrell McCracken, youthful president of Word Records, Inc., world’s largest religious record producing firm, will be featured guest on NBC radio’s “Faith in Action” program, November 2 … The Church of God’s “Christian Brotherhood Hour” is being beamed to Russia via Radio Tangier … The Free Methodist Church was hoping to air its “Light and Life Hour” (in Russian) to the Soviet Union starting November 1.

• Dr. Peter Rees Joshua, interim minister at Buena Memorial Presbyterian Church of Chicago, is in England and Wales for centenary services sponsored by the English Presbyterian Church marking the birth and evangelistic work of his distinguished father, Dr. Seth Joshua … Mr. and Mrs. James I. Detweiler and their three children, who live in Burbank, California, were named “The Methodist Family of the Year.”

• The Council for Christian Social Action of the United Church of Christ plans a $9,000,000 experimental project in desegregated housing in a key Northern city … The 10th annual Religion in American Life program is urging increased regular church attendance during November.

• Lutherans of Madagascar approved proposals that would give the island’s 800,000 Protestants official ties with the International Missionary Council … Dr. Reinhold von Thadden-Treiglaff, president of the German Evangelical Church Day Movement, says similar movements are spreading in Scandinavian countries. The movement, started at Essen, Germany, in 1950, is a permanent institution with the Evangelical Church in Germany. Its rallies are designed to encourage Christian laymen to participate actively in church and public life.

• Shotgun blasts fired from a passing car damaged the entrance to a building on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, last month. The incident was linked to outside opposition to the admittance of Negroes at Asbury … Northern Baptist Theological Seminary dedicated a $300,000 chapel September 23.

Hope And Heartbreak

His “home town crusade” now history, evangelist Billy Graham hopes to set aside coming weeks to prepare for campaigns in Australia and New Zealand early next year.

In the numerous overflow crowds, team members saw this fall’s crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, as having been characterized by unusual public eagerness to get to the meetings. Among Christians, there was evidence of a wide hunger for more spiritual depth.

But the sight of milling throngs unable to get into Charlotte Coliseum also had a heartbreaking aspect. There was many a tear among Christians who brought unconverted loved ones to an evangelistic service, often after years of prayer and pleading, only to find the auditorium filled to capacity.

Attendance for the first three weeks of the crusade approached 300,000. There were 12,761 decisions after 24 days. The figures exclude special meetings such as one at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which drew 10,000.

Originally planned with a tentative October 19 closing date, the meetings were extended through Saturday of that week. On Sunday, October 26, Graham scheduled an afternoon rally at the State House in the capital city of Columbia, South Carolina.

South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman said he was “shocked” to learn of plans for the rally, because, in his opinion, “such a meeting would break down racial barriers” and further the cause of integration. Nevertheless, Timmerman said he would not attempt to stop the plans.

Graham would not comment on the governor’s protest other than to say that he wanted to “preach the Gospel of Christ to all who were willing to come and hear.”

Sunday School Advance

“The Sunday School is doing more to combat juvenile delinquency than any other single agency in America today,” said Dr. Edward Simpson, outgoing president of the National Sunday School Association, in an address before the organization’s thirteenth annual convention in Des Moines, Iowa.

Some 4,500 pastors, Sunday School superintendents, teachers and church leaders were present during the week, October 6–10. They are part of a rapidly-growing evangelical movement to “revitalize the American Sunday School.” Some 30 denominations have officially joined the NSSA; active participants are to be found in all Protestant bodies.

Some 160 workshops, seminars and institutes dealing with every phase of Christian education in the local church drew thousands of observers in addition to registered delegates. More than 80 exhibits of Sunday School literature and supplies were thronged daily.

One of the most significant developments of the convention was the announcement of the Commission on Research in Christian Education that they had formulated a statement of the evangelical philosophy of Christian education which will be the basis for preparation of new textbooks and a new methodology distinctly evangelical in character.

Dr. Bert Webb of Springfield, Missouri, was elected president for 1958–59.

An expanding convention program calls for triple-city gatherings next year: at San Jose, California, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Descending Leadership

W. Wallace Smith was installed as president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the group’s biennial conference in Independence, Missouri, this month.

His selection as the new head had been designated in a document left by former president Israel A. Smith, killed in a highway accident this past summer.

W. Smith was installed after he had been endorsed as president by some 2,500 delegates at the conference. He is a grandson of Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Mormon church, and a half-brother to the late I. Smith.

The Reorganized Church, with world headquarters at Independence, has a membership of about 170,000.

South America

For Colleges: Recognition

Church-related and other private universities in Argentina can grant professional degrees under a bill passed by the legislature in Buenos Aires just before its adjournment this fall. The legislation prompted outbursts of violence throughout the country.

Education in Argentina traditionally has been state-run. The new authority for private universities will immediately benefit many Roman Catholic educational programs, even though the granting of professional degrees will still be subject to control of public examination boards.

Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay remain as the only Latin American nations which deny autonomy to private universities.

Back To The Aucas!

Since the martyrdom of five young missionary men in January, 1956, perhaps no tribe in the world has presented a greater challenge for Christians than the Auca Indians of Ecuador.

South American missionaries and friends have been praying for the savage Aucas for some 35 years. No one dared to enter Auca territory until three years ago. The initial contact attempt ended when Aucas killed the five missionaries on the sands of “Palm Beach,” along the Curaray River.

The slayings stirred the Christian world and set off intensive prayer that the hostile tribe might yet be reached with the Gospel. Missionaries stayed as close to the Aucas as possible by maintaining an outpost at Arajuno. Missionary Aviation Fellowship planes periodically flew over Auca territory dropping gifts.

A year ago, the mission station at Arajuno heard that two Auca women had left their tribe and were staying with the semi-civilized Quechua Indians. Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot, wife of one of the slain missionaries, immediately set out with a group of Quechuas to meet the two Auca women. She found one of them to be an older woman who had been seen at “Palm Beach” in January, 1956.

The Auca women lived with missionaries thereafter, along with Miss Rachel Saint, sister of one of the martyrs, and Dayuma, another young Auca woman who has been away from her native tribe for 12 years. Dayuma was baptized earlier this year during a trip to the United States. The three Auca women have been helping missionaries learn the Auca language.

Last month, Dayuma and the other two Auca women, Mintaka and Mankamu, decided to go back and witness to their people. The missionaries wondered if they would ever be seen again.

With the Auca women went three pups, gifts for their people, and food for themselves. They were prepared for a long journey, but how would it end?

Five days after their departure down the jungle trail, a flight was made over the Auca settlement. From the plane, Mrs. Elliot saw a native woman waving vigorously at the plane. Mrs. Elliot thought the woman looked like Mankamu, but she was not certain. Several other flights were made, but there was no further recognition from the natives on the ground. It had been arranged to drop a telephone to Dayuma, but Dayuma could not be found.

On Thursday, September 25, Mrs. Elliot was hanging out the wash when a Quechua Indian appeared.

“Good morning,” she greeted him. “Why have you come?”

“For nothing,” he replied.

“Didn’t you even bring us any news about the Aucas?”

“Oh, yes, they have come and have brought others with them. They have stopped down at the Nushino River to bathe and they asked me to come on ahead to tell you.”

Mrs. Elliot and Mrs. Marjorie Saint, also a widow of the “Palm Beach” killings, set out to meet the party. They had not gone far before they heard the strains of “Jesus Loves Me”—in English with an Auca accent! It was Dayuma, followed by Mintaka, Mankamu, and four other women with three boys!

Afterwards Mrs. Saint reported:

“We learned that they hadn’t been seen from the plane because they were so tired that they had stopped at a place a few hours walk short of the Auca houses and had sent Mankamu on ahead, perhaps to throw in the proverbial hat. It was she that Betty had seen waving.

“Dayuma saw her mother once again after 12 years. The Aucas told her they would like Betty and Rachel to come in—that they never knew anyone truly wanted to be their friends.

“One man told them that he cried when he heard that some had killed the five foreigners. He said he waited a while and then went to the beach and felled a tree so that no more foreigners could come in and be killed.

“They also told of killing another foreigner just recently, Mr. Tremblay from Canada.” (See CHRISTIANITY TODAY, August 18, 1958.—ED.)

On Monday, October 6, Mrs. Elliot and Miss Saint accompanied Dayuma, Mintaka, and Mankamu back into the Auca jungles. After two days of travel, they set up camp near Auca huts.

Reported CHRISTIANITY TODAY News Correspondent Abe C. Van Der Puy on October 11:

“There was a good radio contact with Betty Elliot today.”

Continental Europe

Civil Pressures

Like the early Christians, European evangelicals occasionally find legitimate claims challenged by civil authorities. Last month, near scenes of the earliest Church-State struggles of Christendom, two evangelical communities saw force applied against property rights.

Greek police moved in one morning on a park claimed by an evangelical congregation near Thessalonica, where centuries ago the preaching of Paul and Silas was met by a community uproar stimulated by religious leaders. Some 500 women turned out to defend the park and one of them was injured before police withdrew. The incident happened at Katerini, where a park stands between a church and an orphanage, all located on land granted to Greek evangelical refugees from Pontus, Asia Minor, in 1922. The Greek government has disputed the evangelicals’ claim.

At Sant’-Angelo-in-Villa, Italy, a community where Baptists outnumber Catholics, the Rev. Graziano Cannito and his congregation have been trying for a year to erect a new, 250-seat church building. Although the Ministry of Public Works in Rome has authorized the project, Cannito has been unable to get a local permit. He appealed to the courts. He was threatened with arrest. Still no permit!

“Meanwhile,” Cannito wrote last month to the Southern Baptists in the United States, with whom his church is affiliated, “the hatred toward us evangelicals is such that the judge, who for a month has been on vacation at Terracina, on the coast, has still busied himself with making me stop the work on the church every now and then.”

Protestants In Poland

Polish Protestants chalked up two firsts for themselves last month:

—A Protestant book store was opened in Warsaw.

—An interdenominational service in Warsaw drew pastors from several church groups, including Lutheran and Reformed representatives.

For Sweden: Women Clergy

The General Assembly of the state Lutheran church of Sweden last month accepted government-approved legislation permitting ordination of women. The action by the church body, which wields a veto power over bills affecting it, enables the measure to become law.

Ordination of women in Sweden has been a perennial issue. This year the church’s legislative veto power likewise became an issue. Had it been exercised again, a measure to abolish the right probably would have been introduced into the legislature.

Moves were afoot to split the church and break the law, if necessary, to evade its implementation. Some observers felt, however, that the law does not require bishops to ordain women if such is against their convictions.

Gains And Losses

Following Lke

President Eisenhower had an intense round of church-related activities starting Sunday, October 12, when he participated in the cornerstone laying at the Interchurch Center (described below) in New York. Using a silver trowel, the President mortised into the new ecumenical center’s 2½-ton cornerstone of Alabama limestone a 150-pound piece of marble, which was presented by the Greek Orthodox church as a relic of ancient Corinth.

The following day, Mr. Eisenhower was back in Washington to accept an honorary doctor of laws degree from Georgetown University, operated by the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic priests.

On Tuesday, the President paid tribute to Pope Pius XII by attending a “solemn pontifical requiem mass” at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington.

Dr. Carl McIntire, president of the International Council of Christian Churches, protested the President’s participation in the cornerstone laying as discriminatory in favor of one religious group. Other observers felt that no more significance should be attached to the President’s participation in the cornerstone laying than to his attendance at a mass for the pope, or his participation a year ago at the dedication of a Moslem temple in Washington.

On October 1, which Mr. Eisenhower had proclaimed as “National Day of Prayer,” the President attended a special service in Washington’s National Presbyterian Church. Despite the fact that a number of other government leaders also attended, the church was more than two-thirds empty.

Interchurch Center

The Interchurch Center in New York City is being built at a cost of $20,000,000 as the most impressive material symbol of the ecumenical movement in the United States. Chief occupants: the National Council of Churches and the U. S. Conference of the World Council of Churches.

Responsibility for development and operation of the building rests with the Interchurch Center, Inc., formed in liaison with the National Council of Churches’ 24-member committee on headquarters location. Corporation board chairman is Edmund F. Wagner, layman treasurer of the United Lutheran Church in America and president of the Seamen’s Bank for Savings, New York.

Modern Translations

Publishers report a great surge of interest in new translations of Scripture.

Among popular language New Testaments, the 575-page The New Testament in Modern English of J. B. Phillips (reviewed on page 35) is in greatest demand. The Phillips compilation (of his earlier Letters to Young Churches, The Gospels, The Young Church in Action, and The Book of Revelation) hit the list of top ten best-sellers this month. Macmillan’s price: $6.

Demand is also great for a new translation known as The Amplified New Testament, released by Zondervan June 4. The Grand Rapids firm says current sales exceed 3,000 per week. By the end of the year, some 110,000 copies will be in print.

Publication of the Phillips New Testament was prompted by popular reception to his earlier sections. Letters to Young Churches, the translation of the Epistles, has sold more than a million copies in ten years.

John Bertram Phillips is a pipe-smoking, Anglican clergyman who began translating during World War II to make the Bible more understandable for his younger English parishioners. He holds the B.A. degree from Emmanuel College and the M.A. from Ridley Hall. Since 1957 he has been Canon Prebendary of Chichester Cathedral.

Translator Phillips feels that “some scholars, at least, have lived so close to the Greek text that they have forgotten their sense of proportion.”

“I doubt very much,” he writes in the foreword of the complete work, “whether the New Testament writers were as subtle or as self-conscious as some commentators would make them appear. For the most part I am convinced that they had no idea that they were writing Holy Scripture.”

Zondervan’s Amplified New Testament grew out of scholarly despair that “the Greeks have a word for it, but we don’t.” The aim was to include various shades of meaning in cases where a single English word is inadequate. This is accomplished by addition within the text of extra words in brackets, parentheses, and dashes.

The 995-page Amplified New Testament, retailing at $3.95, was sponsored by the Lockman Foundation, a non-profit, California corporation “established for the express and stated purpose of promoting evangelism, Christian education and benevolence.” Research was done with the aid of a board of evangelical scholars led by Mrs. Frances E. Siewert, a learned Bible teacher. Twelve thousand hours and $25,000 were spent in preparations for printing.

Zondervan also is preparing for release January 30 The Holy Bible—The Berkeley Version in Modern English. The Berkeley Version, which carries explanatory annotations as footnotes, first appeared as a New Testament in October, 1945. It represents the “retirement” project of Dr. Gerrit Verkuyl, Presbyterian educator and Bible scholar from Berkeley (which gave rise to the title), California. Verkuyl studied under Dr. Benjamin Warfield at Princeton Theological Seminary, did graduate work on the ethics and psychology of Clement of Alexandria at Leipzig University, then went to the University of Berlin.

“At least two valid reasons for fresh translations are clear to the thoughtful reader,” says Verkuyl. “First, the discovery of earlier and more reliable Greek manuscripts than those from which our Authorized Version was translated more than three centuries ago. Second, the need of employing current words and phrases rather than those that have become obsolete.”

Still the leader among modern language translations is the Revised Standard Version, which has been selling at the rate of more than a million a year.

Total sales figures for King James Version are unavailable. The Nelson firm concedes, however, that the RSV still has a long way to go to catch up.

Wicked Moon Shots?

From the Pentagon this month came an iniquitous affirmation: Moon rocket firings “must” proceed on Sundays if scientists deem conditions favorable, God notwithstanding.

Director Roy W. Johnson, of the Defense Department’s Advance Research Projects Agency, said he does not feel that the Lord will frown upon Sunday moon rocket launchings because “what we are doing to secure the blessings of our way of life is necessary.” Noteworthy, nevertheless, was Johnson’s implicit admission that lunar firings on the Lord’s Day are sin:

“If all conditions are met on a Sunday, we must proceed, asking the Lord’s forgiveness for this rude imposition on his day.”

The statement followed a resolution forwarded President Eisenhower and the Defense Department by the First Methodist Church of Conyers, Georgia.

The Rev. J. Douglas Gibson and his congregation said they deplored the selection of Sunday, August 17, for the initial attempt at getting a rocket to circle the moon. The rocket exploded 77 seconds after launching. (The second U. S. attempt, which came on Saturday, October 11, soared far enough into space to return valuable scientific data.)

The resolution urged “those in charge of research to desist from the use of Sunday as a day to proclaim to the world our greatness.”

Four Versions Of John 3:16

KING JAMES

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

REVISED STANDARD

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

PHILLIPS

For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost, but should have eternal life.

AMPLIFIED

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts, clings to, relies on) Him may not perish—come to destruction, be lost—but have eternal (everlasting) life.

[In the Amplified New Testament, parentheses and dashes “signify additional phases of meaning included in the Greek word, phrase or clause.” Brackets contain “justified clarifying words or comments not actually expressed in the immediate Greek text.” Italics indicate words found in the King James, “but generally omitted now because they are not adequately supported by more recent scholarship,” or, in the case of connectives, the indication of italics is that “the word itself is not in the Greek text, but it is used to connect additional English words indicated in the same Greek word.” Other explanations are given in footnotes.—ED.]

Catholicism Under Pius Xii

If Vatican figures are accurately indicative, the world-wide membership of the Roman Catholic church increased by more than 40 per cent during the 19-year reign of Pope Pius XII.

When Eugenio Pacelli became pope in 1939, Roman Catholics claimed some 354,000,000 adherents. Last month, Vatican officials publicly estimated Catholic population at more than 468,000,000. The latest total excludes Catholics in Iron Curtain countries; when added, these easily swell the figure over half a billion.

The rule of Pius XII saw numerous pronouncements which went beyond scriptural license. He expanded Roman dogma by defining the Virgin Mary’s presumed assumption into heaven in body and soul.

He also issued declarations that modern scientific progress should be employed to advance spiritual interests.

The pope’s death in the pre-dawn of October 9 was announced only after Nicola Cardinal Canali, major penitentiary, had performed the ancient ritual of tapping the skull of the dead pontiff with a silver hammer and entreating him several times to rejoin the living.

The last recorded words of Pius XII were, reportedly, “Pray, pray, pray that this unhappy situation for the church may end.”

It was not certain what he specifically meant by “this unhappy situation.”

A few weeks before his death, the pontiff called the lack of aspirants to the priesthood in Latin America “a most urgent problem.” Several other Latin American trends, among them the growth of Protestantism, also are disturbing Roman Catholic authorities. A conference of Latin American bishops was scheduled for November 11–17 in Rome to launch a drive against these “mortal dangers.”

Next At Princeton

Dr. James I. McCord was named this month to succeed Dr. John A. Mackay as president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

McCord is dean of Austin, Texas, Theological Seminary, long associated with Southern Presbyterians but now projected as a joint effort with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Mackay is retiring after more than 20 years as president of Princeton, associated with Northern Presbyterians but described as “ecumenical in spirit.”

McCord will take office next fall if his appointment is confirmed by the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. He holds degrees of doctor of divinity from Austin and Knox Colleges and doctor of theology from the University of Geneva. He represented the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. at the initial meeting of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and at the Faith and Order Conference in Oberlin in 1957.

Princeton has its largest enrollment in history this year—495 students, representing 20 nations and 50 denominations. The physical plant is being expanded and improved at a cost of more than 3 million dollars.

McCord was appointed by the seminary’s board of trustees. His name was introduced to the trustees by a special committee headed by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the Northern church.

McCord, a native Texan, has been dean at Austin since 1944.

Perils Of Service

The Rev. Kornelius Isaak, 30-year-old native Paraguayan missionary, was speared and fatally wounded last month by savage Morro Indians whom he was trying to win for Christ. The Morro Indians of northwestern Paraguay have never been reached with the Gospel. Isaak was of the Mennonite Brethren, married, and the father of three children.

Miss Anna-Greta Stjarne, 31, of the Swedish Evangelical Mission, was murdered by bandits near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, some time in September, according to a report by Ecumenical Press Service. Miss Stjarne had just returned to Ethiopia after a year’s furlough in Sweden to begin her second five-year term, the report added.

In Algeria, an American Methodist missionary, the Rev. Lester E. Griffith, was kidnapped by nationalist rebels and held for more than a month. He was released last month in good health.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Pius XII, 82, whom Roman Catholics claim as their church’s 261st pope, at Castel Gandolfo, Italy … Dr. George K. A. Bell, 75, former Anglican Bishop of Chichester and honorary president of the World Council of Churches, at Canterbury, England … Dr. Otto justice Baab, 62, professor of Old Testament interpretation at Garrett Biblical Institute, in Chicago … the Rt. Rev. Karl Morgan Block, 71, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California, in San Francisco … Bishop Volkmar Herntrich, 49, of the Lutheran Church of Hamburg, Germany, and member of the World Council of Churches Central Committee, near Nauen, East Germany … Dr. James McGinlay, 57, evangelist and Bible teacher, in Portland, Oregon … Minnie Webster Corbett, 72, Presbyterian missionary leader, in New York … Mrs. Herbert Welch, 92, wife of the senior bishop of The Methodist Church, in New York.

Appointments: As dean of Duke Divinity School, Dr. Robert E. Cushman … as visiting professor in the Department of Bible and Religion, Syracuse University, Dr. Rudolf Bultmann, professor emeritus of New Testament at the University of Marburg, Germany … as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, Albert Gregory Meyer … as deputy chief of Army chaplains, Chaplain (Colonel) William J. Moran, Roman Catholic … as chaplains-general of Canadian armed forces, Brigadier John W. Forth, Anglican, and the Rev. Ronald Mac-Lean, Catholic … as visiting professor of homiletics at University of Chicago Federated Theological Faculty, which claims to be the only truly interdenominational (Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Congregational, Unitarian-Universalist) university-centered school of theology in the world, the Rev. William B. J. Martin … as professor of psychology and Christian education at Bethany Biblical Seminary, Dr. Jesse H. Ziegler … as pastor of the Wornall Road Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Dr. Theron D. Price, former professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville.

Elections: As president of the Primitive Methodist Church, U. S. A., the Rev. Thomas W. Jones … as bishop of the Evangelical Congregational Church, Dr. Harold H. Scanlin … as presidents of editor and manager sections, respectively, of the National Lutheran Editors’ and Managers’ Association, Dr. L. F. Blankenbuehler and E. M. Laitala.

Retirement: As editor of the Baptist New Mexican, Lewis A. Myers.

Man’s concept of God largely determines whether he will approach him or not, and if so, how.

The deist will grope through the circumstances of life unaware of the outstretched hand of the Creator because he conceives of God as having created the universe and then having left it to its own devices.

On the other hand, the theist believes that God not only created the universe but that he is transcendent to it and yet immanent in it.

The Christian is free to appropriate privileges accorded to no one else in the world. In fact, one of the problems in the Church stems from those who demand for the world as a whole those things reserved alone for believers.

Unquestionably there have been those who would attempt to “manipulate” God for personal advantage. The individual in the sports world, or in some other phase of secular life, who suddenly finds himself (or herself) thrust into the limelight, may attribute personal success to the “help of God.”

There may be those who look upon God as a benevolent genei to be courted to the end that they may succeed in some cherished project.

At the other extreme are those who, consciously or otherwise, take the deist philosophy and assert that God has created us with wills and intellects of our own and that we therefore have no right to “bother” him with our daily affairs.

The biblical concept of God as our loving Heavenly Father is neither theory nor an accident, for he is just that. Exactly as a human father is concerned over details in the affairs of his children, so too God in heaven is deeply concerned over anything and everything affecting us. To take any other attitude makes a travesty of the Christian faith and of the clear teachings of the Bible.

Surely the God who numbers the hairs of our heads is concerned over the problems of everyday life! If not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge, personal concerns of his children are surely known to him.

Man lives in this world as the direct result of the creative power of God and it is his privilege to know that he is the object of his infinite love and concern.

Both the Old and the New Testaments are replete with stories of God’s personal care of his own. In both we find admonitions to turn to God for help in personal matters.

When the Psalmist said: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass,” he was giving practical advice to the believer.

For centuries, trusting hearts have reveled in the promise: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Christians turn with a sense of relief and confidence to Paul’s admonition: “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” And with equal assurance they hear the apostle Peter when he says: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

God is a personal God and he guides in personal problems. Let no man discourage the trusting child of God in this matter for this is a truth affirmed in the Scriptures, by our Lord in no uncertain terms, and by countless thousands who have tasted and who know the preciousness of such heavenly concern and help.

Faced with a Little Rock or a Formosa crisis, Christians should pray to God for wisdom and guidance for all concerned.

Confronted with world-shaking events in which the destinies of men and nations are at stake, believers have both the duty and privilege of turning to God.

But our access to our Heavenly Father, through the name of his Son, is not limited to such matters. We have the offer of God himself that we can bring anything to him. In the blinding light of his holiness and love, selfish motives and unworthy requests shrivel to reveal the nakedness of our souls, but matters of genuine concern, be they ever so trivial to others, receive the loving attention of the One to whom all things of time and eternity are an open book.

Far from “manipulating” God, we are complying with his holy will when we come in faith, seeking wisdom and guidance—and even things.

The basic problem of the believer is not one of “manipulating” God for personal advantage. Rather, it is his failure to step out upon the promises of God and to appropriate in daily use those promises for his own good, for the good of all concerned and for the glory of God.

The Chinese have a proverb: “Rich people living like beggars.” How well this describes many Christians! With all of the fullness of God’s blessings open to us, how often we live on the husks of our own wisdom and understanding! Confronted with baffling problems or acute personal needs, how often we turn to men for guidance and help when our first step should have been to look to the One to whom belong all heavenly treasures.

Many years ago, we knew an old unlettered Chinese woman who was confronted with the problem of a complicated lock which had become jammed and over which two experienced mechanics had unsuccessfully labored for some time.

The hour was late and this old Christian knew the comfort and possible safety of her American friend was at stake.

The next morning I went to this house to help dismantle the lock. I found it in perfect working order and the jammed key removed. On asking the old woman what had happened, she replied: “I knew Miss ——— would be worried, so I just asked God to help me and the key came out in my hand.”

Perhaps this Christian with the faith of a little child may have “manipulated” God, but to her, and to some of the rest of us, she had exercised a privilege and received a blessing, and in it all set an example for the believing child of God who can claim the promise: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

The First Psalm makes a clear distinction between the status of the righteous and the unrighteous, and Christians know their righteousness is imputed by Christ himself. It is given to believers to prosper, not necessarily as the world counts prospering, but according to the eternal values to be found through faith in God, and a part of this process is a close daily walk with the living Christ by which wisdom is given, ways are made plain and the necessities of life supplied.

Christians should clearly understand that God has never promised ease to those who put their trust in Christ. But, he has promised to give grace for every contingency of life and to so overrule circumstances that they shall all work together for good to those who love him.

Furthermore, faith in His providential care and provision is assured if we accept the fact that while we do not know the future, the God of the future is our God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3).

His design in this sermon, was to open to them the nature of that kingdom which he had before announced as about to be established, and to rescue the moral law from those false glosses which the Pharisees had put upon it. The people in general had an idea, that their Messiah should establish a temporal kingdom, under which they were to enjoy the highest privileges and blessings. To counteract this vain expectation, he tells them, that his subjects would be indeed most blessed; but that their character and blessedness were widely different from any thing that they supposed. They dreamed of riches and mirth; but the persons whom he pronounced blessed, were the poor and mournful.

In dealing with the wants of human souls, however, and especially when He would bring comfort to uneasy sinners, it was the way of our wise and tender Lord to offer His grace, not in dogmatic formularies, but in the easiest, lowliest words of human love. Salvation does not seem far off or inaccessible, even to a child, or to the untaught, or one too faint and fearful of spirit to be able to think much, when God stoops down to whisper only in the ear, “It is yours!” Nor is the kingdom of heaven so hard a thing to grasp, if you say it is but a royal alms dropped by the hand of the Eternal King into every empty, open, out-reached hand of a begging sinner.

Poverty Of Spirit

To be poor in spirit is to have a humble opinion of ourselves; to be sensible that we are sinners, and have no righteousness of our own, to be willing to be saved only by the rich grace and mercy of God; to be willing to be where God places us, to hear what he lays on us, to go where he bids us, and to die when he commands. It is opposed to pride, vanity and ambition.

ALBERT BARNES

It is the contrast to the spirit of the world and of the flesh still. That is still boasting of “progress.” Still prophesying the “World’s regeneration,” and the “good time coming” through man’s strength and goodness. Poverty in self, riches in Christ, is the true sentiment of a son of the kingdom, Romans 7:18. The Pharisee then, or the self-justifier, cannot enter this glory. We are not even at the starting-point of the race, till we renounce our own righteousness and welcome Messiah’s: Philippians 3:9; Romans 4:12, 15.

R. GOVETT

The poor in reference to spirit, the spiritually poor—that is, those who feel, as a matter of consciousness, that they are in a miserable, unhappy condition (cf. Isa. 57:15; Prov. 29:23). They know that in point of knowledge and moral constitution they are far from divine truth. The declaration that such are blessed, however, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, is in perfect accordance with the fundamental condition of participation in the kingdom of the Messiah, the metanoeita (repentance), with the call to which both Jesus and John began their public appearance.

H. A. W. MEYER

He has a deep sense of the loathsome leprosy of sin, which he brought with him from his mother’s womb, which overspreads his whole soul, and totally corrupts every power and faculty thereof. He sees more and more of the evil tempers, which spring from that evil root; the pride and haughtiness of spirit, the constant bias to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; the vanity, the thirst after the esteem or honor that cometh from men; the hatred or envy, the jealousy or revenge, the anger, malice or bitterness; the inbred enmity both against God and man, which appears in ten thousand shapes; the love of the world, the self-will, the foolish and hurtful desires, which cleave to his inmost soul.

JOHN WESLEY

The Kingdom

It is not a promise as to the future, but a declaration as to the present; not their’s shall be, but “their’s is the kingdom of heaven”.… Poor in spirit; the words sound as if they described the owners of nothing, and yet they describe the inheritors of all things. Happy poverty! Millionaires sink into insignificance, the treasures of the Indies evaporate in smoke, while to the poor in spirit remains a boundless, endless, faultless kingdom, which renders them blessed in the esteem of Him who is God over all, blessed for ever. And all this is for the present life in which they mourn, and need to be comforted, hunger and thirst, and need to be filled; all this is for them while yet they are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; what then must be their blessedness when they shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The idea of this kingdom of God is no other than the Old Testament one: an organized community, which has its principle of life in the will of the personal God. The difference is, that henceforth the Representative of God, through whom he makes known and realizes his will, is himself present: from this it is also called the kingdom of Christ (Eph. 5:5; 2 Pet. 1:11). Moreover, the manner in which this New Testament kingdom seeks to realize itself is different. The particular and national limitations exist no longer: civil life becomes detached from the religious; symbols are succeeded by the truth; the law is displaced by grace (John 1:17). Thus the external kingdom of God becomes an inward kingdom (Lk. 17:20, 21). But since every internal force must have its external manifestation, so must also that living power which has gone forth from Christ, which has inwardly knit together the faithful in one communion and fellowship, receive its outward expression: accordingly, it does receive it in the ecclesia, Matthew 16:18.

A. THOLUCK

The kingdom of heaven of which Jesus speaks is, after all, in the first place not a gathering of people, a commonwealth of citizens, but a composite of spiritual goods and blessings, a treasure (Matt. 13:44), a pearl (Matt. 13:45), righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 6:33 and Rom. 14:17). That kingdom is of heaven, and it now comes down with Christ to the earth, for in him the Father distributes all those blessings and those goods (1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:3). The Father has appointed the kingdom to him and he in his turn appoints it to his disciples (Luke 22:29). He does this now already on earth; when through the Spirit of God he casts out devils, that is evidence that the kingdom of God has come (Matt. 12:28), and this kingdom keeps on coming when it shares itself and all its treasures by way of faith (Luke 17:21).

HERMAN BAVINCK

(Part III will appear in the next issue)

Whenever people from other lands visit Palestine they are always deeply moved by historic places familiar to us from the New Testament: Nazareth, Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Golgotha, and Jerusalem. Palestine has indeed been called the “Fifth Gospel.” The expression is really unacceptable, since it elevates seeing the Holy Land (a privilege given to relatively few) to the same level with the Gospels which have come to all. But the intention of this expression is certainly clear; here in Palestine it becomes plain that God has not dealt with us in the form of an idea, but in the events of history. The dealing of God is not a disclosure of lovely thoughts unconnected with historical circumstances, but is a revelation in history.

This has a different meaning for Christians than it has for Jews, who still, with enthusiasm, repeat and sing the words of Psalm 137:5, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem.…” Among the Jews this is a religious homesickness. When in the history of Zionism the idea of establishing the state of Israel in Ugandi in Africa was put forth, and the fatigued Herzl seemed satisfied with this, then the future president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, protested fiercely and made his choice for Jerusalem (Psalm 137).

The Place Of Holy Events

Although our thoughts of Jerusalem are different than those of the Jewish people, and even though we may never be able to visit Palestine and live our lives far from the “Holy Land,” this Oriental land still remains the place of holy events. Here history was fulfilled in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4): God was revealed in the flesh. Here God comes; all the lines of the purposeful dealing of God are drawn together here. All the ways of God’s doings cross each other in the historical revelation of God. From here the message of the Gospel goes out to all the world through disciples and preachers. Salvation here becomes historically visible—for the faith!—and Gospels appear in which everything has been written: names of people and places, and the missionary journeys of the apostles.

The revelation of God is just as real as the historical fact of sin and the disturbance of all of life, even to the secrets of the heart and to the ends of the world. Palestine is not the Fifth Gospel, but this land which lies on the border between East and West is involved in the message that goes around the world.

When the Church speaks of its salvation, it thinks back on this record of history. It protests every concept that would make salvation unreal and fleeting. In a life-and-death struggle, it withstood the temptation of Docetism, which did not do justice to the reality of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It refused to allow this revelation to become blurred in the idea, for it had knowledge of a manger and a cross, of Augustus and Caiaphas, and of Pontius Pilate. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate”—so the early Church confessed its anti-Docetism and embraced the message of the Cross and the Resurrection over against every denial.

Bultmann’S Fallacy

This brings us in our day to the stand against the de-mythologizing of Bultmann, who also assigns the Resurrection to mythical portions of the Gospels which no longer have normative authority for us. The Church stands with Paul who not only points to the Resurrection, but testifies thereto, by calling attention to the many witnesses who had seen the risen Lord (1 Cor. 15). Bultmann has called this “fatal argumentation,” but the whole original community is unanimous in viewing exactly this historical fact: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life … that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with … the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1–3).

The fullness of time!

God revealed in the flesh!

Whenever Paul speaks about the great mystery, then he speaks of “the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began” (Rom. 16:25). Paul is not asserting that prophecy was nonexistent under the old covenant, but he uses this strong expression (kept secret) rather to point out that now for the first time in history it is revealed in its full reality: “But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:26). This is the time of fulfillment of which Christ had already spoken in the synagogue: “This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21).

And when Paul speaks to the Greeks on Areopagus hill concerning the salvation of God, he proclaims the reality of divine revelation, that God now has passed by the times of ignorance and “now commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

The revelation of the mystery …

Decisive Historical Character

The Epistle to the Hebrews once more brings us into contact with this historical, decisive character of divine revelation. Throughout the entire Old Testament, the sacrificial offerings of the old covenant were aimed at the great offering which had now appeared: “now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). The “once” signifies not so much once in distinction from many times, but the finality of the offering. It is not accidental that the Reformation again emphasized this “once” over against the idea of repetition in the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass.

When this climax has been reached, when the Messianic work on earth has been completed, when God “was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), then with this has come “the end of the world.” That does not mean that the Scriptures do not reckon with a further course of history. But it is certainly clear that the time has run full, that the definitive dealing of God on earth has now been completed, and that everything that can still come to pass in the history of the world is necessarily made clear in terms of what has already occurred. The divine revelation in history forever rules out a look only toward the future, forgetful of what already has happened. When the Church looks forward to him who shall come (Rev. 1:8), then it can do this only because he once has come (John 1:11).

And when the Lord rose from the dead, when the kingdom of God was come, and the spirit was poured forth in the congregation—in the last days—then the apostles, as witnesses of the risen Lord, acquired dynamic to preach the Gospel even to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8) and to all peoples (Matt. 28:19). The entire reality of salvation is gathered in the definitive word of the crucified Christ: “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Ever since the time of Pentecost all of history has a status of final and definitive responsibility. Still, the end of the ways of God has not been reached. Now also there is an outlook toward the future—toward a future concerning which Paul writes: “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor. 15:54, 55).

There is one “not yet.” When the Thessalonians viewed the ordinary earthly life about them with disdain, then Paul warned them “not to be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thess. 2:2), and he says that first there must still come the falling away, the great falling away and the “man of sin” (2 Thess. 2:3).

Many times the New Testament revelation has been interpreted so that no concept of history as continuing is allowable after the time of the New Testament. The history of the Church in the early centuries is then regarded as an attempt to come to a reconciliation with the delay of the Parousia. In Switzerland especially, the theory of “consistent eschatology” has been put forward by Martin Werner and Fritz Buri, to the effect that dogma, office, and church had come into being in the place of the disappointed expectation. It is well to remember in this connection that in the Second Epistle of Peter the delay of the Parousia is mentioned. But there it is not the congregation that speaks thereof, but the mockers: “Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Pet. 3:4). Peter then recalls that they have forgotten one thing: the flood, the judgment of God in history, and that there is no reason for their mockery: “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8).

And since, despite all these conclusive events (Cross and Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost), history still goes on, Peter explains the purpose of this continuance in the words: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

Repentance: that is the word for the last days. When all decisions have been made, then man is still before the great decision: “Blessed is he who is not offended in me” Matt. 11:6).

CONCLUDED IN NEXT ISSUE

G. C. Berkouwer is Professor of Systematic Theology in Free University, Amsterdam, and author of many significant books. He is one of 24 evangelical scholars contributing to the important symposium on Revelation and the Bible to be published in the latter part of this year by Baker Book House.

During the past few decades Christianity versus communism has been the burden of countless publications and discourses throughout America. These for the most part have extolled the virtues of the Christian faith and of the American way of life, while on the other hand, they denounced the errors and terrors of communism. And of errors and terrors there have been plenty. Today, for all the “socialist” trends in American life, few causes so strongly unite the American people as the anti-Communist crusade.

Despite this strong opposition, however, the march of communism continues apace. Its progress since the Russian revolution 40 years ago is astounding. To the partisans of the movement this bears eloquent testimony to its validity. Its enemies recognize the fact that evil forces often seem more suited to the conditions of history (for a time) than the good. In any event, it cannot yet be supposed that the high water mark has been reached and that we shall see presently the eclipse of world communism.

Meanwhile, developments within the “free world” have not been reassuring. Despite an outer religious prosperity, there is clear evidence of the fresh growth, since World War II, of the secular stream in our own own culture. It is true that “the time of trouble”—the rise of totalitarian powers, the world-wide economic collapse during the inter-war period, two world wars and the Korean conflict—purged the West of much of its false optimism. Religion once more became respectable, and sin and tragedy returned as theological categories necessary to the understanding of history. But it was our military technology that rescued us from both our economic doldrums and our foreign enemies. God may have been introduced to the federal mint and the flag salute, but it is in our control of the atom that we trust.

Indulgent Living

The lesson has not been lost on “the masses.” No sooner had the war ended than we turned with abandon to cash in on the benefits of wartime technological progress for indulgent peace-time living. Seldom has the old proverb come so near to vindication: War is the father of all things. Where there was still a world of want to be conquered, we squandered our resources in sensate living, and sought security in tranquilizers and missiles. Admittedly, the apocalyptic fears of the atomic age have often seemed the dominant obsession of our time, and yet as we have eased past crisis after crisis, and the prospect of immediate war has receded, the old utopian dream of a world society ordered by man once more returns to encourage our couch of ease. If war is indeed averted, we stand on the threshold of the most powerful onrush of a secular world culture in history.

An astounding harbinger of the new age is this year’s Universal Exhibition and International Fair in Brussels, Belgium. With deep insight into the undercurrent of the world mood today, the planners of this technological extravaganza set out to depict man “building a world for man.” “The time has come,” they announced some months ago, when “man must build and shape this his World to his own measure.” Not content at coining their own slogans, they employed biblical phraseology. “In the beginning,” they said, “man started on a long journey.” And as they reached the climax of their rhapsody, they proclaimed, “Joy to the world.” The Brussels exhibition of 1958 is thus heralded as the “crowning of a great effort (but) above all, a new beginning.…” (Circular published by La Société de l’Exposition Universelle, 10, rue du Chene, Bruxelles).

This dream of man building the world to his own measure comes to us with a haunting familiarity, for it reminds us that the communism we abhor and the secularism of the West are blood brothers. Both are children of the Enlightenment and of scientism. Both are based on belief in evolution, progress and human perfectibility. Despite the contradiction in metaphysical symbols—there a dialectical materialism, here a theistic God—both are terrifyingly alike in their belief that men can create paradise, and in reliance upon science, technology and military might, achieve their own utopia.

The present juncture in world history therefore demands that we take a second look at the problem of communism, a look sufficiently detached to examine the foundation upon which we have built our anti-Communist defenses. This, few people have bothered to do. It has seemed far easier and rewarding to join the great chant of denunciation. As a result, many people have mistaken minor skirmishes for major battles, and perhaps very few can even distinguish the real battle line. This growth of a world-wide secularism, if clearly recognized, will drive us to the conclusion that the crucial issue of our time is not, as commonly supposed, the struggle between Christianity (as the Western way of life) and communism, but rather the confrontation of the Church of Christ by the greatest secular forces of history, before which she stands as an embattled minority. Communism as an ideology and as an historical force may be at present the most malignant form of a post-Christian secularism, but its kinship to other forms of the same secularism is not to be denied. The issue which should give us most concern, therefore, is not the internecine conflict of the two forms of secularism (and who can call our nuclear policy anything but secular?), but between the powers of this age and the Lord of glory. However serious the clash between Washington and Moscow, the front of the real conflict of history lies not on the Elbe, but between the kingdoms of light and of darkness which know no geographical boundaries.

Communism A Dangerous Heresy

This analysis does not rest on a whitewashing of communism. By this time the case has been established beyond all doubt that there can be no concord between the basic faith of Christianity and that of communism. The one is avowedly theistic and the other is avowedly atheistic. Furthermore, in the practical realm, communism has persistently employed methods which fundamentally contradict Christian morality.

Finally, the very goal of communism, namely, as a perfect society within history, to be achieved by the most imperfect means, without God, is a supreme expression of the sinful pride of man. Nor does this analysis deny that on the plane of real politics many problems facing our statesmen appear well nigh insurmountable. Taking the world as it is today, with its festering sores on the one hand, and the open and clandestine efforts of international communism to exploit these on behalf of the revolution on the other, statesmen indeed find themselves “between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

What we propose, rather, is that these facts seemed so conveniently and obviously true that it was far easier—and more profitable—to get on the bandwagon to reiterate them, than it was to face the sober reality that this simply negative analysis does not fully define the Communist problem. Accordingly, as the Communist fever has ravaged more ardently, the American remedy has exhibited ever more fully its inadequacy. It will therefore be necessary to turn to a consideration of the things we, as American Christians, so far have missed in our attitude toward communism. Though such an effort seems not a little presumptuous, it must nonetheless be risked.

The Things We Have Missed

It must be noted first of all that to place Christianity and communism in juxtaposition, as we are wont to do, is inaccurate and misleading. It implies that we are confronted with alternatives at a point where alternatives do not exist. For if communism presents us with a proposed system which incorporates all reality, including the institutions of society, in a unified field, Christianity does not. That is, we do not have before us as an alternative to the Communist proposal, a Christian pattern for world political order. True, the will of God comprehends the whole of our life, but the will of God reckons with the realities of sin and freedom, and therefore the Gospel of redemption does not offer to us a universal historical order, woven in a single cloth, which we can throw into the teeth of the Communists.

This opposing of Christianity and communism quickly leads to a second error which, from a Christian point of view, must be decried as outright heresy. It is the tendency to identify Christianity with one system of states as over against the other. If this was a feature of the pre-Christian chosen people of Israel, it is a vision that has been completely transcended in Christ. We now know that redemptive truth is never confined to one historical complex as over against another. Rather, God weighs the affairs of history in terms of those “in every nation that fear him.” Though the qualitative differences of political powers are not to be ignored, the issues of history turn, not on the relative merit of the one against the other, but on the relationship of all of them to the kingdom of God. Here all are found wanting, and there is no biblical warrant for us to wed the cause of Christ completely to one political power in a Christ-denying war against another.

A third thing which we have missed is the false view of human nature upon which the classical economic theory rests. The belief that the competition of egos in the economic struggle will of itself achieve a harmonious equilibrium runs counter to the biblical view of fallen man as well as to the testimony of history. Furthermore, classical capitalism tends to transfer the economic process from the moral realm to the realm of nature, and thereby to weaken the moral sensibility of its agents. These facts must be admitted without our falling into the opposite and doubly grievous error of Marxism which attributes to man not only goodness, in the planned society, but also (to the few at the top) the omniscience necessary to its achievement. Their admission, too, does not entail a denial of free enterprise as a superior economic system. It is rather that our blindness to these flaws in our system has led to overconfidence in its rightness and efficiency. We are thus ill-prepared to recognize the validity of certain Marxist criticisms, or to come to terms with the achievements of other economic systems. But most serious of all, we therefore bring an inadequate understanding to those people who are faced with the necessity of devising a modus vivendi with a political or economic system which may indeed deny the values they hold dear. It is sobering to realize that we Western Christians in some measure take for granted positions of economic privilege among the nations of the world, which positions are often dependent upon our superior military force, when at the same time we find it difficult to sympathize with Christians in the Communist orbit who similarly make concessions, though at different points.

Real Nature Of Revolution

In the fourth place, this false juxtaposition of Christianity and communism has blinded us in part to the real nature of the revolution on the Eurasian and African continents, and has led to an “overideologizing” of the world struggle. While in the West the scientific and industrial revolutions were achieved leisurely and organically with abundant resources, over a period of several centuries while other societies stood still—and at a cost far greater than we recognize now in our romantic view of our own history—half the world’s population still lives in want. Granted that many of the poor peoples understand their situation imperfectly and, moreover, tend to fix the blame for their plight primarily on the nations who have more. Nevertheless, having come to realize that want is no longer necessary, they are driven frantically to escape it. The pathos of this we have not understood.

While we should certainly labor, hope and pray that revolution may come to the peoples in distress without violence, we dare not be sentimental about the true dynamics of this revolution. For the stirring in the Orient means that the real “disturber” of the peace there is not Communist agitation, but the naked struggle of men for a tolerable earthly existence. And beneath the immediacy of this struggle, man being a unitary being, lies their spiritual hunger.

In the fifth place, this misreading of the struggle in terms primarily of political and military power balances has brought on a vulgarization of our own faith. In a manner reminiscent of Europe’s Thirty Years’ War, we have been coarsened and calloused spiritually by totalitarian struggles fought under slogans of deepest piety. Beneath the euphemisms of military technique we accept mass homicide, and today continue to pour our best resources into the “improvement” of that technique.

A final error antedates the Communist revolution by many centuries. It is the loss of an articulate awareness in Christendom that, while the law of God is indeed binding upon all men, Christian ethics in the full sense can be expected of Christians only. Since the fourth century of our era, it has all too seldom been clear that the unique and primary ethical significance of the Christian faith is not its mollifying influence on pagans who remain pagans still, however desirable this may be, but rather the creating of the new people of God who press forward redemptively in his kingdom, whether or not such action coincides with a particular political destiny. The recovery of the experience of personal conversion in evangelical Christianity has been a partial corrective, but there is too little evidence of a recovery of the ethical implications of this insight. Thus for all the emphasis on personal conversion, when we reach the point of political ethos we tend to glide into vague clichés of national piety which derive, not from the Gospel, but from a strange synthesis of Old Testament national Judaism and the Enlightenment.

It will be a great day when evangelical Christians come to see that the doctrine of the sovereignty of God among the nations cannot be played off against the redemptive thrust of the gospel of Jesus Christ to exempt Christians from obedience to Christ when they are caught in a struggle for national survival. Only when our lesser loyalties are subsumed under the rule of Christ can the full prophetic impact of the will of God for mankind impinge upon the world of nations.

As a result of these deep misunderstandings, historical Christianity has been brought to its knees before Communist might. True, it behooves us to be humble at this point, for we can never presume to comprehend all the counsels of God. Furthermore, we do not pretend by this analysis that Christians en toto have forsaken the faith, or that the Church of Christ has suffered lasting defeat. We are discussing here phases of Christian understanding and practice which do fall within the scope of Christian responsibility, where continuous seeking and sharing among Christians are imperative, and where every insight is subject to the correction or the improvement that another may bring.

It is in this sense that the present writer believes that we have sacrificed the Christian ministry of reconciliation, which in truth transcends our present divided world, to the promotion of the aims of Western civilization. At a time when communism has sought to cast Christianity in the role of the protagonist of corrupt regimes, American Christians play into their hands by attacks which either implicitly or openly identify Christianity with the cause of the West. Just as for decades we were virtually incommunicado with the Russian people, we are now unable to communicate with the Chinese. While there may be many reasons for such a state of affairs, the false assessment of the Communist problem by Western Christians is unquestionably one.

Christian renewal does not in fact come by the prefabrication of new structures, outside the situation, which then, like Solomon’s temple, can be assembled on the desired spot. Christian renewal comes rather when we turn to God in concrete repentance, and he then revives his work “in the midst of the years.”

The direction of that repentance lies, it would seem, in a recovery of a primary loyalty to Christ and his community, to which other loyalties—and national fears—must once more be made secondary. It lies in the discovery that the real battle line today stretches, not simply between Christianity and communism, but between the Christianity and the secular idolatry which East and West share alike, and which is mushrooming to unprecedented proportions wherever men succeed in liberating themselves from the whims of nature. That such recovery will demand a heavy price of American Christians is not to be denied. If in the West we have been granted a temporary respite in the struggle between the Lord of history and the rulers of this age, so far as the attitude of the State toward the Church is concerned, let us receive it with gratitude. But let us never make it an end in itself. It has come, perhaps because some men have been faithful, but more basically, for reasons hidden in the counsel of God. To contradict the Gospel in our effort to defend this temporal value is a spiritual hazard of the first magnitude.

END

Paul Peachey is currently on leave from Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia, to study the “peace movement” in Japan, and its implications for the Christian witness. He teaches Church History and Sociology, in which fields he holds the Ph.D. degree from University of Zurich.

In the choice between two terrible evils, Western civilization may voluntarily submit to the Soviet tyranny—a tyranny of political wickedness and monstrous power run by purges and by secret police.

The frightening force backing our world into this predicament is, of course, the implications in the lethal might of “the nuclear threat.” People the globe over are afraid, and there is cause to be. The mind staggers as problems keep spinning out of the runaway potentialities of our atomic age. The survival of humanity is at stake. Those who know most are most fearful. Token samples of the awful possibilities numb the powers of thought. The harbingers of the future are ominous. “ ‘The ashes of death’ already poison many waters and beaches of the world.”

It is a time for greatness, but civilized leaders, baffled and clumsy, stand in human littleness on a precipice, gambling with catastrophe. They are not sure which way to go, nor are they sure what they should do.

It looks as if man is not equal to the demands of history. We are developing a structural complexity we may lack the powers to sustain. One of the last signs of a crumbling epoch is a general decline in moral appreciation and in moral values. As the atom bomb sounds alarms all over life, Nobel prize winners declare that “… we are no longer great enough for ‘problems of the spirit.’ ” Nothing is left but “a massive and universal physical fear.” We can only “temporarily arrest society’s lethal self-laceration.” Influences that should be spiritual are “a mixture of will-worship, egocentricity, nihilism, jargon, verbal mystification, ontological claptrap and pornography”—pagan wails in a pagan world. What a stage for people fumbling with nuclear explosives!

The issue right now terrifies every element of decency, but—and this is the monstrous thing—it is the chance of all time for evil exploitations.

Sinister influences always exploit the fears of a frightened world. The wicked forces of the hour are, of course, making the most of our terrifying crisis. With diabolical effectiveness, clever manipulations touch and temper the interests of our age. Sensitive and nervous minds, duped with fear or caught with propaganda, are persuaded to chance some deal with evil. Moral expediency is a terrible disease which rots the soul and pauperizes finer moral sensitivities. Morality shrivels when good people think that bargains with degradation can insure decency or keep alive nobility and values.

The atomic problem today faces mankind with grim tasks. It calls for grim greatness. Unstable temperaments that progressively shake apart in the storms of history are to be feared, not trusted. Men who have been terribly wrong in the past and who have been doctrinaire in their wrongness are suspect. Yet such people always bubble into headlines in crisis hours.

Pre-Pearl-Harbor pacifism, tremendous and single-tracked in its sincerity, might have turned the world over to a philosophy of barbarism and a gospel of tyranny. In the last months of 1939, some 400 American intellectuals signed their names to endorse an uncritical crusade that “stressed the role of the Soviet Union as ‘a bulwark against War and aggression.’ ” The Soviet-German pact ironically followed almost immediately. In dangerous times, sentimental prophets are monstrous risks.

There is a point beyond which authentic moral responsibility cannot go without losing everything. It is unrealistic and self-deceiving to assume one’s commitments can be divorced from their responsible consequences. If belief in what is taken to be an ideal aids and abets international gangsters, responsibility cannot be escaped.

Illusions For Reality

Ponder today’s crusade to stop Western society from all further development of nuclear weapons. In some queer way, it is thought that this alone affords humanity its only chance of survival. The implications and responsibilities are enormous.

We may again be seeing how fearful people in tough times substitute illusions for reality. The movement offers no substantiating facts, no scientific principles, no realistic credentials and no proofs. Because nothing is predictable or real about it, the easiest thing in the world is to claim anything and everything for it. One must meditate long upon the thing if he is to comprehend the immense implications.

If the West stops all further nuclear development, the Soviet Union automatically achieves a nuclear monopoly over the world. That by any standard is a monstrous and awful risk! When before did moral man ever think he could find hope by directly or indirectly implementing barbarism with the might of matchless power? When before did intelligent people admit a willingness to chance the future of the race on the inhumanity of an acknowledged despotism?

The strange and dreadful recommendation of this movement which calls itself “A Sane Nuclear Policy” makes realistic newspapers ask about man’s sanity. Isn’t there something twisted when men of eminent position sponsor a crusade which will give brutal communism unquestionable control of the planet? A token of the amazing distortion lies in the conflict between the emotionally excited important people and the park bench realism of the common man. What idealism will, for any reason, voluntarily accept chances with Soviet domination? In the words of the New York Daily News, “We do not charge these persons with consciously trying to do a job for the Kremlin.” But we shudder at topflight emotionalism aligned, to all practical purposes, on the side of Moscow’s immorality. Time magazine quotes the view “of Bertrand Russell, and Philip Toynbee—son of the famed historian—that nuclear disarmament will probably bring Communist domination but that domination is preferable to the prospect of nuclear war” (February 21, 1958). Another version from a different, but top source, comes yet more vividly to the point: “… to be dominated seems to me to be a lesser evil than to get oneself extinguished” (May, 1958).

The Flight From Martyrdom

The drift is to an all-time low for moral expediency. This belief, bluntly stated, says that the only summum bonum of existence is to make sure of staying physically alive. If this mind-pattern of expediency appeals to leadership, may not that have something to do with the tendencies that have decimated so much of the moral life of our era? When before did men of conviction stand in abject fear and confess they would do anything to stay alive? With that standard decency disappears, liberty dies and animal interests are accepted morality. What about the nobility and values of moral convictions? What about the deep cry of the heart for righteousness and for truth and for justice? Were the martyrs of the past inexpedient fools? They could have stayed alive. Are we at long last to give up the moral law, that moral law which has held over nobler ages the unbounded sway of something greater than the selfish desire of men, to save their skins? What values can a humanity possess if it will not die to protect its convictions? Authentic civilization still lives in the principle, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Isn’t there something seriously wrong when men of good will actually believe that serfdom is today a lesser evil than martyrdom for a cause?

The choice now is one of the most serious in history. There has never been anything like it before. The dilemma is: an expedient trust in cynical faithlessness or paying, price down, the cost of austere integrity. The blood of freemen runs cold at the thought of liberty-loving people in high position expressing a deliberate willingness to accept “a Communist dominated world.” For posterity nothing could be more cruel.

World Government by the Soviet Union! The power-drunk infamy of Moscow Lord of the world! World government by degradation because the principles of civilized existence are giving themselves up—because men no longer prefer death and extinction to injustice or to inhumanity and slavery! The twisted moral situation is amazing, namely:

“Uncompromising loyalty to moral principles may mean extinction of the race.” That is a monstrous thought!

“Submission to evil domination may be humanity’s only chance of survival.” That is an even yet more monstrous thought!

Is there any morality in a willingness to turn the world over to the butchers of Hungary because the alternative may mean crucifixion? Can authentic morality gamble on the ruthless degradation of a Communist dominated world? Such promethean defiance of moral principles misses the bottom law of elementary virtue, for absolute power corrupts absolutely and absolute corruption can only decimate the world. Making self-preservation the sole concern of existence is the sure-fire way for a civilization to get itself extinguished. “The paramount aim of the Roman Empire was to keep itself alive.” The self-centered rule disintegrated into chaos and annihilation. In a moral world, a philosophy essentially interested in saving our hides can do nothing but ruin us. Moral laws govern the rise or fall of men and nations, lifting or destroying them with silent and inexorable fatality (Burke). The nemesis of violated axioms is destruction.

What about the willingness to accept, for any reason, an all-powerful Moscow master or—what is more amazing still—the willingness to accept, for any reason, a totally helpless democratic world? A strange recipe indeed for the survival of mankind! What can come out of betraying civilization?

We are witnessing, perhaps, another copybook lesson from history. Recall the silly days in the 1930’s when leaderships of great nations were so afraid of war that they shouted “peace for our time” and submitted to anything. Out of those came the second World War. Hitler tore up the earth because people believed there was nobility and safety in pious platitudes. Vociferous public characters emotionalized themselves into believing that they alone were “realistic, hardheaded and practical.” The motive was the overpowering fear of war. The motive now is the overpowering fear of nuclear explosives. Again logic is underlining, for those who will see it, the evil of ignoring principles. The romanticism that was to stop war in the 1930’s brought war. The sentimentalism of today which thinks it can insure humanity’s survival by debasing the morality of existence can do nothing but disintegrate the race.

The essence of civilization is the will to oppose evil and to stop, at all costs, the enemies of liberty and of decency and of spiritual values. Anything else degrades the moral status of the world. Only a paragon of moral stupidity can dream of taking chances with sinfulness to achieve that which is good. When willful depravity is at work in the world we must not bargain with it for advantages. It is wrong to speak of gambling with expediencies as “a great act of faith.” It is moral betrayal. How far can we go in “striving to concede to international desperadoes a moral capacity?”

If the West stops in the nuclear race, the Soviet Union automatically is in nuclear command of the globe. In that situation, the United States would be turned into a Russian satellite with dizzy speed. Remember what happened to the countries that put their trust in helplessness or thought they could do business with communism.

The last “scribbled message of Imre Nagy”—now a martyr—cracks like the rifle-fire of Lexington around the globe saying: “I want the world to know there can be no compromise!” The soldiers at Corregidor were trapped like rats but they died like men. When you appeal to history, that great teacher of mankind, you find an invocation “not to caution, but to courage” (Clemenceau). If we are coming to the end of the way and if the final curtains are set to fall on the disappearance of all consciousness, it is, I think, nobler to “go out” like moral men than to make the last act of existence the story of voluntary slaves who were willing to do anything to stay alive.

A World Government run by the Soviet Union is a terrifying thought! What is more amazing is the fact that there are freemen ready to accept it.

END

Commander H. H. Lippincott, United States Navy, Retired, served as Chaplain with the United States Fleet in the First World War. He holds the A.B., A.M., and S.T.B. degrees from Dickinson College and Boston University, and has served pastorates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He now resides at 26 Colonial Road, Morristown, New Jersey.

At the time of the American Revolution there were about 18,000 Roman Catholics in all the colonies. Today, according to the hierarchy’s figures, they number 34 million. In less than 200 years the Roman church has grown from the smallest denomination in the country to the largest. Such a sensational increase in the dimensions of the Roman Catholic community suggests that this faith may, in the foreseeable future, become predominant in the United States and attain political and cultural control.

The process is signally aided by a curious theology which makes intelligent family limitation a sin for Roman Catholics. If the hierarchy should gain the ascendancy here, it would mean that a country once overwhelmingly Protestant in numbers and thoroughly Protestant in its genius had turned in another direction. Such a development would have consequences of the utmost importance to every Protestant, to every non-Catholic, and, for that matter, to the Roman Catholics themselves.

Will the United States ever become a Roman Catholic nation? Twelve years ago Harold E. Fey, now editor of The Christian Century, completed a series of articles for that journal under the title, “Can Catholicism Win America?” He concluded the series by answering “Yes.” Every trend which Dr. Fey noted has become more pronounced during the years since. Father James M. Gillis, then editor of The Catholic World, predicted in 1929 that America will be predominantly a Catholic country “before the present younger generation dies.” Two men, observing from opposite sides of the fence, foresaw the same result. It is practical wisdom to ask the nature of the denouement toward which we may be heading. It is in the area of freedom that this question concerns us, and within that area the particular locale of religious freedom concerns us most. What would Roman Catholic predominance mean at this point? We can find the answer in (1) What the Roman church itself teaches; (2) What the Roman church teaches the children in its schools; (3) The practice of the Roman church in lands where it has already gained predominance.

Catholics And Religious Freedom

No Catholic program in regard to religious freedom can be understood without some grasp of the theology which informs it. The fact is that the systematic curbing of other faiths, particularly Christian faiths, is indigenous to its entire position. The Roman church and any government to which it is legally joined are driven to such action by the church’s own inherent logic. The insistence on the identity of the true Church of Jesus Christ with the visible Roman church—an outrageous heresy from a Protestant point of view—is largely responsible. If this particular coterie of ecclesiastics has the truth and the whole truth, then all others, while they might have some of the truth, are also bound to have some error. But error cannot have the same rights as truth. Therefore, it is an act of moral responsibility on the part of those who have the truth to set some limits or inflict some disabilities on the spread of error.

This is the real basis of Roman Catholic suppression of Protestants as it has continued through the centuries to the present day. We see this clearly in the teaching of Father Francis J. Connell, generally regarded as the leading Catholic theologian in the United States. In his book Freedom of Worship, the Catholic Position, a work currently distributed by the Paulist Press, he makes clear that Roman Catholic curbs on Protestant freedom are always inherently present. The degree to which they are carried out, however, differs greatly from country to country. Father Connell says that, generally speaking, the decisive factor in the application of disabilities to Protestants would be the country’s attainment of a Catholic majority. Whether he means a straight 51 per cent of the church population, or a working majority politically, he does not make clear. He does insist, however, that in a country that is “distinctly Catholic … the civil rulers can consider themselves justified in restricting or preventing denominational activities hostile to the [Roman] Catholic religion.”

Father Connell then explains what he means by this. He says he does not mean that civil rulers should punish or persecute Protestants who will not become Catholics. “But they are justified in repressing written or spoken attacks on Catholicism, the use of the press or the mails to weaken the allegiance of Catholics toward their Church, and similar anti-Catholic efforts.” When one realizes that every sermon from a Protestant pulpit is, in a theological sense, “anti-Catholic activity,” the possibilities of this program begin to appear.

It is only fair to Father Connell to cite his own supplement to his program as outlined above:

Even in a predominantly Catholic country, circumstances may render it more advisable for the government to grant non-Catholics the same measure of freedom of worship as is enjoyed by Catholics. Such a course is justifiable when it is foreseen that a policy of complete toleration will procure greater good than will repressive measures against anti-Catholic activities.

This concession to Protestants is generous. It should be pointed out, though, that it rests upon no conviction or principle—only upon the observation that in a given situation the suppression of Protestants might create more fuss than it would be worth!

Roman Catholic thinking on religious freedom is clearly indicated in a rather spontaneous remark of José M. de Arielza, Spanish ambassador to the United States. When speaking before a Charles Carroll forum, he was questioned about the closing of the Protestant Union Theological Seminary in Madrid. He replied:

There exists in Spain today the natural desire to avoid that it become a Protestant missionary camp. If the Catholic Church believes it professes the true religion, why should it be subjected to adverse propaganda to rob it of its faith?

What Mr. Arielza is saying is simply: Why should the Roman church run the risk of competition when it has the power to eliminate it?

Attitude Toward Other Faiths

A succinct statement of the Roman Catholic attitude toward other faiths is found in an oft-quoted article in the Jesuit journal, Civilta Cattolica, published in Rome. This journal is a quality publication which enjoys high prestige and authority among church scholars, and is also known to be close to the Pope. The statement in the issue of April 1948 reads:

The Roman Catholic Church, convinced through its divine prerogatives, of being the only true church, must demand the right of freedom for herself alone, because such a right can only be possessed by truth, never by error. As for other religions, the Church will certainly never draw the sword, but she will require that by legitimate means they shall not be allowed to propagate false doctrine. Consequently, in a state where the majority of the people are Catholic, the Church will require that legal existence be denied to error, and that if religious minorities actually exist, they shall have only a de facto existence without opportunity to spread their beliefs.… In some countries, Catholics will be obliged to ask full religious freedom for all, resigned at being forced to cohabitate where they alone should rightfully be allowed to live. But in doing this the Church does not renounce her thesis which remains the most imperative of her laws, but merely adapts herself to de facto conditions which must be taken into account in practical affairs.… The Church cannot blush for her own want of tolerance as she asserts it in principle and applies it in practice.

The tenor of this teaching is clear. Religious freedom is not a value for the Roman Catholic hierarchy, except in one context only. It is a value to them only when they are in danger of losing it for themselves. The reason the Pope never includes clerically oppressed Protestants in his appointed days of prayer for the oppressed is that in his view such oppression is necessary and proper. Since those being denied their freedom in this instance are not Catholic, there is, in fact, no denial.

There is one source of information on this subject which is so close at hand it is commonly overlooked. Yet it has a significance all its own. In the long run the teaching of Roman Catholic theologians or even the encyclicals of popes may not count for so much as what is taught the children. We know that 4 million Roman Catholic children are now being trained at the elementary and high school level in a carefully insulated denominational enclave. What goes on within its walls? What is the hierarchy teaching these millions of future Americans on the subject of religious freedom?

An article of limited dimensions can do no more than spot check representative parochial school textbooks. The quotations offered here are typical of many that prove highly disturbing to Protestant peace of mind. In Christian Principles and National Problems, by Ostheimer and Delaney, published by William H. Sadlier, under imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman, we read:

The doctrine of the Church … is that the State must profess and promote not any religion, but the one true form of worship founded by Christ and continuing today in the Catholic Church alone. Such a public profession … will of necessity bring the State into some relation with Catholicism, the only complete expression of God’s revealed truth. As an ideal, then, Church and State should be united in their efforts” (p. 98). “The non-Catholic and the non-baptized should be permitted to carry on their own form of worship as long as there would be no danger of scandal or perversion to the faithful. In a country where the majority are Catholics, the practice of Protestantism or paganism by an inconspicuous minority would be neither a source of scandal nor perversion to the adherents of the true Faith” (p. 99).

This chapter then follows with a condemnation of the principle of Church-State separation, agreeing with Pope Leo XIII that the status of the church in the American scheme of things is not the most desirable in the eyes of the church and is not to be accepted as ideal.

What is disturbing to Protestants is not the arrogance of this, but its implied threat to their freedom of worship. The teaching is vague only in regard to the point at which sanctions would be applied to Protestants. The attainment of a majority would not warrant the commencement of repressive measures, provided the Protestant minority were small and “inconspicuous.” How large the majority would actually have to be, and how conspicuous the Protestants would have to become, is not stated. Nevertheless, to suggest that 4 million children be taught the idea that, at any point whatever, their church should start oppressing other churches is in itself monstrous. Have Protestants any reason to doubt that what is taught the children of one generation will be done by their leaders in the next, provided the opportunity offers?

We see a similar point of view in Living Our Faith by Flynn, Loretto and Simeon, published by W. H. Sadlier, imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman. (Both of these books are widely used in Roman Catholic schools.) We read:

The question of union or separation of Church and State has perplexed men since the Protestant Revolt. The ideal situation exists when there is perfect union and accord between Church and State, with each supreme in its own field.… In a Catholic country, when a dispute arises [between Church and State] and settlement is unattainable, the rights of the Church should prevail, since it possesses the higher authority.”

The text points out that citizens of the United States are apt to think that separation of Church and State is a good thing. The church holds, however, that “(separation) is still a compromise and … the lesser of two evils.” The church would do better, the pupils are told, “if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of public authority” (p. 247). This obviously means establishment.

Living Our Faith further points out to the children the fact that “non-Catholic methods of worshiping God must be branded counterfeit” and the plain inference is that the state should assist in the branding (p. 112).

At the college level, consider the popular text by Ryan and Boland, Catholic Principles of Politics, published by Macmillan, imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman.

Suppose … that the Constitutional obstacles to prosecution of non-Catholics have been legitimately removed and they themselves have become numerically insignificant: What then would be the proper course of action for a Catholic State? Apparently, the latter State could logically tolerate only such religious activities as were confined to the members of the dissenting group. It could not permit them to carry on general propaganda nor accord their organization certain privileges that had formerly been extended to all religious corporations, for example, exemption from taxation.

This is the kind of mental climate in which millions of Roman Catholic children and young people are being reared. Why should we doubt that it may have its desired effect tomorrow?

Still another useful source of information as to Roman Catholic intentions lies in the hierarchy’s actual performance in lands where this denomination predominates. The governments of many nations have concordats or special agreements with the Vatican. All of these agreements give certain privileges to the Roman Catholic church and visit certain disabilities on other churches. They vary considerably, yet all have these two major facets. The concordat with Spain is regarded by the Vatican as the ideal agreement with a political power. We may regard its provisions as typical of those which the church would like in all nations.

This instrument, signed August 1953, specifically grants the Roman Catholic church a religious monopoly in Spain. The government agrees to provide its support from tax funds—stipends for priests at all levels, grants for seminaries, church universities and church construction, and “for the general practice of the [Roman Catholic] religion.” Clergy are immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution before a civil judge unless permission is given by the ruling prelate. The state undertakes to subsidize all missionary activities of the Roman church, to care for its monasteries and to support its social and welfare institutions.

Marriage comes under the dictates of canon law. The Roman version of Christianity is made compulsory teaching in all schools, whether operated by the church or the state. All teachers of religion are appointed and controlled by the church. Education is placed under control of the hierarchy. Schools of other denominations are prohibited. Priests are given a monopoly on all religious broadcasting. They are also given a monopoly on the chaplaincy of the armed forces, of the police force, of all penal institutions, hospitals and orphanages.

The public practice of any other faith than Roman Catholicism will occasion the arrest and punishment of the guilty party.

These provisions would seem to represent the goal of Roman Catholic policy. It is a goal achieved in whole or in part in all lands having a Vatican concordat.

The Argument From Difference

The American hierarchy, who understand how shocking their church’s teaching and practice would be to freedom-loving Americans, have endeavored to cushion the shock with an ingenious argument. They offer the plea of “difference.” The plea has two points of emphasis-first: these other countries are “different” from the United States and therefore we should expect to find ideas on religious freedom different, also. This is the argument in one of the famed Knights of Columbus ads designed in an effort to get new members for their church. The ad reads: “The status of the Catholic Church in such a land [Colombia] would obviously be different than in the United States where there are many faiths all entitled to the same rights.”

What the Knights seem to mean is that when Catholics are in considerable majority, this creates a “different” situation and it then becomes proper for them to oppress others. It is highly doubtful, however, whether Protestants find brutality, jail and death any easier to take because they are few in number. Nor are they any happier about the closing of their schools and the destruction of their churches because they are a minority. (All of these things have happened to them in Colombia, the land of the concordat.) From a Protestant point of view, the doctrine that a Roman Catholic majority makes a country “different” where religious freedom is concerned is false and dangerous. Such freedom is even more important to a minority than to a majority.

The second approach to the plea of “difference” is that the United States is different. Because of this “difference” it is argued that the consistent pattern of clerical oppression in other lands could never obtain here. This is the approach taken by the Jesuit, Father Gustave Weigel, and his collaborators in his book, The Catholic Church, U.S.A. Protestants were much interested in a debate on this matter within the Roman church some years ago. The Spanish hierarchy on May 28, 1948, had issued a statement taking Franco to task for not being rough enough on the Protestants. They hotly denounced Protestant proselytism as illegal activity and urged the government to enforce the laws forbidding public Protestant services.

The American Indiana Catholic and Record took exception to these statements and questioned their propriety. It suggested that the Spanish hierarchy was behind the times. The Spanish hierarchy replied with vigor, citing the very pronouncements of Civilta Cattolica quoted in this article. They also cited the encyclicals of Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII denouncing the idea that the state should grant complete religious freedom. The controversy mounted to the point where a Vatican pronouncement was necessary. The Vatican settled it by stating that an address on the subject by Cardinal Ottaviani was “unexceptionable”—that is, correct. Cardinal Ottaviani, as Secretary of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, was the Pope’s closest confidant. In his address he had simply reasserted the Civilta Cattolica position that the church would advocate freedom in certain circumstances only to use it as a means of ultimately overthrowing freedom.

Father John Courtney Murray, one of this country’s most effective Catholic spokesmen, has stated publicly that he did not accept the Cardinal’s statement as the final word. He has, however, had no more to say on the subject. This rejection by Father Murray is a courageous act, but it only points up the futility of his position. Neither he nor his colleagues have any voice on such matters. One voice settles them. It cannot be forgotten that the position of the Roman church on any such question is just as monolithic as the pope wants it to be. There is, and can be, no “American position” among the hierarchy on religious freedom, or on any other matter where the popes have spoken. We may rejoice at some occasional “American sounding” statement of a member of the hierarchy on the subject of religious freedom. Unfortunately he can speak for no one—not even himself.

What Can We Expect?

We are now prepared to give reasonable answer to the question: what can we expect if and when the Roman Catholic hierarchy gains ascendancy in the United States? Those who are inclined to belittle this summation as “speculation” may well ponder the fact that in a number of instances we see the program well on its way.

The first step—and one on which notable progress has been made—would be the elimination of all restrictions as contained in present law on the use of tax funds for the support of parochial schools. This would likely be done not so much by change or repeal of laws as by ignoring or circumventing them in practice. An insistence by the Jesuit college presidents that Catholic institutions share Federal aid on an “across the board” basis, and the proposals by Cardinal McIntyre for full tax support to Catholic elementary and high schools via a “pupil certificate” plan, are examples of the approach.

At the same time there would be stepped-up grants for Roman Catholic welfare activities—hospitals, orphanages, homes, relief work, etc.—together with complete domination of all united fund and community chest projects. Functions which we have traditionally thought of as public in character would be turned over to church operation, though financing would still come from tax funds. (Bishop Sheen has recently suggested that the foreign aid program in its social and medical aspects would be turned over to the church.)

A further step might well be that of direct state stipends to priests. There is precedent for this in Italy, Spain and colonial Portugal. Such a step would, of course, have to await a formal designation of the Roman church as America’s official church. The teaching of Roman Catholic dogma in all public schools, and in all church schools as well, would be required by law, the teaching to be done by priests, nuns or lay persons approved by the church. There is precedent for this in many concordat countries, particularly in Latin America.

Authorities duly constituted by the hierarchy would exercise censorship over the press, books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and television programs. Precedent is forming in the large measure of de facto censorship which the Roman church already exercises in this country through its Legion of Decency and National Organization for Decent Literature. We see the full precedent in Spain where the concordat formally gives the church this authority. No criticism of any policy or action of the Roman church could then be offered in print or on the air.

Restrictions On Protestants

The worship of Protestants would probably not be banned. They would worship on a carefully restricted basis, however, with no large public services or evangelistic services permitted. The building of churches by Protestants would be limited, and they might have considerable difficulty in securing permits to replace outmoded facilities. New church buildings could not indicate by any style or marking the purpose of the structure. Protestant church signs would be prohibited. Protestant children, after observing certain formalities, could be excused from the teaching of Roman dogma in public schools, but they would not be permitted to have religious instruction of their own denomination. Nor could Protestants operate dominational schools of their own except in instances where they would agree to have Catholic doctrine taught by teachers approved by that church. While Catholic dominated lands differ in some of these items, specific precedent exists for all.

There would be no Protestant orphanages, or homes, perhaps even no Protestant hospitals. Protestant theological seminaries might be closed. Only Roman Catholic marriages would be recognized in civil law; those of other denominations would be ignored legally as they are now ecclesiastically. Protestant funerals would be prohibited as public displays of false religion. Protestant services would be closely confined to their own church buildings. There is long and prolific precedent for all these forms of oppression.

Conversions to Protestantism would be barred, and reports of “proselytism” might result in closure of the offending church. (Father Eugene K. Culhane, managing editor of America, after visiting Colombia, said there would be no religious trouble there at all if Protestants would only obey the law and stop making converts.) Protestants could not publish a paper or insert ads in the press. They might be discriminated against in the civil service and in general employment. Only Roman Catholic priests would minister to the spiritual needs of the armed services and to members of the legislature and to all public institutions. Again, there is ample precedent for every item.

Roman Catholicism would be named the country’s official religion. The duty of government to defend and uphold it would be duly recognized. There would be, in time, a concordat with the Vatican providing, initially, for an exchange of ambassadors and other gestures of official recognition of the Roman church. The concordat would be renegotiated from time to time with continually greater concessions on the part of the United States as the country became “more Christian” and as it was found possible to model the American concordat more closely to the model of “Christian Spain.”

The long tolerant tradition of the United States would likely modify the threat of anti-Protestant violence. There would probably be little or none of this so long as Protestants worshiped quietly in their own homes and churches, off the beaten path. But the full weight of official policy and promotion would be thrown against them; vast sums of money, much of it contributed by themselves, would be devoted to their reduction and eventual destruction. There is precedent for this in every land where the Roman church is strongly joined with the state.

Protestants would be treated with snide amusement and official contempt. They would be reduced to second-class citizens and treated as damned souls. Their young would be cajoled and bribed to leave their traditional faith. They would be steadily, systematically whittled away. They would be left at length a devout but inconsequential minority, just as Protestants are in Spain today.

After 51 per cent——that!

END

C. Stanley Lowell, formerly active in Methodist temperance work, since 1956 has served Protestants and Other Americans United, an organization corrective of sectarian encroachments on the American policy of separation of Church and State.

“If it will hurt the Catholics, I’m for it!” The minister who expressed this frank but enthusiastic lack of moral discrimination reflects the thinking of an impressive segment of California’s Protestant clergy. I have heard a reasonable facsimile of this viewpoint in the last 18 months from more Protestants than I care to remember.

The remark concerned a November 4 ballot issue in California which has split the Protestant community. Both sides are campaigning vehemently to increase their Protestant support, for this will be decisive. The position of the Roman Catholic church is united and unequivocal, but it represents only 20 per cent of the population.

The controversial measure, an initiative constitutional amendment, is officially known as “Proposition No. 16.” Thus it gained its place on the ballot through petitions circulated more than a year ago among the voters of the state. It seeks to place in the California State Constitution a provision to deny property tax exemption to all nonprofit, nonpublic schools from kindergarten through grade 12, except those for the handicapped. Once in the Constitution this denial of exemption will be out of the reach of the Legislature and can be altered or reversed only at another general election.

This is not a new issue. After the State Legislature by a vote of 108 to 3 granted tax exemption in 1951 to nonprofit private schools below collegiate grade, a Protestant group disapproving this measure sponsored a referendum. At the polls in 1952 the electorate upheld the action of their lawmakers although the contest was close. Advocates of taxing schools then took the matter to the courts where they were again defeated. The California and the United States Supreme courts in effect affirmed constitutionality of the exemption.

As a study in Protestant strategy, Proposition No. 16 has serious significance beyond the confines of the Golden State. In the face of mounting tensions in its relations with Roman Catholicism, the need of American Protestantism for a sound and effective strategy is obvious. The fundamental importance of this ballot measure lies in what light it can shed on Protestant tactics vis-a-vis Rome. Thus it provides a laboratory situation which may yield data of real value to guide Protestantism in what undoubtedly will be a long period of stress.

As is inevitable in any controversial matter, there are infinite nuances of opinion and many fine gradations of thought. It is not possible in a brief report to do them all justice. At best we can indicate only the main battle lines, primarily as they have been defined by the major opposing Protestant groups in the struggle. In being true to the main over-all outlines of conviction, we may not present accurately any particular Protestant minister’s viewpoint, whether he is for or against Proposition No. 16.

Rome The Decisive Issue

The decisive issue in Proposition No. 16 is the Roman Catholic church. If there were not 643 Roman Catholic elementary and high schools in California to be taxed, the measure certainly would not be on the ballot. Those who have once again placed this before the voters renounce subtlety and are quite frank and open about this. The official ballot argument they prepared quotes liberally from a textbook used in some Roman Catholic schools, including certain words from Pope Pius XI. They do not permit their campaign literature and public speeches to leave any doubt about their target. In one pamphlet they put it quite bluntly: “However, regrettable as it is from the standpoint of what some unthinking voters may misconstrue as intolerance, the question of tax exemption for nonpublic schools cannot be divorced from the rigid and unyielding objectives of the Roman Catholic Church.”

While proponents of Proposition No. 16 have taken the name “Californians for Public Schools,” their main purpose admittedly is not to increase revenue for public schools. Their state campaign director has said: “Actually the amount of money we are talking about is not too great.” The $1,175,000 that would result from the repeal of private school exemptions (1.43 per cent of the total exemptions granted in the state) wouldn’t mean very much to California’s burgeoning public school system which requires the establishment of 37 new schools each week.

Nor can the advocates of taxing private education point to any “clear and present danger” to the state’s public school system. As of March 31, 1958, there were 117,841 public school children on half-day sessions. In the past five years public school enrollment in Los Angeles County alone increased by 453,859, while private schools added 60,780 children. In 1952 nonpublic schools educated 8.3 per cent of all elementary and high school pupils. Five years later their share had increased to only 8.9 per cent. In California there have been no unfortunate actions detrimental to public education involving Roman Catholics. While there is the fashionable grumbling about rising taxes, educational extravagance and ineffectiveness, both the financial undergirding and the general moral support for California’s public schools are quite healthy and adequate. It is impossible out here to get the impression that they may be forced out of business. While they are beset by problems of growth, they are doing well and everyone knows it.

Fear of Rome supplies the teeth in the arguments advanced by “Californians for Public Schools” to justify taxing nonprofit schools. The true focus of their concern is Rome, not public education. If anxiety over Roman Catholicism is removed, so is the bite of their logic. Lacking a clear and autonomous position of their own, they represent reaction.

Their basic position can be fairly stated by stringing together some sentences from their own literature: “Shall California subsidize private and parochial schools with tax property exemption?… Should you pay public funds through tax exemption to support parochial schools that indoctrinate ideas alien to America?… Rome has the biggest stake in tax exemption.… Tax exemption is the opening wedge to full tax support later on.”

This thinking reflects the viewpoint of the Protestant minister who said to me: “If it will hurt the Catholics, I’m for it!” It also involves the reverse: “If it will benefit the Catholics, I’m against it!” This reactionary position, pure and simple, threatens to inflict greater harm on Protestantism than it ever will on Roman Catholicism. When you leave Rome out of the case for placing mandatory property taxes on nonprofit schools it collapses completely.

Protestants who uphold tax-free schools and oppose Propostion No. 16 have sought to establish their basic position independent of Rome. “Protestants United Against Taxing Schools” has adopted three basic convictions to guide its campaign: 1. Strong support of the public schools by every citizen whether or not he has children in them; 2. Opposition to the use of public monies to support nonpublic schools, including textbooks, bus transportation and teachers’ salaries; 3. Tax-equality for religious-sponsored and nonsectarian schools below grade 12 with similar educational institutions above this level.

They maintain that tax-free education is a Protestant tradition in America older than the republic itself, now universally honored in all 48 states. Not even their opponents can deny this. That the exemption is constitutional and does not violate proper separation of Church and State has already been decided in the courts.

Opponents of Proposition No. 16 are pointing out the tremendous danger that confronts Protestantism in the philosophy that a tax exemption is a subsidy. If this view is accepted, then all churches, educational units, fellowship halls, colleges, seminaries, hospitals, homes for the aged, orphanages and camps are being subsidized by the state. Recognizing the weight of this logic some leaders of “California for Public Schools,” like Dr. Abbott Book and Walter Hancock, have publicly advocated taxation of all property of every description owned by any church. Many Protestants in the state go along with them on this, since “it will hurt the Catholics.”

“Protestants United Against Taxing Schools” is stressing the perilous fallacy of defining principles of social justice by statistics. That 89 per cent of the nonpublic school enrollment is Roman Catholic has no relevance one way or other to the basic question of taxing education. We might as well tax churches, since a greater proportion of Roman Catholics than Protestants is reputed to be in their respective pews on Sunday. Indeed, by a quantitative determination of right and wrong, Protestantism itself never could have come into being, for it represented only a small segment of Christendom at the start. Obviously all that matters is that the tax exemption be available to all nonprofit schools, Catholic or Protestant, on equal terms and this unquestionably prevails in California.

The thorny point in the campaign centers in Rome’s future intentions regarding education and taxation and its conflicting position on separation of Church and State. On this the Protestant leaders of the tax-free school forces take a very “existential” position. Affirming their faith in the strength of Protestantism, they believe that the fairest way to handle problems of this type is individually and concretely in the courts. The Constitution of California is quite intransigent in prohibiting the appropriation of public money for the support of any religious sect or church or for any sectarian or denominational school (Art. 4, Sec. 30 and Art. 9, Sec. 8). The present law is both adequate and proper. Protestants should be vigilant about its enforcement. They should not, however, deny justice to Roman Catholics now simply because there may be further demands in the future.

This much is clear from the California situation: The strategy of “If it hurts the Catholics, I’m for it” only divides Protestantism and weakens its effectiveness. Triumphant tactics spring not from fear but from confidence. Therefore the starting point for sound Protestant strategy is not what Rome is doing nor yet what it might do. The proper starting point is a deep appreciation of historic Protestant convictions and an abiding passion for social justice regardless of what Rome does or does not do now or in the future.

If the Protestant position on any given issue is determined by the position the Roman Catholics take, then Rome determines Protestant strategy by negativity. This has happened to some Protestant groups in California as it has to some across the nation. Yet to assume that Rome is always wrong is to come as definitely under papal control as to assume that it is always right.

These days of mounting tensions call for an autonomous and authentic Protestant strategy that issues from the deep places of its own soul. The development and the pursuit of such a strategy demand both courage and objectivity. Thus we will serve our God far better by thinking more about justice and less about Rome.

END

The Rev. Kenneth W. Cary has been Rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Pacific Palisades, California. Currently he is serving as State Chairman of “Protestants United Against Taxing Schools,” an organization formed to defeat a ballot measure that would deny property tax exemption in California to nonprofit schools. He is a graduate of Occidental College, Los Angeles, and Union Theological Seminary, New York.