Honorable Honorarium

This is a true story. The names are changed to protect the innocent. I am, of course, begging the question of whether any people associated with me are innocent or deserve protection.

For the sake of argument let us suppose that my name is Ernest Erstwhile. I have been invited to speak at a dinner in the Michigan Thumb area, or over in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The program chairman will not tell me whether to speak for twenty minutes or thirty-five minutes but does say, “Don’t make it too long.” To save a little money he has offered to pick me up in his car, and we have agreed on a time late in the afternoon of that day of rest and gladness called the Sabbath. At the last minute he feels that he must go early and wonders, “Do you mind going along? You can sit in on some of the afternoon discussions, which should prove interesting.” We, therefore, leave the house at two P.M., and I am to speak at a dinner at six P.M.—which eventually gets under way at seven P.M.

In the afternoon I sit in on a discussion group of “youth” who worry away at the subject of “boy and girl relationships,” giving time to such items as whether one should date a girl who wears glasses. At supper time (remember, this is a true story) we have escalloped potatoes, baked beans, and spaghetti, with apple pie for dessert, and church coffee. The program includes everything from a vocal solo to a high dive, and I then get up to deliver myself of my opus.

The following conversation comes at the close of the meal. Putting his left hand in his right inside pocket the chairman says, “Now, Mr. Erstwhile, you know that this is a charitable organization.” And I say, “Yes.” Then he says, “You know, of course, that we don’t have much money.” And I say, “Yes.” And he says, “Have you any charges for what you have done tonight?” And there is a strange lilt, giving the impression that I haven’t done much. So I say to him, “Just get me home again, and we will call it a deal.” His furtive face is wreathed with happy smiles.

There must be a good answer to this kind of treatment. I asked a friend of mine, and he said, “When they tell me, ‘We are a charitable organization,’ I say to them, ‘So am I.’ ”

EUTYCHUS II

Hour Of Sharing

The articles on preaching in the June 7 issue are apropos. Ministers and teachers need to read, think, and heed the numerous suggestions contained in them. There is one vital point in preaching which neither article discussed [although] the Rev. Peter H. Eldersveld touched upon it … that true preaching is the sharing of what God has done for one’s heart and life.… When there is no heart-throb in the minister’s delivery, when there is no tug at his heart, there will be no pull on the hearts of the listeners.… To see that this element is in the delivery of the message is exceedingly costly. It requires time, imagination, energy, vitality, faith, and the enduement of the Holy Spirit.

Evangelist

Dallas, Texas

Morgan And Methodism

Re “The Prince of Expositors” (June 7 issue): To say that Campbell Morgan’s association with the Methodists influenced him far more than the life and lip of his father is perhaps biting off too big a chunk. Surely such preaching as Morgan’s would have to have a more substantial foundation than Arminianism, and surely a boy’s life is molded by his father much more than by outside forces.

Skokomish Community Church Shelton, Wash.

Liturgical Revival

The appeal made by Glendon E. Harris (“Laymen, Spare That Preacher!,” June 7 issue) has value as most of us do need more time for study. But, he unfortunately does not understand the purpose behind the current revival of the liturgy. Our “hope of success” does not rest “on the concept that people may be vain enough to believe something will prove interesting if they participate.” We simply believe that the liturgy is not the liturgy unless it is the “work of the people.” When a congregation declares together, “We believe,” whether it be in a creed, in baptism, communion, or at other times, opportunity is given them to express as the people of God their beliefs. I would refer Mr. Harris to the Old Testament where he can see very clearly the participation of the congregation in many ways.…

Finally, I am not so sure that good sermons will necessarily be “attendance builders.” Somewhere I recall one preacher who, at times, could not even rely on his congregation of twelve to be on hand.

Union United Church of Christ Evansville, Ind.

What Glendon E. Harris says is all true and well said in its own way, but unfortunately it is all predicated on the wrong premise and leading to the wrong goals. What he is trying to receive and doubtless what he would have liked to give as a “preacher” and what he is training people to look for, is intellectual rather than spiritual food. A well-prepared sermon is important and does honor God. But the sermon grows out of the worship and leads back into deeper understanding of worship and participation in worship.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Waterloo, Iowa

To Tell The Brothers

In view of our tremendous needs of spiritual reading materials for our present “Christian Library and Reading Center,” which is sponsored by “Christian Youth For Anti-Communist Movement,” I shall be very grateful if you would tell our brothers in Christ that we will appreciate any books, pamphlets, tracts, magazines, Bibles, and Bible commentaries they may wish to send us to help combat Communism and to win more souls for Christ.

President

Box 3 Bulatok

Pagadian, Zamboanga Del Sur, Philippines

Quest

In reply to your correspondent (Daniel L. Eckert, June 7 issue) who said, “… one must live with his documents,” does he mean by documents: JEPD or “Q” or “Proto-Mark,” etc? If so, it would be good if he could show us “his.” We were taught that they were imaginative and hypothetical. Does he mean: the Gospels themselves as well as the other texts we possess as a common heritage? If so, are the difficulties really so insurmountably great that they can destroy verbal inspiration? Sincerely, some of us would like to see the “documents,” for whenever we ask for them we are given the run-around. Perhaps our younger ministers and our lay people have been sold a bill of goods.

Hebron United Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

For The Record

I felt that Dr. Frank Farrell’s report of the annual convention of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (May 24 issue) was quite objective.… There is one point in particular, however, that has caused some misunderstanding.… The sentence is: “Even Dallas Theological Seminary came under attack, in literature circulated at the conference, for inviting speakers identified in some way with Neo-Evangelicalism.” The literature referred to was a single booklet published by an individual. The author gave away some copies of his booklet to individuals and placed other copies with the operator of the book table. The views expressed in this booklet were those of the author and are in no way to be considered to be officially the views of the IFCA. Some, upon reading the account in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, have put that construction upon the sentence quoted above. This is unfortunate, and it is our desire to keep the record straight.

National Executive Secretary

Independent Fundamental Churches of America

Chicago, Ill.

The manner in which you very fairly dealt with our business was exemplary of fine writing.

President

Independent Fundamental Churches of America

Rosemead, Calif.

The Civilians

As a retired Army and National Guard Chaplain, I want to commend your issue on “Ministering to the Military” (May 24 issue). I read every article with interest and approval. One thing, however, did not seem to me to be stressed enough. All too often the military is blamed for any adverse moral conditions among its personnel.… [But] who is it that uses every means to exploit the military man’s lower choices? The civilians.…

Campbell, Calif.

Serum For The Sleepy-Eyed

The closing remarks of Leslie R. Keylock (“An Evangelical View of Vatican II,” April 12 issue) should be formulated into a serum and injected into every sleepy-eyed Protestant and complacent Catholic, so that they may return to the health of the Gospel.

Reading, Mass.

Smoking

This is to say that the statement by Tom Allan (Eutychus, May 10 issue) was the most powerful thing I have read against smoking. God bless you for having published it.

Dean

School of Religion

Seattle Pacific College Seattle, Wash.

• For the best scientific evidence we know of, see the American Cancer Society’s free booklet Cigarette Smoking and Cancer, which came out this spring.

A Case Of Identity

Just after reading “What I Don’t Understand About the Protestants” (May 10 issue), in which the author says, “Well-intentioned Protestants have asked why we ‘worship statues.’ We do not, of course …,” I heard a Roman Catholic-produced radio story (St. Christopher’s Inn) in which the presence of a statue of St. Christopher supposedly saved a man’s life.

I have been unable to distinguish between the practice of Roman Catholics and Buddhists here in Japan except for the fact that the names of the statues differ. Both claim they do not worship the idol iself.

I wonder if Mr. Moran could give me a definition of idolatry which would fit the Buddhists, but not the Roman Catholics?

Ishinomaki shi, Miyagi ken, Japan

When the term “a Catholic” is used in the narrower sense of membership in a denomination which labels itself “Catholic,” we should remember that there are eighteen independent denominations in the United States alone which do so. Seven of these also use “Orthodox,” with or without “Apostolic”; one is “Apostolic” but not “Orthodox”; four are “Old”; two, “Liberal”; one, “Christian”; one, “Polish”; one, “Lithuanian”; and one, “Roman.”

Duluth, Minn.

To Halt Abuse

The title of “Reverend” is probably the least understood and the most abused of all titles. The dictionary defines it as “deserving reverence:—title or designation of the clergy.” Do those who are entitled to this designation fully comprehend its meaning and significance? The use made of the title by the clergy themselves in referring to themselves indicates that many have no real appreciation of the true significance of the term. Too often those that are the least deserving of this recognition are the most frequent offenders.

The use of the abbreviation “Rev.” on a calling card or in the signature to a letter virtually says, “Please take note that I am deserving of reverence.” Instead it would be much more appropriate if a person wanted to call attention to his ordained status to indicate his position as “Pastor, First Baptist Church” or “Evangelist,” or simply “Pastor.”

It is quite fitting and proper in addressing a minister of the Gospel by correspondence to address him as “Rev. John Doe.” In addressing him orally, however, it is inappropriate to refer to him solely as “Reverend.” In presenting him to an audience, it is inappropriate to say, “I present Rev. Doe,” since this would be the equivalent of saying, “I present Doe.” Instead it should be, “I present the Rev. John Doe.” If the first name is not used, it would then be appropriate to say, “I present the Rev. Mr. Doe” or “the Rev. Dr. Doe.”

May we suggest that the title or designation of “Reverend” is one to be accepted humbly as conferred by others but is not a title to be conferred upon oneself any more than one would designate himself as “the Honorable Mr. Smith.” May we suggest that humility is one of the traits of the man of God and he does not need to attempt to elevate his position by assigning to himself the title of “Reverend,” nor does he need to feel that his position is not entirely respectable if he does not possess the title of “Doctor.” To be a minister of the Gospel is one of the highest callings that can come to man. Let us not cheapen it by abusing or misusing the term “Reverend” or by seeking to “gild the lily”!

“Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud” (Prov. 16:19).

Registrar

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

The Soul

Re the article of Robert P. Roth (“Death Has No Shape,” Apr. 12 issue):

1. When we speak of the soul as the vital principle of the body, that which is shared by man and beast alike, we are, to be sure, making an assertion consonant with the biblical usage of the term soul. But now we come to the core of the matter which confuses me. The author writes, “The soul is not something distinct from the body; it is the body insofar as the body lives.… The soul does not have a substantial or essential being.…” Even though I believe that the unity of man should be emphasized, I cannot conceive of the soul as being the body. Neither can I conceive of the soul as not having a substantial being. Perhaps it all turns on what one means by the terms substance and being. Although man is a unity, yet it seems to me that the soul and the body are distinct from each other (Matt. 10:28).…

2. As to the subject of death and departed spirits, it is not clear to me that “the biblical conception of the place of departed spirits does not give credence to the concept of a substantial soul.” I believe that the soul is an immaterial substance, and I believe with Calvin, that it is immortal. The author’s reference to spirits as dwelling in some mysterious realm leads me to infer that he regards the spirit as something distinct from the body, since the spirit dwells as a shadow in some realm while the body is in the grave. However, the term flesh is used in contrast with spirit. Finally, the person is a shapeless shadow, although consciousness survives. What is the relation between spirit and person?

Grand Rapids, Mich.

More Than Lip-Service

You are doubtless familiar with the proposal that someone has recently made that Billy Graham should be nominated as a candidate for the next president of the United States. Such an idea will probably be regarded as fantastic by many of our citizens.

In view of the crying need that our president should be a man who is something more than an astute politician who gives lip-service to God and his program for the world through Jesus Christ, why not give us a thoroughgoing discussion of this whole matter in an early editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY? Some pertinent Scripture passages are Jeremiah 8:9; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Revelation 11:15; 21:23–26.

Scottdale, Pa.

Christians should be at the forefront in demonstrating love and understanding and in trying to solve the racial tensions which can eventuate in the breakdown of law and order and still greater acts of aggravation and violence.

The situation is so electric with emotional reaction that the voices of moderation on both sides of the issue are being drowned out by the louder voices of “rights” without reference to the realities of the situation or the only way whereby they can ever be solved.

In September, 1956, the writer participated in a symposium on race relations sponsored by Life magazine. Near its conclusion we presented the following statement, which won a strong measure of approval and was later incorporated into a report of this meeting (Life, Oct. 1, 1956):

“1. Christians should recognize that there is no biblical or legal justification for segregation. Segregation, as enjoined in the Old Testament, had to do with religious separation while the New Testament lends no comfort to the idea of racial segregation within the Christian Church. For these reasons it can be safely affirmed that segregation of the races enforced by law is both un-Christian and un-American.

“2. It can be demonstrated with equal logic that forced integration of the races is sociologically impracticable and at the same time such forced alignments violate the right of personal choice.

“3. The Christian concept of race may be expressed in the following way:

a. God makes no distinction among men; all are alike the objects of his love, mercy and proffered redemptive work.

b. For this reason, all Christians are brothers in Christ, regardless of race and color.

c. The inescapable corollary of these truths is that Church membership should be open to all without discrimination or restriction.

“4. In the light of the basically Christian affirmations the church should implement them as follows:

a. All churches should be open to attendance and membership without reference to race or color.

b. Recognize that in so doing, in most areas and under normal conditions this will not result in an integrated church, for various races will prefer separate churches for social, economic, educational and other reasons.

c. But, this opening of the doors of the churches will break down the man-made and sinful barrier which stems from prejudice, and recognize the unquestioned Christian principle of man’s uniform need of God’s redemptive work in Christ, a need and a salvation which knows no distinction of race or color.

“5. To aid in an honest and just solution of this problem on every level, the Church should frankly recognize that racial differences, implying neither inferiority nor superiority in God’s sight, are nevertheless actual differences which usually express themselves in social preferences and alignments which are a matter of personal choice, not related to either pride or prejudice. Because of this and because no Christian principle is involved, the Church should neither foster nor force, in the name of Christianity, a social integration which is neither desired nor desirable.

“6. The Church should concentrate greater energy on condemning those sinful attitudes of mind where hate, prejudice and indifference continue to foster injustice and discrimination.

“7. The problem of the public schools constitutes a dilemma in many areas which both the Church and the courts of the land should recognize and admit. Because these schools are tax-supported, they are in name and in fact ‘public’ schools.

“At the same time, because the ratio of the races varies in different localities the problem also varies from the simple in some areas to the apparently insoluble at the present time in others. Those who live where only 10 or 15 per cent of the population is of a minority race have no serious problem. Where the ratio is reversed the issue is one of the greatest magnitude and those who have to deal with it deserve the sympathetic concern and understanding of others.

“It must be recognized by both Church and State that at this time, and under present conditions, the problem involves social, moral, hygienic, educational and other factors which admit no immediate or easy solution, and the phrase, ‘with all due haste,’ must be interpreted on the one hand as requiring an honest effort to solve the problem, and on the other by the leniency and consideration which existing conditions demand.

“8. Finally, the Church has a grave responsibility in this issue; a responsibility to proclaim love, tolerance and justice to all as basic Christian virtues, to be accepted in theory and practiced in fact.

“Basic to this concept is the urgent necessity of removing all barriers to spiritual fellowship in Christ, without at the same time trying to force un-natural social relationships.

“The Church has the responsibility of recognizing that more than spiritual issues are involved. While freely admitting full spiritual and legal rights to all, there are at the same time, social implications and considerations which involve the matter of personal choice, over which the Church has no jurisdiction and into which it should not intrude in the name of Christianity.”

We believe the above principles are still generally valid. That the situation has now gotten out of hand we all know. One reason is that many church leaders have themselves become confused and now defend, even participate in, civil rioting.

We are convinced that public places should be desegregated, thereby removing humiliation of and discrimination against a segment of our population. But we seriously question mob demonstrations as the right method to accomplish this end. Other people also have “civil rights.”

Our chief concern is the effect of these demonstrations on the young people involved, both Negro and white. Many white boys and girls, often encouraged by their parents, have participated in counter-demonstrations involving insults and violence. At the same time many Negro young people are being led into a psychological blind alley—the philosophy that “rights” can and should be secured by mob action. All of this is having a traumatic effect on a generation already showing little respect for law.

Furthermore, we have yet to see mention of those policemen in both the South and the North who have shown amazing restraint in efforts to maintain order.

We seriously question that “Christian” leadership which participates in demonstrations against the law (be that law just or unjust) and in so doing compounds the problem for all concerned.

We must take care lest under the guise of “civil rights” for one race, or religious freedom for atheists, a form of legalized tyranny is imposed on our country by a minority. Where civil rioting is used to get rid of unjust laws, the end can be oppression.

Protestant missionary interest in Latin America reaches far back, to American colonial times. No less a figure than the great Boston preacher Cotton Mather, along with his seminary-trained friend and chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Samuel Sewall, tried to spark a Protestant missionary effort in Middle and South America. At that time the European powers were struggling with Spain for supremacy of the West Indies in the conflicts that led up to the War of the Spanish Succession. A brilliant linguist and prolific writer, Mather taught himself Spanish and authored the first American-printed book in that language. His purpose in writing it was to evangelize Latin America. In his Diary (January, 1699), Mather reports:

[As] the way for our communication with the Spanish Indies opens more and more I sett myself to learn the Spanish Language. The Lord wonderfully prospered mee in this Undertaking; a few leisure Minutes in the Evening of every Day in about a Fortnight, or three weeks time, so accomplish’d mee, I could write very good Spanish. Accordingly I compos’d a little Body of the Protestant Religion, in certain Articles, back’d with irresistible sentences of Scripture. This I turn’d into the Spanish Tongue; and am now printing it with a Design to send it by all the ways that I can into the several parts of South America … as not knowing whether the time of our Lord Jesus Christ to have glorious Churches in America bee not at hand (Harry Bernstein, Making An Inter-American Mind, 1961, pp. 6 ff.).

Apparently it was not yet the “time of our Lord” for the Gospel to penetrate the Southlands.

About five years after Mather’s little book had broken trail, Judge Sewall kept the large design alive by writing to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, urging that

… it would be well if you could set on foot the printing of the Spanish Bible in a fair Octave, Ten Thousand Copies; and then you might attempt the bombing of Santa Domingo, the Havanna, Porto Rico, and Mexico itself. I would willingly give five pounds toward the charge of it.… Mr. Leigh commends the translation of Cipriano Valera, which I am the Owner of in Folio (ibid.).

A further attempt—patient, sincere, but unsuccessful—to convert the distinguished governor of Cartagena, Carlos Sucre y Borda, while he languished in a Boston jail after being captured by the British as a prisoner of war, concluded the missionary efforts of Mather and Sewall. Their life-long vision was frustrated. As Bernstein points out, “their religious design may have been premature, but more than anything it introduced Boston and New England to a historic reputation for interest in things Hispanic” (ibid.).

Although the Bible societies carried on some significant evangelism and colportage work during the early decades of independence and several missions entered the lists in the mid 1800s, it remained for the twentieth century to see the Gospel gain a real foothold in Latin America and for the last two decades to see missions reach the zenith of their impact. Up and down the continent the national church has now emerged in adult strength. It is a witnessing church (see “Evangelical Surge,” page 5). It is a Bible-centered church whose evangelical theology re-echoes Luther’s Reformation emphasis of “justification by faith.” It is a Pentecost-oriented church that seeks to honor the Holy Spirit (see News feature, page 29).

In an address at the University of Puerto Rico in the spring of 1962, historian Arnold J. Toynbee remarked: “Things are happening in Latin America today which, in my judgment, may have the same significance for history as the Renaissance of the Fifteenth Century.” To which Dr. John A. Mackay has added: “Things are happening among the Latin American Churches today which may have the same significance for Christ’s Church Universal and for the Ecumenical Movement at its truest and best, that the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century had through the rediscovery of the Bible and the Gospel of Christ.” Evangelical forces agree that they are unquestionably living in Latin America’s most challenging day—a day of change, of growth, and of opportunity. It is a day of unprecedented evangelistic outreach, when efforts like the Billy Graham crusades and the Evangelism-in-Depth movement enlist almost the total support of the evangelical community and enjoy a hospitable reception in virtually every country.

But what does this new day of opportunity hold for foreign missions and for foreign missionaries? To reassess their role in the current growth and program of Protestantism south of the border is one of the urgent imperatives of the times.

To arrive at some definite conclusions, CHRISTIANITY TODAY polled one hundred Latin American evangelical leaders—most of them pastors—on the general subject of “Foreign Missions and the National Church.” About a third of them responded. This is what they said:

Latin Americans are deeply grateful for the work of the foreign missionary societies. Have these societies made a significant impact? The almost unanimous reply was, emphatically yes! Missions made their biggest contribution, however, more than ten years ago. The majority of respondents feel that the presence of foreign missions is still desirable. But financial subsidies seem even more essential than the missionaries themselves. The majority feel that any prohibition of entrance of new missionaries into their country would pose no insurmountable problem.

There is some anti-missionary spirit on the part of national Christians, but not a great deal. Nearly half our informants say there is none. Frequently the mood merely reflects the anti-Yankee-ism of political leftists. Some reasons given for anti-missionary prejudice where it exists are: (1) different standards of living and the economic gap between missionaries and pastors; (2) “wasteful” spending of money on “superfluous” things; (3) superior attitudes on the part of missionaries, who “act like tourists” and expect the nationals to “do the work,” taking the best jobs, hanging onto the administrative positions, and forcing the adoption of their own ideas; (4) lack of adequate training, theological insights, creative thinking, and flexibility on the part of missionaries; (5) inability of missionaries to identify themselves with the Latins, failure to understand their attitudes, speaking Spanish or Portuguese poorly, performing thoughtless discourtesies, and in general holding themselves aloof and acting as if they were from a superior race. Most disturbing, not a few respondents accused many missionaries of (6) failing to do personal work and to carry on evangelistic witness, avoiding the tough assignments, and “managing a subsidy” rather than communicating a message.

The pastors stated that both missions and church bodies are facing up to some of these problems, but much more can and should be done. More church-mission consultations would help. The national church stands ready to assume greater partnership responsibility, but it still needs more leaders, adequately prepared, and financial help from overseas. The Church is trying to meet the challenge of local evangelism, but with the exception of the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals in Argentina and Brazil, no significant foreign missionary effort is anywhere underway.

In summary, it is the conviction of the pastors polled that foreign missionary funds and personnel are still needed and perhaps will always be needed, if the right kind of foreign missionary can be provided. This is a big “if,” they emphasize; at present we are sending too few of the right kind.

The missionary movement which first welled up in the dedicated hearts of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, and which by God’s grace has now swelled to a great tide of ongoing evangelistic expansion, has not yet begun to ebb. But unless evangelical missions are willing to reassess their methods and can provide missionaries who possess the qualities welcomed by the Latin American Church, they may very well find themselves pushed into the eddies and backwashes while the tide of church growth leaves them behind.

END

Evangelical Coordinating Agency Needed For Spanish Work

Our sometimes over-organized Protestantism in the United States has failed to provide an adequate agency for the coordination of work among the many and varied colonies of Spanish-speaking peoples scattered across the country. Local organizations have done a great deal, particularly in New York City, greater Miami, and the Southwestern states. Denominational home missions have reached into many areas where migrant workers, “braceros,” or other Latin Americans live and work. The Spanish-American Committee of the National Council of Churches has met to discuss some common problems, but it has not yet published basic data, nor has it been able to draw all evangelical groups into consultation. The gaps are legion.

Perhaps this should not surprise us, since some of the related sociological problems perplex even the United States Bureau of Census. Classifications, whether by Spanish surname, language spoken, or place of foreign birth, fail to provide statistics about Hispanic Americans that suffice for every purpose.

These complications, however, merely highlight a situation which should not be allowed to continue. Working in consultation with the NCC’s Spanish-American Committee, some representative agency should convene an evangelical conference which would: (1) draw in all those who are engaged in evangelistic or social work in Spanish from every part of the United States; (2) produce the necessary sociological and statistical data for plotting a nation-wide strategy and program; and (3) serve to emphasize to each local church and Christian the evangelistic challenge represented by their Spanish-speaking neighbors. There are five million of them who need Christ.

END

God’S Laws Cannot Be Flouted Without Ultimate Judgment

One can but wonder whether the Church has become so preoccupied with social and economic affairs that she has lost the ability to raise her voice in clear moral issues. Aside from a few feeble words of remonstrance and a censure directed towards the minister performing the marriage, the church courts of our land and the religious press in general have reacted lamely to the Rockefeller and Murphy divorces and the subsequent marriage.

Rockefeller’s discarding and divorcing of his wife of thirty-one years, the mother of their grown children, and Mrs. Murphy’s similar action towards her husband and four small children are a disgrace. Insofar as this has been taken without vigorous protest by our nation, it is a blot on us as a people.

Britain has been rocked by evidences of immorality in high places. But to many the chief concern has been possible security leaks, not the disclosure of moral turpitude. The prostitute in the Profumo case has now become a celebrity, with numerous offers from the stage, movies, and scandal magazines.

The sordid exchange of husbands and wives in Hollywood and the escapades of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have become sins of our nation, exploited by the producers of Cleopatra and by dozens of magazines which pander to such things.

America has unquestionably lost the grace to blush and stand up in righteous indignation to repudiate such behavior, and in so doing stands subject to the just judgment of a righteous God.

Nothing which falls short of renewed convictions on the rightness and wrongness of things, convictions proceeding from the Judeo-Christian heritage, can stem a tide which otherwise means national peril and ultimate judgment.

END

Protestant Prayers And Roman Crowns

No doubt more prayers were said in Protestant pulpits for Pope Paul VI than for any other pontiff since the Reformation. Encouraged by a friendlier climate, Protestants could only wish Paul VI well, and pray God’s blessing upon him. This inclination to bless chokes up in most Protestants’ throats, however, as they think of a minister of Christ being exalted, crowned, and carried about on a portable throne. The thought of a man of God with a high triple crown on his head and men prostrate at his feet grates on a Protestant’s sense of the Christian ministry. Heeding an earlier Paul, Protestants regard their ministers “worthy of double honor,” yet hardly expect them to forge and parade symbols of clerical power and glory. Crowns are for Christians—as for Christ—by the hand of God, when life is done. Most Protestants quite understand that ecclesiastic who reminded an enthroned Paul VI on parade that the glory of the world passes as did the burning flax in his hand.

END

Magazine Interest Soars; Plans Include Format Change

This issue devoted to the spiritual situation in Latin America is another in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s annual series on the Protestant world scene. To implement the project dependably, we asked the Rev. W. Dayton Roberts of Latin America Mission to join our Washington staff for a month. The issue also includes News Editor David E. Kucharsky’s special reports from Europe on Pope Paul VI’s coronation and President Kennedy’s audience with the new pope.

This summer our staff again includes James Boice, former editor of the Princeton Seminarian. Recent recipient of Princeton’s $1000 fellowship in New Testament, he will be heading abroad in the fall for doctoral studies.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s next issue will appear in a delightful new format. Our readers will find the change refreshing. And we, in turn, are delighted with our circulation department’s report that paid subscriptions have doubled in the last three years.

END

Vatican Policy And U. S. Policy: Some Fear Possible Correlation

As President Kennedy visited Pope Paul, there were those who raised questions concerning possible correlation of policies of the two huge bodies represented. Uneasy over certain reports, some raised the question of possible influence of papal encyclicals on American policy. Concerning the President’s new peace offensive, Newsweek had said he “seemed to be taking a cue from Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris.” In his papal visit, said The New York Times, Kennedy was almost certain to raise the issue of Vatican efforts to reach practical accommodation with Communist governments.

The Times noted Washington’s pleasure at such efforts and at Vatican moves to align the church with “socially progressive elements.” Times columnist Arthur Krock noted that Mater et Magistra has been interpreted by some as a papal sanction of the AFL-CIO opposition to “right-to-work” laws. And some foresee papal influence indirectly brought to bear upon the American racial problem. Any Vatican-White House policy correlation beyond coincidence will sound an alarm in this nation.

END

Quality Of Church Membership As Measured By Twice-Born Persons

To ask any mere mortal how many born-again believers there are in the United States might well amount to addressing “the wrong throne.” But at intervals one reader or another has put the question to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and we have ventured in turn to ask several men of good judgment and active ecclesiastical life to estimate the number of such persons within their own particular denominations or churches. The replies, it was felt, might be of value for evangelism as such, and for appraising the American religious scene as a whole.

Thirty-four men replied. Each one without exception noted the difficulty of answering such a question; about 40 per cent either expressed unwillingness to do so or considered themselves unqualified. One minister remarked: “It is grossly presumptuous for anyone to venture such an estimate.” He felt, moreover, that to publish any such kind of estimate would be detrimental to the magazine. Another respondent, however, believed that some judgments in this area are permissible on the basis of Matthew 7:20, which says: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Certainly whatever right there may be to voice such a judgment is limited to those who are specifically entrusted with the spiritual welfare of souls. The province of a servant of Christ is to minister to those who do not profess Christ; it is also his province to minister to those who profess but do not possess Christ. Jesus did not hesitate to say: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matt. 15:8). Ought not Christ’s ministers to be aware of such ones in their congregations? Noted one Christian leader in his letter: “There is not enough effort to make sure (as much as is humanly possible) that those who profess faith really have it.”

One minister said: “There is no way I can possibly establish what is known only to God.” A Southern Baptist seminary professor gave way to a bit of humor. “Regarding my estimate of the percentage of Southern Baptists who are twice-born,” he wrote, “100 per cent is about as close as I could come (though it might be higher).”

Every earnest minister, whatever his denomination, would like to think 100 per cent is correct. Certain problems, however, make this rather unlikely. For one thing, churches vary in their requirements concerning the substance of a vocal profession of faith prior to church membership. For instance, one denomination requires “satisfactory evidence of regeneration, belief in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and in the vicarious atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ …” whereas another merely asks, “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord …? Do you receive and profess the Christian faith as contained in the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ …?”

Said a seminary professor: “I would assume there are many people who have been born again who are theologically confused and hold views which are not easily identified as evangelical.” Theological orthodoxy is not necessarily a guarantee of salvation, either. “It is quite conceivable,” observed a national church official, “that a number that are theologically sound may not be born again.”

It was Jesus himself who said in Matthew 2:20, 21: “… by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” In other words, it is the evidence and quality of fruitfulness that differentiates among the professed followers of Christ. The same emphasis occurs in Titus 1:16. According to one prominent United Presbyterian minister, in most congregations one-third of the members are heavy givers, one-third occasional givers, and one-third give nothing at all to the various phases of the church’s program of Kingdom work.

There is the problem, too, of church records and of inactive members. In one large city 20 per cent of the official church membership was comprised of people who had moved away but had not transferred their letters. Elsewhere a Baptist church of 2,600 finally dropped from the rolls 600 for whom addresses had been lacking for ten years.

A number of those we queried did, indeed, venture to furnish some statistics. These figures were based admittedly on “human judgment” and showed a wide disparity. Of 650,000 members in the American Baptist Association, one leader estimated 80 per cent, another 90 per cent, to be truly regenerate. Of the 1,600,000 in the American Baptist Convention, 50 per cent was one answer, 65 per cent another. Of the 75,000 in the Baptist General Conference, 66 per cent was the figure cited, and of the 300,000 Conservative Baptists, 50 to 66 per cent. A spokesman for the 70,000 Christian and Missionary Alliance judged almost 100 per cent to be born again. Of the 2,500,000 Missouri Synod Lutherans one estimate was 33 per cent, another 35 to 50 per cent, a third 80 per cent. Fifty per cent was cited for the 900,000 Southern Presbyterians; 80 per cent for the 230,000 in the Reformed Church in America; and 75 per cent for the 8,000 in the Reformed Episcopal Church. Of the ten million Southern Baptists (of whom 25 per cent are non-resident)—estimates of 70, 75, and 90 per cent were given.

Several replies reminded us that Elijah’s estimate that he was the only remaining true believer on earth turned out to be grossly in error. Actually there were 7,000 believers. Others reminded us that wheat and tares look very similar. There are those, too, as described in Matthew 7:22, whose outward profession of faith and works belies their inner evil state. To judge in these matters is precarious indeed and always open to error. “I am constantly amazed,” revealed one pastor, “to find that people whom I have regarded as indifferent, have turned out in their own quiet way with very strong Christian convictions.”

It is difficult, in view of ecclesiastical variations of procedure and of individual differences in evidences of discipleship, to estimate the number of regenerate believers in the United States. This is clear, however—active concern for a sound and thriving Body of Christ is not only scripturally enjoined, but even required of those who shepherd the flock. And this is our joy in the midst of this sometimes darksome task: “The Lord knoweth them that are his.”

END

A Spanish-speaking mission field has been brought to our doorstep by the economic pressures of our generation. Although statistics are shaky and definitions uncertain, it seems safe to say that Spanish is now our country’s second language, and about five million Stateside residents, both foreign and domestic, can be claimed for the Latin American community. Of these, 2,316,671 were born in Latin America. Also resident in the United States are some 849,000 Puerto Rican-born citizens. And to the above must be added their American-born, Spanish-speaking children, plus 300,000 to 400,000 migratory workers, transients, “braceros,” and “wetbacks.”

Although they are to be found in every state of the nation, Latin Americans have arrived primarily across the Mexican border and through Miami and New York. In these areas they are concentrated. They range from the doctors and lawyers in exile from Castro’s Cuba to the Mexican laborers who “commute” into the United States each day to go to work.

These millions, more often than not, have come to our shores wide open to spiritual help and evangelism, having left behind their nominal religious traditions. They are ready—if not eager—for spiritual orientation “a la americana.” According to one poll, cited by John H. Burma of Duke University, about half the Puerto Ricans in New York said that they rarely, if ever, attended church any more. There is an undisputed tendency to allow the old religion to fall into disuse along with the old culture. Thus, while there are less than a dozen Roman Catholic churches ministering to the Spanish-speaking in New York (and more frequented by Spaniards than by Latin Americans!), there are an estimated 427 Protestant churches with Spanish-language services. Stateside Latin Americans definitely constitute a legitimate and fruitful mission field for the evangelical church in this land.

Miami, Florida

During the time that Fidel Castro has been in power in Cuba, up through January, approximately, of 1963, the United States has opened its doors to 205,000 Cuban exiles (15,000 of whom are parentless children). About 125,000 have settled in the greater Miami area and together with other Latin Americans make up a Miami Spanish-speaking colony of 250,000. One out of every four Miami residents is a Latin American. In one downtown store a proprietor with a sense of humor displayed a sign: “English Spoken Here”!

Roman Catholics have established a strong refugee-processing center, and some eight churches have substantial Spanish-speaking parishes in adjunct. There are eighteen Protestant refugee centers, all related to Church World Service. It is estimated that between thirty-five and forty churches minister to Latin Americans, many of them with Cuban-refugee associate pastors. Refugees are reported to be very open to the Gospel, and the percentage of evangelicals among the Cubans in Florida is much higher than that in Cuba itself. This same picture is reflected on a smaller scale in Tampa and in Key West.

Southwestern States

Although difficult to pinpoint statistically, the Latin American community in the Southwest is large and significant. About 40 per cent of the residents of New Mexico reportedly are Spanish-speaking. According to the 1960 census there were 1,735,992 Mexican-born residents in the United States. Most of these, plus their American-born children, live in the Southwest—half of them in Texas. To them must be added the other Latin Americans to be found in large numbers, particularly in California. The Spanish-speaking migrant labor force once ran over 400,000 per year, but last year’s “braceros” averaged nearer 87,000. Mechanization of cotton harvesting plus minimum-wage laws will undoubtedly continue to reduce imported farm labor.

Many denominations are carrying on extensive work both in established localities and among migrant workers. As might be expected, Southern Baptists are particularly active. But workers and facilities are everywhere most inadequate in number for the evangelistic opportunity. One writer on the subject, Jack E. Taylor, laments particularly the lack of attention given to the “braceros,” who have left their families in Mexico and have been proven not only to be wide open to the Gospel but also to be excellent missionaries to their own people when they return to their fatherland. In his book, God’s Messengers to Mexico’s Masses (Institute of Church Growth, Eugene, Oregon, 1962), Taylor analyzes the needs and distribution of the Mexican workers and suggests ways of capitalizing on the evangelistic opportunity.

New York City

One out of every six people in Manhattan is a Latin American, and as of 1960 there were 700,000 (about 8.4 per cent of the total population) resident in the five boroughs of New York. By 1970 it is estimated that the Puerto Rican population of New York will have risen to 13.5 per cent, and to 22 per cent in Manhattan.

The Protestant Council of New York reports that 427 churches carry on a ministry in Spanish. Many of these are “store-front” groups, but over 300 are stable churches. More than half of them (240) are of Pentecostal persuasion, and the Pentecostal communicant membership (18,482) is nearly 60 per cent of the total Protestant membership (32,159). The Protestant community is estimated at just under 100,000, comprising 13.6 per cent of New York’s Latin American population.

Although statistics have been cited for only three areas, there are colonies of Latin Americans in practically every state of the union. Their social needs are legion. The National Child Labor Committee has recommended “the establishment of day-care facilities for the children of working migrant mothers to keep the younger children out of the fields and to free the older school-age children from babysitting to attend school more regularly.” The unemployed need vocational training. City slums and migrant camps offer inadequate housing. The health problems of these new Americans clamor for attention.

But most of all, Latin American refugees and immigrants need a chance to know the transforming power of the Gospel. They have been found more open to it here than in their native countries, and they constitute an exciting challenge to the evangelical Christians of the United States.

W.D.R

Has the East-West struggle reached an unpalatable stalemate? Is it time to introduce a third party, an intermediary to break the deadlock?

In sweltering Rome, these questions gained surprising relevance this month—in fact and, curiously enough, in fiction.

The fact lay in what may have been, according to the American newspaper in Rome, “the biggest double feature here since Nero fiddled while the city burned”: the coronation of Pope Paul VI and the visit of President Kennedy.

The fiction lay in a new novel, The Shoes of the Fisherman, wherein a Ukrainian pope becomes the go-between for the United States president and the Soviet premier. The book was released just seven days after the death of Pope John XXIII and was an immediate U. S. best-seller. It was written, not by an alarmist bigot seeking to arouse anti-Catholic sentiment through fear of papal power, but by a veteran Vatican correspondent turned novelist. The author, Morris West, formerly of the London Daily Mail, previously wrote The Devil’s Advocate, which also was a sensation. West’s early years were spent as an apprentice of the Christian Brothers, an Australian teaching order.

Adding still more fuel for speculation was the audience with Paul VI, just four days before that of Kennedy, of the President’s 1960 election opponent, former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon and his family were on a vacation trip. They spent about half an hour with the Pope.

West’s novel will never come true altogether. Some of its lines border on the ludicrous. But it may well prove historic as an accurate portrayal of the spirit of the times, that is, a yearning for more normal world conditions.

Moreover, the elevation of Giovanni Battista Montini to “the chair of St. Peter” probably spells additional participation for the Vatican in world affairs. The Vatican has long been reputed to be a diplomatic listening post for the world, and Montini brings to it extensive experience in political affairs. He is widely recognized as a first-rate diplomat and served for years as Vatican secretary of state under Pope Pius XII. He has already indicated that he will follow up the conciliatory overtures made toward Moscow by John XXIII.

Beyond that, opportunities may indeed be forthcoming whereby the Vatican, as a morally prestigious and politically neutral force, assumes the role of international arbiter. Most distinct possibility of this would probably come in a grave crisis when button-pushing is imminent.

Several years ago, there was some feeling that the Afro-Asian neutralist bloc might emerge as the reconciling third party in world affairs. But these nations now appear to be content with promoting their own ends, sometimes even playing the two world powers against each other for rather narrow purposes.

It is obvious to informed observers that the timing of the papal audiences so near the coronation was coincidental. Kennedy’s schedule originally provided for a meeting with the late John XXIII at about the same time that, as it turned out, he saw Paul VI. The trip to Rome at one point was called off altogether, then reinstated. One important change in the President’s schedule was made following the announcement by the Vatican that the coronation would take place June 30. Kennedy was due in Rome that day. He spent it in Milan instead. The United States was represented at the coronation by a four-man delegation headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

THE CEREMONY

For the hundreds of thousands who milled about cobblestoned St. Peter’s Square on Sunday evening, June 30, the coronation of Pope Paul VI was a ceremony of elegance and finesse. But it was a wearisome spectacle, and it had touches of unscheduled humor.

Heat and humidity felled scores, including a costumed guard who was helped from the platform during recitation of the liturgy. Some brought jugs of cold beverages. Others had packages of dry ice which they pressed against their wrists and foreheads.

The ceremony began at twilight under a bright half moon. Prior to the opening procession a thirty-two-piece Palatine Guard band entertained the crowds with martial music.

But it was less than a wild ovation that greeted the pontiff, who was introduced with a blare of trumpets. Much of the crowd, perhaps reflecting traditional Italian apathy, seemed indifferent throughout the ceremony. Some knelt during the prayers, some read missals; but most gazed about, chattered, and joked.

The open-air ceremony had its lighter moments, as when the Pope’s voice cracked at several points during his chants. Even priests and nuns chuckled with candid good humor.

The new Pope’s speaking voice is resonant, but it has limited range.

Comparatively few people in St. Peter’s Square saw the actual coronation. So many attendants had gathered about the altar that the principals were obscured from view for all but the dignitaries on the platform and others who sat atop Bernini’s Colonnade. The masses standing in the square shared the big moment only via public-address system. There was scattered applause.

The Pope sat on a white silk throne against a red cushion. Behind the throne hung a 12-by-18-foot tapestry depicting Christ handing theologically controversial keys to Peter. From a balcony overhead was suspended a flag of equal size—the Pope’s personal coat of arms. On the altar were seven 3-foot candles which evening breezes extinguished repeatedly.

The nine-language homily of Paul VI echoed the “dialogue” appeal of Pope John XXIII toward other Christians and the modern world in general. The Italian portion said the Roman Catholic Church would be “respectful, understanding, patient, but cordially inviting” toward others.

Rumors circulating in Rome while John XXIII was still alive spoke of a possible summit meeting in Rome of the pontiff, Kennedy, and Khrushchev. But these were largely discounted. A trip to Rome by Khrushchev, however, is probably only a matter of time, if only as an effort to offset the Kennedy trip. The Soviet leader’s hastily conceived jaunt to East Berlin was widely interpreted as just such a maneuver.

Kennedy concluded his ten-day European tour on a spiritual note. In a speech at NATO headquarters in Naples he quoted some phrases uttered by Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini 115 years ago. Mazzini was described as having said at a mass meeting in Milan: “We are here … to build up the unity of the human family so that the day may come when it shall represent a single sheepfold with a single shepherd—the Spirit of God.”

Kennedy’s comment was that “the unity of the West can lead to the unity of East and West until the human family is truly a ‘single sheepfold’ under God.”

Earlier that day Kennedy had made his much-celebrated trip to the Vatican. As usual the Vatican laid on all its majestic pomp. Remarked one sweating newsman, “ ’Tis like a page out of Gilbert and Sullivan.”

The Palatine Guard band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” when Kennedy’s car pulled into the San Damasus courtyard. The President and his party, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, were escorted to an elevator which brought them up to the richly muraled Clementine Hall. This was as far as the 100-odd newsmen covering the event were allowed to go. The only exceptions were several “pool” reporters and photographers.

Kennedy, the United States’ first Catholic president, went on through a series of anterooms and was introduced to Paul VI at the threshold of the pontiff’s library. The President bowed but did not kiss the Pope’s ring as Catholics normally do.

Asked why Kennedy did not kiss the ring, Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger replied that he did not wish to discuss the matter publicly. Salinger said shortly afterward that a Roman Catholic monsignor was available to interpret, but he did not know whether the interpreter was actually in the room at the time or whether the audience was completely private. About fifteen minutes later Rusk was ushered into the private library, and subsequently other members of the White House staff entered. Kennedy was reported to have said to the Pope: “I hope to see you in the United States.”

The Pope was described as replying with a noncommittal gesture.

After the President left, the Pope greeted visiting newsmen in Clementine Hall. He was clad in a white robe, white skull cap, and red shoes. His first words were drowned out by the Palatine Guard band’s send-off for the President.

“You know what we discussed,” said the slightly-built Paul VI. “Above all, the peace of the world.” Kennedy’s next stop was at Pontifical North American College on Janiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican. He was greeted there by a kiss from his own long-time archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. Kennedy’s sister, Mrs. Stephen Smith, also was on hand. “Hi, Jean,” said Cushing. “My, you look good.”

He then shook hands with Kennedy and jokingly poked him in the chest.

For a moment, the President looked startled. Cushing put up his fists in a boxing pose, and they broke into laughter.

The President’s ten-day tour of Europe, climaxed by his visit to Italy, had an assortment of political and religious implications. Least affected, it seemed, were Italy’s handful of Protestants. They have been in a perpetual uphill struggle despite unfettered legal opportunity.

An American missionary in Italy says Protestants now have as much liberty there as they do in the United States. But asked about the evangelical witness in Milan, for example, he shook his head sadly.

Upon teeming Milan, Italy’s largest city and a focal point of industry, may hang the future of Free Europe. A third of its population is said to be nominally Communist. Kennedy’s visit there can undoubtedly be attributed in part to his desire to see a turnabout in favor of the West. Diplomatic observers are keeping a close eye on Italy’s newly named premier Giovanni Leone.

It is almost ironic that the new Pope should have come from Milan. Montini’s appointment there eight years ago is widely reported as having been a virtual banishment from Rome. He had been at odds with the Roman curia, it is said; hence the “deportation” to a difficult situation.¹Paul VI was crowned by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, reputed to have been one of his chief adversaries. He probably stopped short of stemming the tide but did gain a reputation as an amiable and popular prelate. He headed the list of non-cardinal “Papabile” following the death of Pope Pius XII. John XXIII made him cardinal, and the two were regarded as very close. John XXIII once referred to Montini as “the most eminent Hamlet of Milan.”

What kind of era will Paul VI usher in? Vatican observers are straining for clues. One even saw in the Pope’s new lightweight crown an apparent determination “to face the challenge of this anxious modern age.” Perhaps the safest generalization is that Paul VI will gear his program around the priority of peace in keeping with the growing world feeling that absence of hostilities is a desirable end in itself. The prospect that perhaps deserves the most attention is how he might try to implement the proposal made in John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris encyclical for a new global authority to guard the peace.

Cristo, si; Lenin, no!

Increased harassment and persecution of the Protestant church in Cuba has in no sense weakened its testimony or effectiveness, according to recent reports from Havana. Membership is below the 1958 level, stated one observer, but offerings have kept up. And a leader was quoted as saying, “The Christian church in general is better off than it was in 1958.”

This, despite the fact that Protestants are now subject to increasingly frequent and violent opposition, both official and quasi-official. The Rev. Moises Virelles, pastor of the Pedro Betancourt Methodist Church in Matanzas Province, was recently jailed on a Sunday and forced to cut sugar cane along with other “volunteer” workers. In the Sierra Maestra mountains the pastor of the Buey Arriba Church is reportedly in prison for undisclosed reasons.

A Protestant church of unidentified denomination in the suburbs of Havana was stoned by a rioting mob during a service near May Day (Labor Day in Latin America). The pastor and several members of the congregation were reported injured. And during a Sunday morning service in April, a group of militia was reported to have invaded the First Presbyterian Church of Matanzas and, pounding the floor of the sanctuary with their rifle butts, to have shouted, “Lenin, si; Cristo, no.” A mob surrounding the church used a car equipped with loudspeakers to repeat slogans of the revolution.

Methodists, whose membership is drawn more from the professional and middle classes, have been hardest hit by the “exodus.” The largest church has lost 200 members, and thirty-six Methodist pastors have left the island, stated a Christian informant in Havana.

Presbyterians reported that their church membership is down 1,000 from 1958, to 4,150, but that they are prospering economically. All schools, except seminaries, have been nationalized. There are approximately 1,200 Protestant churches and outlying missions in Cuba, with an aggregate membership of at least 60,000.

At The Front Door

It was a weary Billy Graham who took his wife for a stroll through Hyde Park the other evening.

“It’s the first walk I’ve had a chance to take in six weeks,” said Graham.

He was in London for a few days’ rest following a strenuous evangelistic tour of Germany and France. It had been his first series since a stomach ailment had canceled his projected Far Eastern crusade. Still not fully well, Graham complains of a tightening of the chest and throat when under fatigue.

After several weeks’ holiday in Scotland, he will fly directly to Los Angeles to participate in an evangelistic film for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pavilion at the 1965 World’s Fair. In mid-August he begins his major crusade in Los Angeles, including five nights on nation-wide television. He will also speak at the annual dinner of the Motion Picture Relief Fund in Los Angeles, with Bob Hope as scheduled master of ceremonies.

After his thrust in Germany and France, Graham spent several hours in Geneva, where he addressed the consistory founded by Calvin. After an hour-long address he was plied with questions for two hours. World Council leaders, who took him to lunch, said they were impressed by French telecasts of his effort, the first major Protestant programming in that land. Graham plans to return to Paris in 1965.

In Nürnburg, an average of 17,000 attended Graham’s meetings nightly for five nights, and in addition 40,000 turned out for the Sunday rally.

In Stuttgart, 25,000 attended nightly for five evenings, and 40,000 turned out on a cold and rainy Sunday.

Decisions for Christ in Nürnburg and Stuttgart totalled 7,500.

Graham received generous television coverage on the German networks and had an unusually good press. “This time I felt I was going in the front door,” he said.

He also met with Chancellor Adenauer in his Bonn office for 52 minutes. Adenauer spoke of his “religious hobby of studying the evidences of the Resurrection.” “That’s the most crucial issue,” he added, “and I think it can be attested.”

In two years Graham is scheduled to hold crusades in Dortmund and Frankfurt, in what will be his fifth visit to Germany. His first meetings there were held in 1954.

West Germany’s danger, he thinks, lies in the fact that, having reached affluence through hard work, it will fail to sense that the nation’s next challenge is spiritual. But he sees a hopeful turn in the fact that both religious and political leaders are recognizing this peril, and in the fact that the Church in Germany is hospitable to evangelism.

Evangelism, Inc.

A new era of evangelism is dawning in Asia. Best evidence is formation of a fellowship of national evangelists from Asian nations who are convinced that “if Asia must be won to Christ, it must be won by the Asians themselves.”

The movement—begun in 1958, when the well-known Filipino evangelist Gregorio Tingson launched into full-time evangelism for all of Asia—has stirred Filipino evangelicals from various denominations to create an organization which would help support the new enterprise. They named it “Evangelism, Inc.” The new group is composed of a cross section of society and prominent church lay leaders who share the belief that Asian Christians must unite in a broad program of evangelism.

The new evangelistic zeal is not limited to local Filipino Christians. As news of the movement traveled to other Asian countries through the yearly missionary-evangelistic trips of Evangelist Tingson, evangelists from other Asian nations rallied to the enterprise. Evangelists Reiji Oyama of Japan, Ais Pormes and Eddy Ie of Indonesia, David Jacobsen of Australia, Muri Thompson of New Zealand, and others have collaborated with the cause. The dynamic of their combined efforts was especially demonstrated in the Philippines for several months previous to the Billy Graham Crusade there, during which time Asian evangelists from New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines staged city-wide evangelistic campaigns. The united effort prepared the way for the All-Philippines Billy Graham Crusade and itself reaped a large harvest of decisions for Christ.

Evangelism, Inc. serves as main promoter of the movement and has for its present program an annual sponsorship of united evangelistic campaigns in different countries of Asia.

Observers welcome the movement not only as a potent weapon for evangelism in Asia today but also as a vigorous buffer against the rising tide of Communism. With doors closing to missionaries from the West as fires of nationalistic fervor inflame governments against foreign influence, the new movement may well keep the doors of evangelism open.

Light From The Negev

Excavations begin this summer on an ancient Hyksos city, built by people critics once denied existed. The ancient city, lost for thirty-five centuries beneath the shifting sands of Israel’s Negev wasteland, is to be uncovered by an expedition of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies under the direction of R. A. Mitchell, with the aid of a $45,000 grant from the United States State Department.

Work in the area, on the site of Tell Nagila, actually began last summer when a previous expedition unexpectedly uncovered, directly beneath the surface, the ruins of the Hyksos city. This season scholars will uncover more of the houses, streets, and public buildings in which the patriarchs of ancient Israel might have lived, walked, and conducted business.

The scholarly world has expressed its hope that this expedition will illuminate some of the mysteries of the Hyksos age (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries B.C.), one of the most obscure periods of Middle Eastern history.

The Receiving End

Vowing to integrate the all-white Gwynn Oak Amusement Park near Baltimore or “fill the jails,” hundreds of civil rights protagonists chose Independence Day for a walk-in demonstration which resulted in the arrests of 283 persons, including twelve prominent white and Negro clergymen. Among those arrested were Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; the Rev. Daniel Corigan, director of the Home Department of the National Council of Churches; Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., chaplain of Yale University; local Rabbi Morris Lieberman; and seven Roman Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It was the first time that so large a body of prominent clergymen of all three major faiths had participated together in a specifically directed protest against segregation.

Not everybody was impressed. Said James Price, joint owner and vice-president of the amusement park, about the demonstrations: “It’s unfortunate. It’s analogous to my shooting crap, and when the police come, I begin to pray and say I was arrested for praying.”

Dr. Blake, one of those arrested in the demonstration, had earlier told his denomination that the Church must take vigorous action in the segregation crisis. Such action, he said, might mean “being on the receiving end of a fire hose.”

Pentecost South Of The Border

At a pastors’ conference in Colombia, South America, four missionary leaders lodged as roommates found that they had something else in common—all four had recently spoken in unknown tongues.

The previous week, at a similar conference in Chile, the great majority of the attending pastors were Pentecostals.

A recent evangelistic campaign sponsored by a Pentecostal church of fifty members attracted stand-up crowds of five to fifteen thousand, and concluded with the baptism of 1,500 “converts.”

Statistical studies by consultants of CHRISTIANITY TODAY revealed that one out of every three Protestants in Latin America is a Pentecostal. In Chile nearly 90 per cent are of Pentecostal persuasion. In many of the large cities of Middle and South America, Pentecostals outnumber other Protestants two to one. In every corner of the hemisphere, those that specially stress the Holy Spirit, that re-emphasize Pentecost, or that are newly open to the phenomena of faith-healing and glossolalia are growing in number.

Such reports prompted CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s search for facts and reasons for Pentecostal advance in Latin America. While most Pentecostal groups are not diligent about statistics (“There is no time, brother.… We have to preach, always preach!”), their remarkable growth has been well documented (see “Evangelical Surge,” page 5). Reasons for that growth were culled from observations submitted by a score of respected observers:

“The Pentecostal movement represents, in some sense, the only Christian movement with real indigenous roots here in Latin America.… Two main elements … deserve careful appraisal: fellowship and worship.… They have rediscovered—or rather they have been given by God—a basic dimension of Christian Church life which is present in the New Testament, but woefully absent in many of our churches.… God’s presence and gifts are looked for—not exclusively but basically and typically—in the fellowship of the believers, not in individualistic seclusion.…

“Worship is a time when something ‘happens,’ when God visits his people and makes himself manifest. In other words, worship is God’s own act rather than merely a human religious performance.… The believer participates with his whole being in worship. In most of our churches worship is exclusively ‘auditive’ and ‘intellectual’ (centered on the sermon with ‘preliminaries,’ as it is usually said). The Pentecostal community worships with its whole being—sings, shouts, dances.”

“The early disciples, represented by those who wrote the canonical Epistles, spoke little about Jesus’ teachings and much about him. They were moved to expound and interpret their experience in him.… The present-day Pentecostals are most interested in ‘an experience.’ That gives freshness and immediacy to their Christian life.

“They have a keen sense of witnessing.… Some of us are most interested in the results of witnessing, but they are interested in the witnessing itself. They preach on the street corners when no one listens. We would see no reason to do that unless we had an audience.…

“Each one has something to do. In Chilean Pentecostalism there is really a dictatorship by the pastor.… The pastor and his lieutenants have the brethren organized in disciplined groups and keep them busy.… According to Pentecostal practice, a man can confess Christ today and tomorrow be preaching on the street corner.… We should not imitate their form. The better features of their work are due not to form but to the vitality of an experience.”

“Because of a natural desire to defend our own correctness in doctrine, evangelicals tend to underplay the doctrine as a decisive factor in the growth of the Pentecostal movement.…

“Their secret ingredient is much work—continuous and enthusiastic, at the maximum of each individual’s ability, by the great majority of the members. As a whole, in comparison with all the other denominations, they pray more; they distribute more literature; they witness more; they hold more and larger and longer evangelistic campaigns; they hold more regular services; they have more preaching points; they have more pastors, women, and participants.”

“I feel that the main factor … is the experimental.… The expectancy of supernatural intervention is normal.… Whatever may be said pro and con about the Pentecostals’ theological position in regard to the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that a person who is taught that God desires to come to him and control him, even physically, and who is encouraged to seek God, and by heart-searching and yielding to Him, eliminate disobedience to His will until God can and does come and ‘possess’ his body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, is certainly likely to expect and receive more of God than those persons who have no such teaching or spiritual preparation.

“In the ‘baptism’ in the Holy Spirit this expectation is realized.… Essentially it brings to the individual a keen sense of the reality of the things of Christ: the special help of the Spirit in prayer, praise, and testimony, and an ‘unction’ of the spirit that leads, inspires, and teaches them.”

“Pentecostalism seems to be tailored to the Latin culture and makeup.… By and large we have attempted to carry North American culture southward and failed to take advantage of and utilize the Latin culture, temperament, and ‘free wheeling’ way of life. Many Pentecostal meetings go into excess, but we must admit that there is life, enthusiasm, and a sense of joy.”

They have been particularly adept at winning adherents from the lower strata of society. This was illustrated by a recent Mexico City survey comparing the social structure of Pentecostalism with that of other Protestant bodies (A = high, B = upper middle, C = lower middle, and D = lower class):

A&B C D

Pentecostals 4% 37% 59%

Other Protestants 11% 57% 32%

“The Pentecostal brethren … put in practice an incarnational theology.… When a theology of the laity is incarnate in this existential form, then the structures of the local church are very flexible, very elastic, and very adaptable. And precisely here is where we fail. Our terrible rigidness kills us.… And while we are this way, petrified, inventing tabus, the Pentecostal brethren are dynamic, they are adaptable, they function with more spontaneity than we.…

“There is great danger of disorder. But they win people.… The missionary message of the Bible is incarnate in their daily lives. While we spend our time inventing tickets or labels, the Pentecostals preach in season and out of season.… While we have made the Christian life into a theology, they have made a theology into life.…

“I don’t believe that I find in the Pentecostal brethren either the best method or the most correct interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.… But the Spirit of the Lord is using the candor, the rustic form, the ‘uncombed’ presentation of Christ. And what God has not done through us, he has done through them.… If indeed we represent the science, the method, the theology, they represent the spirit, the passion, the incarnation. The first is not worth much without the second.”

W.D.R

Convention Circuit

Grand Rapids—Repudiating cries of “Communistic” the Christian Reformed Church last month sent a report on nuclear warfare to its churches for study. The report of its Committee on Warfare acknowledged the validity of the traditional “just war,” whose purpose is to establish “peace upon the foundation of justice.” The committee expressed doubt, however, that a nuclear war could be waged for such an objective. Against the better-Red-than-dead criticism, the report declared that “if a general thermonuclear war is able to scorch the earth, … annihilate the human race or leave alive only a maimed and wounded fragment of it … then a general thermonuclear war lies outside the traditional concept of a ‘just war’ and must be judged impermissible, whatever the provocation.”

The report, accordingly, summoned the Church to enjoin the nations of the world “to scrap these weapons … without delay, under international surveillance.”

In its ten-day meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the synod within a matter of minutes authorized a two-million-dollar campaign to construct a new auditorium and gymnasium, but rejected plans to include a swimming pool.

With equal dispatch the delegates rejected an overture for total abstinence but issued a strong warning against the evils often associated with drinking. They adopted the following declaration and sent it to their churches: “In view of the alarming incidence of the liquor problem today, that … in our teaching and preaching in the home, church, and school, instruction be given concerning the dangers associated with the use of liquor, including that of social drinking.”

The Christian Reformed Church will host the Reformed Ecumenical Synod which will meet in Grand Rapids in August.

J.D.

Champaign, Illinois—In a strongly worded resolution condemning discrimination, delegates to the General Conference of the Church of the Brethren called on the denomination to “adopt aggressive policies for racial justice and integration” in all its churches, agencies, and institutions. The denomination’s more than 200,000 members include several hundred Negroes, all in integrated congregations.

Oklahoma City—A strongly worded resolution which castigated the Supreme Court as “eight men who have played into the hands of the worst enemy America has ever had” and condemned the recent court decision prohibiting prayer and Bible reading as devotional acts in public schools was passed here last month by delegates to the annual meeting of the American Baptist Association. The resolution noted that “America is great because the very governmental, educational and social superstructure is built upon the strong, eternal foundation of a firm belief in God, prayer and the Bible,” and called upon the Supreme Court “to take firm action for prayer and Bible reading—not against.”

In other action, the independent, missionary association of over 3,000 Baptist churches, many of which are in the South, took a stand opposing integration. Terming the fight for integration “morally wrong,” the delegates approved a memorandum to President Kennedy stating that “our sentiments are that the Negro should be afforded greater opportunities for achievement and encouraged to win respect for himself in public life” but that “integration of the races … should be resisted.”

Long Beach, California—Nearly 10,000 delegates jammed the new Arena and Municipal Auditorium last month for a joint meeting of the North American Christian Convention and the National Christian Education Convention on the theme “The Church Speaks in the Space Age.” Workshops and interest groups dealt with such topics as “Moving Adults to Study,” “Drama in the Church,” “Mass Communications,” and “Developing a Mission Program.”

Chicago—High on the docket of the 78th annual meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was the question of ecumenical relations. Was she or wasn’t she? Well, she was—partially. In a resolution passed by the 615 delegates of the 61,000-member body, approval was given to merger discussions with denominations of similar “theological orientation.” At the same time a policy of non-alignment with interchurch organizations was reaffirmed. “We do not now affiliate with any ecumenical organization of national or international scope,” the delegates stated.

Meeting earlier, ministers of the denomination had adopted a pastoral letter on racial prejudice. “God calls His children to justice, love and suffering,” the letter said. “We must either accept the consequences of doing what we feel God wants us to do or turn our backs upon that will and choose our own dangerous course.”

In other resolutions the ECCA approved a second year of “study in depth” of Christianity’s encounter with Communism and expressed concern that glossolalia and divine healing “be exercised in love for the edification and unifying of the body of Christ, not as a badge of individual spiritual attainment.…”

Winona Lake—The 702-member Ministerial Association of the Evangelical Free Church of America held the spot-light at the 79th annual conference of the EFCA last month as it passed key resolutions expressing regret on the Supreme Court decision on Bible reading and prayer in the public schools, supporting integration, and calling for “true Biblical unity” as the only valid foundation in the present ecumenical trends.

Resolved the ministers, “We express regret at the Supreme Court’s decision and deplore the present trend toward complete secularization of education, government and, indeed, all of American life.” The resolution was prefaced by a statement which supported the separation of church and state but rejected any interpretation of that principle which is so rigid as to prohibit reference to things religious in our schools and government.

On the race question the ministers of the Free Church declared, “We pledge ourselves anew to upholding the rights of all, regardless of color, registering our opposition to discrimination and supression, while at the same time opposing all attempts to deal with these difficult problems by violence.”

The statement of the ministerial association regarding the ecumenical movement stressed the necessity for a firm doctrinal base. “We shall continue to emphasize true Biblical unity, the unity of the ‘one body in Christ,’ entered only by the new birth, involving agreement on the great essentials, transcending all denominational lines, and at least partially answering the prayer of our Lord ‘that they all may be one.’ ”

Beaverton, Ontario—Disclosed in reports to the 42nd annual conference of the Associated Gospel Churches last month was a denominational expansion to a total of ninety-five churches with 7,000 members in eight provinces. The reports also indicated that per-capita giving averaged $253.

Toronto—Medicare was in the news again, this time in Canada where controversial measures last year spurred doctors in Saskatchewan province to suspend their services for twenty-three days. The context was the Church. Approving by resolution a national program of compulsory, prepaid, universal coverage against medical bills, the 89th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada affirmed that Medicare measures were in harmony with the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Every person … deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and is entitled to a decent standard of living and adequate medical care.… A national health service is one of the ways in which people can show their love for each other,” the report said.

Plunging even deeper into the political arena, the general assembly praised Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson for his efforts to re-negotiate Canada’s defense structure to one involving only conventional armaments and expressed hope for a speedy abolition of all nuclear weapons.

Related debate involved the alleged “rightest propaganda” which the Board of Evangelism and Social Action perceived to be entering Canada from the United States. Declared Lawson in a written report, right-wing propaganda “assumes” that any one working for peace “beyond the status quo must be a fellow-traveler with communism.” Because it is often linked to democracy and specifically Christian values, he said, such propaganda “appeals to many sincere Christians.”

In other significant action, the general assembly rejected a suggestion that it open merger talks with the United Church of Canada, formed in 1925 by merger of Canadian Methodists, Canadian Congregationalists, and 70 per cent of Canadian Presbyterians. Told by former moderator J. L. W. McLean that such action would be “unwise, dangerous and futile,” the conclave referred questions on the denomination’s status to presbyteries and to eventual reconsideration in 1964.

Montreal—A resolution affirming “unqualified belief in premarital chastity as an essential Christian virtue” and urging “all our ministers and people to be vigilant and courageous in their stand against all attacks on the moral strength of Canada” was adopted at the annual meeting of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. The resolution was occasioned by an article advocating “good, honest satisfying sex” for Canada’s teen-agers which was published in Maclean’s in May.

Theology And Science

Ever since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859, organized Christianity has been fighting a defensive and, in many cases, an uninformed battle against the so-called “inroads” of natural science. Denouncing the allegedly heretical findings of science in regard to biblical lore, Protestant spokesmen have, with few exceptions, retreated before the onslaughts of their more popular and apparently more weighty opponents. But no longer. In recent years the tide has changed, and influential thinkers are more and more acknowledging that science is the proper ally of theology and not its inescapable protagonist.

One manifestation of the new movement within the scientific fold is a body of evangelical Christians who call themselves the American Scientific Affiliation. Bringing to their organization a firm belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures and in the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ and contributing minds well versed in the physical and social sciences, these scholars now number in excess of 1,200. They have been meeting since 1941 to investigate the philosophy and findings of science as they relate to Christianity and to disseminate the results of their studies to the Christian and non-Christian worlds. Last month, in the most recent of such meetings, the ASA descended upon Asbury College in the blue-grass region of central Kentucky and for three days, in joint session with the younger Evangelical Theological Society (organized in 1949), presented a series of papers on the conference theme—“God’s World.”

It was not so much the details of the papers which captured the interest and imagination of the delegates (over fifty were in attendance) as it was the underlying issues with which they were involved. On the second day reaction was strongly divided over a paper on “The Spirit of Compromise” written by Dr. Henry M. Morris, head of the Civil Engineering department of Virginia Polytechnical Institute. In a statement certain to evoke protest the document had asserted that Christians must not compromise with science, that “compromise is a one-way street ending in a precipice.” Evoke protest it did. In comments following the presentation of the paper psychiatrist Dr. Donald F. Tweedie detected “a certain anti-intellectual bias,” and host for Asbury College Dr. Cecil B. Hamann termed the views “disturbing.”

A popular topic at ASA conventions is evolution, and the second day of the Kentucky conference was partially devoted to this theme. Confronting the general topic “A Critical Synopsis of the Literature on Creation and Evolution,” the morning and afternoon papers surveyed the fields of earth’s earliest origins and the alleged evolution of man in light of the biblical record.

One such paper was “The World as Described in the Bible,” by Dr. R. Laird Harris, head of the Old Testament department of Covenant College. Taking issue with Bultmann’s description of the biblical world view as involving a “three story universe,” Harris asserted that “I cannot agree that this cosmology is taught in the Bible.” The elements which go into such a picture—a solid dome for heaven, a flat earth, windows in heaven for admitting rain—never occur in one context. The biblical mythology as Bultmann conceives it, stated Harris, is attained only by abstracting these poetic references and joining them into an artificial picture of the biblical perspective.

Asbury Seminary’s distinguished professor of philosophy, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, addressed the conference on “The Influence of Philosophy,” presenting conceptual Greek thought as the highest achievement of the natural mind prior to and independent of the stimulus provided by the Christian Gospel. “Christ’s coming marked the moment for men’s minds to get in line,” he noted. The relationship between that Gospel and the pursuit of knowledge, particularly in science, is the “basic issue” which confronts us now.

A detached observer might well have wished that more of these trained in Christian theology had been present. The Evangelical Theological Society was poorly represented and, as a result, the task of criticizing science and its conclusions fell largely to the scientists themselves. Had well-trained theologians been present, the generally accepted thesis that God’s creation, like the written Word, adequately reflects his nature and the truth about reality might well have been challenged by a reassertion of the corruption of human nature through the Fall and the participation of creation in that corruption.

One paper attempted such a critique, although in a limited area, and the response to it by the delegates was ample evidence of its involvement with crucial issues. Approaching the general problem “The Christian and Mental Health,” Dr. Donald F. Tweedie of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, propounded the thesis that psychotherapy must not be opposed to the Christian faith nor merely work in conjunction with it, but must be so grounded in Christian principles and biblical presuppositions that it can correctly be termed Christian psychology.

“The distressing tensions in mental health research seem to be clustered around the lack of an adequate anthropology, an objective axiology, or value system, a distinct therapeutic direction, and a governing goal.… The Christian world and life view provides stability in each of the above problem areas and affords the Christian psychotherapist a base of great theoretical and practical advantage.”

Where do the ASA and ETS go from here? To this question two answers were proposed. First, suggested ASA president Dr. V. Elving Anderson in a letter to the convention delegates, the ASA and ETS must work together toward a “theology of research.” Here, it is hoped, the theologically trained delegates would have much to offer.

Second, much could be done to increase the impact of the ASA and ETS upon both the Christian and secular worlds. Many representatives expressed hope that this would be done through increased use of publications and through specifically directed research. “I feel that one of the great needs is for an avenue for distribution of the messages given at the annual meetings,” observed Dr. J. C. McPheeters, president emeritus of Asbury Seminary. Added Dr. R. Laird Harris: “The ASA should be first in showing the new ideas in science.… I would like to see our society publish and made capital of them.”

J.M.B.

Divergent Positions

Criticism of church-state relations in Israel has come from Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, editor of the Central Conference American Rabbis Journal. In an article critical of Israel’s policy with regard to marriage laws and the recent anti-missionary campaign, Gilbert draws attention to “the divergent positions assumed by Jews” in Israel and in the United States. Current Israeli laws do not recognize mixed or secular marriages, nor is the popular mind tolerant of Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. At the same time, asserts Gilbert, the situation in Israel is a challenge to the “cool neutrality toward religion that American Jews would welcome from our secular government.…”

In a promising move several days later Israel’s Education Ministry announced that Moslem and Christian religious education in state high schools serving Arab children will begin this fall.

Tracking The Churches

New churches reported by forty-five Protestant denominations for the three-year period 1958–60 numbered 4,408, an annual average of 1,469. Closings for the same denominations (with the exception of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) totaled 2,510, an annual average of 836. These statistics occur in a study titled New Churches, 1958–1960, which was conducted by the Bureau of Research of the National Council of Churches.

Other items of note: member bodies of the NCC opened new churches at a ratio of 1.9 to existing churches as compared to a ratio of 5.1 for non-member denominations. Contrary to popular belief, only 28 per cent of new congregations were established in the metropolitan suburbs; the greatest number are being constructed in the “central metropolitan cities, non-metropolitan larger towns and … in the rural countryside.”

Responding To The Court

Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling against devotional use of Bible reading and prayer in public schools ranged the gamut from consent to defiance last month in statements by secular and ecclesiastical leaders.

This time it was the states which were most vocal. Disclosing his contempt for the Washington pronouncement, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared that his state would “keep right on praying and reading the Bible in the public schools,” and officials of North and South Carolina advised that the ruling be ignored in their constituencies. “We do these things because we want to,” said North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford. “As I read the decision, this kind of thing is not forbidden by the Court and, indeed, it should not be.”

Similar in spirit was a ruling by Delaware’s Attorney General David F. Buckson. Acknowledging that the court decision invalidates the state laws requiring Bible reading and prayer in the Delaware public schools, Buckson asserted that devotional practices could be continued on a “voluntary” basis. Other state officials and educators confessed bewilderment at how prayers could be permitted when the laws requiring them were acknowledgedly void.

In California the court decision raised no problem. Since 1955 an opinion handed down by the state’s attorney general has banned the reading of the Bible in public schools for devotional purposes and the saying of prayers. In Montana, disclosed a state superintendent, only one public school in a rural area has maintained any kind of prayer devotions. And in Minnesota, according to a survey conducted in 1957, only 3 per cent of the state’s public schools engaged in devotional practices.

In states more directly concerned with the Supreme Court ruling, among them New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, official reaction ranged from “no comment” to a disclosure that the feasibility of a period of silent prayer or meditation is under study.

Ecclesiastical reaction was also diverse. In one of the strongest pro-decision statements, the National Council of Churches affirmed that the Court has “again fulfilled its function of settling peaceably disputes in the American community.” The pronouncement added that “neither the church nor the state should use the public school to compel acceptance of any creed or conformity to any specific religious practice.”

Kantzer, Smith To Trinity

To serve a wider constituency the Evangelical Free Church of America last week chose Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer as dean of its Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (renamed from Trinity Theological Seminary), approved immediate construction of married students’ dormitories on its new seventy-nine-acre campus in Bannockburn, Illinois, and announced plans for major faculty enlargement. Former chairman of Wheaton College’s Division of Biblical Education and Apologetics, Kantzer succeeds Dr. G. Douglas Young, who remains as chairman of Old Testament and Near Eastern studies. Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, formerly of Fuller Seminary, becomes professor of English Bible. President H. Wilbert Norton summarizes the seminary’s theological thrust as “firmly oriented to the historic Christian fundamentals with a strong orientation to the inerrancy of the Scriptures.”

Smith Resigns At Fuller

Dr. Wilbur M. Smith resigned his faculty post at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has served as professor of English Bible since the school’s founding in 1947. Administrative and faculty differences on the subject of the Bible’s inspiration have recently vexed the school and led earlier this year to the resignation as trustee of Edward L. Johnson, president of Financial Federation, the nation’s fourth-largest savings and loan holding company.

WHERE IS EVE?—Producer Dino De Laurentiis has launched a search for an unknown girl to play the part of Eve in the forthcoming cinematic extravaganza, The Bible. “The role,” he notes, “calls for a new face and personality. It would be fatal to the part … to cast someone already known to the public or identifiable with other roles.” The Bible, from a script by playwright Christopher Fry, will be released in several sections, the first of which will be the Book of Genesis.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—The Association of Free Lutheran Congregations voted at its first annual conference in Fargo, North Dakota, to oppose what its president called a “back-to-Rome” movement among world Protestants. In his report, association President John Strand warned that “the fundamental difference between evangelical Protestantism and Catholicism is being forgotten, or, worse still, being ignored.”

Joint sessions are set for the American Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Convention, National Baptist Convention U. S. A., National Baptist Convention of America, Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, Northern American Baptist General Conference, and the Baptist Federation of Canada in Atlantic City, May 22–24, 1964.

The 14,000 member Evangelical Lutheran Synod, meeting at Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, Minnesota, voted to withdraw from the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. The action resulted from a dispute with the 2.5 million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the largest body in the conference.

Membership in Baptist church bodies of 115 countries now totals 25,198,025 (a gain of 888,487 over a year ago), according to a report by the Baptist World, official publication of the Baptist World Alliance. Most of the increases were registered in the United States.

The Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. has allocated $150,000 toward a million-dollar program to strengthen the only women’s college in the Middle East—Beirut College for Women.

MISCELLANY—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish religious leaders are sponsoring formation of a Boston Conference on Religion and Race to “mobilize … moral and spiritual forces” against discrimination. Named as chairman is Protestant Episcopal Bishop John M. Burgess.

The Anti-Defamation League charges that many elementary-school social studies textbooks are sectarian in tone and gloss over minority-group contributions to America’s development. The charges occur in a 65-page report based upon a three-year study of 120 textbooks used in the United States public school system.

The Northern Evangelical Church of Laos met in its first General Assembly since 1958, appointing seventeen pastors and Christian workers to responsibilities in six districts. Abnormal conditions have made it impossible to arrange such a meeting in recent years.

Moody Institute of Science announces the development of multi-lingual sound-tracks to accompany the showing of its “Sermons from Science” film series in its pavilion at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair. Each seat will have an earphone and selector switch, allowing the visitor to listen to the message in his own language.

Two Baptist churches have been reopened in Madrid—further indication of the easing of Spanish government restrictions on the nation’s small Protestant minority. The action brings to thirteen the number of Protestant churches reopened this year.

Twelve noted clergymen have published a full-page newspaper advertisement, carried in The New York Times and The Washington Post, to protest what they described as denial of religious freedom in South Vietnam and to oppose U. S. aid to that nation’s current regime. Signatories included Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Bishop James A. Pike, Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one Buddhist and several Jewish leaders.

The National Assembly of the Somali Republic ratified an amendment to the nation’s constitution stating that “it shall not be permissible to spread or propagandize any religions other than the True Religion of Islam.” Mission leaders are cautiously hopeful that the action will not interfere with school and hospital work in the country.

PERSONALIA—Rabbi Leon I. Feuer elected president of the Central Conference of American (Reform) Rabbis.

Dr. Paul Goodwin, professor of evangelism at Missionary Baptist Seminary, elected president of the American Baptist Association.

The Rev. Roy C. Cook named to succeed Arthur B. Francis as president of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec.

The Rev. Harry Lennox elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Dr. M. Verne Oggel elected president of the 157th General Synod of the Reformed Church in America.

John E. Bevan resigned as registrar of Drew University to assume the position of minister of education at Church of the Good Shepherd, Areadia, California.

Dr. Harold W. Boyer elected to a ninth term as chairman of the policy-making General Ministerial Assembly of the Church of God.

Dr. W. Harry Jellema retired as professor of philosophy at Calvin College, where he has served for thirty-one years.

The Rev. Allan R. Brockway appointed new managing editor of Concern, semimonthly publication of the General Board of Christian Social Concerns of The Methodist Church.

Dr. Robert W. Spike appointed permanent executive director of the National Council of Churches’ new Commission on Religion and Race.

Dr. Donald F. Thomas named associate professor of pastoral theology and assistant to the president at California Baptist Theological Seminary.

Floyd Anderson, president of the Catholic Press Association, named director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Press Department and of the NCWC News Service.

Rear Admiral J. Floyd Dreith of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod appointed new chief of Navy chaplains.

D. Harley Fite, president of Carson-Newman College, named new president of the Southern Association of Baptist Colleges and Schools.

WORTH QUOTING—“The trouble with Christians today is that nobody wants to kill them anymore.”—Dr. J. Wallace Hamilton, minister of Pasadena Community Church (Methodist), St. Petersburg, Florida.

“If I can’t come through this case the same offensive, unlovable, bull-headed, defiant, aggressive slob that I was when I started it, then I’ll give up now. My own identity is more important to me. They can keep their gawd-damn prayers in the public schools, in public outhouses, in public H-bomb shelters and in public whore-houses.”—Mrs. Madalyn Murray of Baltimore, the atheist whose case against public school devotions was sustained by the Supreme Court, in an interview to The Realist shortly before the court decision.

Deaths

THE REV. CHARLES HODGE CORBETT, 81, retired Presbyterian missionary to China and former editor of The Presbyterian Tribune; in Stow, Ohio.

DR. WILLIAM TOTH, 58, newly elected executive director of the Foundation for Reformation Research; in Columbus, Ohio.

MISS MABEL HEAD, 90, ecumenical leader who helped unite the Council for Women’s Home Missions, the Women’s Committee of the Foreign Mission Conference, and the National Council of Church Women into the United Council of Church Women; in Lakeland, Florida.

DAVID WYNBEEK, 49, religious historian, author, and advertising manager for Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Between Springtime And Summer Storm

The Christian Ministry in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Wilfred Scopes (World Council of Churches, 1962, 264 pp., paper, $3.90), is reviewed by George Gay, vice-president, Seminario Bíblico Latinoamericano, San José, Costa Rica.

The Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches has sponsored surveys of theological education in the lands of the Younger Churches (India, Africa, the Middle East) and now in this book presents its report on Latin America. The late Bishop B. Foster Stockwell was chairman of the survey committee and its guiding genius until his sudden death three weeks after the completion of the trip.

The author dedicates the major portion of the book to statistical reports of all training institutions in every country of Latin America and the Caribbean. The most interesting part of the book, however, is the third section, in which the editor analyzes in summary fashion the problems facing the Latin American Church today. Dr. Scopes calls this period of church history “the springtime of the Evangelical movement in Latin America.” There is evidence of growth everywhere; there is great promise for the harvest; but, sad to say, all that blossoms in the springtime does not come to fruition. In fact, behind all that springtime beauty there are already discernible certain weaknesses that must be corrected before the summer storms break.

In order to advance the whole evangelical position in Latin America, the training given ministers must be improved in several important areas: (1) the responsibility of the seminaries and Bible schools to make the Bible’s message relevant in today’s world; (2) the raising of salaries for Latin American professors; (3) the sponsoring of indigenous theological literature; (4) the recruitment of Latin Americans for teaching positions; (5) the awakening of theological students to the reality of the world around them, especially in the expanding urban areas.

But improvement will not come by continuing the present trend to proliferation of small seminaries and Bible schools. Financial, academic, and spiritual factors should drive many of the present training schools to cooperative efforts. Dr. Scopes makes a strong plea for “union seminaries” employing a “hall system” in which each cooperating group would teach its own ecclesiology and, if necessary, provide a hostel for its own students.

The rapidity of the survey trip precluded a more profound analysis of the Latin American cultural atmosphere, but by and large the conclusions reached are sound ones. No executive of a mission or church working in Latin America can afford to be without this book.

Dr. Scopes practices what he preaches in his book. During a recent trip to Latin America (March and April, 1963) he was instrumental in the “birth” of two Associations of Theological Seminaries and Bible Schools, for Spanish America, something he had suggested on page 237!

GEORGE GAY

Master Of Dialogue

Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, by Paul Tillich (Columbia University Press, 1963, 97 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by William W. Paul, professor of philosophy, Central College, Pella, Iowa.

Within the brief compass of these Columbia University Bampton Lectures for 1962 the reader may find the answer to three questions: (1) What is Paul Tillich’s apologetic for approaching world religions? (2) Can there be a meaningful dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity? (3) What is Tillich’s estimate of the challenge currently presented to all religions by such “quasi-religions” as nationalism, Communism, and liberal humanism? Although no religion is here discussed in detail and although nothing new is revealed about Tillich’s own theology, the lectures do provide thought-provoking answers to the above questions.

In apologetics Tillich continues to prove that he is a master of theological dialogue, of a philosophy of encounter. Like an Origen attempting to frame a Christian Gnosticism to meet the challenge of alternative faiths Tillich has used his great mind throughout this century to interact with men as diverse as Barth and Bultmann and with philosophical movements as far apart as naturalism and existentialism. Now, in these lectures, Tillich advocates what might be called a “post-missionary” conversation with world religions such as Buddhism. He reasons that although in some parts of the world the masses are still open to direct missionary approach, the educated must be met by a “dialogical-personal” method. To achieve any success this technique requires a willingness by both parties to the discussion to (1) “acknowledge the value of the other’s religious conviction (as based ultimately on a revelatory experience),” (2) represent their own religious basis with conviction, (3) presuppose a common ground to their dialogue and conflicts, and (4) maintain an openness to criticism from the other party to the discussion (p. 62).

Now readers may well quarrel with Tillich’s own “religious basis” or with his broad interpretation of “revelatory experience” (and here he invites dialogue rather than simple negation), but it does seem to this reviewer that we live in the kind of world which increasingly calls for Christian witness by the type of personal dialogue just outlined. Teaching by monologue or stirring emotions by mass evangelism cannot take the place of an encounter between persons in which one party to the conversation has received new being in Christ Jesus and is anxious by God’s Spirit to have others share in that reality. It is unfortunate that in these lectures Tillich restricts his attention to a theory of encounter rather than stressing (as is certainly possible within his own Christian theology) the personal transforming reality of the Christ.

This lack is particularly noticeable in Chapter 3: “A Christian-Buddhist Conversation.” Here Tillich compares the concept of the kingdom of God with that of Nirvana, seeks a correlation between the Christian view of participation and love and the Buddhist ideas of identity and compassion, and reworks the well-known contrast between their historical and non-historical types of interpretation of history. But Christ is not mentioned. Instead Tillich appeals to his own “transpersonal” concept of God as “being itself” plus some elements from “Christian mysticism” to establish contact with the Buddhist understanding of “absolute nothingness.” Clearly, in this chapter the “conversation” is between an ontologically minded Tillich and perhaps a philosopher like the Japanese Buddhist Takeuchi, author of “Buddhism and Existentialism: The Dialogue between Oriental and Occidental Thought” (Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, Harper, 1959).

When Tillich does finally (Lecture 4) refer to Christ, it is His ontological rather than personal significance which is stressed. Christ symbolizes “the decisive self-manifestation in human history of the source and aim of all being,” and he achieved this as he “crucified the particular in himself for the sake of the universal” (pp. 79, 81). Such language is clearly consistent with the philosophical structure of Tillich’s theology, and he uses it to good advantage here. He sees in the Christ-event the basis from which Christianity must judge itself as a particular religion (cf. his “Protestant protest”) as well as a criterion for judging all other religions and the secular quasi-religions of our day. According to Tillich Christ did not come to establish a particular religion, although this happened historically, but to depict a religious attitude which both embraces and judges the various religious and secular spheres of life.

This thought leads Tillich to a logical but nonetheless startling conclusion. The day of attempting to make “converts” in the traditional sense must be replaced, says this master of dialogue, by a community of conversation in which each one will try to penetrate into the depth of his own religion while at the same time coming to see a “spiritual presence” in other religions and in the secularism which underlies Communism and nationalism. At this juncture it would seem that Tillich has been carried away by his desire to converse and has lost sight of the very Person who came not to condemn but that men might believe and be converted. Could it be that the author of these Columbia University lectures has failed to heed the second presupposition of his own apologetic: “to represent his own [a vital Christian?] religious basis with conviction”?

WILLIAM W. PAUL

Who Is The Greatest?

Why Christianity of All Religions?, by Hendrik Kraemer, translated by Hubert Hoskins (Westminster, 1962, 125 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Raymond B. Buker, Sr., professor of missions, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

Why Christianity of all religions? Hendrik Kraemer’s answer: “Because of Christ.” The title of this book is a subtle way of asking which of the great religions of the world is the greatest. As a follower of Christ, Dr. Kraemer categorically asserts that the religion with Christ as Lord is the greatest. Many of us who study the great religions of the world have long felt as Dr. Kraemer has written in this book. We have wanted someone with the stature of Dr. Kraemer to say it.

The first 75 pages set an excellent background for the definite answer. Dr. Kraemer reduces the proposition to the usual “likenesses in all religions” and then by careful analysis refutes this shallow attitude. An example of this is his disapproval of Arnold Toynbee’s conclusions in this area. It is in this section that Dr. Kraemer refers in scorn to “this loose talk about the love of God.”

The discussions concerning the other great religions show much empathy, but the ultimate greatness of Christ in comparison with any other is steadfastly emphasized.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ The Challenge of the World Religions, by Georg F. Vicedom (Fortress, $3.50). Author stirs the Church’s sense of mission because he believes that Christianity’s future will be decided as it confronts the religions of Asia.

★ The Church and Its Ministry, by David Belgum (Prentice-Hall, $6.60). A solid study of the ministry of the Church in the wide areas of its pastoral concerns.

★ Tradition in the Early Church, by R. P. C. Hanson (Westminster, $5.75). A careful study of the abundant literature comprising the tradition of the first three centuries. Author attributes more “inspiration” to some rejected letters than to some canonical books.

Dr. Kraemer reiterates again and again that Christianity is similar to other religions by reason of its inherent human weaknesses. One wonders if he has not developed an unnecessary dichotomy between Christ and Christianity. It is like saying that water is not water because there is impurity in it.

The masterful case for the Christian religion in this book will satisfy the devout neoorthodox. At the same time conservative evangelicals will find much that sets forth their conviction of the preeminence of Christ.

RAYMOND B. BUKER, SR.

Identified, But How?

Identification: Human and Divine, by Kenneth J. Foreman (John Knox, 1963, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, associate professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Our share in the reality of redemption depends on our identification with persons from whom we are in other real senses quite distinct. I am not Adam and I never lived in Paradise; but I am identified with Adam in his fall. I am a servant and not the Lord; but I am identified with Christ in both his cross and his resurrection. Christian devotion and theology is full of vague speech about these identifications. But it is far easier to talk about them in a fuzzy and indefinite way than to put our finger on their actual meaning. And when we do talk about them specifically, we are divided in our judgments as to what makes for a valid and acceptable identification.

Theological types can be distinguished according to their explanations of how we are identified with Adam and Christ. Take Adam and me, for instance. Am I identified with Adam in the mind of God, with Adam counted as my representative, so that when Adam fell his guilt was ascribed by God to me? Or am I identified with Adam in some real and physical sense, so that when Adam fell I was actually involved in his sin? Here you have the federal and the realistic type of theology distinguished by the way in which this identification is understood. Or, take the Church and Christ, a classic example. Is the Church identified with Christ as an extension of his incarnation on earth, as some Catholics understand it—and is the Church, then, identical with Christ in a genuine sense? Or is the Church identified with Christ’s cause and ministry, and thus identified with him only in that both are involved in God’s program of action? Is this identification one of essential participation or one of association? These are only two areas in which identification is at the heart of our share in biblical reality.

Dr. Foreman’s book is a clear-headed effort to distinguish between valid and invalid ways of understanding our identifications. His method is to set up a scheme of the different ways in which we think of identification with persons in ordinary experience. Then, examining the many biblical areas of identification, he tries to get at the type of identification each one actually is. He wants us to make distinctions and insists that our language of identification in theology must conform to our language of identification in ordinary speech. If it does not, we will not be making sense to anybody, profound and pious though we may sound. His judgments as to what kinds of identification between God and us, God and Christ, Christ and us, us and the Church, and so on, are valid depends on his own theological insights. At times the reader will not agree. But the reader is led with a steady hand and sure touch through the linguistic maze that we have made of the language of identification. We must make distinctions. And Dr. Foreman helps the reader in that most successfully.

LEWIN B. SMEDES

Invaluable Survey

Protestant Missions in Latin America, A Statistical Survey, edited by Clyde W. Taylor and Wade T. Coggins (Evangelical Foreign Missions Association [1405 G St., N.W., Washington 5, D. C.], 1961, 340 pp. plus box of 31 maps, $13.50), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, vice-president and professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This work is probably the most complete statistical survey of missionary endeavor in Latin America to be published in thirty years. The Interpretive Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church was published in 1938. Since then the World Christian Handbook, published periodically by the World Dominion Press, has supplied some statistical information for world missionary endeavor.

This survey by Taylor and Coggins goes beyond anything done by the World Christian Handbook, although the authors acknowledge indebtedness to that work for some of the information. Apart from the bare statistical information, the thirty-one maps which form a part of this new work are invaluable to those interested in the location of mission stations and the penetration in depth by the number of boards laboring in a given area, and as a guide to unreached areas of Latin America.

The man-hours of labor which went into the work must have been great. One can only hope that some one will publish a similar survey for the other mission fields of the world.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Justice Within Love

The Justice of God in the Teaching of Jesus, by J. Arthur Baird (Westminster, 1963, 283 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The pastor with an interest in contemporary theological debate will find here a hurried but useful opening survey of the post-Bultmannian reaction. All but the opening chapter of this book, however, is given over to the theme which Dr. Baird, associate professor in the Department of Religion at Wooster, expounds with many a fresh turn. But the underlying motif is a familiar neoorthodox refrain: God’s justice and wrath must be taken “seriously,” but love is the deepest core of the divine nature. It is this denial of the equal ultimacy of justice and love in the nature of God that cancels out much of the merit of the work.

In tracing Jesus’ “theological inheritance,” Baird tells us that in the Old Testament love is God’s “essential nature,” and that when justice refers to God’s nature “the emphasis is on its meaning as love” (pp. 42 ff.). The fierceness of consuming wrath is always set within God’s love and graciousness (p. 62).

Jesus spiritualized hell (“a geography of hell … is not Christian”) (p. 227). The doctrine of eternal punishment is rejected (p. 230) for that of conditional immortality as more compatible with the author’s representations of God’s love and wrath (p. 234). While Jesus “viewed his death in one sense as the taking upon himself of the wrath of God” (p. 250), yet “an incarnational understanding of the atonement” as disclosing a Cross in the eternal nature of God best explains Jesus’ sufferings: he died not to appease God’s wrath toward sinners but to reveal God’s love (p. 251).

The author usually succeeds in making his meaning clear, however inadequate evangelically. But a closing paragraph is profoundly ambiguous: “One thing more must be said. Jesus must not be left on the cross.…” The author goes on to speak of resurrection in terms of “the vertical life of the Spirit” and “his abiding presence.” That sort of theological twist seems to make the “forty days” of “many infallible proofs” a pathetic illusion.

CARL F. H. HENRY

No Longer The Christ

Jesus and The Gospel, by Ernest Cadman Colwell (Oxford, 1963, 73 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Lorman Petersen, professor of New Testament, Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois.

When Ernest Colwell takes up his pen or mounts the lecture platform, most scholars read or listen. He has been president of Southern California School of Theology since 1957 and before that was president of the University of Chicago, dean of its Divinity School, and vice-president of Emory University.

This well-written little volume containing the Cole Lectures for 1962, delivered by Colwell at Vanderbilt University, hits hard at those who separate completely the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. He writes as a historian—and he is a capable one—rather than as a theologian. “These lectures,” he writes in the Preface, “are written by an historian who is a Christian, not a Biblical theologian.… I believe that God has been and is active in human history in making Himself known and apprehensible. I believe He does this through people’s words and deeds. Since this is true, the study of history will lead to a knowledge of God.… And finally, I believe that the decisive event in the revelation of God was Jesus of Nazareth.” This is saying much more than many New Testament scholars and theologians are saying today, and it sets the tone of the book. His objective, he says, is to “bring historian and theologian close to mutual understanding and to effective cooperation in the service of the Church.”

He opens the first lecture with a statement of his view of history. Both historian and theologian will be interested in his seven points about history, the fourth of which reads, “Historians believe that historical fact is objective fact” (p. 9). His view of history in this day of myth and symbol is something that has needed saying for some time. He emphasizes that it is not scholarly disgrace to believe that “Jesus said,” and that the faith of the early Christians stood or fell with the sober facts of a story. In stating these views he confesses that he has changed some of the opinions held in his “anti-theological youth.”

This reviewer felt “let down” while reading Chapter III, “The Revelation in Jesus.” The anticipation that the Jesus of history would be presented as God Incarnate was not fulfilled. Instead, Jesus only proclaims God as a humble Sovereign who does not climb down steps to reach the poor. Colwell reprimands those who today “make Jesus over in the image of their God,” just as the Gospel writers are supposed to have done. Jesus was a humble carpenter’s son, but his people wanted him to be a Messiah of divinity and glory. Similarly some today “require of him that at his return he come to us with the power and the glory with which he did not come to Israel” (p. 51). The chapter ends with this significant passage: “It is time to stop using the language of royalty for Jesus. Messiah was an inappropriate title in the days of his flesh; it is doubly inappropriate now. If by God’s kingship we mean that His mercy knew no limits, let’s call Him ‘The Merciful’ rather than ‘The Great King’ ” (p. 57). We are elated over Colwell’s significant criticism of the present-day dichotomy between faith and history—we only wish he had gone further, and stated that Jesus is not only a revelation of God but is himself God and Saviour.

The fourth lecture is splendid, almost devotional reading. Here Colwell exhibits his keen insight into modern Christian life. While he believes the words of Jesus do not comprise an economic blueprint for our day, he says that Jesus saw the nature of man with 20–20 vision. Jesus knew man can be seduced by money. “In our country,” says Colwell, “this is illustrated by the fact that the advertisers have triumphed over us.” Jesus pushed aside both asceticism and extreme wealth and speaks of the rich as handicapped in the race for the Kingdom. Yet Colwell believes the Gospel is more than the social gospel. “The Christian voice and action should vigorously support the realizable Utopias of our generation: the elimination of hunger, the elimination of disease, the elimination of ignorance, and the elimination of the low subsistence level that breeds all three. But after these victories, what? The triumph over covetousness, over materialism as the end of all human achievement—this will be the last victory. It is still to be won in Russia and China; still to be won in America” (p. 73).

Here is an insight which should cause all of us to pause and reflect, especially in the light of these words of Colwell: “In my county, there are half as many automobiles as people, even including babies. In other words, every person in Los Angeles county can ride in the front seat of an automobile at the same time. Four-door cars will soon be useless” (p. 71).

LORMAN PETERSEN

Crisis World-Around

Christianity and World Revolution, edited by Edwin H. Rian (Harper & Row, 1963, 237 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The modern thing about the modern world is that for the first time in history the whole world is undergoing revolution. Much of the old is going under, and many new and strange things are emerging. This constitutes a judgment and a challenge to every world view, Christianity included.

In this book sixteen men present as many lectures assessing the world situation in the light of the Christian faith, and probe this faith to find relevant truth for such a world-time as this.

Most of the lectures are competent and penetrating, meeting the intent of the editor. Some few are good, but could have been written long ago.

Originally given as lectures at Biblical Seminary in New York City, located near the United Nations Building, the essays deal with five major themes. Four essays analyze The Power Struggle; two, The Rapprochement Between Science and Religion; two, The Relation Of Psychiatry and Religion; two, Communication; four, World Christianity; and the last two search for A Theology For the Nuclear Age. Among the sixteen contributors are J. Pelikan, C. F. H. Henry, J. Haroutunian, L. Newbigin, E. Cailliet, A. Cordier, W. A. Nielsen, R. Howe, and R. Shaull.

This is a book any minister, and many laymen, could enjoy and read with considerable profit. It should indeed be read by anyone who doubts that the world is in universal revolution—and, strange thing, so many people can, and do, live in our time of worldwide crisis without being aware of it.

JAMES DAANE

A Fine Miscellany

Good News, by J. B. Phillips (Geoffrey Bles, 1963, 210 pp., 12s. 6d.; Macmillan, $2.95), is reviewed by Frank Colquhoun, Canon Residentiary and Precentor of Southwark Cathedral, London, England.

The subtitle of this book is “Thoughts of God and Man,” a phrase which is broad enough to cover almost anything and perhaps is intended to indicate that the book does not profess to deal with any one particular theme. It is in fact a miscellany, consisting of various articles, sermons, and broadcast talks not previously published in book form.

In an introductory chapter J. B. Phillips explains the meaning of the word “Gospel” and protests the way in which it is commonly distorted and debased. “In Christian circles we must see that what purports to be the Christian Gospel is always, and in the best sense, Good News,” he writes. “A great many people repudiate what has been put before them as the Christian Gospel: they have never been able to see how good is the true Good News.”

The major part of the book consists of short extracts from the New Testament (in the author’s own familiar translation) with appropriate comments and notes. These would serve admirably for daily devotional reading, and doubtless this was their original purpose. These readings are grouped under the headings The Purpose of God, Faith, Hope, and Love.

The latter part of the book deals with the Christian year and shows the relevance of the great festivals, from Christmas to Ascension Day, to the life of the ordinary Christian. These short articles are excellent examples of popular apologetics and reveal the author’s gift of expounding the profound mysteries of the Gospel in simple, down-to-earth language.

FRANK COLQUHOUN

Good Team

Interpreting Religion, by Donald Walhout (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 481 pp., $9), is reviewed by Arthur Holmes, associate professor and director of philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

This is a distinctively Christian textbook, written by the professor of philosophy and religion of Rockford College (Ill.), addressed to students who think seriously about religion. Its method is neither apologetic nor theological, but rather philosophical: “The analysis and interpretation of some of the intellectual questions” which arise (p. 1), as these are handled by contemporary writers who treat religion seriously and sympathetically. The work is organized into three parts: religion generally, theistic religion, and Christian thought. Topics range from traditional problems like faith and reason, religion and science, evil, the nature of man and the reality of God, to recent questions like religious language, and to theological matters like revelation and ecumenism.

Walhout’s stated position is that of a Protestant, conciliatory in matters of doctrinal difference. “… little purpose is served either by haphazard convictions coupled with gushy openness or by adamant convictions coupled with belligerent broadsides. To couple firm convictions with appreciative openness may be as difficult a thing as it is rare. But there is this possibility also: that the two obligations, as necessary supplements to each other, may each be strengthened by their very tension” (p. 442). These words, written of the Christian attitude to non-Christian religions, represent the author’s attitude throughout the book. His own loyalty to historic Christianity, conservatively interpreted, is apparent throughout. Yet he shows a discriminating appreciation of the contributions of writers like Niebuhr and Hordern.

The book combines source readings (approximately 60 per cent) with the author’s own text (40 per cent), an independent development of a continuous line of thought. With this composition, it has the advantages of both the traditional textbook and the anthology. Selections are drawn both from familiar writers, such as Otto, Gilson, Tillich, Brightman, and Hartshorne, and from those less frequently included, like John C. Bennett, C. S. Lewis, and Hendrik Kraemer. Evangelicalism is well represented by men like Clark, Carnell, Ramm, and Packer. It is encouraging to see a textbook with this perspective prepared with the competence of a man like Walhout, and produced by publishers like Prentice-Hall.

ARTHUR HOLMES

All In All: Good

The Divine Comforter, by J. Dwight Pentecost (Revell, 1963, 256 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Robert Preus, professor of systematic theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Professor Pentecost of Dallas Theological Seminary offers a sane, clear, biblical presentation of the work of the Holy Spirit. Such a study is particularly important today, when there is much perversion or ignoring of the work of the Holy Spirit among Christians. The author’s discussions of the Spirit as revealer of divine truth and of the activity of the Spirit in the Old Testament and prior to Pentecost are particularly well done. He also offers a valuable chapter showing that the baptism of the Spirit is something which has already taken place on Pentecost.

This reviewer, however, must voice his hearty dissent with the author’s interpretation of John 3:5, that Jesus here is speaking of something more than baptism. According to the Greek text, our Lord is not referring to two separate activities, a cleansing by water and another of the Holy Spirit. Rather, he is speaking of one act of rebirth through water and the Spirit (no definite article precedes either word). Those who believe in baptismal regeneration, that is, that the Spirit of God regenerates us through baptism, will part company with Professor Pentecost.

One might also wish that the author had said more about the Spirit’s activity in working faith in the individual and in bestowing faith as a gift of God (1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 2:8, 9).

All in all, however, this thorough study should increase the Christian’s appreciation of the manifold activity of the Spirit of God in his life; and this, I believe, is the principal aim of the book.

ROBERT PREUS

God Plus Three

History: Written and Lived, by Paul Weiss (Southern Illinois University Press, 1962, 245 pp., $5.85), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, chairman, Department of History, Waterloo Lutheran University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

The task of a philosopher of history is to bring man’s past experiences out of what William James once described as the essence of babyhood: “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Weiss, a professor of philosophy at Yale, believes that God must be posited in order for history to have meaning, for “only He is broad enough, persistent enough, powerful enough to endow the past with sufficient existence to enable it properly to be” (p. 222). However, the God of Weiss is by no means the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; rather, taking his cue from Aristotle, Lucretius, Scheler, and Whitehead, Weiss uses the term “God” to refer to “a being superior to anything in this space-time world, but which is not absolutely perfect, not necessarily the creator of any substances, not necessarily concerned with man’s salvation” (ibid.). Indeed, as we learn from the author’s other works, seven of which, together with the present volume, set out his general philosophy, Weiss’s “God” is but one of four ultimate, irreducible, mutually related modes or dimensions of being (the other three are Actuality, Ideality or Possibility, and Existence).

As W. N. Clarke well noted in his comments on Weiss’s Modes of Being, the Weissian system “leaves untouched the … fundamental and, for a metaphysician, unavoidable problem of the ultimate origin or source of existence and the ultimate principle of unity of this whole with its four irreducible modes” (Yale Review, Sept., 1958). Moreover, since Weiss regards systematic philosophy much as Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann regard systematic theology—as a circular enterprise in which epistemology grounds ontology and ontology grounds epistemology—his total system, to use Morris Weitz’s expression, lacks “testability” (Ethics, Oct., 1961).

As I have tried to show in my Shape of the Past, the meaning of history (which is, after all, a special case of the meaning of life) can be discovered only if man has in fact received an objectively reliable Revelation originating from outside the blooming, buzzing, confused human situation. Without the scriptural revelation of God in Jesus Christ, Professor Weiss is as much in the dark as to the meaning of the past as were his philosophical predecessors.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Book Briefs

The Coming Explosion in Latin America, by Gerald Clark (McKay, 1962, 436 pp., $6.75). Although he tends to underestimate the strength and cleverness of Communism in troubled Latin America, Clark brings a journalist’s sharp eye and graphic pen to play on the social ills there. Unless we find ways jointly to reduce poverty, illiteracy, political violence, and economic feudalism, says Clark, the hemisphere will explode. The need is urgent. Coordinator Teodoro Moscoso, of the Alliance for Progress, keeps a sign prominently displayed on his office wall: “Please be brief. We are 25 years late.” Major weakness: emphasis on political means for remedy to people’s ills, with no mention of Protestantism at all.

Church Growth in the High Andes, by Keith E. Hamilton (Lucknow [order from Institute of Church Growth, Northwest Christian College, Eugene, Oregon], 1962, 146 pp., $2). Growth of the evangelical churches of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

A Lonely Minority, by Edward Wakin (Morrow, 1963, 178 pp., $4.50). The story of Egypt’s Copts—a minority, a church, a community; the present descendents of the race that ruled the Nile Valley 2,000 years ago, who consider themselves the “true Egyptians” and the “true Christians.”

The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict, by Hans Joachim Schoeps, translated by David E. Green (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 208 pp., $5). The basic conflict between Christianity and Judaism in both its earlier and later forms, presented from a Jewish viewpoint by a Jewish author.

The Necessary Conditions for a Free Society, edited by Felix Morley (Van Nostrand, 1963, 239 pp., $5.95). Papers delivered (and later revised) by thirteen men gathered in conference in Princeton, New Jersey, who discussed the prerequisites of a free society and raised the question whether political freedom derives ultimately from Jesus Christ.

Air Force Chaplains 1947–1960, by Daniel B. Jorgensen (Office, Chief of Air Force Chaplains, 1962, 432 pp., $3.50). The story of the development and activities of the Air Force chaplaincy during the period indicated. Inexpensively priced.

The Gospel in a Strange, New World, by Theodore O. Wedel (Westminster, 1963, 141 pp., $3.75). A very readable, often perceptive discussion of that problem currently of wide concern: communication.

Many Witnesses, One Lord, by William Barclay (Westminster, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50). On the thesis that there is no one standardized religious experience and no single interpretation of the Christian faith, the author shows what the Gospel meant to Paul, James, John, and others, and what their peculiar witness to the Gospel can mean for us.

The Church: Papal Teachings, selected by the Benedictine monks of Solesmes (Daughters of St. Paul [50 St. Paul’s Ave., Boston, Mass.], 1962, 928 pp., $9). Four hundred pronouncements chronologically arranged, beginning with Benedict XIV, 1740–58. Excellent for the student of Roman Catholic thought.

Paperbacks

Social Change in Latin America Today: Its Implications for United States Policy, by six authors (Vintage Books, 1960, 254 pp., $1.45). Essays prepared not by tourists, nor political observers, but by anthropologists and sociologists. They are therefore replete with valuable insights into the idiosyncracies of the Latin character and the problems of the Latin society. Not only required for would-be Hispanicists, but factful and readable as well.

South Wind Red: Our Hemispheric Crisis, by Philip A. Ray (Regnery, 1962, 242 pp., $2). A former undersecretary of commerce, after a five-month tour of Latin America, points out the alarming upsurge of Communism and offers an economic solution.

Mexico and the Caribbean and South America, by Lewis Hanke (Van Nostrand, 1959, 192 pp. each, $1.25 each). Volumes I and II of a series “Modern Latin America: Continent in Ferment,” by one of the nation’s top authorities on the area. With unfailing insight Hanke has culled and stated the most significant facts about each country. An extra bonus, filling half of each book, is the collection of essays and excerpts from other authors. An “A” to Dr. Hanke on every score. Best handbooks yet available.

The Latin American Churches and the Ecumenical Movement, by John A. Mackay (The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America [475 Riverside Drive, New York 27], 1963, 34 pp., $25). A distinguished ecumenist insists that to be truly ecumenical is to be strongly missionary and traces the development of the ecumenical idea in Latin American Protestantism.

At the center of the current debate over the matter of communicating the message of the Christian Evangel to our generation stands the figure of Rudolf Bultmann, formerly a professor at the University of Marburg.

Basic to Bultmann’s message is, of course, his thesis that the message of the New Testament is couched in mythological language. That is to say, he holds that the New Testament writers thought in terms of a world-view which is no longer intelligible to the minds of men. He takes exception, in behalf of Modern Man, to what he regards as an outdated cosmology which he holds to underlie the entire structure of the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. He contends that these records are bound inextricably to a view of a three-layered universe, of a geocentric astronomy, and of a philosophy of history which is no longer meaningful to the man of today.

He proposes, in the light of this, that the New Testament is to be taken in its entirety. In actual practice he resorts to eliminating certain passages by the expedient of regarding them as interpolations. But his explicit intention is to leave the New Testament whole, and then to “interpret” it in its entire form in such a manner as to expose the basic truth which he feels to underlie its “mythological” elements. He has made a name for himself through his elaboration of the process of “demythologizing,” by which he proposes to peel away the layers of “myth” which overlay the “real” message of the New Testament writers.

The objectives of his method are as follows: first, to reinterpret the message of the Gospel in a manner which will eliminate thought-elements which are either unintelligible or objectionable to the modern mind; second, to restate the message of the New Testament in “existential” terms; and finally, to discover the manner in which the “Gospel” as he understands it may lead men into “authentic” existence.

The first of these objectives is to be achieved by means of the application of the canons of form-criticism. This is a sophisticated method, utilizing what Bultmann insists are reconstructive techniques. That is to say, he has professed to discover the steps by which “myths” are made, and then has applied them in reverse so as to discover what he believes the “facts” behind the narratives might have been. Now, those who have studied the process of “demythologization” with some measure of objectivity have come to the conclusion that the entire method rests upon an a priori assumption concerning the nature of the end product toward which the process moves.

The second of these objectives, the restatement of the Christian Evangel in “existential” terms, rests upon a mode of interpretation which makes use of a multiple understanding of truth and of history. That is to say, it assumes that empirical truth is one thing, while “truth” for the individual in encounter with God in “crisis” is another. The field of myth enters into this second phase; it does not attempt to state what man’s actual relation to his world is, but only what that relation is understood existentially to be.

Bultmann’s third objective, the exposition of the Gospel as a way to “authentic” existence, centers in the existentialist distinction between mere being-in-the-world on the one hand, and one’s existence as an accountable and responsible individual on the other. This sounds plausible enough on the surface. When we look a bit deeper, however, we note that Bultmann suggests that authentic existence is an ambiguous term, and that he is highly ambiguous about the possibility of achieving it.

Having noted what Bultmann evidently intends to say to our day, we turn to note some of the things which he may be saying to evangelicals by indirection. First and foremost, he does attempt to render the Christian “message” intelligible to the men and women of our day. It seems to many of us as if he were so preoccupied with the “modern mind” that it drives more important issues into secondary place. However, he provides perennial reminder that unless our message has relevance to the hearer, its proclamation will remain ineffective. The minister of God’s grace who will speak to his generation will do well to hear at least this from the message of Bultmann, however little of Bultmann’s actual techniques he may use.

Second, Bultmann would challenge us to be sensitive to the meaning of words. Certainly his lesson is taught in terms of inacceptable hyperboles and absurd exaggerations. Certainly his “existentialist” interpretations carry the analysis of language too far. At the same time, evangelicals will do well to cultivate a sensitivity of their own to verbalizations. They will likewise be well advised to recall that there are few “bare facts”—that is, that all fact-situations involve interpretation.

In addition to a sensitivity to relevance and to the meaning of words, evangelicals may learn from Bultmann regarding some of the aspects of what he calls authentic existence. Without assenting to the radically individualistic and idiosyncratic overtones of this term, one must recognize that Christians are not exempt from the danger of living upon mere tradition, upon mere “received” norms, upon the basis of a mere protective coloration of the social or religious group. There is a perennial need for emphasis upon personal existence, in terms of the overt acceptance of personal initiative and the frank assumption of personal responsibility.

Finally, Bultmann’s system shows once again that there is a genuine “either/or” attached to the Christian Gospel. It may assume a form quite different from what Bultmann would expect. For the evangelical, the question is: either a frank supernaturalism, grounded in revelation and centering in the Incarnation and the Atonement in Jesus Christ, or a humanism which ultimately denies the supernatural and throws man back upon the purely natural. The exposition of Bultmann’s thought by his disciples must make this alternative painfully clear to their teacher himself.

A world Christian leader and past co-president (1954–1961) of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Otto Dibelius at 83 remains—for lack of a successor acceptable to both East and West—the Bishop of the Protestant United Church of Berlin, the city of his birth. As stated by Time magazine’s Henry R. Luce, Dr. Dibelius “has kept the flame of Christian hope alive for his people under two tyrannies, Nazism and Communism.”

Born in an era swept by Protestant liberalism, Bishop Dibelius’ ministry has spanned beyond two world wars to the division of his homeland. When the German government in 1933 dismissed him from his church post he became a leader of the “Confessing Church,” which opposed the Nazi-dominated church government. Then came the partition of Berlin and the hoisting of the hammer and sickle over the Brandenburg Gate. Bishop Dibelius not only deplored the totalitarian tyrants but also called the Church to renewal as the only means of hope for the future. He sees at stake in the fate of Berlin more than the outcome of the struggle between world powers; he sees at stake also the spiritual fate of humanity in our times. Communist absolutism he interprets as the extension of Nazi-Fascist totalitarianism.

Interviewed by special arrangement in the Washington offices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Bishop Dibelius was accompanied by Dr. J. W. Winterhager of Berlin Ecumenical Seminary.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, what is the religious situation in East Germany? What of the vitality of the churches? Are the Christians able to reproduce themselves? What about the young people in the churches? Is the picture depressing or are there encouraging elements?

A. I can’t say that the overall impression is encouraging. The Communistic, atheistic attack directs itself primarily toward the young people. And when the youth in school never hear anything but the Communist ideology, and the parents are never seen the entire week at home, so that there is little parental indoctrination, it is unavoidable that the Communist propaganda will bear fruit. Our church youth work continues in spite of thousands of prohibitions and restrictions by the state: free assembly is forbidden, and so forth.

Q. How effectively does Christian conviction survive?

A. We have the impression that by and large the youth today are still rooted in the same general Christian atmosphere as formerly. Even among those who participate in Communist activities the inner protest against the Communist representations remains unalteredly strong. Church attendance, which even formerly was not great among the youth, has not increased everywhere—but also has not decreased. Some of the youth are still available for confirmation, so the youth in East Germany show a very considerable inner opposition to atheistic indoctrination. And the Bible study groups are much more alive. The intensity of Bible study and the desire to gain inspiration in the laymen’s work is a thing we did not have half a century ago. This study of the Bible started with the persecution of the Church under Hitler and is now increasing all the time. But the Communist majority holds these Bible groups in contempt.

Q. What is the nature of the persecution?

A. It’s not open persecution of the Church. It is harassment all the time. Worship is not forbidden, but it is made extremely difficult on Sunday morning owing to special meetings for workers and premium bonds and all that sort of thing.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, have you not said that a state which does not consider itself bound by the laws of God does not come under the scope of Romans 13 and that Christians therefore need not obey such a state but should rather resist and overthrow it?

A. I have said that such a state is not in a biblical sense an authority functioning in the name of God. But I have never preached open resistance—much less, revolution. Rather I have interpreted the situation, because this kind of government brings a conflict of loyalties. And in a conflict of loyalties we must obey God rather than man. Instead of preaching active disobedience, I have preached the priority of obedience to God’s commandments according to conscience. We have the Bible. If there is a conflict of loyalties, God comes first.

Q. Do you take this general position to be Luther’s also?

A. This is exactly the standpoint of Martin Luther. Read the new book by Professor Johannes Heckel (professor of ecclesiastical law of Munich University), Lex Caritatis (“The Law of Love”). There you will find all the citations of Luther. Luther did not shrink from open resistance where there was tyranny in the Catholic totalitarian authority. Today the Lutheran Church no longer preaches this kind of open opposition for two reasons. The first reason is that the atheistic totalitarian states have learned a great deal from history, particularly that it is not very intelligent, not even clever, to create martyrs. The Church has always gained through martyrdom. So the totalitarian states throughout the Soviet orbit now seek to avoid open persecution of the Church wherever possible. They do not wish to have martyrs for the faith. They are always finding some pretext to intimidate, harass, and even exterminate the witness of the Church for other reasons. For instance, they will try to prove that some individual has been subversive in political attitude or has committed an economic crime, such as accepting aid into the church, or anything that is against the economic legislation of the totalitarian state society. And it is not very difficult in a totalitarian state where everything is regimented to find some item for which a church leader may be and can be and is arrested. That happens all the time. But this is an indirect persecution. We cannot prove openly that this particular church leader is arrested for his witness for Jesus Christ. Today no totalitarian state in East Europe persecutes the Christian churches because they are Christian churches. Bishops are arrested on the ground they have infringed on some economical or political regulations; they are never arrested because they are bishops and because they preach the Gospel. Never. And the second reason the Lutheran Church does not preach opposition is that modern society is not as homogeneous and clear-cut as in former times. The atomic age brings some interchange of realities and also a mixture of ethical, professional, vocational responsibilities. And with this changing of the standards of modern society—so complex now—it is not so easy to say that here are the pure Christians, puritanical in their behavior, clear-cut, with their little sphere of a wonderful kingdom of God, and on the other side there is a purely Satanic kingdom, as Luther had it. Rather there is an interacting all the time, and the devil is finding ways to increase this confusion. The circumstances are no longer so simple that here one finds exclusively Christians and there, exclusively atheists. One finds quite a few atheists among the Christians, and one finds quite a few Christians among opponents of the Church. In view of this complex situation, the Church, humiliated and historical in its continuity, would not say we can project this simple, clear-cut, late medieval situation upon modern times, but we must carry on a dialogue with this complex world in which we try to apply the new findings of the modern mind to the Christian concept of life which we share—which we share with a great number of modern men outside the Church. As a consequence it is no longer the Church’s province to fight against a closed atheistic power. The Church has learned that she can no longer operate with force, but only with a message presenting the whole Christ to the whole world.

Q. In this relationship, does the Church’s strategy presuppose Christian coexistence with Communism and presuppose areas of compatibility between Christianity and Communism?

A. Do you mean, can peaceful coexistence—a peaceful coexistence with the Communist authorities—be a new basis for a new Christian ethic and for a new Church life?

Q. Are there levels of compatibility between the two? Are there points of connection where agreement is possible between these differing philosophies? Is a compromising and peaceful working together possible?

A. Only about 5 per cent of the Christians see logically clear-cut alternatives, can say this is Christian and this is not Christian, and the witness has to be one or the other. The other 95 per cent of the population rather tend to make a compromise. There are only a few who say, “Here are two views which are logically contradictory—consequently, I must say no to the one and yes to the other.” Perhaps only 5 per cent of the people are like that. The other 95 say, “One must not take everything so seriously. In the ancient Church, in pagan Roman times, the Christians were asked to throw a kernel of wheat into the fire in front of a bust of the emperor as part of emperor worship. And the lapsed Christians thought, ‘Why not throw the kernel of wheat into the fire as an act of adoration, because no one takes the emperor seriously any longer?’ ” Well, what of it, after all? So they threw a kernel of wheat into the fire and thought nothing of it. Why does one have to dramatize everything? Compromise is always a temptation to take it easy. For instance, confirmation. The atheistic Communist state does not say, “I forbid confirmation.” But it introduces a new act concomitantly with confirmation, and establishes the same kind of liturgical elements in its ceremony—only instead of a confession of commitment to Christ it requires a confession of commitment to the state. And then it says, “Every young person must come to the ceremony of commitment to the state.” The Communists say this is a political, social affair; confirmation doesn’t interest them—do what you like about that. But the Church said at first, and today still says it in 90 per cent of the cases, “One can’t do that. One can’t dedicate oneself one Sunday to atheistic Communism and the next Sunday dedicate oneself to the Lord Jesus Christ. That won’t do.” But 90 per cent of the parents say, “Oh, go without qualms to both. A dedication which is forced and which does not come from the heart does not have any significance anyway. So go ahead and do it. And then go to the Church and let yourself be confirmed. For the state will never arrest you for letting yourself be confirmed, but it will arrest you—or in any event oppress you—if you don’t come to the state ceremony.”

Many young people from Christian families undergo this absurd ritual of Communist youth dedication—taking an oath. No one takes it seriously. They take it easy just for the social, promotional features tied up with that oath of allegiance to the world revolution. But religiously no one takes it very seriously. Many people pay lip service, and all this is an adjustment. But no one believes in it. In Germany we have learned something from Hitler’s materialism, and how dangerous this totalitarianism is for the issues of life.

Q. How do the Communists view this adjustment?

A. The state reckons—just as Islam did in Africa, that eventually the social and political significance of the state ceremony will prevail because from the Church ceremony—as we say in German—there is “no flower pot to be gained”: it contributes nothing toward one’s material existence; it is simply a matter of internal life “from which no one profits.” So the church life—says the state—will gradually deteriorate. In North Africa in this manner the Christian church actually disappeared, although it once bloomed there.

Q. But what of the real possibility of peaceful coexistence?

A. Coexistence would require a clear, logical confrontation of two parties—a clear-cut field of responsibility for a Christian on one side, rationally explained and limited, and on the other side a partner that confronts you with a field of his responsibilities and claims. Coexistence between the lion and the lamb is only possible if from time to time the lamb is resupplied! So it would be for peaceful coexistence between Communism and the Christian church. If Christian people undergo these rituals of the Communist world religion, this doesn’t mean real coexistence; it is only an adjustment to the promotional aspects. All this bargaining with the rituals of this Communist religion is not a matter of deep commitment; it is much more a matter of practical expedience. And probably the Christians might perish if they did not give in at some point just for the promotional aspect.

The temptation exists also that we dodge serious intellectual decision, so that there is no intellectual honesty. But the Church does not really give in. The Church watches these young people very carefully. It doesn’t discard confirmation. The young people come and prove that their compromise has been achieved under pressure of the promotional aspect or for politico-sociological reasons. The Church, in fact, still takes confirmation and the sacraments so seriously that they are more respected now than they used to be. The Church takes its own sacramental life much more seriously than it did in former years.

But this doesn’t mean coexistence in the philosophical sense of the word. This coexistence is only an adjustment, which secures the survival of people who are persecuted when they make too much of the political realities of the Church, which does not conform to the totalitarian standards. It is not a compatibility of the two concepts of man. The totalitarian state does not welcome the disparagement of its pseudo-religious Communist ritual as a bogus thing. But as long as Communism means a totalitarian state, coexistence is impossible. And there is a text from Scripture, you will remember, the words of Jesus Christ: “I send you as sheep among the wolves.” That is a terrible phrase. A terrible phrase. Because, naturally, the lambs will surely be torn apart by the wolves. They will be sent to a certain death. If we were to proclaim any coexistence other than a day-to-day adjustment, this is what would happen, as long as Communism is in possession of such a pressure-force as the modern totalitarian state. That is exactly what happens when coexistence is called for and Communism abides by its viewpoint of a totalitarian state which subjugates the ideas and feelings and the wills of men to its power.

Q. Can the Christians then complain if the Communists likewise take part in the Christian ritual just as a matter of convenience without really giving their hearts to the Christian realities?

A. If you are asking whether Communists in the same way say, “We will accommodate ourselves to the Christian practices while underneath we remain Communists,” my answer is that there are few convinced religious Communists. There are very few convinced Communists who really come to the light.

Q. Can anything be done by the Church or by international diplomacy to ease the Red-oriented ideological pressure upon the Christians in East Germany?

A. Ideological pressure can be eased if the churches study and publicize the actual situation in the Eastern orbit. Nothing is dreaded and feared more (by a totalitarian state) than publicity. Outspoken prayers of concrete intercession would also be a great help.

Q. What is the attitude of the East German Christians toward property rights? Do they consider property rights a human right?

A. You mean, is it a God-given right to keep property as formerly? In biblical thinking, especially in the New Testament, there is hardly any room for the property rights of the human individual. We should be ready to sacrifice at any time, also to sacrifice our property. The human individual is not entitled to store up property rights or privileges for himself. This is unchristian, and we simply have to learn that anew. Sacrifice, sacrificial love, self-effacing surrender of individual privileges is the basic attitude of the New Testament. There is one consideration which prevents the Church from saying no to property, and that is the responsibility we have toward other persons. The father is responsible to give his children the best possible rearing. Property is justifiable when there is a human individual’s responsibility for people and for furthering God’s kingdom. Certain property is necessary or else one would have to leave all such decisions to the state. But if this entrusting of property does not serve the upbuilding of His kingdom, then it will be and has to be destroyed and given up.

There is a second aspect of this responsibility which will in certain cases make private property justifiable. There has to be progress in human society, progress through scientific research, and exploration of the world potential to help further the relationships of human beings. Now we have cases in totalitarian states—particularly in Soviet Russia—where a great researcher achieves an invention of his own, but he cannot develop it because under a Communist regime he can have no property. He can only apply to a government office to accept the invention. But if the officials say that this does not interest them, or consider it to be impractical, then the matter comes to nothing. He has done the research and he comes forward and wishes to have his invention registered with the totalitarian state, which is of course unspeakably bureaucratic (we in the free world cannot even imagine what it is like), and which does not allow him to handle the potential of his research, much less the results of his research, without the red tape associated with the totalitarian machinery. In such cases inventions have come to naught, and this is a setback. The free society, the open society, provides the possibility for an individual to further these inventions for the good of mankind by the support of friends in society who join to further a good cause. But always we must reckon with the responsibility for bettering mankind in the sense of Christian partnership.

Q. How would you balance human freedom and government regulation?

A. In one sentence, I think that all Christian ethics would say: as little state as possible and as much freedom and liberty as possible for responsible activity of men. Property should not be taken over by the state. Property in itself is not a divine reality; it is only an instrument. But the state—especially the totalitarian state—tends to mishandle this instrument, making it something not furthering the good of mankind, not helping the souls of men, and not discharging the responsibility man has to his neighbor.

Q. To what extent do the churches of Germany get across this message of property as a divine stewardship to the Christians of West Germany?

A. In West Germany the Church gives the same emphasis. Certain technicalities in a progressive society may possibly fall under control of a democratic state. West Germany is a progressive state with a fairly high economic standard (but not as high as many people in America think). Certain controls are necessary. Sometimes a well-organized democratic state applies responsibility better than private ownership. As our church preaches to a particular congregation, or speaks to the big bosses in the Ruhr district, it is very lively against the capitalistic excesses of an irresponsible handling of the gifts of God.

Q. What effect has materialistic success had upon the spiritual life and outlook of West Germany’s people?

A. We in Berlin do not live in West Germany. Our atmosphere is much more Eastern; although we enjoy Western protection in Berlin, we are situated entirely in Eastern surroundings. You must also bear in mind that public opinion and public atmosphere in West Germany is much more determined by the Roman Catholic Church than it is in Berlin. But the responsibility for maintaining the Church as the Church is much more alive throughout Protestantism than it was in former years. Another factor which makes the Protestant church very much alive to the complex situation and much more humble in its witness is the ecumenical movement. In West Germany we have very prominent leaders of the ecumenical movement who speak for the whole of the Church and who not only attend conferences but also apply the findings of the ecumenical movement. Bishop Lilje, for one, but also Pastor Niemoeller, reflects an ecumenical sense of partnership which really means a Christian outlook different from simply the national outlook, or the empire outlook, or the Roman outlook. This ecumenical outlook is never totalitarian in its aspirations, but always awake to the dangers of a complex society in this atomic age.

Q. Do you see the Communist situation differently than did Pope John XXIII?

A. Basically, I see it in very much the same way: treat the human individual in the Communistic world like a created being of God, but do not make compromises with the system. Remind the Communist dictators that they are responsible for human beings who basically belong to God. This is what Pope John had in mind. Many are not Communists, they are human beings with a longing, with a craving, with a searching. The Communist has nothing in Communism to preserve his soul.

Q. But Pope John’s plea for greater mutuality was followed by a big vote for the Communists in Italy, and many Christian Democrats blame this development on the Pope’s statement. Your policy has not resulted in an open sympathy on the part of churchgoers for the Communist party in East Germany. Where is the difference? Did the Pope apply a false strategy in Italy?

A. I cannot say anything about the Italian situation. Whether this accusation or reproach of the Christian Democratic party in Italy that John XXIII went too far in approaching the Communists is justified—I do not know. I am convinced that the Pope was not interested in entering into a compromise with the Communists, but that, rather, at the decisive moment he planned to introduce the definite Catholic requirements.

Q. What is your feeling in the matter of eventual Protestant-Catholic reunion?

A. I can give the answer in one sentence. Perhaps it may be in God’s design that after five or six hundred years the question of uniting the churches will become a real issue. During these next five hundred years very little is likely to happen in regard to organizational union with Rome.

Q. What significance do you attach to the evangelistic crusades that have gathered momentum through the ministry of Dr. Billy Graham?

A. The campaigns of Dr. Graham are unique and their effect was great. They had a lasting effect while he was there, and have strengthened the Church. But we Germans have not developed a similar method of evangelism. It is still a bit alien to the Lutheran Church spirit that is prevalent in East and West Germany.

Q. Tell us something more about the local activity in evangelism that goes on at grass-roots level in the churches of Germany.

A. There is less evangelism in the American sense of that method of work and witness. But there is Pastor Heinrich Giesen: he is doing what we call Volksmission and Stadtmission—reaching out to the townspeople who live on the fringes. This effort grew out of the laymen’s movement of the big Kirchentag. Besides, there is excellent Bible-study work on the parish level.

Q. Do you welcome this growing interest in evangelism? Does it reach the workers?

A. Assuredly. Since the Memorial Church was rebuilt, we have had services every afternoon for the people coming home from work, with ever increasing attendance. In Berlin, we work right through. We have a short five o’clock service and another at half-past five. In recent weeks we have added another service (shorter than the others) at one o’clock near the shopping center, just for people finishing their purchases. Every Saturday there is a musical service. This is the first time we have tried to bring the evangelistic work into the church itself, and through different congregations. We learned this approach from America, and from England, where I was in the pulpit rather often at one o’clock in Coventry and other places to speak to the people working nearby. Other congregations began to follow our first Berlin example, and we think this will provide a certain spark for renewing the evangelistic forces and powers in our church. Then we also have telephone methods, as you have in America. We have a telephone pastoral service. People come to the “Telephone Cure of Souls” when they have troubles. Several numbers are now available through the church where people can discuss their troubles. It is partly anonymous.

Q. Is this personalized, individual counsel?

A. Yes.

Q. What about missionary vitality in the German churches? How many missionaries are being sent? What is missionary giving, and how does it compare with the giving of a generation ago?

A. Prominent areas of foreign missions in East Germany were Pomerania and Silesia and nearby areas. All of these are now lost for this kind of work, since they are no longer able to give any more help to the mission fields. They are not allowed to give money. The Communist-ruled areas give no passports to those wishing to go as missionaries. They are seldom allowed to send parcels of books. They are not able to print books in East Germany now without a license. So the whole responsibility has fallen again to the organized church. As members of the same church (Lutheran) we in West Berlin can do something in the name of the eastern provinces now ruled by the Communists; in this way the western churches try to do the work once done by the congregations and the mission societies of East Germany. West Germany has its own missionary societies—of Barmen, and in the south of Germany, the missionary society of Basel. There are also Hermannsburg, Brecklum, and various other societies.

Q. To what extent can the work in East Germany be directed from West Berlin?

A. To a great extent. For a long time I have served as the head of the East German Leaders Conference. Now my former assistant curate, Bishop Krummacher, is the head of the East German Bishops Conference. Nothing is really done by the bishops in East Germany without consulting Christian leaders in Berlin. The office of the Berlin Missionsgesellschaft is in East Berlin. Recently I ordained two new pastors—we call them Heimatinspektor (home inspector)—whose duties are to make new efforts regarding missionary interests in West Berlin, which is now cut off from the mission administration located in East Berlin. Although the head of the mission is still nominally in East Berlin, these pastors in West Berlin are making a fresh start to stir the missionary spirit in both parts of the province with cooperation from the East Berlin office. And this could not be done without church leaders officiating in West Berlin. The method of missionary work is now changing, as you know. The missionaries come from the young native churches themselves, and our responsibility now is not to send missionaries, but to send advisers. My own church, Berlin-Brandenburg, has for several years had one superintendent who is building an evangelical academy in Tokyo with Japanese Christians.

Q. What ecclesiological significance do you attach to the World Council of Churches?

A. The World Council is, as it says, a “fellowship, a Koinonia of churches.”

Q. Is it a church?

A. It is not a church. It is not a super-church, so to speak. But it is a union—I should say, rather, a federation—for certain purposes. One of its purposes is to discuss questions of faith and to find a common ground. Another is to bring churches together for practical cooperation in matters of life and service. Nothing else.

Q. Some ecumencial leaders (Dr. Van Dusen, for example) say that the World Council has at least as much right to be called a church as any of the historical churches.

A. Well, that is his statement, but it is not the recognized statement or the ecclesiastical definition of the World Council of Churches. The Toronto document says very clearly that the World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches—plural—which confess according to Scripture and according to their confessions of faith (this we have reaffirmed in New Delhi), not which individually (subjectively) accept, but which confess historically in their confessions, in their histories, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of the world. The individual witness of the historic churches still has a place, but they must be reminded of their membership functions in the universal body of believers in Christ.

Q. Is the ecumenical development moving toward one church?

A. No one can prophesy what the future will bring. No one can prophesy what influence the young churches on other continents will contribute to Christian thinking and feeling throughout the whole world. I personally think it out of the question, and not even desirable, that we have one church for the Christians of the whole world. We must have a variety which will fructify itself. That is much more in God’s design than to have one super-structure of the Church.

Q. Does the ultimate success of the ecumenical movement depend on a common basis of faith and on dedication to the Christian mission rather than upon finding a single structure that will be superimposed upon all of the churches?

A. Effective propagation of faith in Christ rather than any pride in current structures will ultimately decide whether the ecumenical movement is of God and will succeed. A single world church would not be desirable. All our efforts to come together with other churches will have one advantage; that is, if every church respectfully thinks upon what the other churches have been given through God’s grace, and continually asks, Can we learn something from what God has given the other churches for our own life under God’s hand?

The whole sense of our ecumenical gathering is that we learn from one another, respect one another’s traditions as individually given traditions from our fathers in different situations, and question one another; united in a common responsibility in the dialogue with the world, and standing as witnesses to Christ, over against the world, we belong to a body that has many members, each of which is alive and works with the others in its own way.

Q. Would you agree with those who say that inclusion of the Orthodox churches into the World Council has lessened its predominantly Protestant orientation?

A. The inclusion of the Orthodox Churches in WCC membership in New Delhi does not mean very much theologically. At least, I can see no danger for the Protestant orientation of the World Council.

Q. What is the theological situation in Germany at present? Does Bultmann stand as tall as ever? Will he continue to overshadow Barth?

A. The influence of Barth can yet be felt among our pastors. The influence of Bultmann is still at its peak. Yet one cannot say that the whole German church stands on Bultmann’s side. I am accustomed to viewing things from the overall standpoint, and I would like to look at Bultmann’s influence in a rather larger perspective. In our dialogue with the world we discover a kind of peculiar desire for what is new and unprecedented. Modern art, for instance, discloses a kind of twisted regard for the unprecedented, the unhistorical, the abstract, the non-existent. In the realms of art and literature there is presently a search for something very new. The wish and determination to be different is a great desire in our generation, and this is reflected in Bultmannism—in this entirely unprecedented, unheard of, unhistorical, uncommitted, and demythologized approach. In theology the younger generation desires to start afresh. This intention has occurred before in history but has been overcome every time. Christian thinking is not a sequence of unanchored balloons; all “balloons” must be held fast by the Bible. By means of the true Evangel which we are to preach, a balloon, whenever it wants to drift too far away, will be tugged back by the strings of a biblical foundation. The biblical foundation prevails in every generation, and will prevail in Germany now, too, against all new experiments. Throughout history and from the perspective of the continuity of the Christian movement the Word of God has always had the coercive power to tie down whatever popular balloons fly into the superspace of unreality—as Bultmannism tends to do; these balloons go out of bounds, and only the Word of God remains to anchor the human being to the realities of life.

Q. What evidences are there in Germany today of a new power of the Word of God in the pulpits and among the theologians?

A. Well, there is the sense of continuity, the sense of fellowship, the sense of responsibility as a minority, the missionary sense of the diaspora, like what developed in the Confessing Church under Hitler.

Q. What was the aim and result of the crusade carried on by the “Confessing Church”? We have been told that the Confessing Church was based on a rediscovery of the confession of the Church, the doctrine of the Reformation, and the recovery of the Bible as the Word of God. What was the practical outcome?

A. The Confessing Church has been the heart of inner resistance to totalitarian systems.

Q. Is the Evangelical Church in Germany—which unites all territorial churches of various confessions, and in whose formation in 1948 you were a leader—based on a confession, on the consensus of the faith, or on national interests? Is it a federation of churches? Or is it a church, and if so, what is its confession?

A. “Resistance to the totalitarian state” does not necessarily imply the organizational unity of the church. Organic unity can never be achieved as a parallel to national unity. In the ecumenical movement, I have always advocated oneness in faith with a wide diversity in order. We do not claim to be an established church having in our hands the whole body of our national unit.

Q. Turning for a moment to the matter of small churches or “free churches,” are not these, in your view, automatically deplored as sects?

A. The free churches are a recognized factor in Germany’s Christian life and work.

Q. As a bishop concerned for the Church’s doctrine in our time, what would you say to ministers of the Gospel around the world?

A. I would say, God did not start speaking to people yesterday. Rather, he has spoken through Christ for the last 2,000 years, and by means of every great witness for Jesus Christ, whether it be Wesley or Wycliffe, Augustine or Francis, Luther or Calvin—all belong to the same Christianity as we do. We must learn from their experiences under God in obeying the living Word. And so church history will come to the fore again to shed light on our present experiences in following the living Christ, and to prod us to demonstrate the living reality of our vocation by sharing the inheritance of our fathers in the faith. Jesus Christ is our only hope against becoming lost in our own self-made ideologies and in our own religious ideas. We must continually be drawn back into the realities of God’s revelation. To continually adhere to the biblical revelation is our only protection against the rationalizations of men, and our only protection against the efforts of modern thinkers to lure us away into human speculation. The living Christ is our only hope against adopting the inhumanity of modern ideologies. The living Christ alone will keep us from over-rating our own strength, will keep us from becoming totalitarian in an earthly fashion. He alone can preserve us as his fellow-laborers—he in whom are all the promises of freedom and he who has proved that he is our help.

Q. What place do you believe the Scriptures to have in the Church?

A. A living Christianity is possible only when one lives in the Bible. The Christian witness is relevant only if it is oriented to the Bible. A Christian worship service is not possible without the testimony to truth provided by the Bible. Personal piety is not possible unless a person lives with the Bible in his hand and in his heart. One cannot be a Christian and relax all day in privacy. One must get new strength daily from God’s Word and try to make real for one’s life and for the life of mankind as a whole what is written in the Bible. The Bible, as the living Word of God, must guide and must re vitalize our hearing. In the modern world we must hear the Word of God ever afresh.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, do you face the future with pessimism or with optimism?

A. Pessimism and optimism are secular terms. The world is doomed to die. There is no hope but the risen Christ. If the moment ever came when I could no longer say, “The Risen Christ is triumphant,” I would resign as bishop.

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Antagonists of the World Council of Churches and of the ecumenical movement as a whole need no longer polish up arguments pointed at the adversary’s battlements. The fourteen contributors to the symposium Unity In Mid-Career, An Ecumenical Critique (edited by Keith R. Bridston and Walter D. Wagoner, Macmillan, 1963, 211 pp., $4.95) have carried their ecumenical critique so far that self-examination on their part has turned into self-indictment. The task has been so thoroughly done that it would be hard to improve upon it. Whatever criticism may be directed at it, the Bridston-Wagoner team is to be given credit for a great show of intellectual honesty.

At the outset, Liston Pope gives a foretaste as well as a promise of what is to come, with a candid admission that member bodies of the World Council of Churches have little in common theologically except a confession of “the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour,” the same confession being subject to diverse interpretations. In actual practice, most of these inter pretations are dominated by a concern for self-preservation. Quite a paradox in an organization primarily devoted to church unity! The problem of reaching the actual membership of the churches puts in an early appearance in the same paper, and the fact that it is raised again and again throughout the volume bears witness to its importance. Thus Walter Leibrecht finds it quite pathetic to see how little of the “fine work” done in the various departments trickles down to the congregations and their individual members. Indeed, the purpose of the WCC is no longer clearly under stood by the people. The popular image of the Council is that of “an organization of its own, an entity in itself.” In the same setting, the local minister has become “the Cinderella of the Ecumenical Movement” (Robert Paul). His chances of ever representing his denomination at a major assembly prove nonexistent unless he is the minister of a large and “successful” parish. Local youth workers fare worse still, according to John Garrett, who borrows the title of his paper, “Oikumene and the Milkman,” from the exclamation of the correspondent of an international wire agency: “I’m wondering what all this is going to mean to the Kansas City milkman.”

With the formation of the WCC, the ecumenical movement is becoming institutionalized. The difficulty of this transitional stage, according to Bridston, may be partly explained in terms of the Bismarckian comment: “Politics is the art of the possible.” But then, how can one forget that in pre-WCC days, the basic activity of Faith and Order derived its dynamism from a youthful independent leadership such as was then found in the Student Christian Movement? There was in evidence among churches in those days the pioneering and renewing power of a truly prophetic tradition. In this situation, the WCC may well appear as a potential hindrance to the ecumenical movement because it is both an institution—and as such tends to resist change—and an ecclesiastical institution, which may well become a super-organization, a kind of ecclesiastical monstrosity. Indeed, the WCC would seem to be susceptible to at least some of the common ecclesiastical afflictions Nicolas Berdyaev had in mind when he wrote of the ecumenical councils that “few things are more expressive of human pettiness, treachery, and fraud.” The least that can be said on the subject is that, as Leibrecht puts it, “lifting the councils to ecclesiological heights” will hardly “serve the progress of the ecumenical cause.”

Politics Or Bureaucracy

The problems faced by the WCC are not only those of a political organism—from bargaining for seats to control by self-perpetuating executive cliques—but those of the only alternative to politics, which is bureaucratic domination. Linder a bureaucratic regime, then, problems of politics are turned into problems of administration, and arbitrary decrees are often the result. Programming boards mushroom on every side and make themselves indispensable. This proliferation of boards and councils at every level adds up to a top-heavy machinery which must be fed by ever larger budgets. Thus the National Council of Churches in 1962 surpassed the dimensions of the WCC (staff, 650 vs. 202; budget, $15,414,110 vs. $1,297,000). According to Henry P. Van Dusen, the National Council of Churches has been described as “beyond challenge, the most complex and intricate piece of machinery which this planet has ever witnessed.” No wonder John Garrett feels like quoting a perceptive collector of dreary Council draft documents who once said: “In the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century, the Word was made paper.”

The fact of the imbalance just pointed out between the NCC and the WCC has naturally led to the charge that the entire organization is a vehicle of the West in general and the United States in particular. Discussing the issue “Regionalism or Centralism?” as it appears east of New Delhi, U Kyaw Than, a Baptist of Burma, is sadly amused to see churchmen from Asia regarded by those of the West as representing younger churches as well as new nations, while the truth is that a number of Asian churches trace their history back to the apostolic days, “long before Columbus discovered America or England first heard the Gospel.” In a somewhat similar mood, Elizabeth Adler exposes the superior attitude of the Westerner to the Eastern Christian. But then an Orthodox priest, Alexander Schmemann, articulates the same kind of complaint with regard to the position of the Orthodox churches in the World Council. His thesis is that “in spite of all official pronouncements, affirmations or actions, the Orthodox participation in the WCC … encounters a deeply rooted suspicion and hostility.…” Going to the root of this attitude, Schmemann ascribes it to an initial faux pas.

Truth Over Unity

As he views the whole ecumenical issue, it is truth and not unity which should be the immediate goal of the movement—or rather, unity is “nothing else but the natural consequence of truth, its fruit and blessing.” A possible ground for ecumenism was to be found in the living tradition of the Church, but it was ignored. The ecumenical problem and preoccupation was no longer the content of the tradition, but the very fact of its existence. The ultimate choice between truth and heresy was displaced by the presupposition that ultimately all “choices” are to be integrated into one synthesis. “The word ‘heresy,’ in fact, is absent even today from the ecumenical vocabulary, and does not exist even as a possibility.” Hence the fundamentally false position of the Orthodox Church in the WCC—false, that is, both theologically and institutionally, “and this falsehood explains the constant Orthodox ‘agony’ in the Ecumenical Movement, the anxiety and the doubts it raises in Orthodox consciousness.”

For most of the contributors to the present symposium, unity is something to be achieved by human effort. In the words of Lewis S. Mudge, Jr., “Ultimately, the churches themselves must decide what the one great Church is to be, and, in conversations with each other, seek to achieve it.” For what purpose, may one ask? William B. Cate points out that in the last analysis one is to look “to the day when enough unity will be realized so that all churches in a community can sit down together and, in the light of relevant and sociological facts viewed from various religious perspectives, begin to plan the total mission of the church for Main Street.” But even this down-to-earth conclusion seems to be too ambitious. As Walter Leibrecht looks at the record of actual achievements, all he can say is that “in spite of all the optimism displayed by some conciliar association enthusiasts, we have through our ecumenical effort only reached the state where churches begin to be polite to one another”—which sounds like the year-end evaluation of what the local church Sunday school has achieved.

No Biblical Reference

What most impressed this reader as he waded through so much organizational manipulation was the absence of any basic biblical reference to that which constitutes the Church. He has missed the victorious outcry, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them.” There unity arises as genuine disciples acknowledge the presence of one another. As Rudolf Sohm put it in his little classic, Outlines of Church History, “It is by no means essential to the Church … that it should have a legal constitution, with Pope and Bishops, Superior Ecclesiastical Council, and Superintendents, after the fashion of the State. On the contrary, if every congregation of believers represents the Church, that is, the whole of Christendom with Christ its head, then no single congregation has any legal authority over another. And if Christ alone is the head of Christendom, that is, of the Church which is Christ’s body, then no man may presume to make himself the head of the Church.” And the same applies to groups of men. Therefore, as a subtitle of Ralph Hyslop suggests, it remains for the churches to discover the Church.

Wherever and whenever bodies of Christians, however small, in the grace of God acknowledge one another’s discipleship in His name, there and then is the unity of the whole represented. There and then does Oikumene come into its own. And lo and behold, it is all of the Lord’s doing. This evangelical approach to the subject has steadily been upheld by men of the calibre of John A. Mackay, who has done more than any other living American I know for the cause of genuine ecumenism, and whose absence from this symposium may or may not be purely coincidental.

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