The Lure Of Lucidity

“Gentlemen,” said Principal James Denney to a classroom of young preachers, “the first thing in a sermon is lucidity; the second is lucidity; and the third is lucidity.” Here, obviously, is a manner of speaking in which one employs a kind of guileless exaggeration in order to score a neglected point.

Clarity of sound and speech is one thing. Clarity of thought and syntax is quite another thing. The first is achieved by giving attention to enunciation. The second is the product (in combination) of logic, rhetoric, and illustration. If we fail here, the most flawless diction is no atonement. It is possible to call a sermon profound when it is merely opaque.

If we are to preach lucidly, there are certain procedures so fruitful that disregard for them is costly:

1. Go for a goal. How shall I word my subject? Admittedly, this is important. What is also important is to ask: How shall I state my object? We may or may not state it to our listeners; we should insist on stating it to ourselves. There is truth in the hoary quip, “Some sermons aim at nothing, and hit it!”

Perhaps we are tempted to reply, defensively, that this is a matter taken for granted, since the aim of all preaching is the proclamation of the Gospel. Such defense is not enough, for what is under discussion is a sharper, tighter concept of the preacher’s aim. Every sermon (evangelistic as well as pastoral) would be the better for it if at the beginning of his preparation the preacher asked himself: What is it that I want this sermon to do?

Let us say that it is in fact an evangelistic sermon. Let us say that its text is Romans 4:5: “And to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” To himself, at least, if not to another soul, let the preacher say something like this: “In this sermon I intend to show the sense in which faith rather than works is the principle on which the righteous God accepts and justifies unrighteous men.”

This settled, he will want, both in preparation and in delivery, to keep the target steadily before him. Deviation from aim contributes to obscurity.

2. Strive to be simple. In analysis of preachers and preaching two opposites may be found, each as remarkable as the other: the skill with which some can take the profound and exhibit it with edifying simplicity and the sheer genius with which some can take the simple and twist it into dark obscurity. Sangster once told of a pastor who, called upon to thank the ladies for the tea they had served, expressed appreciation to them for “socializing our intellectual intercourse.” And there was the preacher whose oddity of mind was his tendency to reverse the law of reduction by which one passes from the complicated to the simple. One day, in an illustration that called for the simplest narrative style, he let fly with, “The man’s head was cut off; in other words, he was decapitated.”

In general, simplicity is achieved by avoiding the following: long words, complicated sentences, theological and pietistic jargon, rhetorical ornateness. As for jargon, one minister asked twenty-five people of average education to list words and phrases they often heard from preachers but did not understand. In the list were “dayspring,” “husbandman,” “heir of salvation,” “washed in the blood,” “balm in Gilead,” and “things of the flesh.” Used in an interpretive setting, these expressions have their place. Thrown out as isolated phrases, they may contribute nothing to comprehension.

3. Cultivate the concrete. Let this be done in both substance and style. When the lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus could have given him a definition. He didn’t. Instead, He described for him a situation. Result? The figure of the Good Samaritan etched with a vividness that twenty centuries have been powerless to fade.

Be ye therefore followers [Greek, imitators] of God, as dear [beloved] children (Eph. 5:1; read vv. 1–17).

God is a good Educator. He has given us in Christ a perfect Example to imitate. God does not look on our walk as the means, but as the result of our acceptance. He wishes us to imitate him because we are his children, and know ourselves to be among his beloved. In order to prove ourselves his acceptable children, God would have us imitate him in three ways:

I. In Love, as Children of Love (5:2). The wonder of our regeneration is that we now can love somewhat as He loves. Love constitutes being like God in character and in action. When imitating God in love we strive to be like our Lord. To be like our Lord means to love souls, and to give ourselves that they may be saved. Thus for our brother’s good we must surrender ourselves. So begin your imitation of God by walking in love.

II. In Light, as Children of Light (5:8). The Lord Jesus is the Light of the world. And through belief in him we may become children of the light. Willingness to walk in the light calls for constant cleansing through the blood of Christ. Being children of the light means that we imitate our Lord, and do only those things that are pleasing in his sight. By contrast men walk in darkness. So our Lord wishes us who believe in him to lead others out of darkness into his blessed light.

III. In Wisdom, Understanding the Will of God. We are to imitate God in his wisdom, which one receives by re generation in Christ. When through response to the Gospel one receives wisdom, light comes, darkness recedes. Growth begins, and Christian fruit will soon appear. These are days when we have an opportunity to worship, to serve, and to live as God wants us to live. We still have time to prepare ourselves to live with him forever. What a paradox it is for people to think little about God now and yet believe that they will live with him forever!

There was never a greater need than now for imitating God. From this standpoint can you profess to be God’s child? If you answer the question affirmatively, this means that you are joined to Christ by faith, through a definite act of repentance, committal, and obedience. Only as such can you begin to be an imitator of God in love, in light, and in wisdom.—From Faithful in Christ Jesus: Preaching in Ephesians (Westwood, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1958, pp. 200–207).

The Bible is full of this quality of concreteness. Jeremiah, for example, de scribes God as “rising up early and sending” the prophets to Israel and Judah. A theologian would discourse about “prevenient grace.” Jeremiah calls up the picture of God getting up early in the day, taking the initiative, always being out there in front, acting to give grace long before men can act to receive it.

4. Plan for progression. Dr. James Stewart of Edinburgh has a Christmas sermon in which he takes an Old Testament text, “What shall we do unto the child that shall be born?” (Judges 13:8), and then finds three representative replies in the story of the Nativity:

a. The answer of hostility:

Herod said in effect, “Let Him be destroyed.”

b. The answer of indifference:

The inn-keeper said in effect, “Let Him be ignored.”

c. The answer of commitment:

Simeon said in effect, “Let Him be accepted.”

In such a structure there is a logic-one might say a rhythm—of progression.

Clarity is enhanced if the preacher treats his topic and states his points in such fashion as to lead the listener to say to himself, “Ah, this is making sense.”

5. Ask for application. Ask it of yourself as the preparer of the sermon. Ask it of the man in the pew as the listener to the sermon. Put is in the form of a searching question: What will you do about it? Couch it in the language of ardent appeal: This I am asking of you—because I believe God is asking it. Cast it in the mold of an illustration: Here is how it happened in one man’s case. Whatever form it takes, make it! After listening to a listless, targetless sermon, John Wesley remarked, “As there was no application, it is likely to do as much good as the singing of a lark.”

The lure of lucidity! Let it seize the preacher. Let it have an endless place in his discipline. He will never make the truth plain to everyone. But let him follow these five guidelines, and he will have some reason to rejoice that truth’s arrow reached its mark.

PAUL S. REES

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness (Ps. 51:1a; read vv. 1–17).

Think of the mightiest man you know. One like David at his peak. A man of middle age, highly gifted and most effective. A leader in church and state. All at once he falls into the worst of sins, sins for which the law provides no sacrifice. At last he repents and prays. Listen!

I. A Prayer for Pardon. Without excuse or evasion he casts himself on the mercy of God. Note his words: “Out of bounds”—“Crookedness”—“Missing the mark”—“Being unlike God.” This mighty man has wronged others. He has fallen far below his best self. But he knows that his sin rests between him and God. Even if not so deadly, so does every man’s sin concern him and God. Are you enough of a man to acknowledge your guilt and pray to God for pardon?

II. A Plea for Cleansing. God waits, not only to pardon a man’s guilt, but also to cleanse his stains. God alone can make a sinner’s soul as white as snow—full of health and vigor—as clean as a new slate—as free from chosen evil as a newborn babe. What a Gospel! And what a God! As elsewhere, this Gospel is “the gift of God to the imagination”!

III. A Promise to Serve. After such a transforming experience, how can a pardoned sinner keep silent? Like a loyal member of Alcoholics Anonymous, this mighty man rises from his knees and goes out to find others, one by one, who sorely need the pardon, cleansing, and peace that God alone can give and no one on earth can take away.

Whenever the church bells ring out a call for the worship of God in his house, the changed one rejoices to sing praises and pray with others who have been born again. He finds joy in giving money as a vital part of public worship, not grudgingly but with gladness, out of gratitude for grace that would not let him go on in sin, but set him free to worship God and serve his fellow men.

Thank God for what the Gospel can do for a man or a woman of middle age! Thank him also for what a man or a woman of middle age, once having tasted the goodness of God, can do in bringing others to God, one by one, to find the same sort of pardon and cleansing, peace and joy.

My friend, have you had such a personal encounter with God? Have you confessed your sins and thrown yourself on his mercy? If so, you have abundant reason for bringing others to Christ, one by one, for joining with them in worship, and for giving in the spirit of the Cross.

Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him (1 Cor. 16:2a).

The Gospel centers in giving. One-sixth of the New Testament concerns a man’s possessions and his God. From Him they all come; to Him as gifts to the church they should largely go. Don’t raise God’s money—there is a better way: give!

I. The Manner. Paul’s first readers are poor folk, plagued by war, burdened with taxes. Yet they give far beyond their means, and gladly. For an example now turn to Korea. Along a rural lane American tourists took a picture of a boy dragging a plow guided by an old man. Later a missionary said that the family had sold its only ox for money to help erect a village church. This is the kind of giving that pleases God, who loves a “hilarious giver” (2 Cor. 9:7, Greek).

II. The Method. First, the readers gave themselves to God. Supremely desiring to honor him they dedicated their all: time, energy, possessions. Our giving should be systematic. Starting with the tithe, gladly give thanks offerings. When we first give ourselves to God, this duty becomes a delight. Not until we come to such a method do we begin to give as Christians. If not, every challenge for investment of self, time, or substance may seem an intrusion, even a hardship, and may cause resentment. As believers one by one we need to catch a vision of the Cross as the supreme example of God’s way for us believers in Christ to give.

III. The Motive. Here Paul bases his appeal on the resurrection of Christ: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.… Now concerning the collection for the saints.…” Elsewhere Paul turns to the Incarnation (Phil. 2:6–8), and most often to the Cross as the supreme motive for our Christlike giving. Thus our most difficult duty springs directly from the most wondrous Christian doctrine, which has everything to do with God’s love for us sinners, as made known supremely on the Cross (1 John 4:10).

In the way of doctrine set to music, truth sings out from one of our most beloved hymns, which voices God’s kind of stewardship:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

In all giving let your supreme motive be the grace of God. How does He give, and why? If church folk would think first about His way of giving, what a transformation would come, both in habits of giving and in the amount! “See that ye abound in this grace also.”—Pastor, United Presbyterian Church, Newton, Massachusetts

Dedicated to assisting the clergy in the preparation of sermons, the feature titled The Minister’s Workshop appears in the first issue of each month. The section’s introductory essay is contributed alternately by Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. The feature includes, also, Dr. Blackwood’s abridgments of expository-topical sermons, outlines of significant messages by great preachers of the past, and outlines or abridgments of messages presented by expository preachers of our own time.—ED.

One thing have I desired of the Lord (Ps. 27:4a; read vv. 4–6).

Often we wonder what sort of vision fills the heart of a saint when he is on his knees before God. In the psalm before us we can hear such a saint of old. Thus anyone can see what forms the all-attractive goal of his devotional life.

I. The Quest for God. This believer prays that he may ever abide in the presence of his God. The suppliant knows that the Lord is ever near, and asks that His believing servant may constantly feel aware of God’s presence and of His readiness to bless.

The believer also asks that he may continually behold the beauty of the Lord and that he may find his highest joy in the worship of his God. In terms of today, what does all of this mean? Simply that in his prayers a saint keeps putting God first. What an ideal for us now!

II. The Blessing from God. What of the issues from such a life of devotion? A. A Spirit of Restfulness. Whatever the gale that rocks the surface of the deep, such a believing heart finds rest in the peace of God. B. A Sense of Security. In the midst of storm and disaster, the man who feels sure of God keeps calm and serene. “The Lord is my Rock.” With such a foundation for his faith, what can cause a saint of God to fear?

C. A Feeling of Elevation. The things that once caused a saint to tremble he now keeps under his feet. Out of the old worries, irritations, and perplexities the Lord lifts up the soul of his servant and sets him firmly upon a rock, above the reach of his old-time foes. What an ideal! Also, a fact of experience, and a sign of growth into the likeness of God.

In view of such a saint on his knees, what shall one conclude? Surely this: “Lord, teach me to pray, and in all my prayer life lead me to honor thee.”—Adapted from Brooks by the Traveller’s Way, n. d., pp. 163–73.

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF A SOUND SCIENTIFIC APPROACH:

1. This approach offers a tremendous challenge to the study of the Bible itself. If the Bible is what it claims to be, and what Jesus and his apostles assert it to be—the fully inspired, infallibly authoritative Word of God written—this view enhances the importance of the Sacred Oracles, features the significance of textual criticism, gives impetus to the cultivation of minute exegesis of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and spurs linguistic and archaeological research and any other pertinent studies which help in understanding the Bible better on the human plane.

On the other hand, subjectivist treatment of the Bible, to the degree that human reason sets aside the Word of God, tends toward a drastic reduction of interest in the biblical languages and minute exegesis of the original text. In fact subjectivist criticism tends toward study about the Bible rather than study of the Bible itself; its interest frequently stops short at the means to the end (studies relating to the Bible) rather than going on to the end itself (the study of the message and the meaning of the Bible in the light of these studies). Or if the study is applied to the Bible itself, the message and meaning are often explained away or largely set aside.

2. This approach fosters the spiritual understanding of the Bible as a unified revelation. Viewing Scripture as verbally in spired and fully authoritative calls forth faith, challenges Spirit-directed human reason, inspires intellectual humility, arouses holy expectations of the panoramic scope and consummation of sacred history and prophecy, and provokes scientific inductive study that, in turn, nurtures sound exposition based on solid exegesis, which furnishes the basis of an exhaustive biblical theology that is worthy of the name.

The subjectivist approach, to the degree that it denies scriptural authority, forfeits these benefits. Instead it inspires doubt, shies away from reliance upon the Spirit of God to guide human reason, engenders intellectual pride, quenches expectation of the fulfillment of prophecy in its panoramic scope, and is incapable of doing justice either to biblical exegesis or to the creation of an adequate biblical theology. This is conspicuously true of the old-line liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is still true to a degree of neoorthodoxy and the “biblical theology” movement of today, which, although it strives at all costs to be biblical, nevertheless still clings to the unbiblical methods of criticism which the heretical liberals of the last century worked out under the false impression they were scientific.

An example of the inadequacy of the new liberalism’s theological content is Gerhardt Von Rad’s conclusion on the person of Moses. Following Martin Noth, Von Rad concludes that “the figure of Moses had no place in a great number of the Pentateuchal traditions.… But even those who believe that the historical element can be regarded as broader and more firmly founded than this are, for all that, far from gaining the picture of Moses as the founder of a religion so urgently sought by the modern reader. In every case they only reach very ancient individual traditions which are difficult to reconcile with one another” (Old Testament Theology, I, 14, 1962).

If this is true of Moses, a type of the Great Prophet to come (Deut. 18:15–18), what sort of a biblical theology may be expected under such a subjectivist approach? This is intellectual anarchy run riot, the result of the assumption that historical inquiry is only “scientific” when it is divorced from Christian presuppositions. If the biblical theology movement is to produce sound and exhaustive biblical theology, it will not do so until it realizes that Scripture is studied “scientifically” and “objectively” only when it is approached in full recognition of its character as Scripture, the infallible Word of God, and not assumed to be a maze of discordant traditions, with scholarly activity devoted to proving this and dedicated to rescuing a modicum of theological truth from the resultant debris.

But the scholar who is willing to approach the Bible on the basis of faith rather than unbelief, and who is willing to give it a chance to prove it is what it claims to be, a verbally inspired divine revelation, rather than starting out to prove it a fallible and faulty tradition, will be rewarded with a wealth of spiritually and intellectually compensating exegesis of the original text that will furnish the basis by inductive study for an exhaustive, coherent biblical theology. Moreover, such a reverent scholarly approach, using all the legitimate findings of modern biblical research plus the gains in textual criticism, will be in a position to see in detail as well as in panoramic perspective God’s plans and purposes of the ages. Fullness of detail and clarity of scope will characterize all of theology.

3. This approach encourages the highest and most God honoring type of interpretation. This, we believe, is the grammatical-historical-critical method that takes into account all the advances in Hebrew and Greek syntax, Bible history, geography, and archaeology, as well as the conclusions of sound criticism, both higher and lower. This sort of interpretation takes the full gamut of Scripture as equally inspired and regards all phases of the divine revelation as important. It seeks to deal with all and to interpret all as a unified system of truth. It seeks to reconcile seeming discrepancies and difficulties on the basis of rigid inductive logic. Never does it deductively superimpose doctrinal conclusions on the Bible; it allows the particulars to produce the generalizations. This is but saying that the Bible is to produce its own theology instead of having man’s theology imposed on it; in other words, the Bible is to be interpreted scientifically.

A correct and workable system of interpretation that harmonizes many difficult and seemingly conflicting passages is needed as a vital part of the apologetic for the truth of full scriptural authority. Part of the reason for the wholesale rejection of verbal inspiration is the refusal of many evangelicals to rise to a system of interpretation worthy of the Bible as a fully authoritative revelation from God. If unbelief is manifested in an unscientific rationalistic criticism that refuses full scriptural authority, unbelief may also be manifested by those who, although subscribing to this truth in theory, yet reject it in practice by refusing to interpret its teachings by a literal, grammatical, historical, critical, rigidly inductive method that believes the Bible says what it means and means what it says, and take all that Scripture says on a subject in its exegetical, expository, and theological systematizations.—Dr. MERRILL F. UNGER, professor of Old Testament, Dallas Seminary.

We Here Read Augustine

The Word of God According to St. Augustine, by A. D. R. Polman (Eerdmans, 1962, 242 pp., $5), is reviewed by Addison H. Leitch, professor of philosophy and religion, Tarkio College, Tarkio, Missouri.

Not since the days of MacKinnon in his volumes on Luther and Calvin have I run into the mastery of mass material which is to be found in Polman’s book. He assures us in his introductory remarks that whatever else we read in the book, we will read Augustine, and this we do. But, in addition to long quotations, we also have Polman’s artistry by which great portions of Augustine are paraphrased or digested. The impact of direct quotation and paraphrase is very impressive.

The Word of God According to St. Augustine is the first volume in Polman’s major work on the theology of St. Augustine and gives us great promise of riches ahead. Other volumes in the proposed series are on the doctrine of God, Christology, and Church and sacrament. Each volume, moreover, is to be complete in its own right; this is certainly true of the present volume.

Augustine’s theology is not systematic (“Augustine frequently corrected his out bursts of zeal,” p. 101), and thus far no one has made a systematic study of his doctrine of Scripture from his unsystematic material. “Significantly enough, though the Word of God took so important a place in St. Augustine’s life and thoughts, no comprehensive study on this subject has been published.… We shall make a point of letting St. Augustine speak for himself” (p. 11). Both of these things the author has done very well. The book is also a rich source of material on some of Augustine’s opponents, the argument with Faustus being a classic portion of this volume.

The strongest chapter is “The Word of God as Proclamation.” This is refreshingly new material, not only on the Protestant position but on the usual discussion of the Roman Catholic position. The most disappointing is “The Word of God in Holy Scripture”—possibly because we are looking in Augustine for more than he is giving us on the conservative view of Scripture. One is impressed again with Augustine’s strangeness of allegory. Impressive also are the differences of emphasis in the Church of Augustine’s day as against what we think is important today.

The author sums up the last chapter in a climax of profound devotional material from Augustine himself.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Treason Yet

Apologetics and Evangelism, by J. V. Langmead Casserley (Westminster, 1962, 186 pp., $4), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

In its concern for the mutual relevance of the sociological, philosophical, and theological disciplines, this study, by the professor of philosophical theology at Sea-bury-Western Theological Seminary (Evanston, Ill.), is a far cry from the usual evangelical approach to Christian apologetics. Although the author, an Episcopal clergyman, emphasizes the mutual relevance of these three disciplines, his main thrust is in the direction of a sociological apologetic. Thus for his basic thesis he adopts the sociological dictum that in a given society, the “consecrated elite will serve the mass culture and the mass life loyally because it knows that this mass life is its inevitable and proper context” (p. 16). He then assumes that what is true for society at large is also true for the Church, and thus “the main task of elite thought … is to understand and express the virtues of mass thought, with a view to rending culture and society sufficiently conscious of them to be able to defend and preserve them” (p. 23).

Proceeding on the basis of this assumption, Casserley indicts the Reformation because it failed to realize this sociological duty of theology; he says that the Reformers “had not sufficient understanding of the characteristic excellencies of the church’s traditions to succeed in such a venture … namely to help the church where it has been right so that it may continue to be right with greater integrity than in the past” (p. 37). He also accuses CHRISTIANITY TODAY of the same kind of treason to mass culture.

Although he shows a certain sympathy with Bultmann, and admits that there are myths in the Scriptures, he nevertheless holds that liberalism has sinned against God, the Bible, the historic faith, and reason.

What solution, then, does he offer to the problem of formulating a meaningful apologetics for the masses in contemporary society? He finds the answer in a return to the system of Thomas Aquinas because he represented the “elite mind achieving not only a mastery of its own proper elite material, but also a sympathetic understanding of the implicit mass thought underlying the whole structure of the mass life” (p. 37).

There is in this book no real apologetical system worthy of the name, and there is even less evangelism. In fact, apart from the title, evangelism is hardly mentioned. This reviewer is at a loss to understand how a press bearing the name “Westminster” can publish a book which presents Calvin and Luther as sincere but grossly mistaken in their theology, and then offers, in place of their Reformation theology, an apologetical system which is the bulwark of the Roman Catholic system of thought. It seems almost as if the presses of the major Protestant denominations are engaged in some kind of a crusade, or even conspiracy, to destroy our Reformation heritage in a vain effort to find some kind of ecumenical substitute which lacks both the content and authenticity of the historic faith once delivered to the saints.

C. GREGG SINGER

It Opens Windows

Before the Bible, by Cyrus H. Gordon (Harper and Row, 1963, 319 pp., $6, or 35s.), is reviewed by K. A. Kitchen, lecturer in Egyptian and Coptic, Liverpool University, Liverpool, England.

In this book the professor of Near Eastern studies at Brandeis University seeks to demonstrate that the “Greek and Hebrew civilizations are parallel structures built upon the same East Mediterranean foundations” (pp. 9, 302) of the second millennium B.C.—that, in other words, the peoples of the Aegean and of Syria-Palestine shared an appreciable number of social and religious attitudes and conventions, and characteristic forms and topics in epic (or epic-like) literature at that period.

This shows up when a comparison is made of data from the Homeric epics (reflecting the world of the Mycenaean/Achaean Greeks), from the Old Testament record down to David’s time, and from the North-Canaanite literature from Ugarit in Phoenicia. Many of the parallels drawn by Gordon between these three sources seem to reflect a common stock of attitudes and usages which cannot normally be shown (so far) to have been borrowed from any one source by the other cultures. Various parallels are probably the result of “convergence,” i.e., the human mind’s arriving at the same result in similar circumstances. Then some items probably are cases of cultural “transference” or borrowing. But Gordon’s comparisons reach beyond the Aegean and the Levant, out into Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Asia Minor (Hittites) for parallels. Very often, the Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources used are older than our Aegean or Hebrew material, and cultural diffusion from the older to later is either likely or certain.

Gordon’s book is an organic treatment of his theme. After the Introduction, in which the thesis is stated and illustrated, comes “Channels of Transmissions,” an important chapter that rightly emphasizes the multiplicity of contacts (trade, conquests, migrations, “colonies,” traveling “professionals,” and so on) that facilitated fruitful intercourse between the peoples of the Ancient Near East at various social levels. Then in successive chapters Gordon adduces his parallels from the literatures of Mesopotamia and the Hittites, of Egypt, and especially of Ugarit, in each case giving brief notes on the historical setting. In Chapter VI, he introduces the ancient scripts of Crete together with his decipherment of the Linear A script as containing a Northwest Semitic language. In the two final chapters, he gives further parallels between Homer and the Orient and between the Old Testament and early Greek data, ending with a postscript on his Semitic decipherment of the Eteocretan inscriptions.

The whole is eminently readable, fascinates from start to finish, and helps to open one’s mind to all manner of new possibilities. Orientalist Gordon’s emphasis (p. 20) is rightly on the primary source-material from antiquity itself—and not on the futile citation of others’ subjective opinions that so largely blights Old Testament scholarship. His brief remarks on attitudes acquired in learning are salutary (pp. 11, 12, 127).

Gordon’s main thesis of a large measure of common cultural background for the Aegean and Levant in the second millennium B.C. may safely be conceded; both here and in his Homer and Bible (1955) he gives in outline enough weight of varied comparative data to amply justify his point. The only overall objection one can voice is that his treatment is so much in outline only; a fuller collection and more detailed weighing of data is desirable in order to see more clearly just how much is established. Gordon’s parallels are not all of equal scope or weight. In the Introduction, the triads-of-heroes parallel is valuable; the chapters on channels of transmission and Egypt contain many good points, as does the literary part of chapter III. In the long chapter on Ugarit, comparisons with the KRT-text are often very useful; the same can be said for much of chapter VII (Homer and Orient) and parts of VIII. It would be easy to add to, and reinforce, not a few of Gordon’s items.

Reading for prespective

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

★ 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.

★ Man in the Struggle for Peace, by Charles Malik (Har per & Row, $5). Prominent Christian statesman lays strategy for a distinctively Western revolution which will prepare the world for peace as well as for war.

★ Things Most Surely Believed, edited by Clarence S. Roddy (Revell, $3.95). The faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in a fifteen-voice symposium declares its understanding of and commitment to the great affirmations of the Christian faith.

The reviewer is as averse to needless emendation as anyone, but Gordon’s ex planation of First Samuel 13:1 is too forced for its context (pp. 228, 229); the suggestion about Psalm 23:5 (p. 187) will raise with most of us simply a laugh or a gasp, but not conviction in context. Two points on the patriarchs are very dubious. The evidence for Ur of the Chaldees being Ur of the Sumerians (rather than in North) and the sheer unreality of Abraham’s ever having been a state-controlled tamkarum-merchant of the Hittite realm have been clearly shown by H. W. F. Saggs in Iraq (22 [1960], pp. 200–209).

The space-limits of this review exclude any real comment here on the lively debate about the validity of Professor Gordon’s Semitic decipherments of Minoan Linear A and Eteocretan (chapters VI and VIII, end). His solution is very attractive, and if true would certainly strengthen the main line of this book.

Here is a real contribution to study of the Ancient Near Eastern background of the Old Testament; some points will fall by the wayside, but many others are worthy of more detailed study. Professor Gordon is ever an independent investigator of the original Oriental source-data, and the reviewer, for one, always learns something of value from his publications.

K. A. KITCHEN

Testament Of Life

A Private and Public Faith, by William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1962, 93 pp., $3), is reviewed by John Feikens, attorney, Detroit, Michigan.

This is a personal testament. Its author is a practicing lawyer, thirty-five years of age, a member of a New York City law firm.

Lawyers customarily draft testaments for others. This lawyer has made one for himself. Testaments drawn for others contemplate the passing at death of the testator’s personal property to others. This testament speaks of life—what it means from a Christian’s viewpoint and how it may be shared.

Because it is a testament, it is subjective, a personal testimony. But this subjectiveness does give one a feeling that it is too much a spontaneous outpouring. A lawyer might say—too much conclusion and not enough fact.

I think Mr. Stringfellow is at his best in the too few instances in which he relates conclusions he bases on his own concrete experiences. He has a wealth of background for this, practicing as he does in New York City. Had the private faith of this lawyer, already a prominent Episcopal layman, been demonstrated in terms of his multiple actual experiences as a lawyer-layman, the book would have had greater depth. While Mr. Stringfellow has a solid capacity for exegesis, one would like to read more about his Christian faith in actual practice.

As we work out God’s will in our own time, we need strong direction both from the pulpit and from informed laymen. Because of Mr. Stringfellow’s conviction and dedication we will undoubtedly hear more from him, and it will probably be in this area. For this is the goal to which I sense he is moving, and his insight into the central issues of Christianity will cause its realization.

JOHN FEIKENS

Bishop, Make Room

The Christian in Society, by Jeremiah Newman (Helicon, 1962, 208 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, chairman of the Department of History and Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The role of the Christian in society and its theological rationalization are occupying Protestantism increasingly. This Roman Catholic writer faces the added problem of controlling social action by the hierarchy. Thus the book involves discussion of the role of the laity in the church as well as in civil society.

History is canvassed in a scholarly fashion to show how healthy lay participation in the Apostolic and the Old Catholic Churches gave way in the medieval institutional church to a clerical reaction against lay intrusion into clerical concerns. This intrusion and monasticism led to an unhealthy bifurcation of clergy and laity and to the opposite evil of clerical domination of the laity. This in turn brought about the democratic reaction of conciliarism and, according to Newman, the democratic Reformation. The author seeks to restore the laity to its proper place in his church.

Theology is next enlisted to justify an apostolate of the laity. This is done by a distinction between the powers of the hierarchy in the institutional church and the laity as an essential part of the Church conceived as the community of Christians in the world. The lay apostolate is conferred in Baptism and Confirmation as a unified rite of initiation into prophetic service. This lay apostolate of witness in the Church and to the world and the “Christianizing” of social institutions must always be united with, and sub ordinate to, the hierarchial apostolate (pp. 71, 106). The writer pleads for more consideration of the Church as Community.

He then discusses a positive approach to a theology of social action to counter the humanism of nineteenth-century democratic liberalism and the Industrial Revolution. The consequent withdrawal of the Church to preach only transcendent personal salvation must give way to a social theology which deals with present life.

This involves the juridical question of a legal framework in canon law for such a lay apostolate in which the bishop might set apart laymen for spiritual and social service. Thus the Catholic Social Movement in Christian Democratic parties would be given sound juridical, theological, and historical foundations.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

Magnum Opus

New Testament Introduction: Hebrews to Revelation, by Donald Guthrie (Inter-Varsity, 1962, 320 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Ronald A. Ward, professor of New Testament, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

Thirty years ago the students of a conservative evangelical seminary approached their principal with objections to the study of A. S. Peake’s Critical Introduction to the New Testament. They were told, sympathetically but firmly, that until evangelicals bestirred themselves and wrote the books there was no alternative. In those days it was, almost, Peake or nothing.

Times have changed, and Dr. Guthrie’s work is a massive indication of this fact. The companion volume on The Pauline Epistles was published in 1961, and we eagerly await the final one on the Gospels and Acts. Already this magnum opus is being compared with similar products of Zahn and Moffatt. The author deals comprehensively and exhaustively with questions of date and destination, author ship and purpose. Problems which many had thought to be settled are found to be still unsettled; “closed” questions are found to be wide open. Dr. Guthrie’s learning is immense, as a study of the footnotes and the bibliographies will prove. Discussion is detailed, courteous, and fair. The author gives both sides of disputed matters—yet it is not the complete objectivity of an F. C. Baur, with no trace of personal needs. Scrupulously fair, Dr. Guthrie is a believer with a conservative sympathy and an evangelical experience. (“Spiritual quality is not a matter of skill, but of inspiration.”)

It is not given to every scholar to avoid mental indigestion, but the author has assimilated his reading well; his knowledge is a unity. Has the more polished Greek of Jude been marred in Second Peter? It is the opposite with Mark and Matthew: it is generally thought that Matthew polished Mark. A man immersed in writing twenty-five pages of concentrated scholarship on Jude’s epistle might be forgiven for forgetting even the existence of the synoptics.

Dr. Guthrie is an authority on pseudonymity, and his mastery in this field is apparent though not obtrusive. He challenges the current view which holds the pseudonym to be a harmless device and an accepted literary convention. In con sequence of this—and of the book as a whole—we can hold fast to many a traditional view with academic integrity. There is a useful analysis of the “contents” of each New Testament book considered. The format is excellent and the misprints few.

The author is to be congratulated—and thanked. This will be a standard work for a generation.

RONALD A. WARD

Around And Back

Full Circle, by Grace Lumpkin (Western Islands [395 Concord Ave., Belmont 78, Mass.], 1962, 312 pp., $4), is reviewed by Bastian Kruithof, associate professor of Bible, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

If truth is stranger than fiction, good fiction can present truth. In this novel Grace Lumpkin has done that very thing. Her story is a challenging one, all the more so because it is in large part her own.

A mother and her daughter, left stranded by a clergyman husband and father, dedicate themselves to the Communist cause. Years of cell meetings and planning go by with dedication there to the nth degree. But one day the daughter is ousted from the party. The blow affects her to the extent of shattering her mind. In quiet Bethel, far away from New York, the mother devotes herself to nursing her child back to normal life. She is disturbed by the thought that her daughter had been found on the steps of a church by a policeman. A Christian Negress and a converted Jew slowly but certainly influence the mother to surrender to the Christian faith. In the end the derelict husband and father returns as a sodden alcoholic. The daughter revives and reaches out her hand to her father and the reunion takes place. At least two lives have come full circle, with the promise of a third.

Grace Lumpkin writes well. In past years one of her novels won the Maxim Gorky Award for the best proletarian novel. Full Circle should win her another award in the hearts and minds of Christians and of those who are reaching for the light. It is an exposé of the ruthless ness and hopelessness of Communism and a firm presentation of the Christian faith with all its implications. For it is love, not hatred and violence, that is still the greatest of these.

Put Full Circle next to To Kill A Mockingbird. It ranges above it in positive Christian conviction.

BASTIAN KRUITHOF

Book Briefs

Strength to Love, by Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1963, 146 pp., $3.50). Sermons whose background is the evils of war and of economic and racial injustice. Each sermon has been preached in the pulpit; three written from Georgia jails.

Evangelism in the Early Church, by Stan ley C. Brown (Eerdmans, 1963, 73 pp., $2). A handbook for individual or group study of evangelism in the light of Acts.

Neurotics in the Church, by Robert James St. Clair (Revell, 1963, 251 pp., $4.50). The author deals with the neurotic church and church member and shows that the clergyman is often a distressing element to the neurotic personality. The book hits hard, though it is sometimes hard to see just what it is trying to hit.

The Bible and the Church, by Samuel Terrien (Westminster, 1963, 95 pp., $1.50). An approach to the Bible which predetermines its significance in a manner that will set many theological teeth on edge. But for all of that, highly readable and highly revelatory of modern views concerning Scripture.

Biblical Archaeology, by G. Ernest Wright (Westminster, 1963, 291 pp., $10.95). Re vised and expanded by the demands of recent excavational discoveries. With drawings, photographs, reconstructions, and maps. A book of fine craftsmanship.

New Testament Aprocrypha, Vol. I: Gospels and Related Writings, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English translation by R. McL. Wilson (Westminster, 1963, 531 pp., $7.50). Collection of the gospels of Truth, of Mary, of The Twelve, of Philip, of Thomas, of Judas, and a host of others: with a general discussion of the subject, and guidance on using the book.

Christian Priorities, by Donald Coggan (Harper & Row, 1963, 172 pp., $3.50). Twenty short essays deal lucidly and forcefully with Christian truths which should be given priority of thought and action in the world of today.

The Asians, by Thomas Welty (Lippincott, 1963, 344 pp., $4.95). Introducing the people of Asia: their religions, their women, their family and social life, their politics and economics. Clear, informative.

Creeds and Confessions, by Erik Routley (Westminster, 1963, 159 pp., $3.50; Duck worth, 1962, 15s.). Seven of its ten chapters treat some but not all of the classic confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author, with an eye on ecumenics, provides a background of inter-confessional relationships for a better understanding of present interchurch relations.

Called to Teach, by Charles D. Spotts (United Church Press, 1963, 111 pp., $2.50). A book which urges the delights, satisfactions, demands, temptations, and opportunities of those who teach in the educational department of the church. Excel lent for teachers.

A Nation Needs to Pray, by Robert B. Anderson (Thomas Nelson, 1963, 112 pp., $3.95). An artistic production; more than 90 striking photographs combine with written text to spell out the reasons America should be a nation that prays.

The Psychology of Christian Experience, by W. Curry Mavis (Zondervan, 1963, 155 pp., $3). A book which says many interesting things but establishes little more than a surface relationship between psychology and the Christian faith.

The Lord’s Prayer: An Interpretation, by Charles L. Allen (Revell, 1963, 64 pp., $2). Originally included in the author’s God’s Psychiatry, it now appears as a special class edition, with some fine art work. A nice gift.

The Heretics, by Walter Nigg (Knopf, 1962, 422 pp., $6.95). The stories and struggles of heretics, such as Pascal, Luther, Hus, Origen, Abelard, and many others. “Young Turks” will find this interesting reading, and dull conformists will find it also disturbing.

The Pastor’s Counseling Handbook, by James L. Christensen (Revell, 1963, 181 pp., $3.95). A concise, practical, popular presentation.

Life Is Forever, by Glenn Alty Crafts (Abingdon, 1963, 93 pp., $2). A no-quarter-asked-or-given discussion from the Christian perspective of life and death.

Sermons on Bible Characters, by John A. Redhead (Abingdon, 1963, 144 pp., $2.75). Short, practical, evangelical.

Sermonic Studies: The Standard Epistles, Volume II, The Trinity Season (Concordia, 1963, 616 pp., $7.50). Thirty-one sermons, preceded by their outlines and by the study and reflection which went into their making.

Paperbacks

Church and State in Your Community, by Elwyn A. Smith (Westminster, 1963, 90 pp., $1.25). A rounded, non-technical study of church-state relations.

Studies in Church-State Relations (P.O. A.U., 1963, 71 pp., $1). Brief, popular series of studies on the American tradition of church-state relations, by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Christian Responsibility in Society (Faith and Life Press, 1963, 18 pp., $.35). What is Christian responsibility beyond evangelism? Answer: Christ’s work of creation, redemption, and consummation is the “biblical-theological basis for a total ministry to the total man, individual and social.”

Jean-Paid Sartre: The Existentialist Ethic, by Norman N. Greene (University of Michigan, 1963, 214 pp., $1.75). A study of Sartre’s existentialism measured against Roman Catholicism, liberalism, and Marxism.

Catholicism, edited by George Brantl, Hinduism, edited by Louis Renou; Islam edited by John Alden Williams; Judaism, edited by Arthur Hertzberg; Protestantism, edited by J. Leslie Dunstan (Washington Square Press; 1963; 277, 226, 242, 261, 257 pp.; $.60 each). A well-organized compilation of definitive writings; with an objectivity sometimes purchased at the expense of depth. First printed in 1961.

Jonah, Jesus, and You, by Mariano Di Gangi (The Bible Study Hour [12 Spadina Road, Toronto 4], 1963, 66 pp., $.25). Eight short essays interpret the book of Jonah.

Our Faith, by Emil Brunner (Scribner’s, 1963, 153 pp., $1.25). A simple account of basic Christian truths in language crisp and clean. Written in 1936, and dedicated by Brunner to his sons.

The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Macmillan, 1963, 352 pp., $1.45). Revised edition of Bonhoeffer’s attack on “easy Christianity,” with some new material added. A heady treatment by the young German theologian martyred by the Nazis in 1945.

The School of Prayer, by Olive Wyon (Macmillan, 1963, 192 pp., $.95). A very substantial and perceptive study of Christian prayer; as helpful for the pastor in his sermonizing as for the layman in his practical religious life.

Hector Simul Justus, by Paul E. Schuessler (obtain from author: 1935 St. Clair Ave., St. Paul 5, Minn.; 1963; 24 pp.; $.25). The doctrine of justification by faith explained with few words and numerous cartoons.

Christian Perspectives 1962 (Guardian Publishing Co. [Hamilton, Ontario], 1962, 258cpp., $2). Scripturally oriented critical lectures on evolution, philosophy, and politics. Not for amateurs.

The Baptismal Encounter, by Gabriel J. Fackre, and An Estimate of the Reformation, by Bard Thompson (Lancaster Theo logical Seminary, 1962, 52 pp., $1). The first essay attempts to overcome “thingification” of baptism by a personal “existential” understanding of it. The second analyzes the Reformation, contrasts Lutheran and Reformed traditions, and warns us not to idolize the Reformation. Both are worth reading.

Der Sonntag, by Willy Rordorf (Zwingli Verlag [Stuttgart, Germany], 1962, 336 pp., 26 German Marks). An interesting and informative historical investigation of the Christian day of rest and worship from its earliest beginnings to the time of Constantine the Great, with one eye on the relevance of this history for the place of the Sabbath in the modern world.

Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian, by Jaques Courvoisier (John Knox, 1963, 101 pp., $1.75). The Annie Kinkead Warfield lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1961. A very lucid and quite Christological presentation of Zwingli’s theology.

The Old Testament in the New Testament, by R. V. G. Tasker (Eerdmans, 1963, 160 pp., $1.45). A substantial study, clear, informed, and informative. First published in 1946; revised in 1954.

Religion, Interviews by Donald McDonald with Robert E. Fitch, John J. Wright, and Louis Finkelstein (Fund for the Re public [Box 4068, Santa Barbara, Calif.], 1962, 79 pp., free). Highly interesting and informative interviews with a Protestant, a Roman Catholic, and a Jew on the role of their religions in American life.

Frankly, a lot of vague pomposity rises from many pulpits just before Sunday dinner. The speakers would be hard put if they were required to give a clear purpose for any particular sermon, and even harder put to show any results from it. A business never advertises just because it is supposed to; it periodically evaluates its advertising to see if its efforts are producing. I propose that the preacher evaluate his preaching.

The old ideal of the preacher’s being “hidden behind the cross” is, I’m afraid, seldom achieved. Up there in the pulpit he is on display before everyone; it is difficult to ignore the tone of his voice, color of his tie, condition of his hair, formal or informal attitude toward worship. The problem then becomes simply one of determining how much these factors help or hinder the worship service. Regardless of its importance, the message will accomplish nothing if the preacher stands in its way.

An effective preaching ministry must come from a sharp analysis of the congregation’s needs and capabilities. Has the church a core of well-grounded leadership? Has it a wide field of opportunity? If so, then evangelism is undoubtedly a definite need. Is it an old-line church in an area already largely enlisted in some church or churches? Then perhaps Bible study and/or missions is the greatest need. Is the church on the fringe of a changing racial and/or economic situation? Then Christian understanding may be especially called for. These are but samples of the many possible situations. No pastor will preach effectively until he knows clearly just what his church’s needs are.

But more than this is necessary. The pastor must also know his people’s ability to understand their own needs. I believe that it was Hyman Appleman who recalled his experience as a young fire-eater in a student pastorate. After months of impassioned preaching with no results, he finally asked an old farmer in the congregation what was wrong. The wise member replied, “Chickens love corn, but they’ll run if you throw it at their heads.” Your congregation may show an abysmal ignorance of the Book of Romans. But if you throw your seminary course at them, heavily larded with quotations from the original Greek and the church fathers, they’ll tune out very fast! An author’s advice to young writers seems appropriate here: “Don’t overestimate a reader’s knowledge nor underestimate his intelligence.” Your congregation probably has little knowledge of the Bible but wants more. It has no knowledge of Greek, and what’s more, couldn’t care less (unless, of course, the people just like to hear their preacher sound learned!). While the latest social theories or the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls may interest you, I doubt if many congregations will lap up this sort of thing. There is nothing wrong with a preacher’s utilizing such resources in his sermon preparation, but they should certainly not be the main substance of his preaching.

So far I have said little about the preacher’s own preaching interests. Actually, they are of secondary importance; he is first of all to minister not to his own ego but to the needs of his congregation. Personal interests ought not to be completely ignored, of course, as they can enrich his pattern of preaching. What’s more, the minister who continually preaches only from a sense of duty soon loses the feeling of enthusiasm or urgency that should enliven his work. But his main choice of subject matter, vocabulary, illustrations, and so on, must be dictated by the academic level, the professional and social status of his real congregation.

Is planning sermons around the needs and receptive abilities of our congregations all that is necessary? By no means. Many an earnest sermon has failed because the preacher neglected to anticipate his congregation’s reactions. A debater’s method of preparing his constructive speech is an excellent one for the preacher to use. The debater continually asks himself just what his opposition is going to reply to this or that point. By anticipating possible objection he eliminates irrelevancies, gets further evidence to support unfamiliar or controversial points, and clarifies his main thesis. He might even omit certain points which he feels are right but which he cannot really support. No one has ever objected to your sermons, you say? Oh, they may give you the usual treatment at the door even though they muttered many a “phooey” earlier. Congregations aren’t ignorant; they just look that way sometimes. Ask yourself what that deadpan businessman might be thinking about your comment concerning the sacredness of Sunday—that you are a bluenose? Got an answer? What might be that soldier’s reaction to your denunciation of the friendly drink—an observation that you were never left alone in the barracks when the rest went out on the town? Got an answer? You’d better have, and in advance.

There is no easy road to preaching. I don’t think many pastors want one. But I do think that the weekly agony of sermon preparation can become very rewarding to both pastor and congregation if the pastor sharpens his perspective.—The REV. HORTON PRESLEY, assistant professor of English, Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.

Christianity introduced a concept into the thought of the West which is alien to the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, the two major political thinkers of the ancient world. This new concept has been called, after Augustine, the idea of the two cities: the City of God and the City of Man. Man, it is asserted, holds his citizenship papers in two realms, the earthly and the heavenly. He is to negotiate this life as best he can, seeking as much justice and such happiness as this world permits, but in full awareness that his ultimate felicity may be attained only in another order of existence. “The world is a bridge,” an Oriental sage remarked. “Cross it, but do not build your houses on it”.…

Christianity introduced another concept into Western thought which has had an effect upon our thinking about government: the concept of the Fall. Christian thought distinguishes between the created world as it came from the hand of God, and the fallen world known to history; between the world of primal innocence we posit, and the world marred by evil, which we know. It follows from this original premise that Christian thought is nonbehaviorist; it is based on the idea that the true inwardness of a thing—its real nature—cannot be fully known by merely observing its outward behavior. Things are distorted in the historical and natural order, unable to manifest their true being. Man especially is askew. He was created in the image of God, but now he is flawed by sin.

Some political implications may be drawn from these premises. It has been a characteristic note in Christian sociology, from the earliest centuries, to regard government not as an original element of the created world, but as a reflection of man’s corrupted nature in our fallen world. Government, in other words, is a consequence of sin; it appears only after the Fall. But if government is the result of original sin, it follows that governmental action cannot be a remedy for sin. By the same token it follows that sinful man will try to employ government for this impossible task, as well as for lesser purposes. In other words, the Christian rationale for government is incompatible with the total state required by collectivism. When the Christian rationale for government is understood and spelled out, the only political role compatible with it is the modest function of defending the peace of society by curbing peace-breakers. When government is limited to repressing criminal and destructive actions, men are free to act constructively and creatively up to the full limit of their individual capacities.

A third Christian doctrine which is politically meaningful is the idea of free will. Man’s fall, according to theology, resulted from an act of choice—an act of disobedience, as it turned out. The kernel of this story as related in Genesis is the conviction that the God who created man gave him at the same time sufficient freedom to deny his Maker. It is but a short deduction from this belief to the conclusion that the God who gave us inwardly such complete freedom that we could either accept or reject him wills that the relationships between men should be voluntary. The despot who repudiates individual liberty usurps a role which God even denies himself! The despot may be a majority, but this doesn’t alter matters. Outer and social liberty, in other words, is the necessary completion of inner and spiritual liberty; the free society is implicit in this reading of man’s nature. Man cannot be deprived of his spiritual liberty without being de humanized; this liberty survives under adversity, inside prison walls, and in totalitarian countries. This may be admitted, while at the same time we affirm to the hilt that man’s nature is such that anything less than a free society involves a denial of some part of it.

We arrive at a similar conclusion by contemplating the second half of the Great Commandment, where we are en joined to love our neighbor as ourselves. The bonds that should unite people, it is here implied, are those of unyielding good will, understanding, and compassion. But in collectivist theory, on the other hand, people are to be put through their paces by command and coercion. This is the nature of the means which must be, and are being, employed in even the most well-intentioned welfare state. In practice, every collectivized order careens toward a police state whose own citizens are its first victims. The love commandment of the Gospels brought down to the political level implies justice, parity, and freedom. There is no way whereby these basic premises may be twisted into a sanctioning of the operational imperatives of a collectivist society.—Remarks by EDMUND A. OPITZ of the Foundation for Economic Education to a seminar in Carmel Valley, California.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges today, one particularly evidenced in our large cities, is to face and overcome the neglect of our heritage in law. The great legal principles that swayed our people and upon which our country was founded were based on inward convictions of the heart and persuasions of the mind. Our ancestors were born and raised on the sanctity and authority of law and order.

The moral law has a basis not only in religion and ethics, but also in intuition, instinct, and reason. We are in dire need, as a society exploding not only in population but with social problems, of recapturing its importance in American life.

We are living at a time when many conceive it to be no wrong to violate the law, but rather think that the wrong lies in being caught.… This is the direct antithesis of the moral law, which applies sanctions or penalties only because it recognizes there is a duty to obey the law. The law, under moral precepts, should be obeyed not because there are penalties. It should be obeyed irrespective of whether a violation would ever be detected or not.…

The Greatest Lawgiver gave us a Decalogue through Moses. “Thou shalt not kill” has after it a period. It does not read, “Thou shalt not kill, for if you do and are convicted of first degree murder in Pennsylvania in 1963, you’ll be sentenced to death or life imprisonment; or, if it’s second degree, a maxi mum of ten to twenty years’ imprisonment; or, if it’s voluntary manslaughter, a maximum of six to twelve years’ imprisonment.” “Thou shalt not kill,” period; whether you’re apprehended or not, whether you can get away with it or not, thou shalt not kill.

The same is true of the law, “Thou shalt not steal.” It doesn’t read, “Thou shalt not steal; if you do, and are convicted, you can get a maximum of two and one-half to five years in prison.” Whether you can get away with it or not, “Thou shalt not steal.”

Unless we as a nation can restore again among our people the persuasive force of moral and spiritual convictions, our people, multitudes of whom are growing morally soft and hungry with greed, will be overcome by their degeneracy.

A sense of duty to obey the law must be re-taught and re-learned. We afford our young people, for the most part, good and adequate recreational facilities, and these are needed. In addition to these, however, we must develop means to strengthen the moral fiber of America. This work cannot be left to the exclusive function of the schools, churches, and national youth organizations. Many, many are not reached by any of these. Greater encouragement should be given to neighborhood civic associations, clubs, forums, and other groups, where problems of moral responsibility are discussed. This should be not a piecemeal program but one that is carefully planned by competent individuals. Especially should such groups be developed, encouraged, and sponsored among young Americans in crowded areas of our large cities. The building of moral stamina and character is as much needed as are physical and intellectual growth.—The Hon. EDWARD J. GRIFFITHS, Judge of Common Pleas Court No. 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

NORWEGIAN CENSORSHIP—A ban against the Lutheran motion picture Question 7 is creating a major national issue in Norway. The state censor ruled that young people under sixteen may not view the film, which depicts the Christian struggle against Communism in East Germany. He said the film would expose young people to a “one-sided impression” and would be a “confusing” and “harmful” influence.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—First Methodist Church Society of Boston plans to restore the city’s famous West End Church, forced by the British in 1776 to remove its towering steeple so it could not be used to send signals to Yankee rebels. The church has been used as a branch of the Boston Public Library since 1896.

A new liberal arts college with Presbyterian roots is taking shape on a 300-acre site at Seneca Falls, New York. It will be named Eisenhower College in honor of the former U. S. president, a Presbyterian. The college, expected to open in 1965, has already been endorsed by the Geneva-Lyons Presbytery and will eventually seek affiliation with the United Presbyterian Synod of New York.

Irish Methodist Conference voted to begin conversations with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and to welcome inclusion of other Christian denominations that may wish to join in the unity talks.

Lutheran World Federation reports that the number of German Evangelical overseas missionary personnel has more than doubled since 1952—from 499 to 1,155.

A draft constitution for a United Congregational Church of Southern Africa was approved at a meeting of representatives of Congregational groups in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

MISCELLANY—A Christian Communications Center to train future ministers in the use of radio and television is being established by the Church Federation of Greater Chicago and eleven denominational seminaries in the area. The center’s initial curriculum will be a course on “The Church’s Broadcasting Minis try” in the fall, for which seminarians will receive credit from their respective theological schools.

Four hundred thousand bushels of wheat are being made available to cyclone victims in East Pakistan through Church World Service. The World Council of Churches said its member denominations had donated nearly $50,000 to help the stricken area. Some 10,000 lives were lost in the storm.

A Venezuelan-born Roman Catholic priest, in making his last will and testament, remembered the “happiness I have enjoyed” in the United States and left $6,000 to the federal government. Father Jesus de Corcugra, a naturalized American citizen, died in March at the age of eighty-eight. He had been assistant pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Schenectady, New York.

Christian Committee for Service in Algeria is stepping up its tree-planting program to provide work for the unemployed and to arrest soil erosion. The committee hopes to plant 70,000,000 trees and to continue its program until mid-1965. Some 1,200,000 have already been planted.

President Kennedy accepted honorary chairmanship of the sponsoring committee for the American Churchill Memorial, a war-damaged London church to be relocated at Westminster College, a United Presbyterian school in Fulton, Missouri, where Sir Winston Churchill made his now famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.

Melkite Rite Archbishop George Hakim of Akka, head of the largest Christian community in Israel, called on President Zalman Shazar to offer congratulations on his election. The call marked the first official meeting between the new president and a leader of the Christian community in Israel.

A special plaque was presented by the Boy Scouts of America to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the denomination’s scouting program.

PERSONALIA—Screen star Dolores Hart, a convert to Catholicism who played a nun in a film on St. Francis of Assisi, says she is forsaking her film career to enter a convent in Connecticut.

Dr. Kenneth Watson resigned as executive director of the Religion and Labor Council of America.

Dr. Jon L. Regier appointed chief of staff of the National Council of Churches’ emergency Commission on Religion and Race.

Dr. Clemens C. Granskou retiring as president of St. Olaf College.

Dr. Wallace N. Jamison elected president of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, succeeding Dr. Justin Vander Kolk.

Resignation of Dr. Henry Bast as professor of theology at Western Theo logical Seminary to return to the pastorate was accepted by the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America.

Dr. Casper Nannes, religion editor of the Washington Star, presented with the annual Award in Religious Communications by Religious Heritage of America.

The Rev. Francis Kirkegaard Wagschal named chaplain of Waterloo Lutheran University.

The Rev. William J. Boone, 32-year-old Methodist minister, named chaplain of the Protestant Chapel to be built at New York International Airport.

Pastor Gerhart Nordholt elected president of the synod of the Evangelical Reformed Church of North-West Germany.

The Rev. Jaroslav J. Vajda appointed editor of This Day, monthly family magazine of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Dr. James Allen Knight appointed professor of psychiatry and religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

Dr. Martin E. Marty appointed associate professor of church history at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

Chaplain (Rear Admiral) J. Floyd Dreith appointed Chief of U. S. Navy Chaplains. He is a minister of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Dr. W. A. Adams retiring as professor of New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Rev. William Havenkamp elected president of the Christian Reformed Church.

Dr. Stewart Winfield Herman appointed first president of the new Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

WORTH QUOTING—“Roman Catholicism has moved further in the past three years than Protestantism has moved in the past fifty years.”—Dr. Samuel H. Miller, dean of Harvard Divinity School.

“It just swells a white man’s pride that he has integrated his church by inviting one Negro.”—The Rev. Denzil A. Carty, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Deaths

DR. GEORGE P. MICHAELIDES, 70, director emeritus of the Shauffler Division of Christian Education at the Oberlin Graduate College School of Theology; in Oberlin, Ohio.

DR. E. GRAHAM WILSON, 79, retired general secretary of the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions; in Bronxville, New York.

DR. T. J. BACH, 82, general director emeritus of The Evangelical Alliance Mission; in Yucaipa, California.

RUTH F. WOODSMALL, 79, retired general secretary of the Young Women’s Christian Association world headquarters in Geneva; in New York City.

Majority Opinion (Justice Clark)

In light of the history of the First Amendment and of our cases interpreting and applying its requirements, we hold that the practices at issue and the laws requiring them are unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment …

It is true that religion has been closely identified with our history and government.… The fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself. This background is evidenced today in our public life through the continuance in our oaths of office from the Presidency to the Alderman of the final supplication, “So help me God”.… Indeed, only last year an official survey of the country indicated that 64 per cent of our people have church membership, Bureau of Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 48 (83d ed. 1962), while less than 3 per cent profess no religion whatever.… This is not to say, however, that religion has been so identified with our history and government that religious freedom is not likewise as strongly imbedded in our public and private life.… This freedom of worship was indispensable in a country whose people came from the four quarters of the earth and brought with them a diversity of religious opinion. Today authorities list 83 separate religious bodies, each with memberships exceeding 50,000, existing among our people, as well as innumerable smaller groups.…

The wholesome “neutrality” of which this Court’s cases speak thus stems from a recognition of the teachings of history that powerful sects or groups might bring about a fusion of governmental and religious functions or a concert or dependency of one upon the other to the end that official support of the State or Federal Government would be placed behind the tenets of one or of all orthodoxies. This the Establishment Clause prohibits. And a further reason for neutrality is found in the Free Exercise Clause, which recognizes the value of religious training, teaching and observance and, more particularly, the right of every person to freely choose his own course with reference thereto, free of any compulsion from the state. This the Free Exercise Clause guarantees. Thus, as we have seen, the two clauses may overlap. As we have indicated, the Establishment Clause has been directly considered by this Court eight times in the past score of years and, with only one Justice dissenting on the point, it has consistently held that the clause withdrew all legislative power respecting religious belief or the expression thereof. The test may be stated as follows: what are the purpose and primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution …

Applying the Establishment Clause principles to the cases at bar we find that the States are requiring the selection and reading at the opening of the school day of verses from the Holy Bible and the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer by the students in unison. These exercises are prescribed as part of the curricular activities of students who are required by law to attend school. They are held in the school buildings under the supervision and with the participation of teachers employed in those schools.… We agree with the [Pennsylvania] trial court’s findings as to the religious character of the exercises. Given that finding the exercises and the law requiring them are in violation of the Establishment Clause.…

The conclusion follows that in both cases the laws require religious exercises and such exercises are being conducted in direct violation of the rights of the appellees and petitioners. Nor are these required exercises mitigated by the fact that individual students may absent themselves upon parental request, for that fact furnishes no defense to a claim of unconstitutionality under the Establishment Clause.… The breach of neutrality that is today a trickling stream may all too soon become a raging torrent and, in the words of Madison, “it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties”

It is insisted that unless these religious exercises are permitted a “religion of secularism” is established in the schools. We agree of course that the State may not establish a “religion of secular ism” in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus “preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe”.… We do not agree, however, that this decision in any sense has that effect.… It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment.…

Finally, we cannot accept that the concept of neutrality, which does not permit a State to require a religious exercise even with the consent of the majority of those affected, collides with the majority’s right to free exercise of religion.…

In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality. Though the application of that rule requires interpretation of a delicate sort, the rule itself is clearly and concisely stated in the words of the First Amendment …

Concurring Opinion (Justice Brennan)

The Court’s historic duty to expound the meaning of the Constitution has encountered few issues more intricate or more demanding than that of the relationship between religion and the public schools.… Americans regard the public schools as a most vital civic institution for the preservation of a democratic system of government. It is therefore understandable that the constitutional prohibitions encounter their severest test when they are sought to be applied in the school classroom.…

The fact is that the line which separates the secular from the sectarian in American life is elusive. The difficulty of defining the boundary with precision inheres in a paradox central to our scheme of liberty. While our institutions reflect a firm conviction that we are a religious people, those institutions by solemn constitutional injunction may not officially involve religion in such a way as to prefer, discriminate against, or oppress, a particular sect or religion. Equally the Constitution enjoins those involvements of religious with secular institutions which (a) serve the essentially religious activities of religious institutions; (b) employ the organs of government for essentially religious purposes; or (c) use essentially religious means to serve governmental ends where secular means would suffice. The constitutional mandate expresses a deliberate and considered judgment that such matters are to be left to the conscience of the citizen.…

I join fully in the opinion and the judgment of the Court. I see no escape from the conclusion that the exercises called in question in these two cases violate the constitutional mandate. The reasons we gave only last Term in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421, for finding in the New York Regents’ prayer an impermissible establishment of religion, compel the same judgment of the practices at bar. The involvement of the secular with the religious is no less intimate here; and it is constitutionally irrelevant that the State has not composed the material for the inspirational exercises presently involved.… While it is my view that not every involvement of religion in public life is unconstitutional, I consider the exercises at bar a form of involvement which clearly violates the Establishment Clause.…

Whatever Jefferson or Madison would have thought of Bible reading or the recital of the Lord’s Prayer in what few public schools existed in their day, our use of the history of their time must limit itself to broad purposes, not specific practices. By such a standard, I am persuaded, as is the Court, that the devotional exercises carried on in the Baltimore and Abington schools offend the First Amendment because they sufficiently threaten in our day those substantive evils the fear of which called forth the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It is “a constitution we are expounding,” and our interpretation of the First Amendment must necessarily be responsive to the much more highly charged nature of religious questions in contemporary society.…

Not every involvement of religion in public life violates the Establishment Clause. Our decision in these cases does not clearly forecast anything about the constitutionality of other types of interdependence between religious and other public institutions.

Concurring Opinion (Justice Goldberg)

I have no doubt as to the propriety of the decision and therefore join the opinion and judgment of the Court. The singular sensitivity and concern which surround both the legal and practical judgments involved impel me, however, to add a few words in further explication, while at the same time avoiding repetition of the carefully and ably framed examination of history and authority by my Brethren.…

The attitude of the state toward religion must be one of neutrality. But untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.…

The practices here involved do not fall within any sensible or acceptable concept of compelled or permitted accommodation and involve the state so significantly and directly in the realm of the sectarian as to give rise to those very divisive influences and inhibitions of freedom which both religion clauses of the First Amendment preclude.

Dissenting Opinion (Justice Stewart)

I think the records in the two cases before us are so fundamentally deficient as to make impossible an informed or responsible determination of the constitutional issues presented. Specifically, I cannot agree that on these records we can say that the Establishment Clause has necessarily been violated. (Footnote: It is instructive, in this connection, to examine the complaints in the two cases before us. Neither complaint attacks the challenged practices as “establishments.” What both allege as the basis for their causes of actions are, rather, violations of religious liberty.) …

As a matter of history, the First Amendment was adopted solely as a limitation upon the newly created National Government. The events leading to its adoption strongly suggest that the Establishment Clause was primarily an attempt to insure that Congress not only would be powerless to establish a national church, but would also be unable to interfere with existing state establishments. See McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 440–441. Each State was left free to go its own way and pursue its own policy with respect to religion. Thus Virginia from the beginning pursued a policy of disestablishmentarianism. Massachusetts, by contrast, had an established church until well into the nineteenth century. I accept without question that the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against impairment by the States embraces in full the right of free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, and I yield to no one in my conception of the breadth of that freedom.… I accept too the proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment has somehow absorbed the Establishment Clause, although it is not without irony that a constitutional provision evidently designed to leave the States free to go their own way should now have become a restriction upon their autonomy. But I cannot agree with what seems to me the insensitive definition of the Establishment Clause contained in the Court’s opinion, nor with the different but, I think, equally mechanistic definitions contained in the separate opinions which have been filed.…

There is involved in these cases a substantial free exercise claim on the part of those who affirmatively desire to have their children’s school day open with the reading of passages from the Bible.…

If religious exercises are held to be an impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed at an artificial and state-created disadvantage. Viewed in this light, permission of such exercises for those who want them is necessary if the schools are truly to be neutral in the matter of religion. And a refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen, not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism, or at the least, as government support of the beliefs of those who think that religious exercises should be conducted only in private.…

The Elusive Money Line

Decisions in the Supreme Court chamber last month built a higher wall of separation between church and state. But elsewhere in Washington, breaks in the wall provided increasing involvement of denominational agencies in government funds. Yet cases to test the constitutionality of such involvement seemed ever more elusive.

A seven-week campaign by the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions was climaxed when the federal government approved a $3,900,000 grant for the purchase of five United Mine Workers’ hospitals in Kentucky. The board is setting up a non-sectarian, independent corporation to buy the hospitals to keep them open. United Presbyterian officials originally sought $9,500,000 in federal funds from the Area Redevelopment Administration to purchase ten hospitals which the UMW planned to close. The other five reportedly will remain open for another year, pending additional grants.

Approval of a loan of $4,000,000 to Southern Methodist University, the largest yet approved for a private institution under the college housing program, was announced last month by the U. S. Housing and Home Finance Agency. The money will be used for dormitory and dining facilities and for enlargement of the campus power plant.

Statistics made available by the Housing and Home Finance Agency also disclosed extensive federal investments in denominational retirement homes. A survey of the statistics by the National Lutheran Council indicated that ten Luther an projects for senior citizens have received direct government loans totaling $7,987,784 since 1961, when this type of financial aid became available. In addition, agency officials were quoted as saying that they either have committed or are in the process of approving mortgage insurance totaling $26,457,890 for twenty-four Lutheran housing projects for the elderly.

Meanwhile a research grant of $823,159—one of the largest ever made to a private institution—was awarded a few days ago to Baylor University for a study of the structure of human viruses. The grant to Baylor, largest of the Southern Baptist universities, is for five years.

Toward Transition

As racial unrest mounted across the United States last month, President Kennedy summoned to the White House some 243 religious leaders to discuss integration processes. The meeting, held in the East Room, was historic, for it marked one of the most representative gatherings of high-ranking U. S. church leaders ever held anywhere.

“Even if we disagree,” said Kennedy, “it is our responsibility to make this transition as easy as possible.”

The upshot of the meeting was the creation of a national advisory council of clergymen on civil rights. Kennedy asked J. Irwin Miller, president of the National Council of Churches, to act as chairman. Other churchmen who were present suggested further implementation through the creation of local committees.

“Let us see,” said Kennedy, “if we can make a significant break-through this summer … church by church … and community by community.”

The meeting with church leaders was one of a series the President has conducted during the race crisis. Other meetings brought together educators, businessmen, and labor leaders.

Two clergymen from the South were reported to have made pro-segregation comments in a question-and-answer period with Kennedy. One asked him whether he sought to promote racial intermarriage. Kennedy denied it.

Detailing Charity

Ecclesiastical cannons rained sharp criticism on the Internal Revenue Service last month. The provocation was a proposal to tighten charitable deduction provisions of the income tax code. At a three-hour hearing in Washington, representatives from the National Council of Churches, the American Council of Christian Churches, assorted Lutheran bodies, the United Presbyterian Foundation, and several Jewish interests peppered the government agency with charges of “unnecessary,” “discouraging,” “detrimental,” and “burdensome.”

Two aspects of the proposed additions to the tax law, the avowed purpose of which is to “require the furnishing of additional information to establish the deductibility of contributions of property, other than money, to charitable organizations,” seemed to draw greatest fire. One was a requirement that taxpayers submit with their returns “the name and address of each organization to which a contribution was made and the amount and date of the actual payment of each contribution.” The other was a demand that all donors report the specifics of non-monetary contributions, including “circumstances under which the taxpayer acquired the property” and the date.

“The effect of these amendments is to discourage giving to charitable institutions, to make the existence of these institutions more difficult and to reduce their effectiveness,” said the Rev. Robert B. Gronlund on behalf of the American Lutheran Church.

The regulations must not, declared an NCC statement, “have the long-run effect of discouraging what heretofore has been encouraged by the tax laws of the Federal Government; namely support of the broad variety of voluntary associations of our citizens.”

ACCC representatives were more direct. “There is no doubt whatever that the proposed new regulations will deter, restrict or detrimentally influence property gifts,” declared a statement which had been submitted previously by John Wesley Rhoads. “The income tax as presently administered has been used to harass independent churches and religious institutions and agencies.”

Only the United Presbyterians appeared unruffled. “We’ll manage somehow,” declared George W. McKeag, who represented the denomination’s trustees. Nevertheless, he suggested that the proposed revisions be shelved pending the outcome of President Kennedy’s current efforts to modify the tax structure.

‘Christian Oscars’

The Tony Fontane Story, an evangelistic film chronicling the conversion of a popular singer, won top honors in the National Evangelical Film Foundation’s 1963 competition. Fontane and his wife were chosen best actor and best actress for their roles in the film. Billy Zeoli was selected best producer and Jan Sadlo best director. Fontane also was voted best male singer in the record awards.

Other film winners were Savage Flame (Cathedral), best missionary film; One Nation under God (World Wide Pictures), best musical film; Jonah (Film Services), best children’s film; Prophet From Tekoa (Broadman), best Bible story; Christian Faith In a Confused World (Family Films), best Christian life film; Beyond These Skies (Ken Anderson, Inc.), best Christian witnessing; The Minister (Video Productions), best documentary film; and Survey of the Scriptures (Moody), best filmstrip; Bob Jeffries (Gospel Films), best sup porting actor.

Record awards went to “Auca Story” (Diadem), best documentary record; the White Sisters in “Brighten the Corner” (Word), best trio record; Kurt Kaiser in “Preludes of Faith” (Word), best instrumental record; Don Lonie (Word), most unusual record; “Teen World” (Sacred), best choir record; the Melody Four Quartet in “Cascades of Blessing” (Word), best quartet record; Mary Jayne in “I Believe in Miracles” (Capitol) best female singer; and Lorin Whitney (Christian Faith), best organ record.

Testimony Revision

The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, a tiny U. S. denomination which believes that the Constitution should have a Christian amendment, weathered an intense debate at its 134th Synod at Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, last month. Key issue was over a proposal to revise the church’s official testimony on Christian citizenship, particularly a chapter which discourages participation in non-Christian, civil elections. Synod delegates were divided on how proposed re vision might be implemented. The proposal was adopted, however, by a vote of 72 to 34. It still needs approval by two-thirds of the church’s sessions and a majority of voting elders before becoming valid.

A Qualified Urge

Although it spoke brightly of its urge to merge, the Reformed Church in America tiptoed hesitantly down the ecumenical road last month. The church’s annual General Synod voted to continue ecumenical conversations with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), but also gave considerable hope to overtures from two Michigan classes (North and South Grand Rapids) which requested that in the event of merger, individual congregations which decided by a two-thirds vote “to retain their identity” could remain out of the merger without loss of property rights. The requests were referred to the church’s committee on ecumenics.

Dr. Bernard Brunsting, pastor of the First Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan, and president of the synod for the past year, took his eye off the ecumenical highway, urging consideration of churches not affiliated with ecumenical organizations. He urged the synod to go on record favoring closer relationships with such churches in order to recognize “our oneness with them in Christ.”

The questions of the Communist influence in the World Council of Churches since admission of Russian Orthodox churches and the role of the WCC in regard to national policy, “particularly in view of its unfortunate declaration with regard to the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba in October, 1962,” were referred for study to the denomination’s own committee on the WCC.

CHALLENGES FOR THE POPE

Pope Paul VI may be obliged to turn his attention rather quickly to Viet Nam and Spain, where incidents in recent weeks had a Middle Ages flavor. Suppressed religious minorities in these two countries have yet to feel much relief as the result of Roman Catholicism’s new posture of good will.

American Negroes are an honored elite compared with the distraught Buddhists of Viet Nam, where Roman Catholics dominate the government. The Buddhists, to underscore their protests, have been staging severe demonstrations. At a street corner in Saigon, an aged monk poured gasoline over his body, then burned himself to death as thousands of horrified Vietnamese looked on.

In Spain, five Protestant churches are still padlocked; sixteen new ones are seeking permits to open but so far have been unsuccessful. Fines totalling some $125 have been levied against Protestant congregations within the past six months for unlawful assembly (groups of twenty or more persons outside a church building are forbidden). A young couple was arrested in Barcelona several weeks ago for distributing Gospel tracts. Two other Protestant couples, meanwhile, were denied permission to marry.

Protestants in Spain are nonetheless hopeful in view of some recent developments. The Spanish army no longer requires troops to attend Roman Catholic services, although the navy and air force still make it mandatory. Protestants still are barred from military officer-training schools.

Protestant spirits were lifted during May when Fernando Vangioni and Charles Ward, associates of evangelist Billy Graham, conducted thirty days of meetings in Madrid, Barcelona, and Galicia province. They were greeted by capacity crowds at every church. Aggregate attendance totalled 12,000, 253 of whom professed conversion. Observers said the Protestant meetings were the largest since the advent of the Franco regime.

Delegates also decided to take no action on an overture from Classis California requesting reconsideration of the church’s relationship to the WCC and the National Council of Churches in the United States.

The synod met on the campus of its Central College, at Pella, Iowa, a Dutch community which celebrates its origin with annual tulip festivals and sale of souvenir wooden shoes. Delegates faced the question of smoking, and the question of dancing on its college campuses—which has been shunted back and forth between synods and college boards in recent years—and gingerly referred both questions to its Christian action committee for study.

Meeting in its 157th regular session, the synod elected Dr. M. Verne Oggel of the Community Reformed Church of Glen Rock, New Jersey, as president for the coming year, and Dr. Justin Vander Kolk, past president of its New Brunswick Theological Seminary, as its vice president.

The Synod made forthright and dramatic decisions on the problem of racism. It decided to “convey to the President of the United States its hearty agreement with all steps taken by his administration to eliminate racial injustice,” and to “commend the negro sit-inners and non-violent demonstrators for their courage, their willingness to suffer for the sake of freedom, and their self-discipline and non-violence in the face of extraordinary provocation.” It further decided that “a gift of money accompany our expression of commendation and encouragement to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” headed by Dr. Martin Luther King.

In an address to the delegates, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale challenged the wisdom and the value of the synod’s race pronouncements and gift in view of the fact that they come from a church which is outside, and remote from, the area into which they are projected.

J.D.

Family Facts

Nearly two-thirds of American women are now married before age 21, according to the Population Reference Bureau, a private research agency.

But the bureau reports indications that “early marriage and early parenthood are becoming less popular than they were in recent years.”

In a statistical account released last month, bureau researchers also noted a downward trend in the expectation of family size.

At present, average family size is approaching 3.4 children per married woman, the bureau said. If the birth rate dropped to an average of 2.27 population stability would be attained, it claimed. However, the population is continuing to grow at a rate of more than 3,000,000 per year with the present birth rate.

The bureau predicted that 1,600,000 marriages will take place in 1963 and that nearly 400,000 will end in divorce.

Although the divorce rate is now only half of the post-war peak reached in the early 1950s, almost 3,000,000 children have divorced or separated parents, the agency said.

Women are not letting early marriage interfere with their education to the extent it formerly did, the bureau said. About 12 per cent of all women attending college, or 162,000, are married, and there are 77,000 married girls attending high school.

The rate of illegitimate births continues to increase. One baby out of every twenty born in the United States this year, the bureau predicts, will be born to an unmarried mother. That would total about 224,000, compared with 141,000 in 1950 and 80,000 in 1940.

The average woman has her last child by age 28, the bureau reported. Increasingly, women with older children are entering the labor force, with more than one-third of all wives today having jobs outside the home.

Another Honest John

The Anglican diocese of Southwark, undoubtedly the liveliest if seldom the most orthodox in England, added yet another colorful character to its staff, which includes the Bishop of Woolwich. During his installation as vice-provost and canon-residentiary of the Thames-side cathedral, the Rev. John Pearce-Higgins interrupted the service to make a spirited protest against his required as sent to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Addressing the bishop, Dr. Mervyn Stockwood, Mr. Pearce-Higgins described the Articles as “a Reformation document originally set out in all sincerity within the limitations of thought and under the stress of the theological and social pressures of the time” and as “a theological fossil embedded in the constitution of the Church of England.” He quoted a former Archbishop of York in support of his position, delineated on several of the Articles he found particularly offensive, but finally gave the general assent which is required of him by law.

The new canon is vice-chairman of the Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Research, and chairman of the Modern Churchmen’s Union. Speaking to pressmen after the service he said the Article on the Resurrection was “absolute nonsense,” and added: “I say that Christ’s physical body did not rise again. His spirit rose certainly. But what is this Article suggesting … that they were practicing rocketry on the Mount of Olives in those days?”

Lord Fisher of Lambeth, former Arch bishop of Canterbury, agreed publicly that the Articles badly needed revision. Answering the criticism that the Articles reflect the beliefs of 400 years ago, Prebendary Colin Kerr, a prominent evangelical, pointed out that in fact they reflect the beliefs of nearer 2,000 years ago, being based on the Scriptures. Ventured a correspondent in the Church of England Newspaper:

“A newly installed canon must be fired sometime.”

J.D.D.

It was 11:30 a.m. by the bronze clock which hangs over the Supreme Court bench. Justice Tom C. Clark had been drawling over a zig-zag sewing machine patent when, with scarcely a pause, he shifted to cases 119 and 142. Clark talked for another 25 minutes. His voice trailed off as he finally announced the court’s decision against a 150-year-old American tradition of prayer and Bible reading in the public schoolroom. The decision was regarded in some quarters as imposing a restriction upon the religious practices of more Americans than any prior government action.

The court’s decision on June 17 was 8 to 1, with Justice Potter Stewart, an Episcopalian, voicing the lone dissent, just as he did in 1962 when the court struck down the 22-word interfaith prayer approved by the New York Board of Regents for use in the public schools of that state.

The court’s opinion in the 1962 case stressed that the Regents’ prayer was governmentally composed. Curiously, in the 1963 decision, one of the justices forsakes that line, and views recitation of prayers as unconstitutional irrespective of whether or not they are governmentally composed.

While banning required Bible reading and the Lord’s Prayer even as it had earlier disallowed required non-sectarian prayer, the court nonetheless put no roadblock in the way of the teaching of religion as a cultural and historical influence or in the way of objective study of the Bible as part of the instructional program. Thus it made a clear distinction between the compulsory corporate practice of religion and the objective teaching of religion (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial, March 1, 1963 issue, “Is the Supreme Court on Trial?”).

Another significant aspect of the latest ruling is that the justices differ sharply on why required public school devotions are unconstitutional. Clark’s majority opinion was shared only by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Hugo L. Black, and Justice Byron White.

Clark’s argument against devotional exercises in the public schools rested largely on the contention that the government must maintain an attitude of neutrality in religious matters. He said the test may be stated as follows:

“What are the purpose and the primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution.”

The longest opinion—nearly 25,000 words—was delivered by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the only Roman Catholic member of the court. Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, the only Jewish member, wrote a separate concurring opinion, and was joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Justice William O. Douglas, exponent of a far more strict separation of church and state, also wrote a concurring opinion.

The decision incorporates an element of indeterminacy in respect to devotional practices in the classroom in the absence of governmental legislation, which is the context of the latest decision. Some observers argue that a principal’s or teacher’s introduction of classroom devotions would reflect the same objection able element of compulsion, since school employees are also agents of the state and public servants. Others insist that this contention rests upon inference, is not explicitly based upon the court decision, and ignores the right of “free exercise” which is fully as constitutional as that of “separation.” Yet the conviction is widening that required public school devotionals are objectionable from the standpoint of a sound philosophy of religion, education, and freedom.

But already there is a dispute over whether the court ruled out schoolroom devotions altogether or merely banned religious exercises when state laws require them. Some state education officials said they would ignore the ruling.

With the obvious air of precluding radical interpretations, Brennan wrote: “Our decision in these cases does not clearly forecast anything about the constitutionality of other types of inter dependence between religious and other public institutions.”

In a similar vein, Goldberg declared: “Today’s decision does not mean that all incidents of government which import of the religious are therefore and without more banned by the strictures of the Establishment Clause.”

In a related case involving various religious observances in Florida’s public schools, the court issued a per curiam order vacating that state’s Supreme Court ruling upholding some of the practices and ordered re-hearings in that court “in the light of the decision” on prayer and Bible reading.

Case 142 originated in the Philadelphia suburb of Abington, where a Unitarian family protested a Pennsylvania law requiring the daily reading of passages from the Bible. The case was brought by Edward Lewis Schempp, his wife, Sidney, and their three children. The Supreme Court upheld a federal district court ruling in the Schempps’ favor.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

IMPACT OF THE RULING

If considerable reaction to the 1962 Supreme Court ruling against the New York Board of Regents was ill-informed and intemperate, the response to this year’s decision on schoolroom devotions marked a puzzling retreat.

The decision against prayer and Bible reading came as no surprise. The United Presbyterian Office of Information had confidently distributed a three-page advance comment for release when the court ruled. Without knowing what the ruling would say, Presbyterian officials were quoted as saying that “the court’s decision underscores our firm belief that religious instruction is the sacred responsibility of the family and the churches.”

Although this year’s ruling represented a far more extreme separation of church and state than the 1962 Regents’ prayer case, fewer church men spoke out. Many had obviously changed their minds.

Some observers predicted that practical effects of the latest ruling might be disillusioning for the laity and divisive for the church in general. Do rank and file laymen really understand why many ecclesiastical leaders countenance and even support the suppression of prayer and Bible reading in public schools?

Case 119 was brought by a Baltimore divorcee, Mrs. Madalyn Murray, on behalf of her son, William. Both professed atheists, they objected to practices in the Maryland schools such as Bible readings from the King James Version usually followed by class recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. The Supreme Court upset a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling which had upheld the practices.

Still apparently in question are such things as public school Christmas pageants and baccalaureate exercises. Many observers think they will be sacrificed next.

Several Congressmen introduced bills to amend the Constitution to provide for religious exercises in public schools, but most observers doubted that they had any chance of passage.

One immediate development will be the exploration of the larger scope the majority opinion allows to religion as content matter in the public school curriculum. Clark remarked that “nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment.”

Some educators say it may take 8 to 10 years to evolve a program of public education that does full justice to the religious ingredient. But others think this judgment greatly exaggerates the difficulties. Yet a single additional course embodying religious facets is viewed as a mere makeshift. More ideally the religious element would be injected throughout the curriculum wherever it is relevant. Such a program, it is widely held, would be administratively preferable to shared time proposals which in recent years have been under study by various religious leaders.

Many observers concede that were a national referendum to be held on the issue of Bible reading and prayer in public schools, the exercises would prevail.

Under proper legal procedure, the justices based their decision on the evidence submitted. The arguments in favor of retaining schoolroom devotions were presented by legal officials of the jurisdictions involved. The arguments were largely void of historic and theological foundations. Not a single church group or Christian organization availed itself of the opportunity to file a brief in support of their arguments; their case was sacrificed by default.

By contrast, six organizations went to the trouble of filing briefs against public school devotions (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY News, April 12, 1963, page 39).

Stewart commented: “I think the records in the two cases before us are so fundamentally deficient as to make impossible an informed or responsible determination of the constitutional issues presented.”

Sabbatarian Victory

The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that denial of unemployment benefits to a Seventh-day Adventist because she was unavailable for Saturday work infringed on the free exercise of her religion (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 7, p. 33).

The 7–2 ruling in the case of Mrs. Adell H. Sherbert reversed the decision of South Carolina’s Supreme Court. Justice William J. Brennan declared there was “no compelling state interest” to justify “the substantial infringement” of Mrs. Sherbert’s constitutional right.

Appellants’ Views

“I’m a trouble-maker at heart and don’t give a damn what people think.”

So says Mrs. Madalyn Murray, one of the appellants in the prayer-Bible reading case in whose favor the Supreme Court ruled.

Mrs. Murray and her two sons, aged 8 and 16, are professed atheists. She claims she was “converted” from Presbyterianism when she was 13.

The Murrays have undergone considerable abuse since the litigation began. Vandals marked up their back fence with the line, “Murrays are Communists.” The sons have been repeatedly heckled, the older one so much so that he brought charges against a fellow student.

Mrs. Murray is a law graduate. She was divorced from her husband, a Roman Catholic, several years ago. She supports the family with contributions that happen to come their way, plus the proceeds from articles she writes for atheist and humanist publications.

Religion channels people into inaction, she says, adding that “I would turn every church into a hospital, a sanitarium, or a school” so it would accomplish some good.

Concurring opinions were delivered by Justices William O. Douglas and Potter Stewart. Stewart said the finding for Mrs. Sherbert was inconsistent with the majority opinion in the Schempp-Murray Bible reading-prayer cases handed down the same day, and with the Sunday Blue Law decision of 1961. But since he disagreed with the majority in those decisions, he added, he now finds no difficulty in supporting Mrs. Sherbert’s claim.

Justice John Marshall Harlan, joined by Justice Byron R. White, dissented, calling the majority’s decision “disturbing both in its rejection of existing precedent and in its implications for the future.” Harlan found no religious discrimination because South Carolina denies unemployment benefits to all who are not available for work whatever the personal reason. He concludes: “I cannot subscribe to the conclusion that the State is constitutionally compelled to carve out an exception to its general rule of eligibility in the present case.”

An Evaluation

A group of prominent educators, lawyers, editors, and religious leaders,¹Assembled as part of thc Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project of the National Conference of Christians and Jews: Dean Edward Barrett, Prof. William Brickman, Dan Callahan, Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, the Rev. James Denecn, Rabhi Ira Eisenstein; the Rev. Kyle Kaseldon, Dr. Carl F. H. Henry; Dr. David Hunter; Dr. Wilber G. Katz; the Rev. William J. Kenealy, Dr. Dumont F. Kenny, Rabbi Norman Lamm, Dr. Joseph Manch, Dr. Theodore Powell, the Rev. John Reedy, the Rev. John S. Sheerin, the Rev. Roger Shinn, the Rev. John M. Swomley, Jr., the Rev. Norman Temme, Thomas J. O’Toole, the Rev. Charles Whelan, Tobe Acker, Miss Lillian Block. Dr. Sterling Bronsn, Richard Horchler, Dr. Claud Nelson, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert. The Rev. Gustave weigel and Dr. Thomas Van Loon, though not present at the meeting asked to have their names added to the statement. representing diverse religious commitments and reflecting varied reactions to the Supreme Court ruling, met in New York two days after the ruling was issued. They agreed that the court’s principle of “wholesome neutrality” is not only cognizant of religious liberty, but aware that American institutions presuppose a Supreme Being and looks favorably upon the chaplaincy, Congressional prayers, and other national practices.

The group noted that 1. the court has clarified the relation of the public school to religion; 2. its decision does not endorse irreligion or atheism in America; 3. although devotional exercises are forbidden, the court clearly allows for the objective study of religion and particularly of the Bible in the public school; 4. in a pluralistic society religious and civic groups should be encouraged to use the instrumentality of dialogue to resolve conflict; and 5. the decision challenges parents and religious leaders to shape and strengthen spiritual commitment by reliance on voluntary means, and to resist the temptation to rely on governmental institutions to create religious conviction.

During debate the Greeks threatened to pull out, Negroes responded to other action with high praise. It was not a United Nations meeting. In view was not the East River but the Hudson. The site was New York City’s Riverside Church hard by the Interchurch Center in Morningside Heights. It was the regular June meeting of the policy-making General Board of the National Council of Churches, and the usual placid air of the assembly had been thrust aside by cleavage-revealing debate which bore the threat of disruption of the body politic.

Waging a strong battle against long odds was retiring Union Seminary President Henry Van Dusen, who is becoming in some respects a prodding NCC conscience that sometimes prevails but often as not doesn’t. Allied preeminently with him was New York attorney and board member Charles Rafael, who painted with vivid strokes the Greek Orthodox viewpoint in his role as representative of absent Archbishop Iakovos, primate of North and South America.

At issue was a proposed NCC statement opposing devotional religious acts in public schools. Dr. Van Dusen strenously attacked the document for two “inexcusable” omissions: the realities of God and of truth. “The premise that lies behind this document,” he charged, “is that we are not a religious people, that religion is a past phenomenon of history and does not have a vital role in the education of a child for life.” He opposed the document’s endorsement of the United States Supreme Court Regents’ prayer ruling.

Yale Divinity School’s dean emeritus Luther A. Weigle called for revamping of the statement to eliminate misunderstanding of its content, and asked: “Do we need to beat the Supreme Court to it on its decisions?” (The revamped form did—see News, p. 29. The General Board has been criticized for not earlier issuing a statement on this vexing problem which creates divisions that cut across theological and denominational lines.) Concerning the NCC statement, Charles Rafael read in behalf of Archbishop Iakovos a memorandum which noted repeated references in the press to the statement as “representing efforts ‘by leaders of major Protestant and Orthodox churches to prepare the public for calm acceptance of a Supreme Court ruling which they expect will hold religious exercises in public schools unconstitutional.’ ”

For Orthodoxy this seemed a calm before the storm: “We find this disturbing.… We are not at all certain that this represents the Orthodox point of view, or the point of view any religious body should take. The NCC policy statement is apparently largely based on a forecast of results of two [Supreme Court] cases.… The results may well be as our policy statement assumes, but why should we capitulate so readily be forehand? Why should we play so directly into the hands of those whose interest it is to have Bible readings and prayers banned, when this is not in the true Christian and God-abiding interest?

“Our policy statement says that ‘major faith groups have not agreed on a formulation of religious beliefs common to all.’ But all sincere faiths must agree on belief in and dependence on God. If every mention of this profound truth is to be stricken from our educational processes, especially in our Elementary Schools, the loss will be great and eventually fatal.…

“… Should a well-intentioned desire to separate devotional religion from education go so far as to ban the mention of God in teaching, and to cast disrepute on the one great work which best pays tribute to and encourages respect for God?… This is not a case of a particular religious doctrine, which no man has a right to try to impose on another. It may well be a struggle involving whether or not the concept of God is to be fore most in our civilization, or whether step by step it is to be renounced. Therefore we believe that any policy statement by the NCC on this subject should exercise the most extreme care that it is not interpreted to be leading, however subtly and ‘progressively,’ to the repudiation of God Himself.”

After reading the memorandum, Rafael indicated that NCC adoption of the policy statement could mean Greek Orthodox withdrawal from the council. (A board member said later that Iakovos’ objections were based on a reading of preliminary documents rather than the policy statement itself.)

Van Dusen’s motion for revision of the statement passed, and the modified resolution was presented on the following day. The final draft added a preamble which acknowledged God as the ground of truth and stated in an exploratory mood that “the place of religion in public education must be worked out” within the “recognition of the prevailingly positive attitude of the American people as a whole toward religion.…” The pronouncement acknowledged the valid educational purpose of the Bible, especially in those studies “related to character development,” but also gave assent to “the wisdom as well as the authority” of last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the use of the Regents’ prayer in New York State. This endorsement of the Supreme Court ruling was much less direct than it had been in the original document. The revised resolution concluded with a query as to whether possibilities should not be investigated “for more adequate provision within the public schools of opportunities for the study of religion where desired, fully within the constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and of religious expression.”

Van Dusen indicated reluctant approval of this revised pronouncement and expressed the hope, somewhat optimistically, that Iakovos would be satisfied. Rafael, the Greek Orthodox representative, abstained in the final voting however (the motion passed 65–1), and by week’s end the Greek Orthodox Church had formally dissociated itself from the NCC pronouncement.

As the nation smoldered under the increasing tide of racial violence, the General Board moved in this area to urge member churches to effective social action, “even costly action that may jeopardize the organizational goals, and institutional structures of the Church, and may disrupt any fellowship that is less than fully obedient to the Lord of the Church.”

In a series of specific proposals, the church leaders voted to set up a twenty-five-man Commission on Religion and Race “to focus the concern, the conviction, the resources and the action of member communions” and “to provide a national interdenominational liaison with inter faith and other concerted efforts.” The authorization to the commission included the encouragement of direct action in places of particular crisis and the mobilization of church resources to advance racial equality both within and without the participating denominations. Accompanying measures authorized the council to invite Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders to joint action and admonished members of the board “to engage personally in negotiations, demonstrations, and other direct action in particular situations of racial tension.” Such demonstrations, according to Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, who gave the report, could include “being on the receiving end of a fire hose.”

During the two-hour discussion which preceded adoption of the pronouncement, several Negro delegates rose from the floor to affirm their belief that the measures were a significant advance for the policies of the NCC and would doubtless find an echo in the hearts of Negro Christians throughout the nation.

Turning aside a strong protest from the broadcasting industry, the National Council challenged the course of television and radio broadcasting by urging that federal control over local and network advertising and programming be extended. The report, which highlighted “a disturbing lack of candor on the part of communications officials and commercial sponsors,” was seen by the National Association of Broadcasters, represented by Vice-President Paul B. Comstock, to “favor extreme changes in our system of governmental regulation of broadcasting” and to favor action which would “greatly increase federal control in the vital area of freedom of expression on the air.” A request by the NAB to table or defer action on the pronouncement was defeated by a majority vote, and the pronouncement was adopted despite some debate on whether or not the council should act due to the small number then in attendance.

At a testimonial dinner on the first night of the gathering friends and delegates paid tribute to Dr. Roy G. Ross, the retiring general secretary of the National Council of Churches, who has held this position since 1954. He is succeeded by Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, associate general secretary of the NCC since 1958, formerly associate executive secretary of the council’s Division of Christian Life and Work.

The World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order meets in Montreal for its fourth world Conference on Faith and Order from July 12 to 26. The discussions will indicate what new doctrinal guidelines ecumenical scholars influential in the four international theological commissions are proposing, and the resultant decisions may influence the ecumenical strategy for church unity during the remainder of this decade.

The conference sends its conclusions to member churches “for study.” Prevalent theological positions often supply the presuppositions of the denominational press, and sometimes become swiftly determinative for denominational commitments at the hierarchical level. But more often they are wholly ignored by ecclesiastical machinists who wish to “get on with the real business of merger.” A standing indictment of the World Council, now voiced even by some of its earlier enthusiasts, is that merger more than mission, or more than message, has come to absorb some of the movement’s main energies. The political cadre regards doctrinal considerations as marginal if not disruptive, and even uses its favored position to advocate controversial policies in international affairs quite outside the Church’s competence and mandate.

A look at the agenda of the Montreal conference indicates the overwhelming task before the delegates, who cannot hope to arrive at truly definitive positions in two weeks of discussion. The sessions can give a barometer reading of the theological climate in 1963. Ministers wanting to keep abreast of the times or to set the modern mood in the framework of post-Reformation dialogue will be satisfied with this.

But some confessional churches voice increasing demand for more earnest doctrinal discussion, for less programmatic and more systematic theology, and for a more definitive theological commitment by the World Council itself. They are distressed to see even some ecumenically active bishops calling for fuller confessional emphasis while they show little indignation over heresy, fail to watch over the doctrinal fidelity of their communions, and even fete and honor churchmen who are radical opponents of biblical theology. This they cannot excuse on the ground that many of these church leaders themselves had extreme liberal teachers. Nor do they understand why ecclesiastical leaders who speak of the rediscovery of the Church’s confession, or of the doctrine of the Reformation, or of the Bible as the Word of God, should at the same time allow the influence of religious philosophers like Bultmann and Tillich to run rampant in the seminaries and life of the churches. Why, for example, do Bultmannians occupy so many German pulpits? In New Delhi, WCC adopted a “trinitarian basis,” but it does not on that account exclude churches tolerant of unitarian views.

If the tragedy of many Protestant churches is not only their loss of the sola scriptura, sola fide, and sola gratia, but the loss as well of other basic doctrinal elements of New Testament Christianity, perhaps Montreal will indicate whether this has also become the continuing tragedy of WCC, and if so what is to be done about it. Is there any heresy within member churches of which the World Council is intolerant? Much more is at stake in the matter of doctrinal purity than the Church’s inner health and peace. For whenever the line between Christian truth and heresy is blurred, the borderline between Christianity and the non-Christian religions soon becomes indistinct, also.

The Lutheran World Federation’s theological quarterly Lutheran World suggested recently that the Faith and Order movement might better achieve its purposes if it were not so closely linked to the World Council. In part such a proposal arises as a reaction to the danger of propagating and superimposing positions which really lack rootage in the uniting churches. But it also reflects a protest against disproportionate attention being given the “younger churches,” and the consequent breakdown of sixteenth-century Reformed emphases. At any rate the ecumenical movement’s weak confessional basis is a source of widespread dissatisfaction among those who insist that the Church cannot be the Church if it is not evangelical and biblical.

An equally insistent problem facing Faith and Order is the precise definition of the World Council’s ecclesiological significance. The confusion and contradiction on this point among WCC constituents is so extensive as to be either ludicrous or tragic. Twentieth-century churchmen have conceived in the World Council a species of ecumenical reality over whose essential character they increasingly differ. Unaffiliated evangelicals—who are being urged to identify themselves—tend more and more to regard such invitations in the “pig in a poke” category while WCC’s “church status” remains obscure.

Many ecumenical spokesmen insist that the World Council has no significance whatever as church. The Toronto document declares that WCC is a “fellowship of churches,” and hence implies that the council has no church-status of its own. With the sentiments of Bishop Dibelius (interviewed elsewhere in this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY) many ecumenical leaders concur, some for reasons quite different from Dr. Dibelius’. The Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches emphasize with the Roman Catholic Church that apart from apostolic succession and the hierarchy there is no true church. Many Protestant churchmen, on the other hand, simply deplore the prospect of any dynamic merger wherein a single super-structure (particularly if hierarchical and sacerdotal) swallows up all plurality of order.

FAITH AND ORDER AGENDA

The major study documents of the Montreal conference will be the reports of four international theological commissions which have been at work for the past decade. These reports, which have been issued to participants for advance study, deal with Christ and the Church, Tradition and Traditions, Worship, and Institutionalism.

Study at the conference itself will be organized in five sections: The Church in the Purpose of God; Scripture, Tradition, and Traditions; the Redemptive Work of Christ and the Ministry; Worship and the Oneness of Christ’s Church; and All in Each Place: The Process of Growing Together.

A review of these five sections issued in advance to participants suggests that some of the contemporary ecumenical problems to be discussed by the conference will include the following:

What is the nature and task of the Church? What is the extent of the churches’ agreement on the attributes of the Church: its oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity? What are the chief points of development and tension in the view of the Church among the main traditions of Christendom? And what is the significance of such diverse new forms of Christian community as councils of churches and movements which reject the need for ecclesiastical institutions?

What is the theological meaning of revelation, Scripture, and tradition and their relation to one another? How can this relationship be stated in new forms to avoid use of conventional descriptions? What are the particular problems when church traditions are transplanted from one region to another and how can tension between “daughter” and “mother” churches be resolved?

What is the relation of Christ’s ministry to the Church’s ministry and what is the status and function of the ordained ministry? What current doctrines and practices impede or enhance the ministry?

What is the place of the diaconate in the ministry and what is the attitude of the churches towards the ordination of women to the ministry? (One of the background papers in this section will be a new WCC survey of women in the ministry.)

What are the basic patterns of Christian worship and how can these best reflect the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church? How are recent moves toward liturgical renewal coping with the estrangement of modern man from the transcendent realm? What new guidelines are required for the “indigenization” of worship in both old and new culture? What are the implications for unity of the recognition of one Baptism for all Christians, the character of the Eucharist, the question of intercommunion, and the celebration of the Eucharist at ecumenical conferences.

What are the chief obstacles for advance toward unity “in each place”? What institutional factors impede or advance this unity and what are the racial and ethnic factors which create division? How does the disunity of the Church affect popular concepts of personal and social morality, national politics and international affairs, and even population mobility? What are the “responsible risks” churches should take in seeking unity? How can the great bulk of church members who yearn for unity but who are generally inarticulate in expressing themselves on the issues be educated to become a more potent and intelligent force in moving towards unity?

But if WCC’s “self-understanding” involves a denial of all ecclesiological significance for the movement, there are many signs of impatience and of aspiration toward church-status, particularly on the part of some of the ecumenical hierarchy and salaried staff. More than one observer has complained about the “church politics” of Geneva. There assurances that no super-church is envisaged go hand in glove with ecclesiastical claims made in Lucas Vischer’s article in the Ecumenical Review (1962), that WCC “fulfills some functions of a church which are not fulfilled by the separate churches. For instance, it expresses their universality.… It bears a common witness.…” Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, retiring president of Union Theological Seminary, insists that WCC has at least as much right to be called a church as any of the historical denominations. To this point councils of churches have not normally had creeds, nor have they directly determined theological issues, nor administered sacraments or ordination. Dr. Van Dusen’s proposal would change all that. If the World Council is assigned ecclesiological significance, that same moment other councils of churches—national, state, regional, local—will assert a churchly character.

Currently there is before the General Board of the National Council of Churches a general policy statement on its nature and structure affirming that “the Council is not a church.” The NCC study commission is expected to register in Montreal the present view of its present majority that “councils of churches are not and should not claim to be churches.” Such a claim, it is contended, would not further the cause of Christian unity, but merely add a new denomination or denominations to the spectrum.

In an article in Christianity and Crisis (March 4, 1963), Dr. Truman B. Douglas, a member of the General Board, asks nonetheless whether “councils of churches must forever be discouraged … from recognizing and taking up their churchly responsibilities.” Dr. Douglas grants that councils of churches “are not the Holy Catholic Church in its wholeness and universality.” Moreover, he lampoons the “artificially generated bugaboo” of a “super-church.” But he finds in the councils a transcendent “super-denominational conscience” and a function far exceeding their original consultative nature. Dr. Douglas asks whether councils of churches may not be a real manifestation of the Church’s unity, a new mode or form of the Church, and he answers affirmatively: “It is my contention that the councils of churches have become new forms of the Church. Obviously they are not the Church; nor is any denomination the Church. But the councils, like the denominations, partake of the nature of the Church, and in some respects do so more fully than any denomination. They can do this because in some areas they are the Church relieved of its insupportable burden and apostasy of dividedness.”

It is probably too much to ask that Montreal tell us what WCC believes—and how it overcomes the apostasy of inclusiveness. But is it too much to expect that Montreal state unambiguously what WCC is—church or non-church, or some entity intelligible (or unintelligible) only in terms of paradox?

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Compulsory Devotions Banned; Bible Retains Classroom Value

Since pagan influences increasingly shape American institutions, it is noteworthy that the Supreme Court set its prohibition of compulsory devotional exercises in the context not of irreligion but of the nation’s religious heritage. The court banned legislated Bible reading and prayer in public schools, and its logic likewise would ban legislated irreligion. Neither majority nor minority should use the machinery of government to implement religious beliefs or unbelief.

The decision did not explicitly cover a principal’s or local teacher’s individual classroom use of Bible reading or prayer, but was somewhat indeterminate. Among students of diverse faiths corporate devotional exercises remain a delicate problem whose solution touches both on free exercise and on church-state separation. Required devotions, sectarian or non-sectarian, however, seem an imprudent and controversial public school activity. Yet atheistic forces are not to exploit the Court ruling. Some group acts of theistic affirmation remain congruent with the nation’s historic political documents.

More important, the ruling allows a role for the Bible and its religious teaching in the instructional program. To prevent the court’s interpretation from encouraging godless education and a secular state—which in its public life always acts as if there were no God—America’s devout masses must now insist that the Bible and our Christian convictions be reflected accurately in the instructional program of our public schools. The classroom is no place to evangelize, whether for atheism or theism. But a student unfamiliar with the Bible remains an outsider to the best ingredients in the American heritage and purpose.

The decision multiplies the responsibility of American parents and churchmen to promote spiritual decision not through the machinery of the state but through voluntary agencies.

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THE FORTUNES OF CHRISTIANITY IN LATIN AMERICA

Interest in Latin America has been generated by the crisis in Cuba and the threat that the Communist take-over will spread. CHRISTIANITY TODAY will devote its July 19 issue to an up-to-the-minute analysis and evaluation of contemporary Christianity south of the United States border.

The phenomenal growth of the evangelical movement (at a rate five times that of the population explosion), the paradoxical relations between Catholics and Protestants, the wild fire spread of Pentecostalism—these and many other significant and timely themes will be treated in a series of area essays by outstanding national and missionary leaders.

Contributing editors will also scrutinize the basic social problems of Latin America from a Protestant perspective. They will point out strengths, weaknesses, and potential of the evangelical movement in lands on their way to becoming the world’s most important secondary power bloc today.

It would be difficult to overstate the contemporary significance of Latin America in either the political or the religious scene. We may be witnessing a new Protestant Reformation.

Assisting in the preparation of the July 19 issue is the Rev. W. Dayton Roberts, assistant general director of the Latin America Mission. He counts over twenty years of intimate acquaintance with the progress of the Gospel in the Ibero-American world. A second-generation missionary, he has authored articles on Communism, Romanism, and the Latin American scene. Other contributors include Dr. Benjamin Moraes, Presbyterian minister and professor of criminal law in Brazil; Dr. Herbert Money, New Zealand-born executive secretary of the Evangelical Council of Peru; Argentine evangelist Fernando Vangioni, of the Billy Graham team; Dr. Hector Valencia, headmaster of a large secondary school in Colombia; Dr. R. Kenneth Strachan, general director of the Latin America Mission; Dr. Gonzalo Baez-Camargo, distinguished Mexican educator; Dr. Wilton M. Nelson, rector of the Latin American Bible Seminary in San José, Costa Rica; and the Rev. Rubén Lores, pastor of the Templo Biblico Church of the same city.

The special Latin America issue represents the continuation of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S series of analytical studies of the state of Christianity overseas.

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Evers’ Murder Signals Eventual Burial Of Segregation

Medgar Evers’ murder marked a turn in the civil rights struggle. Southern spokesmen openly deplored the NAACP leader’s snipe-murder, rightly refused to blend the States’ rights cause with a murder mentality, and stressed the South’s traditional hospitality toward the Negro. They noted too that political leftist approval of mob pressure against law inevitably implies a wave of counter-lawlessness.

The sneak gunshot that silenced Evers discloses an anti-Negro tide running deeper than States’ rights currents. States’ rightists have shown a weak sense of duty to national law alongside their legitimate protest against mounting federal power. Obstructing constitutionally guaranteed rights supplies no durable assist to States’ rights but makes them an excuse for irresponsibility. In respect to civic rights a state goes either color-blind or constitution-blind. States’ rightists have much to deplore about integrationists’ methods of advancing the Negro cause, and equally much to regret about their ambiguous objectives. They resent mob demonstrations that flout local statutes, the Washington political approval of mob clamor, the promotion of coercive formulas in the absence of supportive community con science. They long warned integrationists that lawless ness breeds lawlessness, and pleaded for juridical procedures rather than revolutionary techniques.

Nonetheless Evers’ murder haunts the conscience of more and more Americans with the conviction that the midnight hour has struck in the clamor for full Negro rights. President Kennedy’s direct personal appeal to voluntary interests has come late, after complicating and divisive political pressures, but mistakes in theory and technique must not be made a ground of inaction. More is at stake than Negro rights (there are no “Negro” rights) and Christian virtue (justice is another’s due as a man, not as a Christian only). Human integrity is at a judgment bar on the American scene. And the Christian citizen had better consider himself doubly obliged to protest injustice and promote justice, or a sharp cutting edge of his religion will rust away.

Regrettably, liberal propagandists clouded the air by their ambiguous cliché of full integration (including “total equality” and racial intermarriage). Although extremists continue to foment discontent, wise Negro leaders espouse more sensible objectives: equal opportunities in public affairs, public education, public employment, public housing, and use of public facilities, especially. No Southern city has desegregated schools, parks, theaters, restaurants, hotels, and swimming pools as swiftly as has Washington, D. C., yet some Negro spokesmen warn of impending pro-integration violence in the nation’s capital. Washington is now a symbol of large American cities whose balance may shift from the white race. Negroes constitute 56 per cent of the population and have opportunity to demonstrate whether they can carry the responsibility for public safety and rise above race discrimination.

President Kennedy now emphasizes that race solutions are moral more than legislative. Yet in the peculiar political idiom of the times he trumpets that violence is the only alternative to the legislation he advocates. Pressures to force all businessmen to serve all persons promise to carry the debate beyond States’ rights to private property issues. Senator Richard B. Russell emphasizes: “The outstanding distinction between a government of free men and a socialistic or communistic state is the fact that free men can own and control property, whereas statism denies property rights.”

May God grant community leaders facing the problem of neighbor-rights understanding and courage. What the Negro needs now is not more laws—indispensable as these may be—but more room in the white man’s heart. That need is “as old as the Scriptures.” And it is uncomplicated by coercion of private property whose political overtones are highly debatable.

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