If The Foundations Are Weak?

The Challenge to Reunion: The Blake Proposal Under Scrutiny, edited by Robert McAfee Brown and David H. Scott (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 292 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This book is a symposium devoted to analysis of the Blake-Pike reunion proposal from several different angles. In some cases the essays are historical, in others denominational, in others again sociological, and in a final group theological. Dr. Blake himself contributes a closing reconsideration in which he expresses confidence that the suggested plan has stood up under examination. Useful appendices contain the original sermon, Dr. Pike’s reply, and some basic Anglican documents relevant to the situation. Brief but helpful bibliographies are given after each essay.

Inevitably in a work of this kind there is a certain amount of overlapping. Although the standard of thought and writing is generally high, there is also an unavoidable inequality of treatment. Attention may be drawn to a few of the more outstanding essays. The discussion of the New Testament church by Bruce Metzger is an excellent survey. No less impressive is the review of the question of reunion during and after the Reformation by John T. McNeill. Robert Nelson has contributed an able and interesting essay on recent Asiatic schemes, such as that of South India. Markus Barth plays effectively the role of “the adversary” by putting some awkward and searching questions on the priesthood of the laity and the theology of the sacraments, though he himself does not supply any alternative answers.

What is the general impression from a perusal of these various essays? On the whole, they seem to be generally in favor of the proposal. Difficulties are necessarily seen at various levels, and there is question as to the ultimate goal or value of such a merger. But Dr. Blake is right enough in his conclusion that the proposal stands up reasonably well to the many-sided analysis to which it is subjected. This seems to be the view of the editors also in their introductory review of the enterprise.

Nevertheless, it is significant that endorsement is weakest at the theological level. Indeed, it is a striking fact that there is so little theological discussion in the present volume. One suspects that the reason is that the proposal itself contains so little theology anyway. It is essentially the construct of the ecclesiastical man of affairs. It is almost an ecclesiastical equivalent of the business merger. It does not even invite real theological discussion. Like so much of our modern practice, it bypasses biblical and doctrinal issues as though they were merely theoretical and obstructive. Even the invocation of the theme of death and resurrection is here given a practical application—the churches are to die to their present structures and to reemerge in a new form. No guarantee is given that the new form will in fact be a “resurrected” form in the true sense, i.e., that it will not be conformed to the world but will be transformed by the renewing of the mind. In other words, neither the proposal nor the bulk of this able and interesting symposium really comes to grips with the basic question of the nature and goal and structure of true Christian unity.

It is at this point that the proposal really demands profound and detailed analysis. It is also at this point, as Dr. Barth’s essay suggests, that the ultimate inadequacy of the proposal, and the peril of its attempted application, could well be revealed.

GEOFFREY W. BROMILEY

And Your Cloak Also

Spurgeon: The Early Years (1834–1859), a revised edition of his autobiography (Banner of Truth Trust, 1962, 500 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by Godfrey Robinson, Minister, Main Road Baptist Church, Romford, Essex, England.

Some of us still have on our shelves the cumbrous four-volume edition of C. H. Spurgeon’s autobiography, compiled by his wife and private secretary and long since out of print. Large books, like long sermons, are no longer fashionable, and the Banner of Truth Trust has reprinted the original Parts I and II as a single and most attractive volume (Parts III and IV to come later). A certain amount of non-biographical material has been omitted, but Spurgeon’s own contributions have been retained practically in full.

Who was this phenomenon? At the age of seventeen he was the pastor of a country congregation meeting in what had been a dovecote at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire. Within five years he had London at his feet. In his final illness the attention of the civilized world was centered on him “in column after column of almost every newspaper.” Opinions about him varied. “The sauciest dog that ever barked in the pulpit” was one.

In these pages Spurgeon lives again, and we are permitted to look deep into his heart. It is all here—the hatreds and jealousies of lesser men, the loneliness of eminence, the robust humor, the astonishing command of language, the passion for his Lord. “In Spurgeon’s heart,” wrote Archibald Brown, one of the “Governor’s” own men, “Jesus stood unapproached, unrivalled.… He was our Lord’s delighted captive.” This handsome volume, so beautifully produced and inexpensively priced, is a delight to handle. The reader will wear out his pencil marking passages worth noting—and quoting. If you feel you cannot afford it, then, as C. H. S. himself might have said, “Sell your waistcoat, and buy it!”

GODFREY ROBINSON

The Demonic

Christ and the Powers, by H. Berkhof (Herald Press [Scottdale, Pa.], 1962, 62 pp., paper, $1.25), is reviewed by John Joseph Owens, Professor of Old Testament Interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

When man’s mind is being pulled in every direction by varying philosophies of life, it is important to see faith as the crowning element of victory and success. Dr. Berkhof, professor of dogmatic and biblical theology in the University of Leiden, wrote Christus en de Machten in 1953. Now Dr. John Howard Yoder provides for us a very readable and clear English translation.

The central theme is an interpretation and explanation of the meaning of “powers” as found in Pauline thought. In Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians, Paul speaks of “principalities” and “powers.” The author does not make specific modern definitions or identifications of these powers. But in general terms he describes the biblical denunciation of the powers as the Old Testament prophet would denounce Baalism. The general approach is that any influence or power which sets itself over against Christianity would be classed as one of the powers. It is from this thesis that Dr. Berkhof draws the title Christ and the Powers, inasmuch as the entire booklet is devoted to Paul’s use of the terms.

In this age of historical and demonstrable powers, we are prone to put theology into one area and everyday life into another. This small paperback book speaks out for the validity of the Christian faith as over against the “powers” of Communism, secularism, nihilism, and so on. Dr. Berkhof speaks of the powers as belonging to the area of Paul’s view of the world instead of to his theology.

JOHN JOSEPH OWENS

Fair Presentation

New Testament Theology, by Frank Stagg (Broadman, 1962, 361 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Merrill C. Tenney, Dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

“Biblical theology” has come into its own once more, and writers of all schools of theological thought are offering their contributions. New Testament Theology is written by a Baptist who represents the more conservative wing of recent writers. Basing his work on the text of the New Testament, he has written a classified summary of its doctrinal content for classroom teaching. Although he does not attempt a philosophical articulation of theology, he follows a logical progression beginning with “The Bible: Its Nature and Purpose” (which is the medium of revelation), and then proceeding to “The Plight of Man as Sinner,” “The Christology of the New Testament” (God’s answer to sin in Christ), “The Doctrine of Salvation,” “The Death and Resurrection of Jesus,” and “The Kingdom of God” (which embraces the purpose and outcome of salvation). Following these are several chapters dealing with the Church—its ordinances, ministry, and ethics, with a concluding chapter on “Eschatology: The Goal of History.”

The book is a fair representation of the total scope of New Testament theology. The discussion of the nature of sin and the treatment of the person of Christ are quite thorough and satisfactory. The author endeavors to let Scripture speak for itself without minimizing or exaggerating exegetical problems, and he frankly confesses inconclusiveness on some points, such as “baptism for the dead” (1 Cor. 15:29). In regard to this latter problem he suggests that Paul meant by “the dead” the “old man” who is put to death that the new man might take his place. One wonders whether this were the precedent that Paul had in mind when he made his argumentative appeal to the Corinthians, however.

Reading for Perspective

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

★ A Man Spoke, A World Listened, by Paul L. Maier (McCraw-Hill, $4.95). A son tells the life story of the late Walter A. Maier, whose voice on the Lutheran Hour for many years sent the Gospel around the world.

★ The Last Judgment, by ]ames P. Martin (Eerdmans, $4). A historical study to discover whether respect for biblical authority—or something else—determined the understanding of the Last Judgment in Christian thought.

★ The Church’s Use of the Bible, edited by D. E. Nineham (S.P.C.K., 21s.). Eight English scholars investigate the way the Bible has been viewed and handled at various periods in the history of the Church.

The teaching of the New Testament is presented in the light of contemporary thought. Authorities quoted belong almost wholly to the last two decades, and their contributions are evaluated by the text of the New Testament itself. The author expresses freely his theological convictions by differing with others: “The New Testament knows no ‘irresistible grace’ ” (p. 84); “ ‘Justification’ is the creative work of God in which he is making man upright,” for it is more than “a state of acceptance with God” (p. 95); “Reconciliation is God’s own work in restoring man to proper relationship with himself and other persons” (p. 104), in contrast to the idea of appeasement. Some new material on baptism is supplied from pre-Christian Jewish practices (pp. 205–12).

In two or three particulars the reader may not be perfectly satisfied with this book. Dr. Stagg’s statement of the inspiration of the Bible seems somewhat equivocal. “The writer was not concerned to discuss the nature or manner of inspiration. His concern, beyond affirming the fact of inspiration, is to stress the purpose of the God-inspired Scriptures” (p. 3). Unquestionably he affirms the unique authority of the New Testament, but whether it is the truth or a witness could be defined more sharply.

Eschatological teaching could also be more detailed. The author combines the approach of “realized eschatology” and of traditional futurism by interpreting parousia as meaning both Christ’s presence now with his people and a “real coming of Christ to His people” (p. 312) which is still future. The reconciliation of these two concepts needs a fuller exegesis of the New Testament than can be given in the limited pages of this book.

Stagg says that “the New Testament … has much to say about the Holy Spirit” (p. 39), but he does not develop this important topic adequately. Although there are several references to the Holy Spirit under various headings, no one of these does justice to the doctrine.

This work is eminently readable. It contains some fine epigrammatic expressions, such as: “The New Testament offers no salvation which leaves as optional the Lordship of Christ.” Preachers will be able to profit considerably from its word studies, and the general outline will be useful as an index to the sources of Christian theology.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Who’S Listening?

Breakthrough: A Public Relations Guide for Your Church, by Howard B. Weeks (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1962, 320 pp., $5), is reviewed by David E. Kucharsky, News Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Very few pastors will take the time to read this book. That’s unfortunate, because for many it would spell the difference between mediocrity and success in their churches’ impact. Public relations, strangely enough, still has a bad image in many clergy minds. They think the concept itself is something deceptive, or else they feel public relations is a slippery ideal that you can never really get your hands on.

Once the church had a voice as loud as any other in the community. Today it has been largely drowned out by television, radio, periodicals, mail ads, billboards, flyers, packaging, and a wide assortment of more subtle influences. Everyone wants to say something, but nobody wants to listen. Churches are saying more than they ever did, but there’s also more chaff in the air than ever. The result is a record amount of static and probably an all-time low in effective reception.

This author recognizes implicitly that churches have not faced up to the problems of contemporary communications competition. Although directed primarily to Seventh-day Adventists, his principles have wide applicability. The book is highly readable, down to earth, and packed full of illustrations and practical suggestions.

The fact that the book is a product of Seventh-day Adventists is itself a commendable feature, because this group with its special image problems has one of the most effective public relations systems of any denomination. Weeks himself was formerly international chief of Adventist public relations and is now engaged in doctoral communications study. An unusually gifted young man, he could easily pull down a top salary along Madison Avenue. He has chosen instead to devote his talents to his church, and in this book he has given us the most thorough and practical guide to church public relations available.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Reverent Neoorthodoxy

Harper’s Bible Commentary, by William Neil (Harper & Row, 1963, 544 pp., $5.95; also by Hodder and Stoughton, 1962, 15s., under title One Volume Bible Commentary), is reviewed by John H. Gerstner, Professor of Church History, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This is a unique and interesting one-volume Bible commentary. First, it proceeds not verse by verse or even chapter by chapter, but, as it were, thought by thought, epoch by epoch. Ideally it calls for the simultaneous reading of the Bible, which is the goal at which the writer has aimed.

Second, Neil combines popular writing with deft critical touches. In a few sure and facile strokes he is able to paint the whole JEDP canvas and three “Isaiah”s, for example. Without any learned digressions our author brings his readers immediately up to date on the results of prevailing modern criticism and then, with remarkable ease, relates the Bible story in that framework. What Wellhausen, Barth, Bultmann, Noth, and others have tried to do for the scholar, Neil offers to the general reader.

Our third observation is a warning often uttered by another commentator, John Calvin. Beware of separating the Word of God from the Bible. If the Bible is not to be depended upon as the Word of God, are men not inevitably obliged to make their own conjectures into the Word of God?

We do not approve of the position of this book, but we do recommend its reading for what it is: an excellent, up-to-date statement of the Bible as seen through the eyes of a competent, reverent neoorthodox scholar writing skillfully for Everyman.

JOHN H. GERSTNER

Less Pithy

A Commentary on the Holy Bible, Volume II: Psalms–Malachi, by Matthew Poole (Banner of Truth Trust, 1962, 1030 pp., 30s.), is reviewed by A. Skevington Wood, Evangelist-at-large, York, England.

Poole was one of the ministers ejected from the Anglican church in 1662 as being unready to declare his unfeigned assent and consent to the contents of the Prayer Book. His abridgment of the Crtici Sacri (a monumental encyclopedia of exegesis) equipped him to launch out as a commentator in his own right. His posthumous Annotations, as they were originally called, deserve to rank alongside the better-known work of Matthew Henry. Poole is less pithy in homiletical appositeness, but more exact and informed in his close treatment of the text.

A. SKEVINGTON WOOD

Can It Conserve?

In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, by Frank S. Meyer (Regnery, 1962, 179 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Irving E. Howard, Assistant Editor, Christian Freedom Foundation, New York, New York.

In this age of conformity, a reader looking for intellectual stimulation will not find it in the tired, worn-out phrases of the liberal collectivist literature, but will be rewarded by reading the books emanating from the ferment of conservative thought. Frank S. Meyer’s In Defense of Freedom is such a book. It is critical, not only of the liberal collectivist attempt to destroy liberty but also of the New Conservative inadequate defense of freedom. Thus the book is an example of the conservative movement’s ability to be self-critical. Since Meyer is a senior editor of National Review, such a quality is not surprising.

The author refutes one of the most popular fallacies of our time; namely, that a democratic government is “all of us.” This fallacy, he points out, confuses the power to pass upon who shall govern with the power to govern. Says Meyer: “Even if annual elections changed the governors constantly and men were forbidden to succeed themselves in power, the essential separation of the state from the rest of social existence would still remain.… To grasp this elemental distinction is the first condition of a theory of the state.”

While agreeing with Meyer’s criticism of liberal collectivism, the orthodox Protestant may not give unqualified agreement to his conception of man as a “rational, volitional, autonomous individual.”

Nevertheless, the issue he raises is one which orthodox Protestants should face and—if possible—resolve: “Can the new and rising conservative leadership release and guide the pent-up energies, the intuitive understanding of their heritage, the love of freedom and virtue in the hearts of the American people, before the converging forces of cloying collectivism at home and armed collectivism abroad destroy the very meaning of freedom?”

IRVING E. HOWARD

A Jab For The Reader

Studies in New Testament Ethics, by William Lillie (Westminster, 1963, 189 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Presbyterian Lillie, since 1953 a lecturer in the University of Aberdeen, presents fifteen essays on ethics according to the New Testament. Included are essays on the New Testment’s attitude toward law and justice, the state, wealth, work, children, and marriage and divorce.

He is a strong believer in the reality and function of natural law. Although he recognizes the limitations of natural law, he regards the Old Testament Holiness Codes as later developments of legal traditions which can be traced back beyond the earliest limits of biblical revelation. He urges natural law as the common element of all codes of morality, and as the common ground making possible Christian and non-Christian cooperation in social action. The same motif emerges in his claim that agape sublimates and transforms eros in the Christian man, and in the claim that agape is reflected even among animals, as when a mother sacrifices herself for her young. At the same time he contends that there is a unique, mysterious, noumenal element in God’s summons to obedience and service, an element that makes Christian ethics transcend good and evil as mere moral constructs.

While at many points his doctrinal and ethical positions are deeply evangelical, his view of the Bible as revelation is something else. He can smile at certain biblical stories, facilely declare Paul to be in error, and yet appeal to little-known texts for proof of the rightness of his positions with a confidence that expects no rebuttal.

Nonetheless, within the ambiguities of his conception of biblical revelation, he can endorse the most unpopular Christian positions; he can also shock the reader by what he challenges and rejects, and by his fresh insights.

I doubt whether Lillie’s ethics is consistent within the terms of his own logic. Yet his razor-edged analysis, his detection of the weak spots in other current ethical positions, and the happy unexpected turns of his thought serve the needed function of exposing those all too simple and easy codifications of ethics in which man is more in control of New Testament ethical imperatives than controlled and challenged by them.

The essays are lucid, the thought and style clear and often sharp enough to stab the reader out of an easy ethical complacency, into the necessity of doing some ethical reflection of his own.

JAMES DAANE

New Approach

The Home Front of Jewish Missions, by Albert Huisjen (Baker, 1962, 222 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by H. Leo Eddleman, President, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This book is well documented and presents a thorough historical background of the delicate subject of Jewish-Christian relations. Perhaps as no other book, this volume gives the attitude of Jewish people towards the polemic between the Church and Judaism as it is revealed in the extrabiblical Jewish literature, including the Talmud, Mishnah, and others.

One of the book’s strong points is its tactful analysis of the failures of all approaches on the part of Christians toward Jews up until now. The author is fair but accurate in dealing with such items as the false “traditions” about Jesus, the Inquisition, and the affect of secularism on the total picture of Jewish-Christian relations.

By virtue of decades of experience in the field, this author is able to point to the basic principles of a new approach to Jewish people, particularly to the parish or local church level for reaching the Jewish heart.

H. LEO EDDLEMAN

Book Briefs

Institutionalism and Church Unity, edited by Nils Ehrenstrom and Walter G. Muelder (Association, 1963, 378 pp., $6.50). A study by 16 scholars from all over the world of theological-sociological relationships as they exist in ecclesiastical institutionalism, in biblical thought, and in other aspects of institutionalism. Prepared by the Study Commission on Institutionalism, Commission on Faith and Order, World Council of Churches.

Preaching on Old Testament Themes, edited by C. E. Lemmon (Bethany Press, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50). Although the book claims to be a series of sermons on Old Testament themes and to present “a sampling of the best in contemporary Disciple preaching,” its sermons, while highly readable, are generally superficial and frequently unbiblical. In most Christ is scarcely visible, and in many there is a social concern with but short biblical rootage.

Isaiah, by Elmer A. Leslie (Abingdon, 1963, 288 pp., $5). Isaiah (First, Deutero, and Trito) chronologically rearranged (second verse treated almost 100 pages after the first), translated, and interpreted.

Heart of a Stranger, by Lon Woodrum (Zondervan, 1962, 136 pp., $2.50). A religious novel about a bank robbery and a conversion to Christianity which some will thoroughly enjoy and about which others will say with one of its characters: “Yucca juice.”

The Epistles to the Thessalonians, by Harold J. Ockenga (Baker, 1962, 142 pp., $2.75). Helpful comments and insights on the key texts and motifs of this epistle.

Knight’s Treasury of Illustrations, by Walter B. Knight (Eerdmans, 1963, 451 pp., $5.95). A better-than-average collected mass of illustrations and poems, facts, statistics (some out of date), observations, and jokes, of use to Christian speakers.

World Without Want, by Paul G. Hoffman (Harper, 1962, 144 pp., $3.50). Arguing that it is now for the first time possible to eliminate poverty the world over, Hoffman (of Marshall Plan fame) pleads that the economically advanced countries should invest in foreign aid to the world’s 100 underdeveloped countries. Such aid, he says, is morally right and economically profitable, and politically is the only expedient way to avoid explosive revolution in a world where two-thirds of the people daily earn only the equivalent of a half loaf of bread.

Christian Education as Engagement, by David R. Hunter (Seabury, 1963, 128 pp., $3). This book sets forth the theological and educational foundations of the Episcopal Church’s “new curriculum” which has aroused a storm of both praise and protest. For the educator.

Daily Life Prayers for Youth, by Walter L. Cook (Association, 1963, 95 pp., $1.75). Prayers (very like sermonettes) which encourage thought of God in the nooks and crannies of teen-age life.

The Handbook of Public Prayer, edited by Roger Geffen (Macmillan, 1963, 204 pp., $5.50). Nearly 1,000 prayers gathered from Scripture and diverse Christian traditions of all ages for use on public occasions.

The Apocrypha (University Books, 1963, 238 pp., $12.50). A facsimile of the famous Nonesuch edition of 1924. A thing of beauty and fine craftsmanship.

The Day Camp Program Book, by Virginia W. Musselman (Association, 1963, 384 pp., $7.95). In a grand manner what it claims to be.

Das Wesen Des Reformatorischen Christentums, by Emanuel Hirsch (Walter de Gruyter & Co. [Genthiner Str. 13, Berlin W 30], 1963, 270 pp., 18 German Marks). A teeth-in-it kind of discussion of the central affirmations of the Reformation.

The Believer’s Unbelief, by Roy Pearson (Thomas Nelson, 1963, 175 pp., $3.95). The book’s best example of its title is the author’s exceedingly low view of the Old Testament, whose God is “terrible,” “immoral,” and of “steady bitterness.” As men “struggled slowly upward,” says the author, “God revealed himself in surer form to them.” This book is part of the disease, not the cure.

That the World May Believe, by Hans Küng (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 149 pp., $3). Küng writes ten letters to a Roman Catholic university student and in both style and substance speaks to the personal and theological problems of such a student in the modern world.

This Before Architecture, by Edward S. Frey (Foundation Books [122 Old York Road, Jenkintown, Pa.], 1963, 127 pp., $3.50). Six addresses on church architecture by the executive director of the Lutheran Church in America’s Commission on Church Architecture. Theology, not pictorial form and appearance, he contends, should determine the shape of the House of God.

Sermons for Special Days and Occasions, by G. Hall Todd (Baker, 1962, 157 pp., $2.50). Sermons by a well-known Philadelphia Presbyterian for such occasions as Mother’s Day, New Year’s Day, Labor Day, and Bible Sunday, in language biblical and modern.

Out of the Depths, by Helmut Thielicke (Eerdmans, 1962, 89 pp., $2.50). Messages coming out of the context of the war and post-war years, directed to basic human needs.

Natural Law and Modern Society, a symposium (World, 1963, 285 pp., $4). Concerned about the assault of modern positivistic science upon objective natural law, various authors argue that natural law is of the very foundation of our view of jurisprudence, culture, sociology, religion, teleology, and public opinion. Writers include Robert M. Hutchins, John Courtney Murray, S.J., and Harvey (Fail-Safe) Wheeler.

Paperbacks

The New Life, by Allan R. Knight and Gordon H. Schroeder (Chaplaincy Services of American Baptist Convention [164 Fifth Avenue, New York 10] and Chaplains Commission of Southern Baptist Convention [161 Spring St., N.W., Atlanta 3, Ga.], 51 pp.). A Baptist-orientated service personnel manual for a chaplain’s instruction class. Six lessons.

The New Life (The General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel [122 Maryland Ave., N.E., Washington 2, D.C.], 40 pp., $.15). Questions, scriptural texts, and pictures which lay out the way of salvation. Written for servicemen.

Opportunity of a Lifetime (Commission on Chaplains of the National Association of Evangelicals [1405 G St., N.W., Washington 5, D.C.], 23 pp., $.15) and Why Didn’t Somebody Tell Me? (The General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel [address above], 32 pp., $.25). Useful and needed information on how to prepare those about to enter the new, strange life of military service.

Reprints

Sermons on Our Mothers, by Joseph B. Baker (Baker, 1963, 125 pp. $1.95). Christian sentiments about motherhood which can only by sentiment be called sermons. First printed in 1926.

DRAMATIZING THE ISSUE—A drive to transfer students of Roman Catholic parochial schools to public schools gained momentum in Missouri following the state legislature’s rejection of a bill to provide bus transportation for pupils of church-related institutions. Proponents of the campaign said they were acting to “dramatize” the school bus issue. The drive began at Centertown, just outside the state capital at Jefferson City, where Catholic parents registered seventy-five children in the public schools. After a few days, the committee of laymen heading the movement called off their campaign, stating that the “point” of Catholic contribution to Missouri education had been made.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—Representatives of four Lutheran bodies reached agreement last month on a plan to launch a consultative relationship for the study of worship. Some who participated in the talks envisioned a common hymnal and liturgy for all U.S. Lutherans. Represented were the Lutheran Church in America, American Lutheran Church, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

United Presbyterian Board of National Missions is buying ten United Mine Workers’ hospitals. Trustees of the UMW Welfare and Retirement Fund want to close the hospitals, located in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, because of a shortage of funds. United Presbyterian officials plan to transfer ownership and operation to a regional hospital board to enable them to remain open.

National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church encouraged Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger to continue such official duties “as his strength will permit.” Lichtenherger has had to curtail activities because he is suffering from Parkinson’s Syndrome.

An Anglican—Methodist—Presbyterian committee in Nigeria set December, 1965, as target date for the inauguration of a united church in that country. The Anglican diocese of Northern Rhodesia, which had taken part in earlier discussions, announced it had withdrawn “for the present.”

Church of the Brethren dedicated a new $75,000 three-story brick building at New Windsor, Maryland, as a processing center for Protestant relief materials going abroad.

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE—Three evangelical Japanese missionaries to Laos were released last month after several weeks of captivity by Pathet Lao forces. Meanwhile, in neighboring Viet Nam, three American missionaries seized nearly a year ago by Communist Viet Cong guerrillas were still being held.

The two North American churches which lead all others in raising foreign missions funds—Park Street Church of Boston and Peoples Church of Toronto—again attracted well over half a million dollars for the coming year. Both churches climax their missions fund drives at annual spring missionary conventions. The Boston congregation netted $277,468, while the Toronto church counted $245,000 with several days of its convention still remaining.

Decision magazine, monthly publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, began issuing French and German editions this month.

MISCELLANY—U.S. Catholics numbered 43,851,538 at the close of 1962, an increase of 969,372 over the previous year’s tabulation, according to The Official Catholic Directory for 1963. The directory listed 125,670 new converts, the lowest figure given in ten years.

A crown of thorns plaited with barbed wire will dominate the design of a 20-pfennig stamp which the West German postal department will issue to commemorate the eleventh Evangelical Kirchentag this summer.

Church losses from “major fires” in North America totaled more than $6, 900,000 during 1962, double the amount lost in the previous year, according to the National Fire Protection Headquarters Association. Nine church fire: last year were in the “large loss” category (those in which damage amounted to $250,000 or more), seven in the United States and two in Canada.

Roman Catholic Bible Society of Canada announced plans for a campaign “to make the Bible known, loved, and understood.” One of the aims will be to establish the habit among church members of “reading and meditating on the Holy Scriptures at least once a week.”

Noted Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng climaxed a visit to Washington by meeting President Kennedy at the White House.

President Kennedy endorsed a proposal for broad government-financed study into the problems of human fertility and the biology of reproduction. In his press conference statement, however, he backed away from commenting on the proposal of Harvard gynecologist John Rock that there be a worldwide attack on the problem of population control. Rock, a Roman Catholic, is in the midst of a controversy over a book in which he advocates oral contraceptives. He was one of the developers.

U.S. Supreme Court will review the decision of a California court declaring Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer “obscene and utterly without redeeming social importance.” Some observers saw in the court’s decision to consider the case the prospect of a full-dress review of the constitutional meaning of “obscenity” as applied to both books and motion pictures.

United Presbyterians are asked to exercise restraint when the U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision on prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. A statement from Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake and education secretary William A. Morrison warned against “violent and irresponsible” action.

PERSONALIA—Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, retiring as president of Union Theological Seminary, named by the school to a specially created traveling professorship.

Dr. Clement William Welsh appointed director of studies for the College of Preachers and as canon theologian of Washington Cathedral.

Dr. Daniel A. Poling chosen 1963 “Clergyman of the Year” by the Religious Heritage of America, Inc.

Tobe Acker named director of public information for the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

The Rev. A. Gordon Baker, editor of the Anglican Canadian Churchman, elected president of Canadian Church Press.

Dr. Paul S. Rees named editor-in-chief of World Vision Magazine. Dr. Ted Engstrom appointed executive vice-president of World Vision.

Dr. Clarence H. Didden elected president of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America, succeeding Dr. Lowell C. Wendt, who was named first vice-president.

Peter J. Marshall, whose late father was the famed U.S. Senate chaplain and minister of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, named president of the Student Council at Princeton Theological Seminary.

WORTH QUOTING—“Christians of the United States will in my view have to overcome the inner divergence of attitudes and practice where certain groups and individuals invade the sphere of church relations with their passions.”—Archimandrite Pitrium of the Russian Orthodox Church, one of sixteen Soviet churchmen who visited the United States this spring, in a radio report from Moscow.

“If we had less pessimism in the pulpits and more faith in the pews, the church would advance faster.”—Bishop W. Angie Smith, president of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism.

Deaths

DR. THOMAS S. KEPLER, 65, professor of New Testament language and literature at Oberlin College; in Oberlin, Ohio.

DR. W. B. RICKS, 97, former leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; in Nashville, Tennessee.

WILLIAM FLEMING, 70, noted Southern Baptist philanthropist and millionaire oilman; in Fort Worth, Texas.

MARY AUDENTIA SMITH ANDERSON, 91, great-granddaughter of Mormon pioneer Joseph Smith; in Independence, Missouri.

Liberals constitute, as everybody knows, only a small segment of the Southern Baptist Convention. Though in recent years they have been gaining ground, they do not yet have the strength to engage conservatives in frontal doctrinal combat and often work outside convention structures. The major confrontation at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention, held in Kansas City, Missouri, this month, pitched conservative against conservative on the issue of how best to contain liberal advances while maintaining the SBC’s evangelistic momentum.

Chief cohesive force of the SBC is its large missionary program. Present SBC leadership is wary of action which could disrupt this and other virile Southern Baptist cooperative enterprises such as home missions and Sunday School work.

The first half of this year’s convention reflected this mood, and an uneasy calm prevailed. The executive board of the Missouri Baptist Convention had petitioned the SBC to instruct trustees of Kansas City’s Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to proceed with whatever steps are necessary to complete the removal of the “liberalism which is still apparent among some of the faculty at Midwestern.” But to the bitter dismay of some, the petition was withdrawn in the interests of SBC harmony.

In the presidential address which came early in the convention, retiring President Herschel H. Hobbs of Oklahoma City stressed the basic theological unity of Southern Baptists, even while confessing the existence of certain tensions in theology. “Theology is the muscles of our denomination. We should not be using these muscles to bash in one another’s heads.”

But the third day of the four-day meeting produced an eruption of underlying tensions which transformed the early peace into a distant, nostalgic memory. Dr. Hobbs presented a new statement of faith which adhered closely to a 1925 statement (for content, see CHRISTIANITY TODAY News, March 29, 1963 issue). Conclusion of its presentation signaled the start of noisy controversy, the chair being assailed by motions, counter-motions, shouted objections, and pleas for prayer. Chief doctrinal debate centered on historic Baptist emphasis on the local church. Some messengers guarded this concept so zealously that they opposed the statement’s inclusion of a reference to the church beyond this as “the body of Christ which includes all the redeemed of all the ages.” But motion for deletion was heavily defeated. The entire statement of faith was subsequently adopted overwhelmingly with perhaps only 30 of some 13,000 messengers voting no.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

CLOSE RACE DECIDES PRESIDENCY

K. Owen White, London-born pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church, came within three hairbreadths of missing being elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

A youthful pastor, standing in line to nominate White, changed his mind when another Texan was nominated and tried to make a seconding speech. Ruled out of order, he proceeded with his nomination of White.

On the first ballot Carl Bates, Charlotte, North Carolina, pastor, received a near majority of votes in an unusually large field of nine. A runoff with White loomed when Bates made a surprise withdrawal. The convention voted all over again.

Again White was one of the top two candidates. In the ensuing runoff, he was elected by a margin of less than two per cent of the votes cast—4,210 to 4,053 for W. C. Vaught, Little Rock, Arkansas, pastor.

The new SBC president studied at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville (Ph.D., 1934) and was pastor of churches in Washington, D. C., and Little Rock before coming to Houston in 1953. He is Texas Baptist Convention president.

For the first time in its history the SBC elected a woman as one of its two vice presidents: Mrs. R. L. Mathis, immediate past president of the Women’s Missionary Union

Then Midwestern Seminary was thrust once again into the spotlight. Last year’s convention had asked trustees and administrative officers of institutions and agencies to take necessary steps “to remedy at once” situations which threaten faith in the historic accuracy and doctrinal integrity of the Bible. This action arose from controversy centering on a book, The Message of Genesis, by Ralph Elliott, Old Testament professor at Midwestern. He was subsequently dismissed when he refused to withdraw his book from publication though some charge that more liberal professors than Elliott are allowed to remain.

At this year’s convention there were expressions of dissatisfaction with the extent of action by the Midwestern trustees and desire to bid the trustees get on with the job. Hobbs ruled this out of order inasmuch as the SBC’s similar resolution of last year provided for continuing action along these lines and because SBC procedure has always been to let agencies implement principles laid down by conventions. Due process, he indicated, is to replace trustees when dissatisfied with their performance through the regularly-scheduled convention elections. The Midwestern trustee president defended his board but did not wish to answer whether Elliott’s book was within the framework of the board’s principle of recognizing “the historical-critical” approach to the Old Testament. It was voted that all other questions about the seminary be referred to the Midwestern trustees, which as a result of a further vote would be required to bring a progress report to next year’s convention.

Conservatives differed on whether the trustees could or would solve Midwestern’s theological problems. Those who had favored pressing the matter further were heartened by Dr. K. Owen White’s election to the presidency. He had introduced last year’s resolution on sweeping liberalism from the seminaries. Following his election he said his administration’s main thrust would be to

strengthen SBC evangelism and missions. But he indicated he would use his influence to remove liberalism from Baptist seminaries and schools. Said he: “The problem probably should be pressed further at Midwestern.”

Birth Rites

Former President Harry S. Truman exchanged birthday greetings with the Southern Baptist Convention and gave messengers an impromptu lesson in local church autonomy. It was his own 79th birthday and the 118th for the SBC on the day Truman strode into the Municipal Auditorium at Kansas City where the SBC’s annual sessions were being held. The messengers sang “Happy Birthday” to him and he responded with a greeting of his own.

Truman told the convention that there had been “Baptists in my family for four or five generations—free will Baptists—the congregations had control over themselves.” As if to underscore a plea for continued local church autonomy he added, “Baptists are governed from the church up and not the top down, and I think that’s the way the Lord intended.”

Negro Evangelicalism

Negro evangelicals from across the nation met in Los Angeles this month to form a new organization to promote the witness of their race. The Rev. Marvin L. Printis of Pasadena, California, was elected first president.

“We gathered to study the spiritual problems that face us today,” said Dr. Howard O. Jones, an associate of evangelist Billy Graham.

Jones, one of the new organization’s eight directors, stressed that “we do not see this as in competition with the National Association of Evangelicals or any other group.”

Bourgeois Decadence?

U.S. morals sagged in high places this month. Police dogs lunged at Negro demonstrators in Alabama, political experimenters in New Hampshire gave modern America its first state lottery, and the leading contender for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination tried to make divorce and remarriage look respectable.

The bid for equal rights by Negroes in Birmingham began as non-violent mass demonstrations. Police tried to disperse mobs with dogs and water hoses, however, and within a few days the Negroes were counterattacking with rocks, bottles, and brickbats.

The Negroes made their bid with a nominally Christian rationale. They used various Birmingham churches as assembly points. Their effort was spearheaded by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist pastor, an “editor at large” for The Christian Century, and head of the integrationist Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

For a time it appeared that the Negroes had gained a white martyr in the person of William L. Moore, a Baltimore postman who was murdered while walking along an Alabama highway carrying sandwich boards which called for racial equality. It turned out that Moore, a former mental patient, was hardly a model champion for Christian liberties. He had left his wife and child in New York reportedly “to be closer to civil rights groups in Baltimore.” Besides carrying the racial equality placards, he pushed a two-wheel cart with a sign, “Wanted—The Capture of Jesus Christ. He was an Imposter.”

In New Hampshire, the executive and legislative branches of the state government bucked almost solid Protestant clergy opposition to enact the first state-operated lottery in the United States in some seventy years. The sweepstakes program had national impact in more ways than one. Indications were that the lottery would be liable to a 10 per cent federal excise tax. On that basis, the federal government would receive $400,000 of the $4,000,000 proponents claim will be grossed to assist public schools. Governor John W. King said he would seek to have the sweepstakes program ruled tax-exempt.

‘Quiet Revolution’

Social concerns of U.S. religious institutions will be surveyed in an hour-long NBC telecast May 24.

The telecast, dubbed “The Quiet Revolution,” will include opinion samplings on the theology of social concerns as well as on-the-spot coverage of churchmen working in crowded slum districts, aiding narcotics addicts, fighting for the rights of migrant workers, and participating in a freedom ride.

Participants will include President J. Irwin Miller of the National Council of Churches; Albert Cardinal Meyer, Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago; and Rabbi Julius Mark, president of the Synagogue Council of America.

Among those who will be interviewed during the program are Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; Associate Editor Martin E. Marty of The Christian Century; Msgr. George G. Higgins, director of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference; Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame; and Dr. A. Dudley Ward, executive secretary of the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns.

Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord wrote a letter to King saying he considered the day of the enactment of the sweepstakes as “black Tuesday for our nation.”

“This action,” said Lord, “strengthens the Communist charge that we are a morally undisciplined and spiritually depraved people.”

A number of church officials also deplored the racial struggle in Birmingham, among them Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.:

“I saw leashed dogs used to drive these people from the public streets. I saw the representatives of government using force to uphold unjust customs. I felt the indignity of the treatment of American citizens, and I was sick and disgusted.”

The marriage of New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to the freshly divorced Mrs. Margaretta Fitler Murphy prompted disciplinary action against the officiating clergyman, the Rev. Marshall Lee Smith.

The Rev. Joseph Bishop, moderator of the Hudson River Presbytery, said a judicial commission would be elected May 24 to investigate Smith’s action. Bishop cited United Presbyterian constitutional procedure requiring special permission for remarriage of any person divorced less than a year. Smith failed to secure such permission, it was reported.

Smith is a United Presbyterian minister who is pastor of an undenominational church in Pocantico Hills, New York. Rockefeller is a Baptist.

The new Mrs. Rockefeller, as a remarried divorcee, has lost communicant status in the Episcopal Church although she is still a member.

As the Rockefellers honeymooned in Venezuela, the most conspicuous irony was that they were enjoying divorce terms unrecognized by the state over which he is governor.

Nrpc To Rprc

The National Religious Publicity Council voted at its thirty-fourth annual meeting in Chicago last month to change its name to the Religious Public Relations Council. The group, formed in 1929 to promote higher standards in the church communications field, today has more than 600 members in 13 chapters in North America. Although interdenominational in scope with no set creed, in practice it has been exclusively Protestant. Recently there has been talk of admitting Roman Catholics.

The Moral Problem

When the morals of an entire nation begin to crumble, and we find men in politics, in business and even in churches resorting to immoral practices, we may rest assured that some members of the Lord’s church are going to compromise and practice some of these unholy things.

—J. D. Thomas

A regrettable by-product of the Billie Sol Estes scandal was the undeserved embarrassment cast upon the Churches of Christ, the 2,000,000-member movement in which he has been a lay preacher. Hypocrisy hunters had a field day contrasting fraud-infested fertilizer tanks with Estes’ strictures against mixed bathing. Thus the topic¹Selected before the crackdown on Estes, who subsequently made a “public acknowledgment” before his local congregation. for Abilene Christian College’s 1963 “Bible Lectureship,” an annual event which is as close as the Churches of Christ come to holding a denominational convention, was ironically appropriate: “The Christian and Morality.”

Although some fallout from the Estes episode quite naturally landed on the forty-acre Abilene, Texas, campus, lectureship director J. D. Thomas made it clear he was not singling out any one person when he said:

“Every Christian should learn for himself ‘why he should he good’ and he should also be able to speak forthrightly about how one can tell the difference between good and evil.”

The forty-fifth lectureship attracted to Abilene last month some 7,500 Churches of Christ visitors from forty-one states and six foreign countries. Attendance at the five-day series was down slightly from last year, and Thomas said the college would go back to a traditional February date next year in an effort to draw larger crowds.

Abilene President Don H. Morris insists that the lectureships are not “conventions” but rather “teaching and fellowship meetings.” “There is never any kind of resolution or proposal made for churches—Churches of Christ are absolutely autonomous.”

Lectureships are a common event in Churches of Christ and on their college campuses. The Abilene series is perhaps the best known and features dozens of speakers, panel discussions, teaching classes, fellowship dinners, alumni meetings, missionary reports, forums, and musical programs. A tent this year housed church and commercial exhibits.

Churches of Christ have members in all fifty states, but they are predominant in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. They have been experiencing steady growth. Reuel Lemmons, editor of the Firm Foundation, predicted that growth will level off eventually but that strides are still ahead.

Expansion discussions are not just idle talk. One evangelist attending this year’s lectureship also used the time to promote an “exodus” in early June to the Long Island, New York, area. He said about seventy-five families from Texas and surrounding states have plans to establish a ready-made congregation in the Bay Shore area of Long Island. Many are professional workers and college and university graduates who are already resigning their jobs. Several families have already made the move. The Richland Hills Church of Christ in Fort Worth is reported to have underwritten a $52,000 guarantee for the purchase of land on which the Long Island church will be erected.

Churches of Christ missionaries are supported by individual congregations, also, and are not appointed by any boards.

Would Churches of Christ consider possible reunion with conservative elements of the Disciples of Christ (Christian Churches)?

“I think there’s a good possibility they may come closer together,” said Lemmons. “The ecumenical spirit in the air is having effect.”

He said there has always been a feeling that both were “brethren,” though each considered the other to be in error regarding Scripture.

Morris predicted that many conservative Disciples will come back to the Churches of Christ position, but indicated it would have to be on an individual basis.

The year 1963 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Campbell, father of Alexander Campbell, who withdrew from Presbyterianism to lead the movement later known as Disciples of Christ. Those who founded the Churches of Christ were originally members of the Disciples. The date of the split cannot be fixed because neither group has ever considered itself a denomination, but by the early part of the twentieth century it was clear that the two groups had drifted apart.

Churches of Christ make up the only major religious community left in the United States which has maintained its identity without resorting to coordinating agencies and officers. There is no organization beyond the local church.

Elders oversee the spiritual welfare of each congregation. Ministers are referred to not as “the reverend,” but as “mister” or “brother.” In worship, no instrumental music is permitted. The Lord’s Supper is observed every Sunday, and no special significance is attached to Christmas Day or Easter. Baptism by immersion is regarded as essential for salvation.

Despite the lack of inter-congregation coordination, Churches of Christ run more national advertising than any other non-Catholic group. Another wide ministry is the radio and television programs under the sponsorship of the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene. Currently there are more than 300 station outlets in North America and several other countries. One of the originators of the program is James W. Nichols, who is also editor of the Christian Chronicle.

Missing The Bus?

“Historically, the clergyman and the medicine man were the same person.”

The reminder comes from Dr. Winfred Overholser, newly elected president of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, an organization of some 4,000 members divided about equally between clergymen of the three major faiths and professionals in medicine and the behavioral sciences. The group held its fourth annual two-day convention in Philadelphia last month.

Overholser, recently retired superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., summed up the purpose and aim of the organization succinctly:

“We need to remember that historically, the clergyman and the medicine man were the same person.… Yet since these two activities developed into separate professions, there has been mutual suspiciousness for a considerable part of the time. However, the fact remains that probably more than one-half of all the people who eventually come to psychiatrists have gone first to clergymen. This illustrates the necessity for cooperation and mutual understanding. There is a need, therefore, for understanding not only the forces of nature, but the nature of man, spiritual, physical, and psychological. As members of the helping professions … medical, religious, and psychiatric … the more we know of each other’s aims, the more we can help those who come to us for assistance.”

One was struck by the absence of evangelical Protestant representation at the academy meeting. Notwithstanding this gap, the scientific disciplines and the ministry are learning to understand each other, and in many places to work together. Dr. Norman L. Loux, medical director of the Penn Foundation for Mental Health, described seminars in which ministers, psychiatrists, and physicians have interchanges of ideas. Others described teams in which individual members have distinct specialties. Evangelicals are “missing the bus” if they neglect these developments and forego active participation.

R.E.G.

Assailing The Pope

Delegates to the twenty-first annual spring convention of the American Council of Christian Churches assailed Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris. They adopted a resolution which charged the pontiff with laying “the foundation not merely for the practice of peaceful coexistence, but for cooperation with the Communist world which will permit the Roman Catholic Church to exist under communism.”

Other resolutions adopted at the Long Beach, California, meeting (1) echoed perennial ACCC criticism of the National and World Councils of Churches, (2) approved a renewed emphasis on missions by the ACCC, (3) commended President Kennedy for the Cuba quarantine, and (4) voiced opposition to federal aid for education.

Independency—1963

During the roiling religious controversies of the seventeenth century, Independency knew some matchless moments. In England its adherents formed the backbone of Cromwell’s army and reigned supreme during his ascendancy. In the New England colonies they exerted tremendous influence in shaping both the religion and the politics of the new country. By contrast, the twentieth century appears a lean one indeed from this perspective, with Congregationalists either splintering or moving under prevailing ecumenical winds into merger with Presbyterians.

The term Independency is itself no longer a popular watchword, but there is one U.S. ecclesiastical grouping that yet waves the name with separatist vigor against the interdenominational “Establishment,” charged with modernist apostasy. The Independent Fundamental Churches of America, itself wedded to a dispensational theology which goes back only to the last century but which is thought to have recaptured the eschatological genius of the Bible bypassed by the Reformation, met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, last month for its thirty-fourth annual convention and affirmed its stand against apostasy.

Beyond this, the IFCA also reaffirmed its opposition to “any teaching that in any way would serve to break down lines of Biblical separation from apostasy and false teaching.” Professing strict adherence to “the great fundamentals of the Christian faith, such as the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, the Deity of Christ, His substitutionary atonement, His bodily resurrection, and His personal pre-millennial coming,” the delegates took note of “some theological leaders, who, while professing adherence to these truths, have sought to soften the lines of demarcation between those who believe these truths and those who do not.… Such theological positions are identified by such names as Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Orthodoxy, and Neo-Evangelicalism.” Included in the unanimously passed resolution was a call for the National Executive Committee and the editor of the fellowship’s (“we are not a denomination”) magazine, Voice, to “strengthen the content” of the journal “by regularly setting before our constituency the clear Scriptural exposition of our Biblical distinctive of separation, the evidence of the increasing compromise in Christian schools, missions, and evangelistic efforts, and the challenge to stand with our Saviour without the ecumenical and New Evangelical camps.” Extended debate which tended to dominate the business sessions of the six-day conference centered on the desired frequency of Voice’s delineations of the compromise of separatist principles.

Another resolution recorded opposition to what was regarded as the seeming capitulation of some faith missions to ecumenical pressures in “following the course of the New Evangelicalism in the compromise spirit resulting in such incidents as the Tokyo Crusade sponsored by World Vision.…”

Chief object of conference attack was obviously “Neo-Evangelicalism,” though even the conference leadership was hard-pressed to come up with a definition of it “because it’s a theological attitude, not a position.” National Executive Secretary Glen A. Lehman last year set forth the following definition in Voice, of which he is editor: “A movement among fundamental Christians ‘to stir the interest of evangelical Christianity in meeting the societal problems through the content of Biblical Christianity.’ These are the words of the founder of the movement [Harold J. Ockenga]. Several theologians have spoken in behalf of this viewpoint but other areas of interest are seen also in their writings such as: a critical attitude toward a rigid fundamentalism; a friendly dialogue with religious liberals; a reëxamination of the doctrines of inspiration of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit; a critical attitude toward dispensationalism; an emphasis upon higher education; a de-emphasis upon eschatology; a low view of the doctrine of separation and cooperation with religious liberals in evangelism.”

IFCA men profess fear that what they regard as slight deviations by some “neo-evangelicals” on such matters as biblical inspiration and evolution will lead to major departures later. A vocal right-wing segment of the conference, which professed minority status to suggest a conference shift from former years (denied by leaders), charged the presence within the IFCA of some neo-evangelicalism, terming it “a more deceitful and thoroughly Satanic attack” than the old modernism (“we knew what it was”) and predicted its eventual marriage to neoorthodoxy. Even Dallas Theological Seminary came under attack, in literature circulated at the conference, for inviting speakers identified in some way with neo-evangelicalism.

Consensus had it that most delegates felt they were being pushed too far by this group. A decade ago, the IFCA withdrew from the American Council of Christian Churches “not over the doctrine of separation,” but over extreme attitudes and methods. There are today signs of uneasiness over too negative an image. It is possible for one to be a member of both the IFCA and the National Association of Evangelicals, but this is considered “unwise” on the basis of separatist doctrine.

Organized in 1930 at Cicero, Illinois, by leaders of various independent churches concerned to safeguard fundamentalist doctrine, the IFCA has grown to a membership of 440 churches, with another 300 churches pastored by IFCA men. Many of these are Bible institute-trained, though seminary graduates are increasing. Approximately 90,000 lay members are represented in the organization. Sheer independency makes it difficult for the body to meet its budgetary needs, which this year were set at a modest $27,800.

A visitor could not help being impressed by the prominent and integral place given on the program for extended periods of prayer, and provision of a prayer room for delegates—exemplary for other church conventions.

F.F.

Concern Over Glossolalia

The tongues movement is beginning to nettle church leaders, and two Episcopal bishops publicly expressed their concern this month. Bishops Hamilton H. Kellogg of Minnesota and James A. Pike of California warned their clergy of the dangers in the tongues movement. Both said that such movements can be divisive.

Kellogg issued his warning in an address before the Minnesota diocese’s annual convention. Pike ordered a five-page pastoral letter on the subject read in all churches of his diocese.

“While there is no inhibition whatsoever as to devotional use of speaking with tongues,” said Pike, “I urge that there be no services or meetings in our Churches or in homes or elsewhere for which the expression or promotion of this activity is the purpose or of which it is a part.”

More Than A Preacher

From the pen of his historian son this month came the first biography of the most widely heard of radio preachers, the late Dr. Walter A. Maier.

A Man Spoke, A World Listened, by Paul L. Maier, reintroduces a figure whose name was a household word among Christian families during the thirties and forties but whose influence was all but forgotten following his death in 1950 at the age of 56. It is an affectionate 411-page account of the man who made “The Lutheran Hour” the largest regular broadcast—religious or secular—in the history of radio.

Maier, Missouri Synod clergyman armed with a Harvard doctorate, began broadcasting in the fall of 1930, but fell victim to the depression some eight months later. He resumed the program after a lapse of more than three and a half years. It ran continuously thereafter under sponsorship of the Lutheran Laymen’s League, and it soon became known around the world. Maier gave a total of 509 addresses—some 2,500,000 words.

But Maier was more than a radio preacher. The diverse elements of his career are ably recounted by the author, who now teaches history at Western Michigan University and serves as chaplain to Lutheran students there. Given as one of Maier’s greatest disappointments was the refusal of Clarence Darrow to engage in a debate with him. Maier’s most famous book was a marriage manual (he opposed birth control). His voice coach for a time was radio’s Lone Ranger.

Maier preached for national righteousness as well as personal regeneration. He died of a heart ailment just as radio had reached its peak and was beginning its decline in the face of television. The death was announced at a Boston rally addressed by one who was just then picking up the torch for national righteousness and personal regeneration: Billy Graham.

A Bigger Job

Evangelist Billy Graham began his European evangelistic tour this month with a marriage service at Montreux, Switzerland. The bride was his oldest daughter, 17-year-old Virginia. The groom was Stephan Tchividjian, 23, a medical student.

Graham officiated at the ceremony, held in the 500-year-old Montreux Anglican Church overlooking Lake Geneva. The evangelist, who also gave his daughter away, led Virginia down the aisle of the church while Cliff Barrows, musical director of the Graham team, opened the ceremony.

Following the wedding, Graham was to spend a holiday with his family in Switzerland before leaving for Paris for the scheduled May 12 opening there of an eight-day crusade.

Pilgrims And Strangers

An Anglican-Methodist merger proposal was recommended for study by bishops assembled at the Canterbury Convocation of the Church of England this month. No dissentient voice was raised.

That the proposed merger will be the occasion of renewing the current Anglican controversy about establishment was seen when the Bishop of Leicester, Dr. Ronald Williams, cited the Anglo-Catholic view of a former generation which asked:

“Whoever heard of an established stranger? Whoever heard of an endowed pilgrim?”

The Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Oliver Tomkins, remarked that he recently assured a Methodist woman that church bazaars and raffles are not compulsory in the Church of England.

African Ecumenics

The ecumenical movement in Africa was formally institutionalized last month with the launching of the All Africa Conference of Churches. The AACC was formed at an eleven-day constituting assembly on the campus of Makerere University at Kampala, Uganda. It is the first continent-wide organization of churches and national Christian councils in Africa. Three hundred and fifty delegates from forty-two African nations were on hand.

Spokesmen said AACC functions would be six-fold: to promote consultation and action among the churches on such subjects as evangelism and service projects; to carry on study and research; to arrange visits and conferences between church bodies in the membership and to circulate information; to help churches to find, place, and share personnel and to utilize other resources “for the most effective prosecution of their common task”; to help churches train lay and clerical leadership; “without prejudice to its own autonomy,” to collaborate with the World Council of Churches and other appropriate agencies.

According to the AACC constitution, membership is open to all African churches which accept its basis: “Confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and only Savior according to the Scriptures and, therefore, seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The only difference between the AACC’s membership basis and that of the WCC is the word “only,” inserted with the adoption of an amendment introduced by Pastor Jean Kotte, secretary general of the Evangelical Church of the Cameroun.

A message adopted by assembly delegates noted that while “commercial enterprises use electronic computers to study the results of their work, and television and radio to spread their propaganda for good or for evil, the church relies on donkey cart methods of the past to reach a world that is passing by the door of the church with ever-increasing speed.”

The only snag apparent in the proceedings was cancellation of a news conference scheduled with a leading delegate, Dr. Kofi A. Busia, Methodist layman and sociologist from Ghana who is now living in England. In a speech to the assembly, Busia criticized the “disrupting” effect of Christianity in African culture and family life and the Christian missions’ past alliances with imperialistic powers. Most of his talk, however, was in praise of the work of Christian missionaries in Africa.

Spokesmen said that the proposed interview was called off at the request of Uganda authorities, who explained that foreigners were not permitted to criticize other nations while in Uganda. Busia is known for his outspoken opposition to the Ghana government.

The AACC elected a 20-member general committee and four co-presidents.

Women were thrust a significant step closer toward ordination as deacons, elders, and ministers in the Presbyterian Church in the United States last month. The church’s five-day General Assembly in Huntington, West Virginia, moved to amend the Book of Church Order so that “both men and women shall be eligible to hold Church offices.” The issue generated spirited debate.

McQueen Quattlebaum, elder commissioner from South Carolina, reminded the 456 commissioners of the biblical statement that an elder “must be the husband of one wife” and challenged them to show how women could meet this biblical requirement for office.

The Rev. Archie Davis of Miami ended a fervent speech against the proposal by solemnly admonishing the assembly that there is “a big distinction between the laying on of hands on a man and on a woman.” The remark brought down the house.

In spite of such efforts the motion to send the amendment down to the church’s eighty presbyteries for “advice and consent” passed by a 249–173 vote. Forty-one of the eighty presbyteries must ratify the proposed amendment before it can become effective.

Dr. William H. McCorkle, minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Bristol, Tennessee, was chosen moderator. His nomination was made by Dr. Sherrard Rice of Columbia, South Carolina, and seconded by Dr. L. Nelson Bell of Montreat, North Carolina. McCorkle, a former Marine Corps chaplain, was awarded the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, and an Asiatic-Pacific campaign ribbon with four combat stars and is the most decorated chaplain in the history of the United States Navy. Former secretary of the denomination’s evangelism program, McCorkle admits he had strong resistance to entering the Christian ministry during his early years in the insurance business, and vividly recalls the night when he “gave in.” His only opponent for what is regarded as the highest office of his church was the Rev. Frank H. Caldwell, president of the church’s Louisville Theological Seminary, who is known as one of the denomination’s chief ecumenical spirits. McCorkle’s victory by a narrow 229–218 vote was interpreted by many as a triumph of the more conservative forces in the church. Others saw it as a sign that issues in the church are not always determined by extensive and careful planning. Prior to the assembly, pictures of Caldwell—big ones and little ones—had been distributed to the press.

In the opening address of the assembly, retiring Moderator Dr. Edward D. Grant told his audience to keep “eyes front.” Warning them not to play ostrich and bury their heads in the sands of the past, he pointed to profound social changes in the South and to that moving of the Spirit of God throughout the Church which is usually associated with Pentecostalism.

An overture from the Presbytery of Central Mississippi requesting the denomination’s withdrawal from the National Council of Churches was considered by the assembly. Delegates leveled criticism against the council’s general theological climate and its alleged politically leftist posture. The council’s pamphlet “Called to Responsible Freedom: The Meaning of Sex in the Christian Life” was characterized by the Rev. R. C. Duhs of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as “blasphemous.” Proponents of affiliation with the National Council also admitted concern over some of the council’s actions, but urged that the only choice was affiliation or isolation. They also put forth the argument, which the assembly later adopted, that “our representation on the National Council of Churches may serve as a corrective for any excesses that may ever arise.” The perennial battle over withdrawal was settled by a 303–88 vote to remain in the council. Last year the same question was similarly decided by a 294–91 vote.

A decision to continue conversations with the Reformed Church of America looking to negotiations for organic unity passed easily.

A small storm center turned round the question of continuing conversations with the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Fear was rampant that continuance of such conversations might chill the ardor of the Reformed Church of America for union with the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Permanent Committee on Inter-Church Relations proposed that such conversations be continued with the UPUSA and with “other Presbyterian and Reformed communions toward reaching an understanding of the similarities and differences … in order that the Presbyterian Church U.S. may better equip itself for negotiations toward union with any or all of these churches.” When the proposal was amended so as to read: “… any or all of these churches committed to the Reformed Faith,” it passed with one audible dissenting vote.

Fear of unfavorable response in the Reformed Church in America was largely exploded when the assembly rejected various requests that the Committee of Twelve, now carrying on conversations with the RCA with an eye toward merger, be empowered with the consent of the RCA to include the UPUSA in its conversations.

An overture from the Presbytery of Potosi requesting the assembly to seek full participation in the so-called Blake-Pike plan was also rejected.

A record budget of $9,813,180, an increase of 1.7 per cent over the 1963 budget, was adopted for 1964. The assembly voted an increase of $100,000 over the proposed budget for World Missions, the largest increase over any proposed budget item in recent years.

In a Sunday morning worship service held in Huntington’s Keith-Albee Theater, the Rev. William A. Benfield, Jr., delivered a sermon on the topic “We Have Something To Say.” With brilliant style, he preached as though it were true. In obvious reference to the race problem in the South he summoned his church to ignore the warnings, “Be careful. Tensions are tight. Go slow.” He likened the church to an “ambulance in a sin-torn world, dragging along behind the issues, picking up the wounded, making bandages, when the Church of Jesus Christ should be out on the front lines, facing the issues, getting hit in the face.”

Criticism from a white commissioner that Negro commissioners were not allowed equal dining facilities in a local hotel were soon snuffed out. A Negro commissioner declared, “We have been treated royally here … by the local people, and by this great Church.” Another Negro commissioner said, “No discrimination has been shown us,” and added that the Standing Committee on Assembly Operation’s “present way of handling this is sufficient.” The committee’s policy, which the 1963 assembly reaffirmed, is to meet only in cities where it is assured in advance that all its commissioners regardless of color will enjoy equal use of lodging and dining facilities. Word was received the following day that the hotel in question was now making its facilities available to all on an equal basis.

In a decision on capital punishment, the church modified its 1961 report, which it had sent to the churches for study. A statement which asserted that such punishment “should not be retained” was replaced by the declaration that capital punishment “is a form of punishment … which raises serious questions concerning the responsibilities of Christians.”

The 103rd General Assembly was guest of the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington—celebrating its 125th anniversary this year—and its pastor, the Rev. Andrew Reid Bird, Jr. The delegates were cared for superbly.

The assembly’s meeting and discussions were marked by what seems to be a traditional congeniality and Christian goodwill. On occasions when differences were sharply expressed, generous and spontaneous apologies followed. Through all the meetings humor ran rich and deep.

This fine humor, however, may curdle a bit when most needed. In response to a questionnaire sent out by the General Assembly’s Permanent Committee on Christian Relations, 42 out of 1178 responding churches asserted they had received Negro members, 1014 said they had not, and 122 gave no answer. In response to another question: Does the Session make any effort to reach Negroes and other non-whites for membership in your Church?, 61 churches answered Yes, 955 answered No, and 156 did not answer at all. The assembly reaffirmed its ten-year-old stand against segregation and urged that “every Presbyterian institution, whether church, school, orphanage … boards and agencies … abolish all racial barriers and references and that this non-discriminatory policy be made known to the public.”

Mankind stands at a crossroad in history. Those words are no longer just the urgent cry of the evangelist. They are also the unforgettable text of the scientist, the politician, the militarist, and the philosopher.

In fact, they are quoted above from a spokesman for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

“In one direction lie the all-consuming flames of thermonuclear warfare; in the other, the full and peaceful utilization of science for the benefit of all the peoples of the world.” These are the alternatives, according to the nuclear scientists.

“In one direction, a totalitarian world ruled by atheistic Communism; in the other, a democratic society premised on human rights.” So the militarists and politicians chart modern man’s central concerns.

“In one direction, a secular or sensate society sunk in the mires of relativism and subjectivism; in the other, rediscovery of changeless truth and ethical values, a rebirth of moral earnestness and the ardent pursuit of justice.” So the philosophers and sociologists define the major issues.

These alternatives are awesome indeed. That the multitudes in the free world would prefer a future in which human rights are assured, and in which science concentrates on peaceful pursuits, goes almost without saying. But these same multitudes are much less eager to repudiate subjective preference and desire in the name of objective truth and morality.

We are blind. Nothing demonstrates our blindness so clearly as our willingness to reduce the world predicament to the foregoing alternatives, and our efforts to resolve the dilemma within the bare dimensions noted above.

Stated in this stark manner, each of these alternatives becomes a way of rejecting a connection between the crisis of our times and the deeper problem of sin and death. The contemporary crisis is so affirmed by modern man mired in spiritual unbelief and moral rebellion that he simultaneously denies that the ultimate crisis of the human race is linked to this generation’s relationship to Jesus of Nazareth. “Now is the crisis of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:31, 32). If the Christian religion is sure of anything, it is that the dethronement of Satan is inseparably related to the exaltation of the Crucified Redeemer.

This means that the Cuban crisis, the Laotian crisis, the Berlin crisis, are all sub-crises. It means, moreover, that the alternatives of “a just and peaceful world” or thermonuclear war or Communist expansion are all sub-alternatives. Since they really depend upon something more fundamental for their validity, they lose their validity when removed from this larger context.

The reality of the eternal and the transcendent character of truth and right are central concerns that no society genuinely interested in justice and peace dare neglect. Not even political democracy nor scientific progress can be sheltered from exploitation by anti-Christian philosophies in a society that champions these cultural forces while it evades the question of the abiding or transitory nature of truth and right. Upon what does Communist theory rest if not upon the notion that truth and morality are changing and developing conceptions, and that the one and only fixed axis of life is economic?

In our time almost everyone hungers and thirsts for economic betterment, and the supreme desirability of more material possessions is reinforced by the creative genius of Madison Avenue. Ours is a propaganda world in which everyman must cope with the overwhelming power of mass media. The Soviet bloc skillfully gains the reputation of being less militaristic than Red China and of advocating peaceful coexistence, while she remains devoted to world revolution, practices deception while planting missiles in Cuba, and establishes the first Communist base in North America—which she still maintains and supplies. The United States thinks the necessity for dealing with Khrushchev rather than Castro over Cuba is a gain for peace and coexistence; Presidential Assistant Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., voices “long-run hope” because the world, instead of developing into a Communist monolith, is developing into “a pluralistic society based on a wide variety of systems and faiths”; and some American economists propose to assimilate the Soviet bloc to Western Europe and the Common Market, hoping thereby to moderate and transform the Communist outlook!

If Communism is congenitally blind—a blindness inherent in the deadly naturalism of Marxist philosophy—then the free world’s blindness lies in the self-deception that it adequately knows the truth and is dedicated to the right, that it is truly free, and that hence it is intrinsically “better” than the rest of the world and on that account merits survival. The circumstantial darkness of the once predominantly Christian West now lies in its ambivalence. “We try to walk with God and the devil, and we fall in the middle,” a government career man remarked privately to a group of intellectuals. “We have lost our way. We are not faced with one problem—serious as the Communist menace is. We have 180 million problems—for in respect to ultimate things the United States is blind.”

The sting of this indictment is as sharp as that which Jesus leveled at the Pharisees when, upon healing the man blind from birth, he told them that the miracle dramatized their own blindness. The point of his indictment was their lack of any conscious sense of destitution. While Jesus could tolerate the blindness of ignorance, he could only pronounce final doom upon a blind self-satisfaction that prevents men from seeking and seeing the truth. The Americans who as tourists mirror the material benefits of free enterprise, or who in serving the military or the diplomatic corps publish the mighty potency of the armed forces against aggressors, or who as Peace Corpsmen travel to the edges of the Communist world as bearers of good will, are far from ugly. They have much to offer that multitudes around the world welcome and covet. But everywhere we go we talk weapons (which are indispensable enough) and forget that persons—redeemed persons—are the ultimate weapon in a fallen society. We lack one thing: in our living, we lack a hunger for abundant life; in our hostility to the Communist lie, we lack a passion for the truth that sets men free.

THE SUPREME RESOURCE

Our world today needs men who can think straight about life’s values, about human relationships, and about divine design.

Moral stability, integrity of character, and meaningful living—which military people need, no less than others—have a basis in spiritual resources.

The supreme resource available to men is Jesus Christ.

By his life and teaching he taught men how to live with one another and with God.

By his death on the cross he reconciled men unto God.

By his resurrection from the grave he made us pilgrims of the heavenly hope.

Life’s deepest questions—who am I? where am I going? what am I doing here? what is the meaning of it all?—find their response in the Christ who invited all men to “Follow Me.”

Those who try to save the nation and the world by methods aimed to compensate for the vanishing awareness of Christian truth and for the vanishing sense of Christian responsibility are engaged in a hopeless task. Trying to save a people on the assumption that the Gospel of redemption is dispensable is the one sure way to insure their doom.

END

The End Of The Road For 25,000 Americans

Every 2½ minutes someone in the United States tries to commit suicide. Most of them fail. Yet each year 25,000 Americans are successful—a strange but necessary usage of the word!

Although suicide is called the “West Coast weakness,” every West Coast clergyman knows the troubled people who come West because they found life in the East intolerable. The “West Coast weakness” is simply the end of the road for many who have traveled a long way. And when the golden symbols of a new life in the West grow pale, restricted by the forbidding vast Pacific, they then and there abandon all hope—and finally life itself.

The suicide of Marilyn Monroe—young, beautiful, affluent, and a symbol of pleasure—has done much to throw the spotlight on this grim national problem and to arouse the medical profession to give it special attention.

Although the medical profession tends to call it a “health” problem, its incidence is highest among the successful and well-to-do who can afford medical help. The facts here are startling. According to reports, practically all of the 25,000 suicides in the United States are white, and the overwhelming majority, Protestant. It would be easy to draw conclusions from this, but safer to ask questions. Is the Negro’s psychology special protection against suicide? If so, whites might profit from the study. Or, is the Roman Catholic confessional pastorally more effective than the counseling of the Protestant clergyman? And if so, why? Since suicide is a matter of life and death, we ought not to be squeamish about any sources that will throw light on the problem.

It would seem safe to infer from the relatively high incidence of suicides among white Protestants that suicide occurs more frequently among the “haves” than the “have-nots.” The suicide is frequently a person who has gotten out of life what he wants, only then to find that he no longer wants life. He has learned from experience what others have heard but do not believe—that success, fame, wealth are not themselves able to make life desirable.

Life without God and without the transcendent and supra-personal affirmations of the Christian faith—even in Beverly Hills, Nob Hill, or Chevy Chase—becomes the stuff out of which suicide is made. Those who have drunk from the golden goblets and find themselves still tortured by indefinable thirst, seeing no solution, come to regard existence as a disease, and suicide as a cure.

An intellectual assault has long been waged by academic institution and stage, author and playwright, positivist scientist and moral relativist, against the central affirmations of the Christian faith. But alongside this sophisticated attempt to discredit Christianity is the grim, chilling, existential demonstration by thousands of Americans whose suicide argues, in a language hard to be refuted, that unless the God of Christianity is in heaven, life is hell and suicide a successful redemption.

END

The Vatican And The Kremlin And The Italian Elections

The countenance which Pope John shows to the Kremlin is softer than that of his predecessor, and it is evoking considerable speculation among political and ecclesiastical pundits. This has not been diminished, to say the least, by the recent Italian elections. Premier Amintore Fanfani’s “opening to the left,” which involved an alliance between his Christian Democrats and the Marxist but non-Communist Socialist Party, received a setback. The Christian Democrats polled their smallest share of the vote since World War II, while considerable—and surprising—gains were registered by the Communists and the free enterprise Liberal Party.

Commenting on the observation made by some that the Roman Catholic Church was at least partly responsible, The Wall Street Journal had this to say:

In previous years, Church leaders had equated voting for the Communists with sin, and have also generally disapproved of most parties other than the Christian Democrats. This year, Pope John stressed tolerance and even met with Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s son-in-law. The Communists attempted to use this incident as proof that the Church no longer condemned political support of the far left. The large Italian Communist vote is generally considered a protest vote against current politicians and economic conditions—whoever or whatever they may be—rather than evidence of widespread ideological support of Marxism. Many Italian Communists also consider themselves good Catholics.

“The Communist total made it the largest Red vote in the free world. Worried one diplomat here, ‘It is something for the whole Western world to be concerned about when Communists can gain substantially in a free election.’ ”

That the free world’s largest Red vote should take place in the shadow of the Vatican is an embarrassment to Christendom in general and the Roman church in particular. But some Protestant observers have pointed to a growing ecumenical interest between Rome and Protestantism, and then between the two of them and Soviet Russia. They have pointed to a shocking possibility that Mater et Magistra could be preparation for a Roman move to the Soviet side if it should appear Communism would win the struggle for the world. Fitting this pattern, they say, there is in Pacem in Terris the call for (or at least the acceptance of) the idea of a centralized world power to bring about peace. Ecumenists once urged their movement as a means of combating Rome, then for combating Communism. Now, the interpretation goes, it is for neither of these purposes but simply for the nebulous aim of getting together so that hopefully there will be peace.

A Vatican-Kremlin rapprochement would constitute a revolution which would shake up the planet not a little, but such surmises indicate the seriousness with which recent Vatican moves with regard to Communism have been taken in some quarters.

The evangelical confronts the ethical tension of loving the Communist and hating the system he espouses. The distinction should be made plain enough to preclude love’s resulting in the promotion of a system of hatred.

Color Is Skin Deep, Evil As Deep As The Heart

“Send me a letter, send it by mail; send it in care of Birmingham jail.” This old wail indicated the safest method to Americans embarrassed not by ugly Americans abroad, but by those at home. The President described Birmingham as “an ugly situation.” And it is. As ugly as the arrest and jailing of a seven-year-old girl; as ugly as the use of water pressure strong enough to strip bark from trees, and the use of dogs against human beings. For what? For wanting such simple rights as eating in a cafeteria, attending a school.

“Ugly” is the appropriate word. For it was a truly ugly folly which employed animal fury against men in a situation in which the very rights and dignity of man were at issue. It was an ugly stupidity in an explosive social situation to employ a means that could only inflame an already threatening violence. The widely published picture of a Negro, one arm in the grip of a policeman, the other in the teeth of a dog, will doubtless be answered by future bloody retaliatory violence. For a month stars fell in Alabama, throwing a foreboding light on James Baldwin’s theme: God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time.

The issue is bigger than Birmingham, as big as all America; it is deeper than color, as deep as evil in the human heart. In Birmingham’s riots, men saw themselves. They saw how thin is the veneer of their everyday decency, how dark the hatred and how raw the violence in the deeper chasms of the human soul. Christians saw that personal regeneration is not enough to solve our social evils, for not all the guilty were non-Christians. And any man not blinded by twisted prejudice could see that Nazi Germans were not special sinners, for morally nothing distinguishes anti-Semitism from Birmingham’s racism. In the ugly clash of American against American, one could see the common human nature we all share, and the common judgment under which we all stand. He who looked hard at the social ugliness in Birmingham saw not special sinners who fight for state’s rights but trample on human rights; he saw the human nature we all share. He saw a time to weep, to repent, to remember—“inasmuch as ye have done it unto me.”

END

Our University Faculties: Need For Christian Penetration

We hear often these days that the university campus is a great mission field. This is true. The problem is felt everywhere, even in countries where theological faculties are still maintained within the framework of the university. These faculties do not play a great role for those students under other faculties. What influence remains is waning due to growing student population and the mushrooming of the fields of science. Hence the great missionary task for Christian student organizations. And experience has shown that this task can be performed effectively only where Bible study is regarded as the center of the student work. In some countries the old Student Christian Movement is being superseded by evangelical groups. But as good as the work of the latter is, it will always reach only a fraction of the students.

The great question is: Shall we have in our necessarily secular universities Christian professors? It is an open question whether there is and can be a single Christian philosophy, but there is no question as to whether there can be Christian philosophers, physicists, chemists, and so on. A great need of our universities is for a real philosophy which will not shrink back from metaphysics. Some note a stronger sense for metaphysics in America than in Britain. They attribute the progress being made here by Thomism among non-Catholic philosophers to the new interest in metaphysics; Thomism offers the Greek variety. Signs of this awakening interest are seen among the younger scientists of America and Europe—and even in Russia, where every physicist knows that the concept of matter which he, as a Marxist, has to confess with his lips is a myth, untenable in view of established scientific facts of the structure of the universe. There seems to be a real longing for a new metaphysics, for a Weltanschauung which science itself cannot give in view of the rapidly changing views of the universe and the inability of the human mind to embrace the many branches of modern science. But where are the philosophers we need? And what can be done to train them?

One of the reasons for the decay of philosophy, of metaphysics, is the inability of the present generation to read the classical philosophers. Our secondary schools are too poor in languages. If this goes on, we shall leave classical studies and the knowledge of the great thinkers of the past to the Roman church. One should note the papal document “Veterum Sapientia,” a touching call to save the knowledge of Latin and the biblical languages. Protestant clergy are weak in Latin, and this militates against their understanding of the classical formulas of the Reformation.

It is obvious that though set in civilized milieu, the mission field of the university campus contains staggering challenges worthy of darkest Africa. One of the greatest lightbearing ministries the Church could perform today is to thrust forth able Christian scholars into the various faculties of the universities, rather than being content simply with trying to counteract the impact of the secularistic professor through student groups, laudable though these may be.

END

The indissoluble connection between faith and obedience is only too often overlooked or rationalized away.

We rightly emphasize “faith,” for without it man cannot be saved; without it no man can please God.

But the faith which saves, the faith which pleases God, is an obedient faith. “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven”—this contains a warning all need to ponder.

The Bible stresses man’s faith unto salvation. The watchword of the Reformation was, “The just shall live by his faith.” But all of this recognizes that the expression of faith by the lips must be coupled with obedience to the divine command.

We have known individuals who stoutly affirmed their belief in the Bible “from cover to cover,” but whose “faith” was belied by the lives they lived.

Samuel challenged Saul with these words: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to harken than the fat of rams.” This is a principle we find reiterated again in the Scriptures, that profession of faith must be associated with obedience of mind and will.

Abraham is cited as the father of the faithful, and he was. But Abraham demonstrated with his faith an obedience at which we can but marvel.

Commanded to leave his homeland and people, Abraham exercised a blind obedience which inspires and humbles us today. We only too often demand of God that we see the ending before we obey. But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:8b) tells us that when Abraham was commanded to leave his home in Haran, “he went out, not knowing where he was to go.”

Was this blind faith? Perhaps it may be so interpreted, but most important, it was obedient faith. He trusted the One who gave the call, confident that He would not lead him astray.

This same Abraham was later confronted with a greater crisis. God had given him a son in his old age. The covenant promises were wrapped up in the boy, and the father’s love for this lad was overwhelming.

But one day God told him to take the boy and go to a distant mountain, there to offer him as a sacrifice. “Take your son, your only son, whom you love”—with every word there was a deeper thrust into Abraham’s heart. Surely in circumstances such as this he would have been justified in temporizing, in asking questions, in offering an alternative.

None of this took place. We are told that Abraham obeyed without question, leaving early the next morning on his sad pilgrimage. But coupled with his forthright obedience there was also a sublime faith. “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering,” he told the questioning boy.

Nevertheless, how sorely was that faith tested and how marvelous the will to obey. The altar was prepared, the son bound, the knife raised. As far as God was concerned, Abraham did offer up his son, and because of that faith, coupled with unswerving obedience, God renewed his covenant promises—“because you have obeyed my voice.”

Sin came into the world because of disobedience and continues today, causing world chaos and our own personal predicaments.

God has commanded us to love one another, but we disobey him. He has commanded us as individual Christians, and the Church as such, to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, but this is a secondary interest, not a consuming one, with most of us.

At the personal level we Christians often live in disobedience to God’s specific demands on us. We rationalize his commands and equivocate in our reactions to them so that with our lips we draw near but in our hearts we are far from him.

There are times when God does demand of us blind obedience, when our faith should impel us to courses of action the end result of which we cannot foresee; but where there is faith combined with obedience there is also rich blessing.

The entire question of obedience is closely coupled with our prayer lives. Only too often we pray for guidance with the mental reservation that if we like the prospects we will go ahead. What a travesty on true faith! We cannot fool God. He knows the thoughts and intents of our hearts. He knows those reservations and often refuses to hear because we are actually putting him to a test of our own devising.

Never forget, the prayer of faith includes a willingness to obey, and this is not always easy. It is a lesson hard to learn but one we must not evade.

Even our Lord, we are told, divested himself of his inherent rights as the Son and “learned … obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).

Paul tells us that the judgment of God will fall on those who “obey not the gospel of our Lord” (2 Thess. 1:8).

Where disobedience to law prevails, a nation falls into chaos. Where obedience to parents is not required, juvenile delinquency is one result.

If earthly rulers and parents have the right to require submission to authority, how much more does God have the right to require obedience!

This in no way detracts from the reality of God’s love; it merely demonstrates the orderliness of his rule. If there is disobedience, disorder results inevitably.

God does not exact obedience as a tyrant; he calls for it as an evidence of the reality of our faith. On the one hand, this is his rightful due; on the other, it is a demonstration for all to see that our faith is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1, RSV).

When our Lord said to the man with the withered hand, “Stretch forth thy hand,” the reaction was one of faith, and of obedience. When he said to the paralytic, “Take up your bed and go home,” there was this same demand for faith coupled with obedience.

Why should anyone question man’s obligation to obey God’s holy and just commands? But this is not the problem of the average Christian. Our problem is the desire to see the end from the beginning. We believe God, his truth, his Word. But only too often obedience is held in reserve until we think we can see farther down the road. And in this reservation and delay there is neither spiritual blessing nor actual fulfillment.

To put it in the simplest terms possible: faith, to be valid, must be associated with obedience to God’s revealed will. This does not mean obedience in all of its perfection, for on this side of eternity no man either has a perfect faith or exercises perfect obedience. But unquestionably God expects of us a faith which believes and an obedience which complies without question.

‘Blithe Spirit’

Now that spring has come along some very nice things will be said about skylarks and nightingales, and I am not such a one as would oppose these freshening thoughts. In all honesty, however, I must point out that the most beautiful sound in the springtime is the crack of the bat on the horsehide (although a good word can be said also for the whack of the number three wood on the fairway). There are friends of mine who are enthusiastic about the ballet, but they have missed grace at its finest if they have failed to appreciate the pivot and throw of a second baseman when the spikes are flying in high on a double play. I have always felt that there are some arts which the artists miss.

Once at the Polo Grounds I had a chance to see the great Carl Hubbell warm up before he began to pitch. I was surprised to see him sent into the game before I thought he was ready, but he was ready all right. He was just so smooth that he was doing what he had to do so well that the grace and ease covered up his power.

“Everything God does,” says Tertullian, “is marked by simplicity and power.” I never get over how God moves tons of water around in perfect quietness and beauty as the clouds float by. The stars in their courses are matters of mass and distance, and they move in silence through eternity—unless the ancients were right when they thought they heard “the music of the spheres.”

Too many of the unobserved wonders of life can get away from us because in our days of din they hardly have a chance to be heard, and it is hard to look up past the neon signs to the skies. Some of the grandest truths of our holy faith disappear because of their quiet simplicity. It’s a shame, isn’t it, to miss the best things in life because we are submerged in so many other things.

EUTYCHUS II

In Search Of Damascus

Re James Wesley Ingles’ excellent, scholarly, provocative article “Masefield’s Poem of Conversion” in the April 12 issue: it is obvious that neither “The Everlasting Mercy” nor “The Western Hudson Shore” is much good, either as verse or as doctrine. I cannot agree that Masefield here—or at any time, as far as I know—“caught perfectly the psychology and the experience of Christian conversion.”

Students of the British Poet Laureate might well read or reread his “Truth,” “The Passing Strange,” and “Sea Fever,” to which Dr. Ingles does refer; “On Growing Old”; a half dozen Masefield sonnets; and, of course, “Lollingdon Downs: XV.” Masefield here reads more like the brothers James (William and Henry—no! no! I do not mean the Missourian James Brothers) and like Thomas Hardy; less like Paul (Saul) of Tarsus-after the Road to Damascus—than anybody I know.…

(The late Dr. Henrietta C. Mears of Hollywood, memorialized by CHRISTIANITY TODAY on page 38, was one of the greatest women of all time.…)

Unitarian Minister (ret.)

Hollywood, Calif.

Hope For Sunday Evenings

Thanks for the challenge expressed in “What’s Happened to the Singing?” (Apr. 12 issue).

… We have doubled the evening attendance in July and August for the last two summers in this 108-year-old downtown church by having a 30-minute sing-a-long each Sunday evening. We conclude by doing Malotte’s “Lord’s Prayer” in unison. I’m looking forward to the Sunday evening service this summer!

First Baptist

Portland, Ore.

Showers And Flowers

The article “Spring Thaw for Baptists” (Apr. 12 issue) was much appreciated. Not only because it told of Northern Seminary (of which I am a graduate, and former part-time teacher in the college department), but also the plain delineation of universalism on the part of some in places of convention responsibility.

Osburn Community Baptist Church

Osburn, Idaho

Your article appears to me to be biased and irresponsible.… Your attacks upon our evangelism director appear to be founded upon hearsay and rumor, and upon a few isolated quotations. Dr. Morikawa has told me personally that he does not hold a universalist position, and that if he did, he would want to be the first to admit it.… Morikawa is one of the most authentic Christian men that I know.

Exec. Sec.

Kansas Baptist Convention

Topeka, Kan.

There is every reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement attributed to “One observer” in the article “Spring Thaw for Baptists” that states, “Only two of the Convention’s state secretaries are said to favor Dr. Morikawa’s retention as the Convention evangelism director”.…

The charge of universalism is hardly an honestly critical evaluation of Dr. Morikawa’s teaching. Let those who accuse him of such read him fully, and they will find the thrust of his work sourced in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Dr. Morikawa has let some fresh air into the Church. American Baptists will be wise to keep the windows open.

First Baptist

Rochester, N.Y.

There are far more than two who would support Dr. Morikawa’s continuation in his present position, and not necessarily because we agree with every detail of his Christian belief.

Ex. Sec.

New Jersey Baptist Convention

East Orange, N.J.

I much appreciated your excellent write-up of Northern Baptist Seminary’s Evangelism Conference. I felt it was a positive presentation of the “good news” of evangelism for those who love the Gospel.… There was a natural opposition to “universalism,” as there always is when the full Gospel is presented.

Foster Park Baptist Church

Chicago, Ill.

To Reinsert The Negative

Your Book Review section in the April 12 issue (p. 44) made an unfortunate misprint. The sentence should read: “Kepler views the resurrection of Jesus as a real, but not bodily, etc.” You … left out the negative and it reads now: “Kepler views the resurrection of Jesus as a real, but bodily, etc.”

Golden Gate Baptist Seminary

Mill Valley, Calif.

Ten In All, But Not King

In your April 12 issue I read the column “straws in the Wind” (p. 5). I really believe the writer is in error when he says that “young clergymen were conspicuous by their absence. Rev. Martin Luther King was the rare exception.” I can recall this issue of Life, and remember at least three Episcopal priests among the 100.…

St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church

Muskegon, Mich.

I hope more of this commentary type of column can be included.…

The weekly paper in this town of c. 35,000 has just discontinued running the Church Directory. Protestant, Roman Catholics, Jews—we’ve all been dropped! Secularism rapidly advances. D. T. Niles said a year ago, “Christians in the U.S. are in for a hard time of it.”

Fewsmith Memorial Presbyterian Church

Belleville, N.J.

James, Sartre, Tillich

Shortly after the turn of the century, William James returned to America from Germany and wrote Varieties of Religious Experience. The book was not considered “heavy” enough for denominational seminaries, but it did appear in the colleges and became required reading for many of the colleges in their departments of religion.

Recently I picked up the book again, after an interval of fifty years, and was amazed to discover the word “existential” and counted the use of it to be forty-eight times. James equivocated it to “empirical” and “pragmatic,” but only in a religious sense.

Going over my seminary notes, both in England and America, I did not find the word “existential” used in any sense or in any place, nor do I remember ever having heard the word used. Bethune-Baker was my tutor at Cambridge, and I have my notes from the lectures of Oman, Tennant, Skinner, and Sorely.

All through the twenties, thirties, and World War II, I have no recollection of ever having heard or read of the word being used. It was not until I attended the summer school at Princeton in 1946 that “existential” was brought to my attention. One day I had lunch at the Princeton Inn with the younger Farmer from Westminster College (I had known his father at Cambridge), and Dr. Farmer explained to me that existentialism was a subjective theory of knowledge whereby we know what we know through our own experience, and denied any objective intrinsic [quality] of God apart from our experience of him.

Hromádka, from Prague, was lecturing at Princeton that summer and also had a good deal to say about the existential in Christianity as the norm of authority.

It was also during that summer that Professor Lowry brought out his book on Kierkegaard and magnified the word existential.

Imagine my surprise upon returning home to read of the Parisian Existentialists, led by one Jean-Paul Sartre, who in the bistros of Paris was conducting a strange atheistic movement through such plays as “Let the Chips Fall.” Sartre’s main contention consisted of a denial of any objective seat of authority in any category of thought. “One must depend upon his own existence-experience to postulate any true epistemology” (“Let the Chips Fall”).

In the spring of 1947 the newspapers were full of the “goings on” of the existentialists in Paris, which were highly irregular.

Upon further investigation of William James’s sojourn in Germany in the late nineties, I discovered he had come in touch with Heidegger and Jasper at Marburg and Tübingen, where James had picked up the religious implications of existentialism—as corresponding to the general pragmatism of Pearce, which James had developed in his own book Pragmatism.

William James gave a good deal of credit, in explaining his pragmatism, to the empiricism of John Locke—away back in the seventeenth century. Locke, however, never denied an epistemology of an intrinsic value of God. Locke quoted Jesus, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I.” A multiple experience of Christ would postulate His objective being. This led to the “great awakening” in England and America. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and later the Wesleys were inspired to mass evangelism by Locke’s multiple empiricism.

Without an objective seat of authority one finds an incredible variety of religious experiences. It is not so much in what men affirm as it is in what they deny that irregularities creep in.

Of course we must have an empirical Christ. “For me to live is Christ,” wrote the Apostle Paul, but in this great affirmation there was no denial of his knowledge of Christ as an intrinsic value. “In him dwelt the essence of the Godhead bodily.”

We can go along with the existentialists, such as Paul Tillich, in their affirmations of the living Christ, but we cannot entertain their negations of an objective epistemology of Christ. We do know “Him in Himself” and not just our experience of Him.

Stated Supply

Harmon Presbyterian

Montgomery County, Md.

1925 In Dayton, Tennessee

The strong weapons of William Jennings Bryan, John Roach Straton, and other fundamentalists of the early 20s, were the books by George McCready Price.

Corresponding with Professor Price a few months before his recent death, I asked him about Bryan’s “failure” at the Tennessee evolution trial. In England at the time and unable to respond to Bryan’s urgent request that he be on hand for the trial, Price did offer him some advice, which, if heeded, might have changed the whole story of the Scopes trial. In substance the advice was:

If scientific testimony is admitted, take the offensive and hit hard at evolutionary geology’s prime weakness—shuffling of fossils and strata into a chronological arrangement on assumption that evolution is true, and trying to prove evolution is true by pointing to the “convincing evidence” as contained in the chronological arrangement.

Go armed with such statements as Le Conte’s that evolution “effects profoundly the foundations of philosophy … (and) determines the whole attitude of mind toward nature and God” (Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, pp. 3, 4).

Produce the available historic proofs that the philosophy of evolution originated with the Ionic Greeks as a pagan rival of supernaturalism.

Take a firm position that, because of its undeniable religious implications, the teaching of the theory of evolution in tax-supported schools must be stopped under a corollary of the Bill of Rights, which demands on the part of public institutions an attitude of neutrality in religious concernments.

But Bryan ignored all this advice and allowed the Darrow-Hays-Malone trio to pull a diversionary tactic. Boasting that he was “not afraid to be cross-examined by Darrow,” he walked into an irrelevant defense against the warmed-over mouthings of soap-box skepticism.

As for the attitude of the atheistic and theological evolutionists toward Price and his “New Geology,” they raised a quibble about his “scientific standing” and blinded their eyes to his devastating exposé of the circular reasoning undergirding the geological case for evolution.

Reseda, Calif.

Cost Of Worship

I am very much impressed by Mr. Blackmore’s arguments (“A Plea for Fasting,” Jan. 18 issue) and entirely agree with him. Our Protestant shortcomings in the respect of fasting are obvious.… We shall not be able to meet the challenge of this turmoil-age with its countless embarrassments without a revival of this religious exercise. Think of the hungry millions of the world! Think of the martyr-churches of our days behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere! They have to carry on without so many comfortable things of modern civilization. Today I read a letter of a member of the Lutheran church still living east of the river Oder/Neisse. Before, millions of Protestants were living and worshiping there. Most of their churches have been closed down or handed over to the Polish Roman Catholics. Only a very, very few Lutheran Christians still are living there in extremely poor conditions. Now an old lady is writing from that part of the world: “Through God’s grace I had a chance to take part in a harvest-thanksgiving service in—. Two weeks my husband and me, we did not eat any butter, in order to save the money for the trip.…”

As a matter of fact, the next church and service for these people are so far away, that they have to make an expensive journey in order to reach them. But they make the journey, and they keep a certain fasting, so that they may be able to make it.

Cloppenburg, Germany

The Cross And The Tomb

It has just been brought to my attention by the Reverend Gerald Leo Borchert that in the March 16, 1962, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY he had called attention to an inaccuracy in an article that appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature, 74 (1955), pp. 277 ff., concerning crucifixion procedure. In that article I had amplified details in the thesis of the distinguished Alsacian scholar, Guillaume Baldensperger (Le Tombeau Vide …, Paris, 1935) in support of a twofold burial of the body of Jesus.

Mr. Borchert seems correct in saying that the death consequent on breaking the legs of the crucified was “because of respiratory failure.” In the article I had assumed it was from shock in consequence of intensified pain. Physicians consulted support Mr. Borchert’s view as regards the majority of victims; my view applies only to a minority. For five years I have been making this correction in presentation offprints, but I may have omitted it from the copy given to Mr. Borchert. I thank him for publishing the correction and herewith formally retract my error.

At the same time I must call attention to the irrelevance of his establishing “the trustworthiness … of the Johannine account” in this very minor detail to the article’s central thesis. There remains the untrustworthiness of the Evangelist as regards the pertinence of the empty tomb to the resurrection appearances. The “tomb” seen by the women, in which the bodies of the three executed persons had been placed by the soldiers prior to the hour of sacrificing the Paschal Lamb (that year, 1:30 P.M.), had nothing to do with the secret grave to which Joseph took the body of Jesus that evening. To Paul, rather than to the Evangelists, we must look for the historical resurrection appearances. The Church is not founded on a violation of natural law but on Peter’s triumphant faith in his living Lord.

Kendall Park, N.J.

J. Spencer Kennard is at present engaged in writing a four-volume work which will amount to a complete rewriting of the Gospel records of the life of Jesus. Accordingly, I shall delay further criticism of most of his views in anticipation of Kennard’s complete statement. With respect to the Resurrection, however, I would point out that Kennard has considered it necessary to set the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection over against the account of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Accordingly, he would make the Pauline statement normative for interpreting the Gospel records. In fact, following Kirsopp Lake he would undoubtedly make Paul’s experience of the risen Lord the standard for all resurrection experiences. Such a view is of course tempting, but it neglects the fact that even though Paul had an experience of the risen Lord it may not have been identical with those experiences of the earlier Apostles because Paul himself states that the appearance of Christ was as to one untimely born (to ektromati). Moreover, Kennard would relegate the story of the empty tomb in the Gospels to the category of a shrine myth because of the fact that it amounts to “a violation of natural law.” In Kennard’s view, therefore, the resurrection appearances become little more than appearances of a ghost. It seems that he is not very far from splitting the Jesus of History from the Christ of Faith!

Kennard has also given a new face to an old theory in which he proposes that the last ending of Mark contained heretical material, and he seeks to support this theory by a questionable parallel to the non-canonical Gospel of Peter. Such a theory is built on nothing more than hypothesis and is an attempt to make silence speak!

Now when it comes to the tomb itself, Kennard attempts to turn back the pages of history and completely reconstruct the site in and around Jerusalem in order to show that Joseph of Arimathaea would never have had a tomb close by the place of crucifixion. Moreover, Kennard proposes to reconstruct the road which Jesus used on the way to the crucifixion. Now Kennard may be quite correct in questioning the Roman Catholic reconstructions of the sites of the crucifixion, the tomb, and the via dolorosa, but despite all of his interesting arguments his own reconstructions are hardly of more value than those proposed by Roman Catholic tradition. Accordingly, such reconstructions should be employed only with the greatest amount of caution and especially so when judging the historicity of the Gospel records, because the area in and around Jerusalem has been subjected to so much alteration that contemporary reconstructions of first-century Jerusalem prior to the destruction (pre A.D. 70), although useful, are yet open to serious question.

Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton, N.J.

Revelation In History

I am very much interested in the article “Eschatology and History” which appeared in the September 28 issue. Although I come out of a liberal tradition, I find myself in quite close agreement with your insistence that revelation occurs both in history (in the usual sense of that word), but that it provides a new kind of history, particularly in the church. These problems deserve much more careful treatment than they have so far received in American theology.

Trinity College

Hartford, Conn.

As the calendar turned 1963 the number of citizens clad in uniforms of the United States’ military establishment totaled 2,667,545. Of these, the Army claimed 952,571; the Navy, 662,522; the Air Force, 863,287; and the Marines, 189,165.

This means that a population virtually that of the state of Iowa or of the nation of Ireland has in the main been uprooted from normal community associations and maintains its spiritual ties at the least under great stress. This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY concentrates on the spiritual predicament of American servicemen, reflects the vital faith of some who gladly bear their testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and suggests some avenues for reaching service personnel with the Gospel.

A military chaplain usually has 850–900 men under his care. Since these men are more strenuously preoccupied and more mobile than most churchgoers, the responsibility for the religious program at the various military bases rests actually with the commanding officer, and not with the chaplain. The chaplain, of course, is accountable to the commanding officer, and formulates and implements the spiritual activities. In round numbers, there are 3,300 chaplains in the Armed Forces: 1,300 in the Army, 900 in the Navy, and 1,100 in the Air Force.

CHRIST GIVES NEW LIFE

As for all people, the greatest need of persons in military service is salvation from sin through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men. Apart from reliance on him there is no true joy or peace of mind—only ultimate futility, in this world, and God’s judgment of the sinner to follow. My own experience is that faith in Christ results in an entirely new inner life, one of joy and peace of mind, and complete assurance of an eternity as a child of God in His kingdom. In fact, I know personally the living Lord Jesus Christ.

Although chapel attendance figures give only a vague picture of the spiritual concern and depth of military men, they are of some value. The weekly religious services for all faiths are attended by 800,000 (380,000 Army, 120,000 Navy, and 300,000 Air Force). These numbers, on the one hand, include dependents and visitors; on the other hand, they do not reflect that proportion of the military who worship off base.

SUSTAINING FAITH IN CHRIST

The assurance of spiritual birth has made all the difference in my military service. For the most part my career has been a life of stimulating opportunity, but there have been times when the crevasse of disaster was bridged only by a sustaining faith in Christ our Saviour and Lord.

When I accepted a commission in our Navy some twenty years ago the privilege and responsibility of leadership became mine. Acceptance of Christ was quite like this. Then, too, I assumed leadership responsibility, but love for Him has provided the motivation. He who sealed this commission has also led me into many avenues of Christian service.

The Navy has afforded marvelous opportunity for development of talent. I am grateful I can use my talents for Him.

Some home churches have been drawn into an energetic program of spiritual watchcare as their young men and women have entered the various services and traveled throughout the free world. Other churches, however, have viewed the inductions simply as an unfortunate loss from the ranks of church youth, and have regarded the military complex of modern life with little more than a feeling of frustration. Actually much can be done by the home church both to prepare its young people for military service and to preserve spiritual encouragement during their absence.

1. The church must urge parents to steep their children from birth in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord” as the best preparation for any life, whether it be at home or away from home.

2. It must emphasize a conversion experience as basic for entrance into the kingdom of God.

3. It can encourage extensive pastoral counseling, particularly during the period before entry into the military.

4. It must emphasize the substance and rationale of Christian ethics in all church departments.

5. Pastor and people should maintain faithful contact with servicemen through letters, packages, and reading material.

6. The church should be faithful in prayer support through individual and family devotions, pastoral prayers, and prayer meetings.

7. It can establish and maintain contact with the chaplains of its service people.

8. It can encourage young people to enter the chaplaincy as an avenue of Christian service.

THE WISDOM OF CHRISTIAN DECISION

Have you seen a sunrise from a mountain top or a sunset at sea? Isn’t there a majestic beauty about it? Have you smelled, on a hot day at high noon, a city slum or a battlefield after the action has passed? Isn’t there an inexplicable revulsion to it? These are parts of the world God and man have created—beauty, revulsion—God-made, man-made. So it has been throughout history.

Christ was here some nineteen hundred years ago, lived thirty-three years and returned. In his short life span he explained for us the sights that mystify and the smells that sicken; the morality that stimulates and creates and the degradation that desecrates and destroys; the understanding, love, and devotion that make us very human and the mistrust, hate, and deceit that make us very inhuman. He explained these things very clearly. Wouldn’t we be wiser if we listened to him? Wouldn’t we bear our responsibilities more easily? Wouldn’t our decisions be more decisive? A Christian decision adds meaning to a world in crisis.

Churches located near military installations have additional opportunities, since the American military policy encourages chaplains to cooperate with religious leaders of the community. Although no official regulation requires local churches to clear their special efforts among the servicemen with military authorities, commanding officers and chaplains prefer this be done as a matter of “good taste.” Problems have sometimes arisen when persons unrelated to any of the local churches have promoted programs of one kind or another, or when chaplains of liberal persuasion have sought to impede evangelical activity. Many churches, however, through a wholesome relationship with the officers of nearby bases have entered into remarkable opportunities for spiritual ministry. Some possible areas of practical activity are the following:

1. Teams for meeting servicemen and personally inviting them to the services and activities of the church.

2. Instruction classes for church members in how to reach military men for Christ.

3. Special church functions designed primarily for servicemen.

4. Invitations into church homes and family life, even “adoption” of servicemen for the duration of their local stay.

5. Provision of Christian magazines, books, and pamphlets for servicemen personally and at base libraries.

6. Cooperation with local organizations such as YMCA, YWCA, and Christian Servicemen’s Centers.

END

AN EVER INCREASING EXPERIENCE

Seven years ago I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. Since then my life has changed from a normal military life to an ever increasing experience with Jesus as I dedicate each day to him and see his will come to pass through and around me. I have turned my life and military career over to him, knowing that he has the power to bless or terminate either at any time. As a result, my military efficiency and effectiveness have increased, for he has to a great extent freed me from the fears of this world. In order to obtain the right to be heard in the military service, one must first be an outstanding military man. Therefore, all that I do, say, or think must be to the glory of God.

Is the heart of the serviceman harder to penetrate with the Gospel than that of the civilian? The situation on one Naval vessel might so indicate, for of its 3,000 men, reports an officer, less than 5 per cent attend Sunday church services.

There are chaplains and Christian servicemen, however, who consider the man in uniform just as open to the message of salvation as his civilian counterpart. The serviceman has basically the same needs and wants, and the Spirit who convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment is no less active among the military than among any other group.

According to a survey reported by Lieutenant Commander Floyd Robertson (USN, ret.), executive secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Commission on Chaplains, the young serviceman’s interest in spiritual matters is actually twice that of a civilian person of the same age. For this reason, believes Robertson, the military “is one of the greatest mission fields on earth.”

A serviceman is more receptive to a call to repentance at certain times, however, and certain kinds of presentation have been found more effective than others.

Said Chaplain A. D. Prickett (now with the U.S. Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida) after nineteen years of duty: “I have found more conversion experiences among those in boot camp than in any other place.” A possible reason for this situation, he suggests, is a greater receptiveness at this time to “new thoughts and ideas.” Another reason, according to a Marine Corps officer, is that “there is much passive social pressure working against a man who begins attending church after a past of non-attendance.” Major Jesse J. Johnson of the First Training Regiment, Fort Dix, New Jersey, gives a third reason: “The training is hard and new to him. He is homesick, lonesome, and in real need of a good solid friend. What better friend could he find than the Lord Jesus Christ?”

This need for a real friend, of course, may continue throughout a serviceman’s entire military stint so that he is always open in some measure to this approach. The number of opportunities for the Christian serviceman to evangelize, therefore, is equal to the number of unsaved men within his barracks or unit. According to Edward E. Gotts (Capt., USAF, ret.), unconverted servicemen are “most readily reached” by Christian servicemen with “sincere personal interest” in them.

The same factors favorable for reaching military men and women with the Gospel when they enter the service to some extent operate also when assignments change. There is sufficient break with former associates and activities to facilitate the “about face” which Jesus Christ requires of those who would follow him. Sometimes, too, a change of status brings a change of heart. An enlisted man may become an officer, a bachelor may become a husband, or a married man, a father; whatever the new responsibility, it brings new awareness of inadequacy. Naval Lieutenant (j.g.) Roger K. Gulick of the U.S.S. “Aeolus” reported that “a large percentage” of those who come to the weekly Bible study class do so “because they feel ‘religion’ is needed to help raise their children.”

An overseas assignment has both advantages and disadvantages. Absent are the restraining influences of church and society in general which prevail around a military base in this country. Present, on the other hand, are greater temptations to profligacy and godlessness. As with Augustine, however, falling into deep sin sometimes works to a man’s salvation. Yet the number of such cases is rather limited, and on the whole, “it is most difficult to get overseas personnel interested in a spiritual program” (Lieutenant Colonel Richard L. McCoy, commanding officer, Third Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry). At such times the military becomes one of the most difficult mission fields in the world.

Succumbing to gross sin and suffering its consequences and at the same time desiring a better life is an experience that can overtake a serviceman at any time. “After extended periods of this distorted way of life,” observes Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Nelson, Jr., executive officer of the U.S.S. “Darter,” “there is often an inward sense of shame. With the sudden realization of sin in the life, there is an open opportunity to present the claims of Jesus Christ, and his power to save, keep, and satisfy, even in the service.”

SHOW GOD’S OTHER FACE

The problem of the servicemen is different. People who are blind, lame, maimed, hungry, persecuted, and threatened flock to Jesus because they know they have need of something. But this approach will not work on a healthy, well-heeled professional warrior who apparently knows no need. We in the service have given this much thought. The general opinion among those Christians I know as to how to approach them is: Show God’s other face. This can be done only by a preacher unafraid, who doesn’t have itching ears or a crowd-pleasing personality. One need wake up only a few. The rest takes care of itself.—Lieutenant Colonel ROBERT G. LEMAY, Clinton Sherman Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

Any time of trouble—be it serious illness, marital difficulty, loss of a loved one, or landing in the brig (stockade)—is a time of special openness to spiritual ministration. The crisis must be of such magnitude, however, that everything else seems secondary; then, as John W. Kolb (Capt., U. S. Army, ret.) says, a person finds he “can no longer cure his ills, either physical or mental” and “in desperation … turns to God.”

What is the big obstacle to conversion at other times? Apparently it is fear of what others will think and how they will react. This fear, of course, ought not to be so formidable since military associations for the most part are cursory and temporary. And yet often they prevent the serviceman from entering the kingdom of heaven. Lieutenant Stanley B. Huss (USNR, ret.) gives this summary of the situation: the serviceman is “a conformist who is not open to the Gospel when in company with his fellows except in a time of overwhelming crisis.”

SALVATION IS GOD’S GIFT

The United States maintains military forces for the defense of our country. Anyone in the military must be prepared to give his life, if necessary, in the execution of his duties. Thus, the probability of life and death makes a greater impact on the serviceman than on the civilian.

A personal decision concerning Jesus Christ becomes very important. So many of us are working our way to heaven by being honest, moral, and ethical. I was one of those until I learned that Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). That verse taught me that my salvation is a gift from God, and that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the only answer.

FACING LIFE WITH COURAGE

Modern communications today make possible the bombardment of unsuspecting citizens with ideas of every possible shade of authenticity. What to believe and what not to believe is an ever present dilemma.

This condition is made more trying by the deliberate effort of forces that would destroy our belief in our government, our fellow men, and our God so that free people immobilized by confusion may be made vassals.

If we are to resolve these dilemmas and realize the abundance which surrounds us, we must seek God’s guidance in our daily lives. World War II and Korea found our military chapels filled on every possible occasion. Communion with God is a necessity for those who face with courage the reality with which the battlefield, and life in general, confronts them.

For many a serviceman that time of crisis does not come until he actually faces the possibility of death. “I recall,” said Samuel I. Wells, Jr. (Lt. [j.g.], USNR, ret.), “that on an LST after a hurricane I observed a number of Bibles made their appearance, thus giving me an opening to talk of things eternal.” Surrounded by the live possibilities of fatal explosions, collisions, and other accidents, the serviceman always lives on the edge of eternity; it is quite proper to remind him then to be ready for death and the life beyond.

Chaplains bear the major burden of reaching military men for Christ. In some instances they have an advantage over their civilian counterparts. But they depend for success on far more than favorable opportunities. A good chaplain, in the opinion of one Army captain, should be “an active, strong, persuasive, driving Christian”; according to another, he should be “one of the boys” in interest and sympathy. Above all, says a third, he should “be acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Besides being a certain kind of man, the chaplain must bring a certain kind of message. He must be aware of present-day living. He will not merely moralize, but evangelize. He will speak not on his own authority but on that of the Bible.

One Air Force major feels that servicemen are “most accessible … through the preaching of the Word.” The natural man resists the Word, however, and its demands. As a result many chaplains “are so anxious not to offend anybody,” notes Air Force Colonel William N. Boaz, Jr., with the 314th Air Division in Korea, “that their message is usually milked pretty dry.”

But the man in uniform may be confronted with the living Word by other means, too. Christian literature is one, especially if its format is attractive and its content interesting. Every ship should have a good supply of Bibles, Scripture portions, and well-chosen magazines and tracts because “at sea men read almost anything.”

The Bible study group is an excellent means of reaching the serviceman because the average adult wants a better knowledge of the Bible and its teachings. Testifies Major Ronald E. Black, stationed at Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts: “Although I was active in the church and had a thirst for the things of the Lord, I was a religious illiterate until a fellow officer persuaded me to come to his house for a weekly Bible Study … led by a young Air Force chaplain … who led me to a saving knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” One commanding officer reports that Bible study groups attract everyone—both enlisted men and officers, as well as their wives. In addition to affording opportunities for military personnel to be “born again,” they also deepen spiritual knowledge and provide Christian fellowship.

Some servicemen respond to another kind of approach. “I personally trusted the Lord with my life as a result of a visit by ‘sermons from Science,’ ” testifies Albert T. Lauer, GAM Systems Branch Supervisor at Loring Air Force Base, Maine. Elsewhere these Moody Institute of Science films have had excellent reception, also.

If evangelistically oriented, servicemen’s organizations also play a vital role. Groups like the Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship, Officers’ Christian Union, Navigators, Christian Business Men’s Committee, YMCA, and YWCA have done their share in reaching the military for Christ. So have various religious radio broadcasts and television presentations.

FOUNDATION OF OUR HERITAGE

The most important attribute of a military man, or of any other public servant, is a high moral character developed by a devout belief in the teachings of Christ and a practice of the Christian virtues which form the very foundation of our heritage. Let us never allow their importance to be diluted or the strength of our character softened by substituting conformity for conviction, philosophy for performance, or principal for principle.

The day we become the meek comrades of moral compromise marks the beginning of the decline of our effectiveness.

CONSULTING THE ‘MASTER GUNNER’

Technical and tactical competence are important considerations in battlefield success. Spiritual strength has equal if not greater importance. In critical battles, there is always a very fine line between the victor and the vanquished. In these borderline cases, almost invariably the decisive factor will be the determination and the will to win of the victor. For me, that determination grows out of an overriding belief in a Supreme Being—in Almighty God. Anyone who has heard the whine of a bullet fired in anger is aware of the presence of what I call the Master Gunner, who safeguards each of us. Learn to consult with and take counsel from your God.

Unusual opportunities of service exist for churches located near military installations. Invitations to church services, to church socials, to dinners in Christian homes offer strategic ways of ministering to service people. Church families sometimes “adopt” a serviceman for the duration of his stay in their community. Certainly there is no wisdom in commiserating with the serviceman or treating him as if he were an unfortunate prisoner of some kind.

The consensus is that servicemen are won to the Lord largely by personal contact and individual witness. But an effective witness must be winsome. Above all, if the serviceman “can see Christ living in the life,” says Captain Richard E. Fitts of Griffiss Air Force Base in New York, “then he will respond.”

This Christ-likeness means not only maintaining a high level of personal morality and piety, but also manifesting top-flight proficiency as a soldier. One cannot be a good Christian and at the same time a poor soldier. Christ-likeness also involves compassion for lost souls and a spirit of self-giving and self-sacrifice.

Rank seems to pose special problems. In general, enlisted men respond more readily to evangelistic efforts than do officers. Then, too, superiors have greater influence on others than do men of equal status on one another. Observes Chaplain Howard D. Cole of the 40th Infantry Division: “I found that most men were affected the greatest by the officers and NCOs in their units who were dedicated Christians … led by the Holy Spirit and living witnesses to the Gospel.” Efforts of an enlisted man to lead a superior, especially an officer, to Christ face special difficulties because the difference in rank hampers establishment of spiritual rapport.

For these and other reasons the witnessing serviceman needs the Spirit’s direction in approaching another. If he truly desires opportunities, they will come. Then, as one Marine Corps lieutenant suggests, he must give “a manly, hearty, down-to-earth presentation of Christ.”

Servicemen, no less—perhaps at times even more—than civilians, want answers to life’s basic questions. Why are we here? Where are we going? They have questions, too, about the Bible. The message of repentance and remission of sins need not come only from pulpits and chaplains; it often comes from a Christian serviceman in an informal setting when the opportunity is propitious.

Besides a spirit of compassion, the effective Christian witness must exercise abundant prayer. Remarked one Air Force major: “There are too few prayers offered for any one individual in the service to bring him to his Saviour.” And another officer said this: “I feel there are only two ways to have a profound impact on these men: pray and then pray more that Christ will work in their hearts.…”

In surveying the military, one is reminded of our Lord’s observation that the fields are white unto harvest but the laborers are few. The average number of men under a chaplain’s care is around 850 to 900—a far greater number than even the most dedicated chaplain can effectively minister to. And in those instances where a chaplain is not evangelical, the entire flock is officially without one who can lead them into eternal life and keep them from going astray. Pertinent, therefore, is Jesus’ remedy for this situation. To his disciples he said: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

If those who stand in proximity to service personnel are obedient to Christ’s command, chances are their experience will be that of His disciples: they will be the first to be called and to be empowered to speak in His name.

END

The sins which American society has visited upon her youth are in many respects the very sins which American servicemen in turn tend to visit upon society.

To catalog the virtues and vices of military personnel authentically presupposes an omniscience which we surely cannot and would not claim. In a very real sense each man—including the serviceman—is the responsible guardian of his own soul and decides his moral destiny. The assessment offered here is based, rather, on hundreds of replies from personnel at military bases at home and abroad to an inquiry by CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The findings are instructive and illuminating.

The American serviceman, insists Lieutenant Commander Frank C. Collins, Jr., U.S. Navy, executive officer aboard the U.S.S. “Shields,” is not “some peculiar creature conceived for a life of immorality as portrayed in the paid killer and ravager of social decency. Rather, he is the high school football hero, the serious science student, or the kid who drops out of school in his junior year due to lack of aptitude or interest. He is a person who enlists because of a sincere patriotic desire, or in order to learn a trade, or to fulfill his bent for adventure, or perhaps to complete his military obligation and thus clear the path for further education or a career.… He struggles to maintain individualism in a sea of uniformity.”

Patriotism is ascribed more frequently than any other virtue to U.S. military personnel. This fact is highly significant; it gives wholesome perspective to the easy ascribing of sagging moral and spiritual ideals to those who regard military service as “a necessary evil” due to compulsory draft, or who enlist only to escape civilian frustration. Despite those who are merely “putting in time” to fulfill their military obligation, many serve conscientiously in a dedicated professional way with the ideal of public service. Although the serviceman seldom enunciates patriotism as the first motivation for his role in the military, he reflects love of country in numerous ways. The great majority of men are willing and proud to be in the services. The career officer, asserts Captain James W. Wold, March Air Force Base, Riverside, California, “feels he is generally last man on the totem pole in pay raises and legislation in contrast with other government employees, and realizes he will never be a rich man, but finds compensation in the nature of his duty; he is somewhat humble in the opportunity to serve his country.” Nor are those who make a career of the military the only ones “quite dedicated to the defense of their country,” although First Lieutenant John Boaz, U.S. Air Force police officer stationed at Niagara Falls, N.Y., would single out this group especially. “A patriotic youngster,” says Lieutenant (j.g.) Mike Bishop, Protestant lay leader for the staff of the Seventh Fleet and for the U.S.S. “Providence,” is a tribute that applies to the American serviceman generally. “On the surface he is skeptical about patriotism,” writes Chaplain Robert T. Deming, attached to Headquarters of the First Air Base Group at Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan, “but he will make real sacrifices if called on to do so.” Naval Reserve officer Lieutenant Commander George E. Howell of Arlington, Virginia, presently on inactive duty, declares American servicemen to be “capable, should the need arise, of defending this country or carrying its share of responsibility in standing up for the rights of the free nations in this greedy and very dangerous present world.”

Another chaplain, attached to an Air Force reconnaissance squadron but preferring anonymity, volunteered that the sense of patriotism is threatened often by the serviceman’s disposition to do “only what he has to, or can’t escape from doing.” But more serious as a diluting factor to the quality of patriotism, as we shall note later, is what Chaplain Philip N. Smith (Maj.), a Conservative Baptist pastor in Colorado Springs also serving a mobilization assignment at Ent Air Force Base, pictures as the serviceman’s ideological lack: “Well cared for by the government, he doesn’t appreciate his benefits, freedoms, and liberties; he lacks understanding of patriotism and of the principles on which our country was founded.”

Next to patriotism the trait most frequently ascribed to American service personnel is self-reliance. It is popular to caricature the military as a realm wherein buck privates suspend all personal decision until they resume civilian life. But Colonel Thomas I. Edgar, U.S. Army (ret.), of Roanoke, Virginia, inverts the picture: it is “the average civilian who has developed the ‘herd instinct’ to a high degree in recent years and lives in pretty much of a rut of conformity. I sincerely believe that the average serviceman is more inclined to think for himself and to display greater initiative and to be more self-reliant.” A Naval lieutenant who maintains an alert Christian witness on a Pacific fleet flagship of 1,100 men adds that “independence, self-reliance, and deep love for country” are qualities cherished by many servicemen today.

The spirit of self-reliance is widely threatened, however, by the many conforming pressures that characterize military life. The desire to be “accepted by his peers” leads in many directions. As Captain Arthur E. Dewey, stationed with the First Aviation Company in Korat, Thailand, comments: “The man of draft age is seldom sure of where he is going. In military life, as in most group experiences, he will follow the road the group seems to be traveling, whether it leads to a bar or to a house of worship. The group norm tempts him to do less than his best and often places individual excellence under suspicion. This man tends to take on the image of his leaders. The question of whether this image is right or wrong is subordinate to an instinctive feeling that this is the easiest way to get along.” Chaplain James H. Morrison (Capt.), U.S. Army, now on the staff of First Presbyterian Church of San Diego, California, reinforces this emphasis after three years with the parachute “jump school” of the 101st Airborne Division: “The young paratrooper is not unlike the usual high school graduate, for most of them are just that. It is my firm conviction that the large majority of them do the things they would do at home if it were not for the social restraint and mores of the society in which they grow up. Many who would not normally do these things in civilian society and yet do them in the Army are subject to tremendous pressure from their peer group to be promiscuous with women, in drinking, and in other ways. Frequently it is ‘go out on the town with the boys’ or remain behind and be bored (there is little to do, and most posts are not near large cities) and receive the disapproval of their ‘buddies.’ ” “Aboard our ship,” writes Ensign James D. Prout of the U.S. Coast Guard’s “Eastwind,” “ ‘public opinion’ has prevented many from taking part in activities at which the Gospel is heard,” despite the fact that “a very large percentage come from church backgrounds and church groups.” Even the maintenance of spiritual values is thus jeopardized by negative group pressures. Much depends, as Major John A. Foster of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, notes, on how determined the serviceman is “not to fit in with the crowd by doing something that sets him apart as being different.” If he wants more than anything else to be “one of the gang” and willingly sacrifices deeply inculcated principles to gain acceptance by his peers, he is easily headed for a break with all that he has cherished in life. This rejection is then rationalized, as a chaplain aboard the U.S.S. “St. Paul” mirrors it, in the notion that “the rapidly changing world scene along with the growing materialism and deteriorating ethical standards make it nigh impossible for his parents (the older generation) to really understand him and his needs. He longs to be understood by the older generation—believes he has tried every way possible to communicate his beliefs and feelings—but often thinks the barrier between generations is too great to penetrate.” Young non-career personnel away from home for the first time, and who seemingly have no goals and purpose in life, are the most vulnerable target for pressures to shun spiritual emphases. The basically immature and insecure youngster, who searches only for acceptance in his new environment and who has no dedication to permanent values of any kind, will do even what he knows is wrong just to become a member of the group. Conformity is part of his training—“a mill of group dynamics,” Lieutenant S. A. Fink of the Navy calls it, in which “he is disciplined to do things in concert: marching, dressing, responding to commands in unison.” Conformity will define his credo as well. He “despises discipline, detests authority, desires a military democracy (but does not understand what democracy involves)” adds Chaplain Paul P. Everett (Capt.), with the U.S. Army’s First Missile Battalion, 60th Artillery, in Gary, Indiana. “Morally he responds like a jack-in-the-box when released from the environment of home and church and becomes involved with wine, women, and song.”

THE MAGNITUDE OF MANHOOD

The serviceman’s image: pleasure-seeking, somewhat immoral and irresponsible while off duty—but ready and capable of fighting to the death to preserve his homeland and fulfill his duties. He is covertly religious normally, openly so when he seeks strength for himself and his buddies—basically a good average American boy trying to adjust to what may be a trying life away from home. Servicemen often wrongly feel that overt expression of religious beliefs conflicts with the magnitude of their manhood. In time of battle they often realize the truth—it takes a better man to be a Christian, and a Christian is a far better and greater man.—First Lieutenant DAVID A. HENRY, student officer, U.S. Army Reserve School, Spokane, Washington.

Alongside the industry, competence, initiative, and dedication that characterize American service personnel, therefore, must be ranged that whole gamut of weaknesses to which they are easily vulnerable in the face of temptation. Separation from home and family exposes our young servicemen to moral letdowns despite the fact that America is a church-going nation and many young people have some training in or at least knowledge of Christianity. The great majority of draftees for whom outwardly “anything goes” nonetheless retain “inner qualms about the things they were brought up not to do,” says David R. Reid of Williamstown, Massachusetts, First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Reserve. On the other hand, he does not “discipline himself the way he disciplines others,” comments a Marine Corps captain. There remains therefore the sense of violated conscience, alongside the shattered framework of an inherited morality and the obvious duality in any demonstration of the Christian ethic and the American Creed.

In this context of moral compromise, however, one also finds a sense of compassion in the military man who has not discarded all his Christian influences. “One may indeed be proud of the ease with which integration of the Armed Forces is being accomplished,” notes Commander William H. Hibbs, U.S. Navy (ret.), of Tucson, Arizona. The American serviceman is basically friendly and honest. One Navy chaplain describes him as “one of the most honest persons in our society.” He is thoroughgoing in what he does—“when he works, he works hard; when he plays, he plays hard.” Physically fit and virile, he enjoys athletics and respects the true athlete. He enjoys land or sea maneuvers, but seldom admits the fact. He has an uncanny way of rising to a situation when the pressure is on. On his serious side he studies hard to improve technical skills, hopes for promotion, and takes off-duty educational courses to further his career even when in doubt whether that career will be military or civilian. He looks forward to self-support, security, and a family.

It is significant, however, that these traits no longer emerge as a conscious reflex of Christian commitment; they co-exist, rather, as a diluted aspect of Christian heritage in a nebulous framework of ideals. Thought of in terms of median, suggests Commander Hibbs, the serviceman is “sincere, dedicated, and realistic, with a pragmatic orientation.” Therefore, while he is “respectful of authority,” as noted by Captain Richard B. Stuart of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, he has no sure sense of ultimate authority in life, so that even the soundest convictions he shares about the treachery of the Communist philosophy tend to float about on a sea of concern with no fixed anchor. As a result, according to Staff Sergeant Henry W. Elliott, U.S. Army, of the Headquarters Battery of the 212th Artillery Group in Hanau, Germany, the remaining regard for customs, traditions, or authority is inconstant and often wobbly, since it lacks discipline and control. While he is usually well informed on international situations, says Lieutenant (j.g.) James R. Bair, U.S. Navy, of Norfolk, Virginia, he completely accepts “the relative truth philosophy in morals and ethics; therefore, he embraces a double standard in these areas.” The “standards” that determine his life tend to become nothing more than the impulses of his group. He may be fully dedicated, as Second Lieutenant Howard Graves, a U.S. Army engineer attending Oxford University, comments, to “resisting Communism and to the preservation of our country,” and is wholly confident of our nation’s ability to cope with any crisis on a large scale. But, complains Chaplain Paul P. Everett of Gary, Indiana, this same serviceman “prefers a vague philosophy to a personal commitment to God.” “Typical of young America, he doesn’t know what he wants or where he is going,” says Captain William Armerding of Burlington, Massachusetts, now in the U.S. Army Reserve. “He lacks background,” adds Lieutenant (j.g.) William Robert Porter, Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve, of Muncie, Indiana, formerly assigned to the U.S.S. “Bexar,” “in different religious, moral, social, political, and economic concepts.… He has been spoon-fed an ill-defined concept of loyalty to God and country and a ‘worldly’ concept of what it is to be a man. The result is a lack of firmly established values for his life. God is not a relevant being to him, but someone to be considered at a later date.”

DEDICATED BUT SPIRITUALLY SHALLOW

The current serviceman is a civilian who has put on a uniform. Any recruit brings with him spiritual training his church and family life have given him. A cross-section sampling of servicemen will show a startling ignorance of spiritual things. Some can witness, as John Glenn has, to a firsthand experience with God. Too often, however, the serviceman is the product of a confused, increasingly materialistic society. He is often given unbelievable responsibilities and is often called upon to make sacrifices that would not be expected of him in civilian life. The outdated concept of the military man who “cannot face life on the outside” is now being replaced by one of technological genius fighting a cold war with digital computers and space vehicles. He is tense, overworked, yet surprisingly often a dedicated public servant.—Captain ROY N. MINOR, missile officer, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

It is this lack of ultimate spiritual commitment that in turn jeopardizes the stability and certainty of personal dedication in the life of the military, and which makes the serviceman a vulnerable defender of national ideals and an unstable bearer of traditional values. Today’s serviceman is young and impressionable, and for the most part has led a life that demanded little discipline and loyalty. In the service he becomes the target of every conceivable vagrant view of life.

The Army usually sends its more intelligent soldiers to service schools for training as technicians; the “laboring type,” on the other hand (most of whom did not finish high school), are sent to combat units. First Lieutenant J. C. Hood, combat engineer platoon leader at Tompkins Barracks, Schwetzingen, Germany, therefore describes the “typical GI” as “a two-fisted young man who has finished ten or eleven years of schooling. He thrives on excitement.… In garrison, he tends to go stale and looks for excitement in alcohol and women, especially overseas where women are easy and alcohol is part of the national diet. His money is spent three to five days after payday.”

Lack of discipline leads, in turn, to lack of restraint. Detachment from earlier ties means detachment also from moral patterns. Immature and impressionable, the young serviceman is “easily swayed by leaders within the unit or barracks,” reports Major John T. Derrick of the 35th Artillery Group Headquarters in West Germany. On the lookout for enjoyment, says Chaplain Harry W. Holland, Navy Auxiliary Air Station, Saufley Field, Pensacola, Florida, “the serviceman making his decisions without the help of whatever character-building influences and strong persons he may have depended on prior to entering the service, is easily influenced by older servicemen and civilians who seek to involve him in drinking and immoral acts.” “Away from home and lonely, he is easy to sway,” comments Major Richard E. Slater of Geiger Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, “and he will experiment with evil never attempted near his family.” Those who have never been out on their own are “easily influenced by associates,” and most “follow the crowd to avoid being an ‘outcast’ or ‘different,’ ” says Lieutenant (j.g.) F. E. Phillippi, Jr., gunnery officer aboard the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. “Orleck.” “They find it ‘necessary,’ ” remarks Chaplain C. Gordon Kyle (Capt.), attached to Headquarters of the Sixth Missile Battalion, 61st Artillery, U.S. Army, “to use the occasional oath and indulge in the questionable thing in order to get along.” The drift away from religion is abetted by those “who are afraid to stand up for their beliefs and do not attend church or chapel services,” notes Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Schmitz of the Iceland Defense Force.

Pleasure-seeking, then, becomes a ruling passion for the serviceman. He reaches for companionship in ways that “wouldn’t have entered his mind in the home environment,” comments Lieutenant Commander Philip A. Roe of the Ninth Naval District, Great Lakes, Illinois. He seeks excitement and fun through a diversity of activities usually involving girls, automobiles, and alcohol. The outward sins then multiply. Drinking becomes routine, marital vows are broken, spendthrift habits are formed. An officer aboard the U.S.S. “Sellers” thinks it no exaggeration to say that aboard his ship “about 75 per cent of the enlisted men chase women (the married men are often the worst offenders)” and that among the officers “about 30 per cent are unfaithful to their wives, about 60 per cent chase other women when away from home.” Along with a fondness for alcohol and drinking in excess goes the frequenting of houses of prostitution. Carefree and spendthrift, this type of serviceman is often financially depleted at mid-month and is looking for something to do with his free time.

TO BE ONE OF THE CROWD

Very few claim to be atheists or agnostics. Most admit they know what they should do; however, they are usually speaking from a legal or moral rather than biblical point of view. Most have not studied enough to understand Christ’s teachings. The parable of the sower and the wheat still separates each into his class. Perhaps the real trouble is that each wants pleasure, each wants to be one of the crowd, and the crowd follows the wide path. I am happy to say that those who do take a stand for Christ generally make it a firm stand out in the open. Those others who have done little studying of the Scriptures usually try to shy away from the subject. A surprising number like to argue dogmas, wresting Scripture out of context—anything to keep away from the main theme of conversion!—Lieutenant CORBIN WOODWARD, U.S. Navy, supply officer aboard the U.S.S. “Rankin.”

For the young draftee trying to be “a man of the world,” says First Lieutenant Edward M. Blight, Jr., of the U.S. Army Reserve, Tripler Army Hospital, unrestrained sexual activity, alcoholic excesses, and smutty language come to imply general lack of restraint. Hypocrisy is then almost forced upon him, notes Lieutenant James I. Wilson of the U.S. Naval Reserve: his degeneracy is outwardly concealed because the service requires him to be well dressed, well groomed, and physically fit, and the refusal of parents at home to recognize his immorality constrains him to sustain the illusion of decency. In the spirit of Kipling’s lines, he welcomes a foreign culture where the immoral seems moral:

O ship me somewhere east of Suez

Where the best is like the worst;

Where there ain’t no Ten Commandments

And a man can raise a thirst.

When he has exhausted the pleasures of the flesh, and discovered their inadequacy, he is not on that account ready to face up to the responsibilities of balanced living. He is an over-confident individual unskilled in the art of solving the maze of problems, observes First Lieutenant Thomas G. Smoak of the U.S. Air Force in Miami, Florida. He finds refuge in a sense of self-sufficiency that springs from his job security, education, or general understanding. Selfish rather than spiritual motivations now contend for mastery. Despite a basic anxiety and unhappiness he is not seriously interested in Christianity—not hostile, adds Lieutenant Thomas J. Manetsch of the U.S. Naval Reserve, Corvallis, Oregon, but indifferent. Self-centered, he remains most interested in the material and physical rewards life can offer him. Rank, station in life, social status, money, and worldly goods remain the dominant ideals. Beyond this there seems little purpose and initiative.

Undeniable, however, are the unexplainable void that vexes the serviceman’s life, the recurring insecurity that springs from the uncertainties of his assignments, and the additional uncertainties that always shadow the serviceman’s career. Under such circumstances his ignorance of spiritual things can be disconcerting; in self-pity he may think that nobody cares about him as an individual. His distress is worsened because, while indeed he may be subjected to more temptations than the average civilian, he nonetheless has the irrefutable conviction—as notes Lieutenant James R. Evans, personnel officer at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, that “it is not the service that causes the man to yield; it is the man.” In a sudden confession of inadequacy he acknowledges to himself, as comments Colonel W. M. Tisdale, U.S. Army (ret.), now assistant president of State University College, Albany, New York, that as a man in the military “he needs God perhaps more than the average citizen. His responsibilities in wartime will be tremendous, and he must be prepared to meet his Maker on short notice.”

Proper military guidance and leadership have been able to shape the rough timber of millions of men into a well-hewn military force. There can be little doubt, therefore, that under proper spiritual and moral controls American youth could “turn the world upside down” in terms of ethical principles and religious values. The tragedy is that service personnel can always point to worse elements in civilian society against which the man or woman in uniform compares quite favorably. Addiction to alcohol, sexual indulgence, and gambling in American society are not limited to any one economic or social level. And the serviceman knows that transient groups (particularly show people and salesmen) tend to practice moral compromises to a greater extent than do more permanently settled persons. “The American serviceman pictures himself as being morally upright in his society; this, he believes, is accounted unto him for righteousness,” remarks Major Russell O. Barney of Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. Within walking distance of a chapel where he may learn of the remission of sins and receive new life in Christ Jesus, he commits the cardinal sin of Western society in our time: he refuses to embrace the Saviour and Redeemer of fallen and needy souls. He professes to “believe” in some concept of God, but worships none; he “believes” in prayer, but practices it only when in trouble; he “believes” the Bible, but seldom reads it; and except on very special occasions or “holy days” he doesn’t go to church. Sunday services aboard a Navy aircraft carrier at sea, with 3,000 to 4,000 men aboard, may draw 50 to 100 Protestants, with attendance at Catholic mass somewhat higher. “The Protestant’s information about Christ and His Gospel is tragically fuzzy,” comments First Lieutenant Douglas K. Stewart, U.S. Marine Corps, of Kaneohe, Hawaii; “he generally believes in a sort of salvation by good works, and a ‘hope for the best when it’s all over’ philosophy, if he is concerned about spiritual matters at all.”

THE SAVING BLOOD

One day on Iwo Jima I knelt beside a wounded Marine whose lips were blue. As I held a bottle of whole blood and the flow continued, the faint throb in his temple grew stronger. Color came back to his lips; he opened his eyes and smiled. Souls of servicemen may become shattered by sin, but the sacrificial love of Jesus will bring new life to those who trust in him.—Chaplain JOHN H. CRAVEN (Capt.), National Naval Medical Center.

Finally then, find your strength in the Lord, in his mighty power. Put on all the armour which God provides, so that you may be able to stand firm against the devices of the devil. For our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens. Therefore, take up God’s armour; then you will be able to stand your ground when things are at their worst, to complete every task and still to stand. Stand firm, I say. Buckle on the belt of truth; for coat of mail put on integrity; let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace, to give you firm footing; and, with all these, take up the great shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take salvation for helmet; for sword, take that which the Spirit gives you—the words that come from God (Ephesians 6:10–17, New English Bible).