Peace and War (Part II)

The peaceful decade of the 1920s provided a hospitable platform for liberal Protestant preachments on international cooperation devoid of force or threat of force. But these blueprints of peace would soon be rendered obsolete by the warring thirties which transformed peaceful international cooperation into a collective security that carried with it the risk of war. The optimism of one decade had not foreseen the brutality of the next. For those Americans to whom the thought of U. S. engagement in another war was intolerable, there was an alternative—isolationism. Even while rejecting the label, The Christian Century turned in this direction in the second half of the thirties, a period which would see Protestantism badly split as it confronted the hazardous choice.

During this period there was widespread belief that economic factors almost alone were responsible for U. S. involvement in World War I. Cocking a disillusioned eye at these factors, the Century did its best to prevent repetition of such an occurrence. An editorial titled “Taking the Profits Out of War” concluded, “For if war actually comes, profit or no profit, civilization will die” (May 1, 1935, p. 568). Thus the Century crusade against capitalism in that period was fought not only with the weapons of domestic politics, but rather the issue was broadened to embrace humanity’s hopes for peace, which perhaps awaited the “dethronement of the twin gods of capitalism and absolute national sovereignty” (Aug. 23, 1933, p. 1055).

As the League of Nations was entering its mortal agonies in Geneva and the Pact of Paris was becoming a fast-fading memory, the Century, in accents of economic determinism, declared: “With each year the doubt increases that any peace plan can succeed … until the world’s economic problem moves into a wholly new phase. Behind all our political governments there stands an invisible government which controls them. Our governments are not free; they are bound by the economic system. In undertaking to keep peace—that is, in joining the league or in signing the Kellogg pact—they have probably undertaken more than they can deliver. Governments are helpless agencies in the hands of national economic self-interest. From now on, it will probably be increasingly confessed by peace lovers that their work for peace must go behind political governments and deal radically with the economic system which governs them” (Sept. 11, 1935, p. 1137).

In an article, “Behind the Fleet Maneuvers,” Harold E. Fey, present Century editor but then secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, charged “those shortsighted men who represent the only statesmanship that our capitalistic system has produced” with trying to halt democrary short of providing equitable distribution of economic privilege. “… These intellects look to fascism to provide the one remaining hope of capitalism, and they know that the easiest method to lead this country into fascism would be through becoming involved in the dictatorship which is inevitable in a modern war.” Danger of war in the Orient “lies in a capitalism which refuses to distribute wealth to the people who produce it and which therefore must constantly seek out new fields for dumping surplus goods and the investment of capital” (May 22, 1935, pp. 697 f.).

(In 1917 those who called the war “a war for Wall Street” were charged by the Century with “a lamentable ignorance of historic movements” in allowing “economic prejudices” to obscure the fact that the war was “in behalf of democracy” [May 17, p. 5].)

The Century fought a running battle against Franklin Roosevelt’s moves toward “preparedness to wage war.” It saw “the appeal to violence” as the “destruction of democracy.” “The development of the war spirit is the development of the effective and indispensable instrument of dictatorship. Those who look that way, look toward fascism” (July 24, 1935, p. 959). Fey warned in Century articles that conscription would mean fascist dictatorship (Jan. 27, 1937, pp. 107–109; May 31, 1939, pp. 698–700).

When Hider announced German rearmament in 1935, the Century opposed any increase of U. S. military and naval establishments (Mar. 27, p. 392). Roosevelt’s peace policy was attacked as “military preparedness to the uttermost possible farthing” (May 27, 1936 p. 757), and the Century therefore desired replacement of “the present weak neutrality laws with legislation of an inclusive and mandatory character” (Jan. 6, 1937, p. 8). As war drew near, the “President’s demand for a supernavy” was opposed (Mar. 9, 1938, pp. 294–296; May 4, 1938, pp. 550 f.).

The Century earlier had called for a U.S. guarantee of economic (as well as military) neutrality with an embargo on every form of help to make war, applying to all nations, Britain included. If such a peace plan were followed, “… we believe that the danger of a new world war would be almost done away” (Mar. 28, 1934, p. 412). By 1939 desire for such legislation remained—alongside pessimism as to the possibility of attaining it (May 17, p. 632).

In 1937 the Century acknowledged that the Kellogg Pact had broken down. It also admitted that American isolation was a chief factor in preventing the collective system (embodied in the League) from functioning, but after all, the League was seen as a means of perpetuating the Versailles treaty and of developing a balance of power, both undesirable to the Century (Sept. 15, 1937, pp. 1127–29).

Memory Of The First World War

Helping to push the Century toward isolationism was the memory of World War I and the “element of shame” in the churches’ support of that war (Jan. 20, 1937, pp. 72–74). Morrison pointed to the heavy financial burdens of the magazine which took much of his time until 1919 when three men gave him adequate financial support. “I have no illusion that The Christian Century would have taken a radically different position had the financial release come earlier. The idea that war was a religious issue, a test of religious reality, in the way we now conceive it, was too vague to do more than haunt my conscience ineffectually.” As for his 1937 position on war, he noted the Century had never taken the pledge of absolute pacifism but declared that the philosophical differences were “academic.” He took satisfaction in its pioneering contribution to the “volume of Christian conviction against war” developed since World War I (Mar. 31, 1937, pp. 409–411).

On the eve of war, the churches were told they could not in good conscience leave Christian conscientious objectors in doubt as to church support since their decisions were made on the basis of the churches’ teaching on “the sinful nature of war” (June 7, 1939, p. 729). The churches were also repeatedly urged to withdraw from the military chaplaincy program (Dec. 21, 1938, pp. 567–569; Jan. 16, 1935, pp. 70–72).

However, Fey’s advocacy of the proposed Ludlow amendment to the Constitution, making declaration of war dependent upon a national referendum, was opposed by the Century as increasing “the danger of resort in crisis to a fascist dictatorship” (Jan. 5, 1938, p. 8; cf. Dec. 29, 1937, pp. 1617 f.).

Pacifists often seem impelled by their own interests to draw a nicer picture of the enemy than warranted by the facts. Aggressions tend to be rationalized. Conversely, the weak points of their own society tend to be exaggerated. In an article, “Cancel the Naval Maneuvers!” Fey declared: “… the recent attitude of our government toward Japan has been aloof, hostile and is now verging on the provocative.” “What is needed now is … organization to make the provocative actions of our government unpopular … and to prepare a continuing method of opposition to war should war occur” (Mar. 6, 1935, pp. 298, 300). R. M. Miller cites as pacifist intolerance the Century’s terming “Albert Einstein’s defection from absolute pacifism (after his experiences in Nazi Germany) an unworthy deed indicating the scientist was not made of stern stuff” (American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–1939, p. 339).

The Century was determined not to be provoked by aggression into support of war. Though detesting the Franco revolt in Spain, democracy in Spain was declared destroyed whatever the outcome of the conflict. Thus the Century opposed liberals who advocated sending American volunteers to fight for the Spanish government: “America has already been betrayed into one European war over this faked issue of saving democracy” (Jan. 27, 1937, pp. 104–106).

The May 19 issue of 1937 contained an editorial, “Japan Turns Toward Peace,” which noted some soft Tokyo words toward China and concluded the prospect for peace in eastern Asia to be the brightest in a generation, with Japanese imperialist thought beginning “to pass into eclipse” (pp. 640–642). But in July Japan launched a full scale attack upon China. The Century called for application of the neutrality law, declaring U. S. involvement “in the tragic events by which Asiatic peoples will work out their fates” would be folly (Aug. 11, 1937, pp. 989–991).

The journal favored invoking the neutrality law not only in Asia but also against Italy, Germany, Russia, and the “ostensible combatants in Spain” (Aug. 11, 1937, p. 991). It denounced Anthony Eden’s toughness toward dictators and expressed hope that Premier Chamberlain’s pre-Munich concessions to them would bring peace (Mar. 2, 1938, pp. 262 f.). Austria’s annexation was taken lightly (Mar. 23, 1938, p. 358).

The Century noted the recession of pacifist sentiment in the American churches in reaction to Hitler and his Munich gains. Racial arrogance made clear the “unregenerate and brutish instincts of human nature despite Christianity’s long acceptance in Western civilization,” and was a further challenge to pacifist faith (Dec. 28, 1938, p. 1600).

On the Munich settlement, the Century vacillated from week to week between condemning Germany on one hand and Britain and France on the other. Munich, it was said, was possibly no more immoral than Versailles (Sept. 28, 1938, pp. 1150–1152; Oct. 12, pp. 1224–1226; Nov. 30, pp. 1456–1458). There was no ideological crisis—“Munich Europe” had simply reverted to the old game of power politics (Feb. 15, 1939, pp. 206 f.).

Among those who followed this line of thought, the bogy of Versailles seemed to blot from memory the harsh treaty of Brest-Litovsk dictated by Germany to Russia in 1918 (see D. B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919–1941, pp. 378–380).

From Munich to Pearl Harbor, the Century was determinedly and vociferously isolationist. Coming of war in Europe did not change this stand save to intensify it. American morality, it was urged, demanded it.

The month before the war, President Roosevelt was excoriated for hoping to “extricate the nation from its economic difficulties” by making munitions available to European nations in time of war. Speaking in accents of the America Firsters, the editorial went on: “Why should the United States enter another general European war?… No nation could win a major war today, either in Europe or Asia, and have enough strength left to contemplate invasion of the Western hemisphere for a generation” (Aug. 2, 1939, pp. 942 f.). But the old pacifist internationalism expressed itself in a call by C. C. Morrison and others for a world economic conference to turn aside the threat of war. European churchmen replied that the crisis had moved beyond the economic phase, but at American insistence, leaders of the World Council of Churches finally suggested a small unofficial meeting of churchmen. Thirty-four persons gathered and produced a statement. By the time of its publication in the Century, war had already been declared (Meyer, op. cit., pp. 372 f.).

With the return of war, the Century prophesied the possible end of civilization, applauded Roosevelt’s, pledge to attempt preservation of America’s peace, urged maintenance of the arms embargo, and expressed lack of concern for Poland’s fate because of that country’s “record of persecuting its minorities” (Sept. 13, 1939, pp. 1094 f.; Sept. 20, pp. 1126–1129).

In “Not America’s War” the Century set its goal for the next two years in stressing the necessity of guarding the American mind “at the point of its sentimental prompting” to go to the aid of the Allies.

“When the war is stripped of its pretensions it stands forth in its naked motivation as a war of empires. It is not England’s war. It is the British empire’s war. This fact, seen steadily, should be enough to deflate the appeal to America to come in and help save democracy. For democracy and imperialism are incompatible.…

“There is not room in the world for two imperialisms such as Britain is and Germany wants to be … The United Kingdom, consisting of England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster, would be, apart from the empire, in no more danger from Germany or any European power than is Norway or Sweden or Denmark.… It is the existence of the British empire which, together with imperial France, has produced Nazi Germany.… Great Britain must be made to know that America will not come to the defense of the British empire.…” (Nov. 22, 1939, pp. 1431–1433).

This sort of interpretation roused the ire of many Protestant leaders. Names like Niebuhr, Oxnam, Van Dusen, Dulles, Sherrill, Mott, and Mackay appeared under a declaration that “an interpretation of the present conflicts as merely a clash of rival imperialisms can spring only from ignorance or moral confusion. The basic distinction between civilizations in which justice and freedom are still realities and those in which they have been displaced by ruthless tyranny cannot be ignored” (Jan. 31, 1940, pp. 152 f.).

French Disaster And Yet Hope

In commenting on the fall of France, the Century looked to Hitler with a little hope. It reminded its readers that Hitler had “proclaimed this war as a crusade on plutocratic capitalism” and that his national socialism had brought about a social revolution which had driven capitalism out of control of Germany. “We Americans have minimized the reality and importance of this revolution because we have been revolted by its hideous brutalities and disgusted by the personalities of its leaders.… Can Hitler give the rest of the world a system of interrelationships better than the tradestrangling and man-exploiting system of empire capitalism? We have small hope that he can, but hope must not be given up entirely until it is known what he intends to do with this victory” (June 26, 1940, p. 815).

An attempted probing of Europe’s future sought to reassure anxious Americans that France’s fate would not really be so bad after all:

“In a united Europe governed from the German center, with a unified planned economy covering the continent, France will be able to find compensations in terms of human values. A France which has thrown off the artificial structure of empire and of capitalistic dominion in industry, together with the intolerable burden of the vast military establishment which goes with them, may experience a new emancipation, a genuine and creative revival of economic freedom. Such a France may be the first great modern society to pass through the gate of disillusionment concerning those values clustering about the mythical concept of the “economic man” which have hypnotized and perverted Western civilization for centuries” (Sept. 25, 1940, p. 1166).

France was expected to emerge from subjection before too long. “A France that is a product of schools which have been swept clean of secularism will be at least a France with a faith—and a faith which is incompatible with the faith of nazis” (ibid., p. 1167). Meyer graphically describes the Century ordeal:

“The ‘at least’ was a pressure point, betraying the terrible costs Morrison was having to pay: the new schools he was describing were the schools into which Roman Catholicism had been returned. The political structure he thought might follow Hitler was an Italian-French-Spanish bloc, a “Latin Catholic totalitarianism.” In the man who had fixed sharply upon the ‘short-run’ issues in 1928 [A1 Smith’s presidential campaign], … who had protested the Taylor mission to the Vatican, it was apparent that for him to down such bitter potion—the thirst for neutrality burned the soul” (op. cit., p. 381).

Roosevelt Toward Fascism

On the home front, the Century was fighting against conscription and a third term for Roosevelt: “If to the cohesive strength of the selfish interests which constitute the party in power is now added conscription, the President’s power, having broken the two-term limitation, will be essentially the same as that of any European dictator” (Aug. 28, 1940, p. 1047). “The party in power, unable to unify the national life at the level of its economic well-being, now turns to the war as a unifying substitute.” The one-party system was seen as the essence of fascism. “[Mr. Roosevelt] is the Führer of this inchoate fascism” (July 31, 1940, pp. 942 f.). Conscription was seen as increasing the danger of war rather than contributing to America’s defense (Sept. 25, 1940, pp. 1168–1170).

Meyer points out that Morrison’s peace apology “colored with bitterness” as he both suffered the excruciation of his own “inner rationalizations” and became the object of “the most withering of the fire of the interventionists” (op. cit., pp. 381 f.). In answer to the question, “What can America do for peace?” the Century proposed the President send a delegation of American statesmen to Europe’s neutral capitals to convene a peace conference to sit until war’s end and plan a new Europe (May 15, 1940, pp. 630–632). In a Century article, “Irresponsible Idealism,” Union Seminary’s Henry P. Van Dusen flayed the Century for grossly misleading Christians to think a peace conference would have the slightest chance of success. He charged: “resolute unwillingness” to face known facts, “falsification of issues,” unforgivable escapism, and “betrayal of truth” (July 24, 1940, pp. 924 f.). The Century in turn described Van Dusen’s mind as one of “the war’s intellectual casualties” (ibid., p. 919).

Reinhold Niebuhr saw in the conference proposal “a completely perverse and inept foreign policy,” a search for a “simple way out” (May 29, 1940, pp. 706 f.). He charged forgetfulness of: Germany’s “pagan religion of tribal self-glorification,” its intention to “root out the Christian religion,” its defiance of universal standards of justice, its “maniacal fury” toward the Jews, its declared intention of enslaving the other races of Europe “to the ‘master’ race.” “If anyone believes that the peace of such a tyranny is morally more tolerable than war I can only admire and pity the resolute dogmatism which makes such convictions possible.” Niebuhr felt uneasy in the security he possessed while others were dying for principles in which he believed. The question of American intervention was “not primarily one of the morals but of strategy in the sense that I believe we ought to do whatever has to be done to prevent the triumph of this intolerable tyranny.” The Century’s type of neutralism was characterized as “pitiless perfectionism, which has informed a large part of liberal Protestantism in America” and which was wrong not only on the war issue but “wrong about the whole nature of historical reality,” for it failed to see that justice had always been established through tension between various forces and interests in society. Niebuhr allowed a place for a thoroughgoing pacifism resigned to martyrdom and political irresponsibility, “but we have precious little of it in America because most of our pacifism springs from an unholy compound of gospel perfectionism and bourgeois utopianism, the latter having had its rise in eighteenth century rationalism.” This “sentimentalized Christianity” “is always fashioning political alternatives to the tragic business of resisting tyranny,” but “no matter how they twist and turn, the protagonists of a political, rather than a religious, pacifism end with the acceptance and justification of, and connivance with, tyranny” (Dec. 18, 1940, pp. 1578–1580).

But still, the Ministers No War Committee of 1941 embraced far more names of eminent liberal Protestant clergymen than were found on the letterheads of any interventionist organization (Meyer, op. cit., p. 374). Responding to a Niebuhr criticism of pacifists, the Century described it as an illustration of an “evil spirit,” threatening the unity of the Church (July 2, 1941, pp. 853 f.). Niebuhr notwithstanding, the Century, though apprehensive at the prospect of a Hitler victory, also voiced “grave misgivings” as to the effect of a British victory (Jan. 8, 1941, p. 49) and declared that if Britain won, the British empire would “be extended to include the continent of Europe” (Feb. 5, 1941, p. 175). There was room for doubt, it was affirmed, that U. S. interests would be better served by British monopoly of the seas than by German (Dec. 12, 1941, p. 1537—to press before Pearl Harbor). Even though a Nazi victory would mean virtual slavery for Europeans not of the “master race,” on the positive side it would: probably lift the living standard in some regions; “establish socialism of a sort, at least to the extent of forcing a transfer of power from the capitalist classes”; and, additionally, “break the power of the international bankers” (Feb. 19, 1941, pp. 248 f.).

The Century actually did not wish victory for either side but kept pronouncing stalemate at various stages of the war and repeatedly demanded a negotiated peace, the treaty to provide for codification of international law by a world league. The cornerstone of such a juridical structure was to be the principle of outlawry of war. Believing that a “victor’s peace” could not even approximate justice, the Century called upon “the Christian forces of the world” to “rally their strength” for the achievement of a “peace without victory” (Mar. 12, 1941, pp. 353 f.).

When Congress passed the Lend-Lease bill, the Century saw the American form of government becoming one “not of men, but of a man,” hence taking a “long stride” toward Nazism (Mar. 19, 1941, p. 385). It had censured Roosevelt’s “arsenal of democracy” speech as “a trumpet call to war” (Jan. 1, 1941, pp. 47–49), but with Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union, the Century advocated aiding the Soviets and China as well as Britain (July 2, 1941, p. 856).

Yet in the last issue before word of Pearl Harbor, the Century maintained: “Every national interest and every moral obligation to civilization dictates that this country shall keep out of the insanity of a war which is in no sense America’s war” (Dec. 12, 1941, p. 1538).

It is hardly necessary to say that Charles Clayton Morrison and many of the host of clerics who stood with him worked strenuously for what they sincerely believed to be the best for church, country and world.

But historian Miller cites the verdict of many historians from present perspective:

“… clerical pacifism debilitated the moral conscience of America and gave encouragement to the dictators. By insisting upon peace at any price, ministers blinded themselves to the enormity of the crimes of the dictators, risked the destruction of Western Europe, and cut their nation off from the democracies. Many churchmen overestimated the economic motivations for war, underestimated the demoniac element in man, minimized the necessity of coercion in international relations, and placed the pleasures of peace over the demands of justice” (op. cit., p. 344).

The judgment has obvious theological implications as to the optimistic liberal doctrine of man.

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury (Mark 12:41).

A charge to keep I have,

A God to glorify,

A never-dying soul to save,

And fit it for the sky.

To serve the present age,

My calling to fulfill,

O may it all my powers engage,

To do my Master’s will.

Arm me with jealous care,

As in Thy sight to live,

And, Oh, Thy servant, Lord, prepare

A strict account to give.

—Charles Wesley

As in Thy sight to live! Let the high meaning of that line take hold of you. Rightly understood, it contains the whole of stewardship. For stewardship, be it remembered, is far more than money. Stewardship is manhood. It is all of life regarded as a happy and a holy trust, for which at last we must give account. In a shining word of personal witness, Martin Luther summed it all up when he said: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord who redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature … in order that I might be his son, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness.”

Note the words—“live under him in his kingdom.” That is responsible living, with his eye ever upon us.

Now this truth is sharply, dramatically, and beautifully pointed up for us in the incident with which our text is connected. Let us picture the scene. It is in Herod’s temple, in the court of women which would hold roughly 15,000 persons. One section of the court is set aside for the receiving of gifts from the people. Here are 13 large, brazen receptacles, sometimes called “trumpets,” because of their wide trumpet-shaped mouths. Nine of them are for the temple tax and for those money gifts that serve in place of sacrifices. Four are for contributions toward the purchase of such things as incense, temple decorations, and burnt offerings.

A Big Gift

Only copper coins can be used in these offerings, which means that in the case of the wealthy many pieces of money are thrown in by each giver, and resounding announcement is thus made that here is a big gift!

All this is going on under the observant eye of the Lord. Now there approaches a woman out of whose life has gone the supporting hand of a husband and breadwinner. Her widowhood is compounded of loneliness and poverty. Surely she is to be excused from giving. Or is she? What is to be done about it if somehow she cannot excuse herself?

At the moment her entire earthly estate consists of two lepta, a lepton being the smallest copper coin in the currency of the day, worth about one quarter of a cent. When both of those coins drop from the hand of the woman into the collection box, Jesus notices this, and, signaling to his disciples to come close, he says to them, “This poor widow cast in more than all they that are casting into the treasury.”

“For you see,” he continues, according to Phillips’ rendering, “they have all put in what they can easily spare, but she in her poverty who needs so much, has given away everything, her whole living!”

These are the broad outlines of the scene. What now are the details? What exactly did Jesus take note of that day?

For one thing, he saw in the stewardship of living and giving that motives are more important than measures. A friend of mine is right when he says, “God is not impressed with large amounts, but by a sacrificial spirit of devotion.” When you talk about “amounts” you are in the field of measures, but when you think of the “spirit of devotion” you are in the area of motives.

The man just ahead of this widow let fall a gift one hundred times bigger than hers, but he gave chiefly to produce an effect, to achieve or maintain a reputation. The woman behind her also gave a sum far larger than hers, but the motive behind it was purely a sense of duty, a dull, even irritating thing.

But “this poor widow” was obviously motivated by a spirit as high as the sky—her love for God and his house! The words St. Paul was later to write would have disqualified many contributors that day, but not this widow: “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).

Meaning And Dignity

How urgently we need to have our whole thinking elevated and Christianized at this point! It is the “why” of life, the “why” of stewardship, that gives meaning and dignity to the “what.”

When we can honestly say, “As in thy sight to live,” we shall begin to realize that, while measures are concerned with the quantity of life, motives are concerned with the quality of life.

There is something else this watchful Christ saw. He observed that universals are more meaningful than particulars.

If you say, “Wait a minute, that sounds airy and abstract,” I shall have to agree with you. Still, its meaning can be made reasonably plain. It is this: you do not find a woman making such a costly gift as this unless she is living by the basic conviction that God has first claim on her and on whatever she has, be it much or little.

We have arrived at a time when millions of Americans are living, or trying to live, without any universals in their lives, any broad and basic convictions that give dignity to their existence and control to their conduct. They live in particulars: a particular truth in a particular situation if the particular situation seems to them to call for it; and a particular lie in a particular situation if either the situation or their mood seems to call for that; but, in any case, no admission of a higher and universal obligation to truth and, therefore, no uncompromising commitment to truth.

Carry this thought over into the life of the Christian and the area of his giving. How many of us are governed in our giving by particulars far more than universals? We give a particular amount if in a particular situation we feel a particular impulse. If we happen to be “flush,” the church is fortunate, for our gift can be a pretty big one. But if the bank account is low and the future looks gray, the church and the Lord had better make some other provisions because in this situation little or nothing is going to be contributed.

The late Bishop Edgar Blake prepared a sermon on the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which he suggested that the robbers, the priest and the Levite, and the Good Samaritan represent three different views of life and life’s possessions. The philosophy of the robbers was: “What’s yours is mine, I’ll take it.” The philosophy of the priest and Levite was: “What’s mine is my own, I’ll keep it.” The philosophy of the Samaritan was: “What’s mine is yours, I’ll share it.”

It is a good outline, and it moves us in the right direction, but it fails to put around life the binding persuasion it needs. It fails to reach the height of genuine Christian stewardship. A charitable pagan might say: “What is mine is yours, I’ll share it;” whereas an informed and dedicated Christian will say; “What is God’s is mine, I’ll administer it.” It is not mine to do with as I please. It is his for me to employ as shall please him.

Can you doubt that this widow was deeply and ungrudgingly committed to such a universal truth as that? I cannot. It was this, in part, that Jesus saw as he watched the worshipers in the court of women.

He saw something else: that not even economic disadvantage can thwart spiritual dedication.

Again we see the picture. “Many rich people put in large sums” (v. 41 RSV).… “A poor widow came and put in two copper coins” (v. 42). Then the excitement (is not the word justified?) of Jesus, as he tells his disciples, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.” Mark that word “more.”

Then the explanation: “For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty.…” Williams translates it, “out of their surplus,” and Weymouth, “what they had to spare.”

If ever a worshiper had an excuse for saying, “I can’t give; I have nothing,” it was this woman. But she gave anyway. She gave what would have gone for her next meal. Her piety, spoken even in penuary, drew the glowing praise of Christ.

We must not conclude that Jesus was saying every good steward must quite literally put all his material wealth in the offering place. We do not know all the circumstances surrounding this incident.

If we are to be saved from making a mockery of this tremendous lesson, one point must be thrust home to us. The givers who made a minimum use of their economic advantage got no compliment from Jesus, while the woman who made a maximum use of economic disadvantage drew his abounding approval.

You may wonder at this, but I believe it would be difficult to disprove: 95 per cent of all the religious giving done by Americans today is out of our “surplus.” Perhaps you say, “I can’t accept that. In my family, we don’t have a surplus. What we set aside in tithes for the kingdom of God sometimes pinches us.”

How well I know it! Because, you see, I am in the same boat with you. But the catch is that this “surplus” we are thinking about, and which we solemnly affirm we don’t have, is something that only enters the picture with us Americans after we have taken our cut of the luxuries of life. To be sure, after the money is all spent (or at least contracted for), then we are feeling the pinch of it all, and can’t be expected to go through with anything like a systematic and liberal scheme of Christian stewardship.

Sobering Figures

If you take any standard book of statistics, such as World Almanac or Information Please, you can dig out some sobering figures. In recent years the total giving through all American religious bodies has come to roughly 2 billion dollars. At the same time, however, our spending for tobacco has been running around 5 billion, our spending for vacations over 9 billion, our indulgence in recreation and sports about 17 billion, and money set aside in the form of “savings” has totaled over 19 billion annually.

Add to all this the fact that while we Americans account for only seven per cent of the world’s population, we own almost 50 per cent of its wealth. Am I wrong in saying that practically all of our giving to Christian causes has been out of our “abundance?”

It is time we did some sober self-analysis as members of the Church of Christ. Perhaps you are not among the wealthy, nor even among the “better off.” But take the challenge from the example of a woman whose spiritual devotion leaped over the wall of economic disadvantage and gave in spite of it. Christ has set his seal upon this truth: “The gift that counts is the gift that costs.” What a woman she was! She turned scarcity into a sacrament. She took financial handicap and fashioned it into a halo.

Givers And Gifts

One last thing that Jesus saw, sitting there against the treasury: givers are more to be desired than gifts.

The fact that God got her coppers was not the most significant thing about this incident. It was the higher fact that God had her.

When St. Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians, he chided them for being meager and miserly in their giving of their substance to Christian work. He set before them the magnificent example of the Christians up in Macedonia who had no wealth but gave with joyous and sacrificial abandon. But Paul does not end his illustration without giving the key to this generous stewardship. He says of these Macedonian Christians that “they first gave their own selves to the Lord” (2 Cor. 8:5).

No giving short of this ever meets God’s test or gladdens the heart of his son. We have Christians who are willing to give the Lord all the marginal things—bits of time, bits of church going, bits of Bible study, bits of everything but the central thing: themselves!

A businessman said to a minister: “My self says to me 20 times a day: I’ll do this, I’ll do that, I’ll give up this and I’ll give up that, but please let me stay at the center!” To this he added: “I’m trying to live the Christian life, but I’m having a hard time of it.”

Of course he was! For behind all true stewardship is a cross. That cross spells death—the death of this grasping, wretched ego which needs nothing quite so much as to be cancelled out in the full enthronement of Jesus Christ as sanctifying Lord of our lives. The minister and the businessman knelt together while the full, central surrender was made and the full control of the Holy Spirit was accepted. Has this taken place in our lives?

When it has, we shall find that stewardship is more than giving. Stewardship is living. It is living under the eyes of One who still sits over against the treasury—watching. So:

Give as you would if an angel

Awaited your gift at the door.

Give as you would if tomorrow

Found you where giving is o’er.

Give as you would to the Master

If you met His loving look.

Give as you would of your substance

If His hand your offering took.

This is an age of conformity, but I do not think it is the only one the world has ever known. Today’s state of lethargy, however, seems to issue from certain specific factors. Foremost among them are man’s deification of technical and material things, his desire for self-gratification and satisfaction, and his devotion to peers and society rather than to God.

Apparently in every man’s heart is a “lonely crowd” and at every breakfast table an “organization man.” We are sick, but are unperturbed by the diagnosis. We are tied to our machines, but think them indispensable to produce “the good life.” “The tragedy is,” says Joy Davidman, “that we really know better. We know happiness is a spiritual state, not to be achieved by piling up wealth or seizing power …” (Smoke on the Mountain, Westminster, 1954, p. 36).

The Prisoner of Chillon is our prototype; after many years in the dungeon he says:

My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are.…

C. S. Lewis points out this same truth of environmental narcissism in The Last Battle. Here he describes persons so fooled by their own ways that they believe themselves to be partaking of the heavenly banquet when all the while they are actually eating dung.

Anyone who severs the chains of conformity quickly becomes tagged with some unpleasant sobriquet, even as was Jesus—that “winebibber.” Those in modern society who do not mind speaking out for a much-needed “change of pace” are ridiculed as a “repugnant” minority. We cannot brook either irregularity or dissension! Nonconformists are swiftly “cut down” by those who cherish the comfort of “cacoon existence.” The words of those who try to rouse us from fat-bellied contentment usually fall on deaf ears (Isa. 6:9–10). The shock treatment Nathan used on David (1 Sam. 12) and which Jesus used in the story of the Good Samaritan and in the incident involving the woman taken in adultery meets without success in our day. Modern man is like him who “observes himself in a mirror and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (Jas. 1:24). We see nothing but the blur of homogeneity, and think this to be the normal state of things. In his book, The Outsider (Houghton Mifflin, 1956, p. 154), Colin Wilson pictures the situation like this:

These men travelling down to the City in the morning reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for cornplasters, Eliot’s lines:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

and they would read it with the same mild interest with which they read the rhymed advertisement for razor blades, wondering what on earth the manufacturers will be up to next. Some of them even carry identity cards—force of habit—that would tell you precisely who they are and where they live.

They have aims, these men, some of them very distant aims: a new car in three years, a house at Surbiton in five.… They change their shirts every day, but never their conception of themselves.… These men are in prison.… They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom.

The constant pressure “to conform” has produced a new ethic of life, the social and bureaucratic ethic, “that body of thought which makes morally legitimate the pressures of society against the individual. Its major propositions are three: a belief in the group as the source of creativity; a belief in “belongingness” as the ultimate need of the individual; and a belief in the application of science to achieve the belongingness” (William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, Doubleday Anchor, 1957, p. 7). Not merely the surface uniformities of American life are responsible for the problem, although television and station wagons and hi-fidelity are certainly no deterrent. It is beneath the surface of our lives, in the motives and frustrations, where lie the roots of our problem. On one hand our students who no longer wish to think for themselves: on the other are young organizational trainees who are so preoccupied managing others they “would sacrifice brilliance for human understanding every time” (ibid., p. 152). Though they are encouraged to search for the truth few persons are encouraged to experiment or to express themselves to the point of disagreement. Consequently we are becoming interchangeable robots. There is no longer such a thing as charismatic leadership.

Life Every Saturday

Furthermore, our society now hinges upon “events.” We simply live only for Saturday night. As Thomas Wolfe says in You Can’t Go Home Again (p. 464):

Saturday night arrives with the thing that we are waiting for. Oh, it will come tonight; the thing that we have been expecting all our lives will come tonight, on Saturday! On Saturday night across America we are waiting for it, and ninety million Greens go mothwise to the lights to find it. Surely it will come tonight! So Green goes out to find it, and he finds—hard lights again, saloons along Third Avenue, or the Greek’s place in a little town—and then hard whiskey, gin, and drunkenness, and brawls and fights and vomit.

The worker lives for the beer-with-the-boys after work, or for the Tuesday night bowling game. The wife looks forward to the arrival of the Ladies’ Home Journal, or the next bridge game, dance, or party. When the event is over, life is over—that is, until the next “event.” Were there no “events,” there would be no life at all for most of us. We have tied ourselves to idols, rhythms, and routines. We get along quite well so long as the newspaper and milk keep being delivered and the office is still there at the dawn’s early light. We have made the temporal absolute and the absolute temporal. Who among us ever heard of the Event?—the one involving the Man of Galilee?

The Washed-Out Man

Inevitably we are caught up short when we see that this routine-cycle-of-life-existence is really quite meaningless by itself, or at least in our distortion of it into the ultimate. What’s more, those who get fed up with the “raw end of burnt out days” and realize the deadness of life that lies all around them are often no better off for recognizing the predicament. They may see their sickness—which is better than being sick and not even knowing it (Matt. 9:10–13 and parallels) but they do nothing about it. So despair sets in, or what we so often call “anxiety.” With the author of Ecclesiastes they say: “What gain has the worker from his toil? All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; and there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 3:9; 1:8a, 9b). Sartre says, “L’homme est un passion inutile.” T. S. Eliot calls us “Hollow Men.” Though man sees his predicament and knows he is being crammed into a mold, he is unable to break free. And he is apathetic about his situation. Why is a person like Meursault in The Stranger, by Albert Camus, so passionless? When his mother dies he does not weep. He cares not at all about the girl who loves him. And his job means nothing to him. Even after he commits murder and goes through his trial he is content with his “stoical” life. His attitude is not so much that of carpe diem as that of a washed-out man who cares not a whit about life. He feels no passion, no concern, no self-condemnation.

Select any city in America and pause there long enough to examine it. Drive toward the city from a distance: ponder its magnificence, the intricate lines of communication that funnel in and out of it, the highways, the railroads, the trailer trucks, the speed and efficiency that radiate from its very atmosphere. As this vast incarnation of power and prosperity looms before you, think for a moment how utterly irrelevant Christ seems to be to the whole situation. What has Jesus Christ to do with bricks and cement and hurrying secretaries; with heavily-loaded trucks, tabulating machines, road-side stands, wheels, and smoke; with the endless amalgam of life and inanimate stuff that composes our American scene?

What Room For Christ?

To put Jesus Christ into the contemporary age where he belongs seems almost as incongruous as placing a Rembrandt beside an array of abstract expressionist paintings or like injecting a Beethoven symphony among the “Top Twenty Rock and Roll” numbers of the afternoon radio musicale. Do you see what we have made? Do you see what we have literally manufactured with our own scrawny little hands? Do you see how many minds have cowered before as many drawing boards; how many bricklayers have labored through as many union-encased restrictions to make as many stale buildings in as many towns and cities? Do you see how many men have centered their lives in these man-made businesses, how many families depend completely upon the functioning of these many boards of directors? To stop someone in the hall to speak of “Christian hearts in love united” would be totally out of step with the design of the hall and with the speed and purpose of the man, and even with the color of his regulated suit! To encounter someone—were such a thing possible—with the “simple words like those who heard beside the Syrian Sea” is a faux pas, something one just does not do; it’s like a red silk tie of the old broad style in the middle of solemn gray conformity. To speak to Jesus Christ in the middle of America, in the middle of the morning, in the middle of the week—where life is supposedly lived—is simply not done. Somehow, it does not fit.

Truly, the sickness has struck deep, and pervades us from within and from without. What can we do? Fortunately there is a biblical solution for our predicament. We can begin by gleaning some advice from the Old Testament. I personally prefer the world-life view of the Hebrew in the days of the Old Covenant. I would pause, like him, to drink from the Brook Kidron; I would sleep under the stars like the shepherds; I would rise early in the morning to go apart to pray—these things would I do before I ushered the beauty of the world from my heart. Life is not meant to be splintered by the wedges of bureaucratic pigeonholing, by organizational mediocrity, and by deceptive advertising lures. We are a totality. We cannot allow the pressures that compose our existence to dissect our being.

Indeed, while I would make the world my stomping ground I would let my steps descend to earth from God. To do this will give me a different perspective on life. It is one thing to avoid the lure of side-show attractions along the narrow Way; it is quite another to realize we traverse this strange land with and for a purpose. To have a purpose; to wander like an Aramean toward the heavenly City; to set our minds on God even while we wear the coat of this world; to love the earth and its fullness—these expressions are the first taste of our “sealed orders”—orders which shall be revealed in the fullness of time.

The things we love so much: autumn leaves, cheese on rye, the warm sand of summer, an adolescent’s blue-eyed love, the aroma of hickory smoke and the touch of frost in the meadow—are we to bypass, to deny these things, these powerful and pungent things of the earth and of those who live and die there? If we have the Old Testament perspective, we need not forego these God-given gifts.

Beyond Conformity

The world, the very earth, is necessary as the playing field for knowledge. To rise to the level of an earth-worshiper, then, is at least a step in the right direction. After all, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” (The Outsider, ibid., p. 45). Certainly there must be those who justly enjoy and love this world without conforming to it. Let us not misjudge these who have a “different drummer’s beat.” Our real danger and enemy is our dedication to the passing parade: to vanity; to the gout of self-destruction; to the tyranny of devotion to pettiness and pomposity; to tea and gossip, to hollow and empty laughter.

In short, the world-life view of the Hebrews is a firm step toward the Christian interpretation of our secular cell. The Old Testament gets us above our serpentine preoccupation with the false artifacts of life and shows us that the earth is “good” when related to God. The New Testament carries us further to a divinely-oriented understanding of the world. Through Jesus Christ we learn both that the world will eventually pass away and that we ought therefore to deny it. We learn, also, that the world is divinely willed as the framework of the present stage of redemptive history and that we ought therefore to affirm it (one of the themes of Oscar Cullmann’s Christ and Time, Westminster, 1956).

We can either carry or be carried by two very powerful weapons in our fight against the age of conformity and all its components. One weapon is Christ himself in his incarnation, death, and resurrection. The other weapon is participation in the “real community” which Christ fashions, the regenerate Church.

Because of His total action on our behalf we may have these weapons for our struggle against conformity and mechanistically-controlled existence. Individualism per se cannot overcome these “elemental spirits”; although Christ has vanquished them, these “elemental spirits” still annoy us. Nor can the Church per se achieve any more than just a harmonious “tie-in” with the social system. What we need to do, therefore, is to unite the “rare individual’s” I-Thou relationship and the Church’s divinely-inspired fellowship of believers.

Somehow we must transmute our beautiful words and academic descriptions of Christ and his Church into an expression of love that cuts to the very core of our being. We must replace the enigma of ritual with the reality of Christian devotion. Somehow we must overwhelm our impending “Ozymandias” with “Christ and Him crucified.” Then lethargy shall become urgency. Then the daily walk shall become a race toward Him who long ago beckoned us from Golgotha.

Isaiah 13:6–7

THE PREACHER:

Otto Dibelius is Bishop of the Evangelical Church diocese of Berlin/Brandenburg which includes both Lutheran and Reformed congregations. Born in Berlin in 1880, he studied at the Universities of Berlin and Edinburgh, then ministered to parishes in Prussia and Pomerania. A former President of the World Council of Churches, he denounces Communism as he once did Nazism. This sermon, abridged by permission from his book Call to a Divided City, was translated by Prof. J. W. Winterhager.

THE TEXT:

Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt.

THE SERIES:

This is the first sermon in a series in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents messages by notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and on the Continent. Plans for future issues include sermons by Professor James S. Stewart of Edinburgh; Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier, France; the Rev. J. R. W. Stott of London; Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Amsterdam; Dr. Leon Morris of Cambridge, and Dr. Charles Duthie of the Scottish Congregational College.

Every prominent visitor to Berlin has said that he marvels at the bravery of the Berliners.

A Berliner naturally likes to hear this. But a question mark remains. Indeed, there are brave people on this side and the other. I salute all those who during the vacation period were in West Germany and had the opportunity, which may never recur, to stay in the West—but did not stay. They went back to the East Zone and do not know when they will ever again be able to leave it. I greet the parents who sent their children to Western schools and had to decide whether to take them to the East or move themselves to the West in order to stay together—and then have decided, in the face of a separation of indefinite duration, that the children shall remain in their Western schools, come what may.

There certainly are brave people among us in Berlin! There are others too. More than one has sat in my room completely filled with doubts, completely broken down. And I know how many there are in the Zone or in East Berlin with whom I cannot meet under present circumstances and who look into the future with the worst doubts and fears. Where, however, fear arises and where courage is lost, there all is lost.

In our text the prophet Isaiah has a word about the destruction of Babylon by the hosts of the Lord; in the light of that passage, I would like to say a word against cowardice. One kind of cowardice is a natural fear against which one can scarcely do anything. That begins in childhood. There are children who cannot sleep alone. There are others, perhaps their own brothers and sisters, who are quite different. There are singers who can hardly utter a note when they first stand up in public. That is part of our make-up.

Some of these inborn fears are found in every man. If anything is characteristic of our times, it is that today fear plays a very great role in our thinking and feelings. Anyone who has seen Sartre’s Flies knows how uneasily the whole theater audience is made to tremble. The classical drama with which I grew up seldom or never mentioned fear. Today a system of philosophy like that of Heidegger views fear as the “basic condition” of human life.

The Carrot And The Whip

Is it a coincidence that just at this time the totalitarian states have come into being, all of them operating with fear and exploiting the cowardice of human beings? Every totalitarian state proclaims night and day: “Enemies all around! If we don’t employ our ultimate strength in our defense, we shall be lost the day after tomorrow.”

In reality it is nonsense that enemies lie in ambush all around. But the propaganda machine needs that: men should be afraid. The state must use this fear, in their cowardice people will do everything the state demands. They will make every sacrifice, intensify their labors—everything for the deity of the state whose power they regard as their only protection.

Then the carrot is added to the whip. The carrot is the eschatological gospel of the glorious paradise which unfortunately lies in the unattainable future. But first the whip! The whip of fear.

And then the individual is approached. Our totalitarian state has huge, carefully-maintained index files containing all names known in any connection. A notation is made on everyone concerning any aspects in his past which are regarded as shady. One day they come and say: “If you don’t do what we demand, then we will dig that up, and then you will go to court.” Then people grow afraid and, cowards as they are, they yield. That is the method: Just keep every individual in a state of fear!

I know that from my own experience: The Eastern attorney-general starts an investigation procedure. He does nothing further, but—they say this quite openly—it is good to have such a weapon in hand for pressure. Therefore, watch out! They succeed with many people. With others, thank God, they don’t succeed.

When a police patrol walks through a restaurant in a country under totalitarian rule, all conversations cease. No one is aware of having committed an unlawful act, of having spoken any critical words against the regime. But so what? Someone might have denounced him anyway. Terror is always effective where it meets with cowardice. Thus fear is systematically cultivated.

Anxiety can attack a man like a robber from an ambush. But it can also be overcome—not just “repressed” as the modern psychologists put it, but overcome through the ultimate depths of faith. The reports of the New Testament tell us that in unmistakable language. The inborn fearfulness of the first disciples is frankly admitted. They were afraid in the storm. They were afraid of arrest. They were afraid of death. But when the faith of Easter came over them, their fears were wiped away. At first not entirely. But ultimately courage and joyfulness determined their entire lives.

Lack Of Moral Courage

But there are other types of cowardice. There is a cowardice of character, which can be bound up with a bravery under certain peculiar circumstances. Bismarck often said of his German countrymen: “They are characteristically brave in the attack. What they lack, however, is moral courage.” Moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, is the heart of the matter! Men reveal themselves as soon as they see pressure being brought against them.

I know children from superb home backgrounds who did not know what a lie was until they were six years old. And then they go to school and learn to tell lies. They lie because of lack of civil courage.

We know the fearful superior who, if something happens for which he himself is at fault, has an uncanny capacity to transfer the blame to some subordinate.

Often there is also fear of the future. This plays a prominent role on the current scene. “What will become of me?” a poor, half-crippled pastor’s wife from the East said to me. “As long as the ties existed with the West, my parents could still help me. I cannot carry on my tasks alone. And now I am cut off from every help!”

This was the answer of men and women in thousands of cases even in the time of the Confessing Church’s war against the Nazi tyranny: “I would gladly work with and be a member of the Confessing Church. But—I fear they will cut off my pension.” Similarly with the war against the so-called Youth Consecration, the Communist substitute for Confirmation. The youth want a Christian Confirmation. Their parents ring their hands: “What will happen? You’ll get no decent employment. You won’t be accepted for advanced schooling or university. You can’t spend your whole life as a road maintenance workman or in the lowest grade white collar employment!”—Fear of the future!

Lack of moral courage is a characteristic weakness of the German people. Since the Second World War we have enjoyed closer relations with the Anglo-Saxon peoples than ever before. The flood of help which we have continued to receive from America has made a deep impression upon the inner life of the German people. But we have not yet learned from them what they have by way of inner human freedom and powerful response which they assert against other men who threaten their condition. We will learn this when fresh impetus in the Christian faith overcomes the efficient and fundamental atheism which we all have to face. But this new impetus will not come before the totalitarian system which surrounds us is overcome.

For cowardice is no harmless character weakness. It ruins the inner life through and through. He who is fearful also lies. He who fears will be ineffective in every genuine contribution toward a great cause. The totalitarian state knows this. Hitler often said that the state “needs only two types of man: a small minority who rule as dictators, and the great majority who unconditionally obey.” Individuality in the masses is only a hindrance to the state. The Christian conscience is too consistent and must be suppressed. Obey—that’s all!

It requires superhuman efforts to oppose this ideology. It cannot be straightened out by moral suasion. The lever which is applied must really be superhuman, unconditional, and transforming. Only when Christian faith completely takes hold of an individual as the sole driving force in his or her life, can cowardice be overcome as a selfish trait. It is simply inconceivable that the majority of German teachers and philosophers still have no antennae for these simple truths—after thirty years of experience with the totalitarian state. To cite Adolf Hitler once more; he often said that one could “achieve everything with systematic terror, once it had been applied long enough and effectively enough.” He knew the Germans. But we know them too. We know that the Church of Christ has taken roots in our people, and we know that genuine Christian faith cannot be broken, not even by terror. We know it after many experiences in Germany.

Even in our German nation, in which there is such a lack of moral courage, there is bravery. I am not now referring to shallow foolhardiness. Nor to the person who says: ‘Whatever will be will be.” That is not bravery. And if someone puts a chip on his shoulder and says: “I dare anyone to tell me what I can do and cannot do,” that is foolish insolence.

But there is bravery. We now have several churches and fellowship halls in Berlin which bear the name of Paul Schneider. I knew Paul Schneider, the young Reformed pastor, who was murdered in bestial fashion in a concentration camp. When he saw a group of prisoners marched by his window, he did not hesitate. He called out a Bible-saying to them, although knowing full well each time that he would be terribly beaten for it. He persisted until his death. I must also mention our friend Provost Grueber, who became known in his concentration camp because he shared whatever was sent him from home, even though such brotherly sharing was forbidden by the camp authorities. I must mention Martin Niemöller—not actually because of his detention in a concentration camp, where he was kept under wholly different circumstances, but rather because of his verbal exchange with Adolf Hitler, in which he expressed his concern frankly and openly and thereby became Hitler’s personal enemy and later his personal prisoner. He would never say, “I was brave.” No Christian says that. On the contrary! He afterwards blamed himself for having talked only about his concern for Germany and not having seized the opportunity to confront him with the essence of the Christian message. But brave he was, nonetheless.

There are superiors in Germany who, when some irresponsible act is committed, will say, “I take the blame,” in order to protect the others. I here are youths of upright character in our churches out there in the East Zone who shy away from nothing. According to press reports there was a young girl who, when she went for the first time to her class on composition, was assigned to write a special theme on the subject, “Why I do not go to the Communist Youth Consecration.” She related why she did not go to that Communist ritual and went on to write down “… and as for you, teacher, I regard it as a vile thing that you would assign such a theme, knowing full well what I would write and what consequences would come therefrom.” There are brave Christian men and women!

Where Faintheartedness Leads

It can be moving to see the struggle between bravery and the lack of courage of conviction. I was called to the office of the chief prosecuting attorney in 1937. I was informed that a criminal complaint was filed against me because I had attacked Nazi minister Hanns Kerrl in a widely-publicized letter by making certain “false observations.” I was speechless, because everything I had written was true to the last word, and I could prove it by a dozen witnesses! I sensed that the chief prosecuting attorney, deep down in his heart, was of the same opinion as I was, but he lacked the courage to throw out a complaint of a Nazi state minister. At the court hearing the chief prosecuting attorney made a speech in which he abused me in loud generalities along these lines: The Fuehrer has united the German people. But then a handful of pastors have broken down the fence with a “church war”—and so forth, just like the clichés of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. He demanded six months’ imprisonment. Lack of moral courage was manifest in every word.

In contrast was the conduct of the presiding judge. He was drawn into the Nazi party in some way, so that he was considered politically safe. The press of the whole world had been called upon to report the punishment meted out to “Otto Dibelius, an enemy of the State.” Despite this the court set me free. The judge died shortly afterward as a result of a serious nervous breakdown, for he was dismissed from his post. The attempt of a totalitarian state—not then fully totalitarian—to subjugate what was clearly right was prevented by the conscience and endurance of that one Christian man.

And finally it is moving to see fear and conscience struggle with each other within a human heart.

I shall never forget that moment in the struggle of our Confessing Church when Nazi Minister Kerrl summoned the three Lutheran bishops (D. Marahrens of Hanover, D. Meiser of Munich and D. Wurm of Stuttgart) and said, “If you do not now announce that you are disassociating yourselves from the Confessing Church, I will send commissars into each of your regional churches. They will take the control out of the hands of the Church and make them fully conform to the National Socialist pattern.” After a grievous inner struggle, they signed. When I visited them in the evening of the same day [here in Berlin’s Wilhelm Street Hospice], they were sitting there together, deeply distressed that in this hour, at any rate, they had the feeling that they had failed. Theirs was the responsibility to see to it that their Churches remained free from the dictates of National Socialism. But the fact that they had signed and renounced the difficult struggle of the Confessing Church distressed them. But then there was creative faith to overcome that distress. All three found opportunity later to disavow their signatures. So these Lutheran bishops proved the courage of their convictions. There can be situations in every man’s life when the decision between faintheartedness and bravery nearly tears out one’s heart.

In the first meeting of the Reichstag in 1933 Hitler pushed through his Statute of Authorization. This required a two-thirds majority. The Nazis did not have even a straight majority, so everything depended upon how the other parties would vote. Hitler calculated that once he had come to power, no one would have the civil courage to oppose him. His cunning calculation was almost correct, though not completely. The only ones who dared to place themselves in opposition were the Social Democrats. I am no Social Democrat, but I shall never forget that act of this party. The other boats were all capsized.

The leader of the then Conservative Party, Mr. A. Hugenberg, was considered a brave man by the entire world. One day after the voting he wrote to his friend Dr. Goerdeler (then Mayor of Leipzig, who came to be the spiritual leader of the July 20th plot against Hitler’s life in 1944), “You must come. I need your help. Yesterday I committed the greatest blunder of my life. I raised my hand for the worst demagogue in the history of the world and helped him push through his authorization statute.” Now, 24 hours later, he knew where his lack of endurance had led his people.

Firmness Of Heart By Grace

Bravery, the courage of our conviction, will be demanded of us if this, our divided city, is not to be destroyed like ancient Babel!

Perhaps bravery will not outwardly alter matters at this moment. But principally it will mean a rebirth of our faith; it will inwardly transform each of us. For brave resolve, even if it should later prove to be untenable, gives one freedom and strength within. Today, one of our large newspapers carried a headline “Total Mobilization of the Moral Courage of the German People.” This should not be merely a manner of speaking. Mobilize the moral courage of the German people! Do it in fact! There is only one way to move from cowardice to moral courage, that faith on which everything depends.

Count Moltke, who was hanged for his part in the July 20 plot against Hitler’s life, immediately before his death wrote a final letter to his wife in which he described the court proceedings before the dreaded Nazi judge: “The entire room could have roared like Judge Freisler, and all the walls could have trembled—it would have meant nothing to me. It was actually true what is said in Isaiah 43, When you pass through the waters, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, and I will be with you.” That was written in faith, and this is the only way to arouse courage of conviction in our people.

It is written in Hebrews 13 that it is a precious thing that the heart be firm, “which happens through grace.” For the revival of that grace we can pray. Indeed, I see no way to help the people of our divided city to new moral courage in these decisive days except for someone to take the lead by setting the example and saying, “I pray.” This can only happen through grace. Therefore, I pray to God each day for grace in order that my own heart and the hearts of others may become firm and brave. Because I do this, I now call upon others to do this with me. If we pray together, a miracle can happen in this city. Then from an agitated people and a threatened city with a lack of courage of conviction can come a people and a city of which others can rightfully say, “You are brave people!” We could then answer, “We know not whether we are brave, but we realize that God has given us much grace.” I close with this thought tonight as I closed yesterday: Brethren and Sisters, pray, pray, pray! Amen.

Aprominent American clergyman, concerned at the increasing number of semi-secular demands on a pastor’s time, said recently: “The time has come to remind ourselves that preaching is the Lord’s work too.” Thus oriented, the pulpit will flash its holy message in truer and sharper perspective.

Three centuries ago, when the Scottish Covenanters were fighting for religious liberty, passions were stirred to white heat. One minister stood aloof from it all. Finally, some of his colleagues asked Robert Leighton why he did not “preach up the times.” “Who does?” he asked. “We all do.” “Then,” replied Leighton, “if all of you are busy preaching up the times, you may forgive one poor brother for preaching up Christ Jesus and His eternity.”

Even a quick glance at week-end church notices shows no lack of preaching up the times. Eye-catching titles guarantee to set the worshiper straight on the fatal folly of pacifism or the ethical problems posed by fall-out shelters. While we may need guidance on such subjects, steady preoccupation with them betrays a certain Neronic detachment at a time when men desperately need the words of eternal life.

To whom shall they go, when with secular progress has come an international flair for sowing tares in neighboring fields, when a state of near-war seems normal and inevitable, when life may be short and death sudden? That the pulpit has lent itself to so many “fringe” subjects and to the spell-binding flights of men whose trade is fooling around with words, is not the least component of our bedeviled world.

Convinced that the modern situation spotlights deep needs and limitless opportunities, CHRISTIANITY TODAY begins in this issue a series of sermons by men whose public proclamations have been greatly blessed. This is a time when the preacher must show himself indeed a faithful steward of God’s mysteries, one who rightly interprets his commission and fully understands life’s terms of reference.

“We are sent,” Hugh Thomson Kerr once pointed out, “not to preach sociology but salvation; not economics but evangelism; not reform but redemption; not culture but conversion; not progress but pardon; not the new social order but the new birth; not resuscitation but resurrection; not a new organization but a new creation; not democracy but the Gospel; not civilization but Christ. We are ambassadors not diplomats.”

The true preacher feels an apostolic compulsion to preach each sermon as though it were his last, and in divine singlemindedness rejects the lure of deceptive contemporary byways in order to set forth the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not the Gospel for this or that age; not the Gospel for a completely unparalleled world situation, half-hinting that God has momentarily been caught off his guard but that all will yet be well; not the Gospel to combat this or that bogey, whose greatest ultimate danger is its obscuring of the real issues—these concerns are not the distinctive hallmark of the Evangel. Man needs rather that Gospel which not only pierces his very soul and shows him his pitiable inadequacy, but which offers also unique rescue when he is on the brink of despair. “When all my hope in all men was gone,” cried George Fox, “nor could I tell what to do; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is One, even Christ Jesus, can speak unto thy condition.’ ”

This, then, is the Gospel which alone can pluck us from the depths, alone can steel us to look long and incisively at the crumbling cosmos, and alone can send us out with an eternally relevant message to a world that fell many centuries before the nuclear age. Such a Gospel continually projects new vistas of Christian living where we may apprehend untried horizons of the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of Christ’s love, and its meaning for the redeemed. The Gospel is for such a time as this, because it is the Gospel for every time. It is the only Gospel, because in no other is salvation. The Gospel is for all, because Jesus invited all.

This confidence calls for preaching, then, which is, as even Adolf von Harnack felt constrained to picture it, “in the midst of time, for eternity by the strength and eye of God.” We need preachers who believe in the Gospel’s power, who will speak with authority, and point a distracted but still skeptical world to the one true God, and to Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

He touches the sightless eyes,

Before Him the demons flee;

To the dead He saith, “Arise!”

To the living, “Follow Me!”

And that voice still soundeth on

Through the centuries that are gone

To the centuries that shall be.

Living truths for dying times! Is the preacher’s task under God anything else essentially than bringing together a needy world and a God who cares?

The lovely lady who was about to introduce me to the Women’s Association luncheon was chatting away at me and I was answering “Oh?” and “Yes, Yes” because I was more interested in what I was about to say to the Women’s Association than I was in what she was about to say to me. But there was an abiding residue to her remarks, and it occurred to me that she had told me her brother had just written a book and that she was going to send me one for a gift and that she hoped I would read it. So she sent it to me and I read it and I’m glad. I think you ought to read it too.

The book, The Crossroads of Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 1961), is by Charles Forcey. Charles Forcey has been Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University and has become a member of the Graduate School faculty of Rutgers University and Douglass College this year. He apparently has liberal leanings, liberal in politics and economics, because I don’t know where he leans in theology, and he has the skill as a writer and the grasp as a thinker to rank him, in my opinion, with men of the stature of Arthur Schlesinger, who, as you know, also takes the liberal tradition in politics and economics for his field of operation. Forcey’s book is beautifully written and bounds in insights and asides which light up characters and movements.

For a sometime and somewhat theologian to venture into another discipline is, of course, dangerous, but I am of the notion that one of the great values of the book to me was that, just because of my amateur standing in politics and economics, the book was an opening of many areas of thought which are not my normal fare. Apart from the thesis of the book, to which we shall soon turn, there is a remarkably fine treatment of three men: Croly, Weyl, and Lippmann and many briefer sketches on such men as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; there are shorter forays into the doings of men like Learned Hand and franklin D. Roosevelt. Surprisingly, for liberal, Forcey gives the back of the hand to F.D.R. more than once, but with Learned Hand he is all respect. We are due for a good biography on Judge Learned Hand, whose impact on a whole generation of scholars is just beginning to be appreciated by the general public. Forcey, with his gifts in handling biographical material, as illustrated in his book, is the man to take up the task. To know Judge Hand, apparently, was to worship him. Much of the book is centered also on the fortunes of The New Republic, founded by and given flavor by the aforesaid Croly, Weyl, and Lippmann. This strand of the book is also delightful as it is instructive.

The crossroads of Liberalism was forced on the Liberals by two traditions, the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian. Jefferson, the darling of all liberals, believed in political action from the ground up and Hamilton believed in political action from the top down. Jefferson would be on the side of pure democratic action, the town meeting, the pressure of the local P.T.A., the individual man standing on his hind feet and hollering for his rights, whereas Hamilton would be for a strong centralized government in which savvy political aristocrats would work out affairs for the good of the country because they would know just what was good for the country. The contest between Jefferson and Hamilton is the contest between a strong centralized government and a lively and responsible local citizenry. The discovery of the liberals, and Forcey places it between 1912 and 1920, was that they must learn to accomplish their Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means, that is, there is no hope for labor, race, housing and the conservation of the local oil supply, on the grass roots level, apart from strong action by a strong centralized government. Thus we see the strange twist by which the Democrats drag along their old beliefs in states rights while trying to operate for liberalism in economics and politics from the national capital. F.D.R., according to Forcey, had his strong centralized power and then failed to follow through in establishing the dreams of the liberals. But that is another story.

All this is instructive for the church. There is much hue and cry from the grass roots and considerable suspicion of such things as the World Council, the National Council, a Methodist Center in Chicago or a National Presbyterian Church in Washington, Bishops by the Housefull and Presbyters in Councils, centers for curricula, organization men up and down the ladder of ecclesiastical success. All these seem to submerge the church in the valley by the wildwood where religion is pure and men are sturdy and upright. The question is: in this complex day can we as a church accomplish our Jeffersonian ends by any other than Hamiltonian means? Are we at our own crossroads? Can those lovely grass roots really be protected? Ought they to be? By accident or design the theological liberals are employing the Hamiltonian means and perhaps can be met only with a similar centralized force. Forcey’s instruction book would make good required reading at every ecclesiastical level.

Torchbearers Of The Gospel

Men of Fire, by Walter Russell Bowie (Harper, 1961, 244 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by William Bedford Williamson, Rector, The Church of the Atonement, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Here is a book which should be read by every clergyman, indeed, by every Christian. It will encourage and gladden his heart and make him proud to be the inheritor of the faith lived and taught by such heroes, “the torch-bearers of the Gospel.” The author sets the tone of his work in his brilliant, precise, and commanding foreword with the challenge that since the first Gospel, “the Word made flesh,” was not a book but a life, so the eternal fire of the Gospel witness is transmitted as “flame leaps to flame (p. 204), from person to person.

Walter Russell Bowie is a skilled craftsman who now adds another unique work to his Story of the Bible and Story of the Church, to name only his popular productions. Men of Fire is an exciting, readable combination of biography and church history. Dr. Bowie demonstrates the art of measuring history against the stature of great men as he literally calls the roll of the “giants” in church history from St. Peter to Thomas A. Dooley, M.D. and spells out their contributions and accomplishments with such vividness that the reader accepts the warmth of their witness as a living reality.

As if to underline the sound, scholarly, and evangelical nature of his work, Dr. Bowie presents his first “man of fire,” St. Peter, with New Testament flavor and accuracy as a leader and a “most vivid and conspicuous figure …” The author observes that “it is equally plain that at the Council (of Jerusalem, Acts 15) he (Peter) was not the official head; it was James … who was presiding” (p. 7). Dr. Bowie deals with other Petrine questions fairly and honestly, always insisting on his evangelical note of St. Peter as “the rock apostle” whose testimony and witness to the power of Christ in him and the Church became the main source-authority for St. Mark’s Gospel-in-writing. He rejects Roman Catholic claims of the primacy of Roman bishops and primal Roman succession.

Thrilling drama is relived throughout these pages: the martyr’s death of Polycarp (p. 24) otherwise too easily forgotten; the martyrdom of the translator John Tyndale (p. 124); and the stirring missionary narratives, for example, Dr. Grenfell (p. 215) are among the many dramatic high spots. Discussing the little-known work of the reformer William Farel (the man who recruited John Calvin to all-out reformation effort) as head of a group of “protesting” missioners in Switzerland, Dr. Bowie uses colorful and artful words. He calls this band “the commandos of the Evangelical crusade, the assault wave of the Reformation advance” (p. 149).

Every Protestant will profit from the reading of Chapters III through XI. These magnificent biographies and narratives will help overcome the uncritical resistance among many non Roman Christians to the major labors and accomplishments of the pre-Reformation bishops, scholars, monks, and missionaries under the banner of catholic Christianity. All will applaud the author’s friendly and yet accurate handling of Reformation heroes. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley appear in true historical perspective and in a context that makes the most of their unique contributions. Dr. Bowie follows a pattern that is growing in modern Christendom (and I hasten to commend it) of picturing Francis of Assisi as more of a reforming fire than as a somewhat aimless mendicant ascetic and slightly insipid ornithologist.

Pauline influence on the honor roll listing of the “men of fire” is thrilling to observe in this inspired writing. St. Paul’s great theme, “Christ in me,” has helped Christians of all generations to remark (with the Emmaus disciples), “Did not our heart(s) burn within us” as the eternal flame of the living Christ is clearly revealed in His disciples. The influence of St. Paul noted in Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley is proof of the Pauline heritage and evangelical fervor stemming from the inward fire of “a man in Christ.” Dr. Bowie quotes Phillips Brooks to clinch his thesis that “Preaching is the bringing of the truth through personality” (p. 204).

The author’s use of contemporary biography of Christians “on fire” is accomplished with consummate taste, as without undue sentimentality he tells their stories within the context of their chosen field of work and under the banner of their own branch of Christendom. Dr. Bowie brings us into the twentieth century with narratives of the labors and witness of modern medical missionaries: Grenfell (Anglican), Schweitzer (German Evangelical), Seagraves (American Baptist), and Dooley (Roman Catholic); who, “like their great forerunners, are witnesses to the eternal truth which came to them from Christ: that he who seeks his life shall lose it, and he who risks his life for the gospel saves it …” (p. 236).

WILLIAM BEDFORD WILLIAMSON

A Definitive Life

Federal Street Pastor: The Life of William Ellery Channing, by Madeleine Hooke Rice (Bookman Associates, 1961, 360 pp., $6), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English Literature and Dean of Columbian College, George Washington University.

“A poor little invalid all his life, he is yet one of those men who vindicate the power of the American race to produce greatness.” So writes Ralph Waldo Emerson of William Ellery Channing, American prophet of Unitarianism, the social gospel, the natural goodness of man, the doctrine of salvation through education and economic reform, the necessity for labor unions—and one of the first Americans to achieve the respect and admiration of Europe’s intellectuals. “Channing is unquestionably the finest writer of his age,” said the English periodical, Fraser’s Magazine, in 1838. Boston in the 1830s and 40s saw a stream of visitors, great and near great, all come to see the man who preached that Christianity is “a temper and a spirit,” not a doctrine; who taught that the Gospel consists of “practical truths designed to enlarge the heart, to exalt the character, to make us partakers of a divine nature”; and who wrote urgent appeals for the support of one “Mr. Adam of Calcutta,” a missionary who had gone to India as a Baptist but who had been inspired by “learned Hindoos to inquiries which had resulted in his adopting a more rational form of Christianity.” It was the temper of the times. Revolutionary social reform, eighteenth-century deism, the “cult of sensibility,” the seeming victories of science and “reason” over supernatural religion—all were coming together in that atmosphere of which Wordsworth wrote that “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be very young was very heaven.” (Wordsworth, incidentally, took Chaning for a tiring walk in the Lake Dissct when Channing visited England.) Mrs. Rice, associate professor of history at Hunter College, has written a scholarly, comprehensive, highly-readable biography, complete with excellent bibliography, footnotes (gathered at the back of the book), and a useful index. The work should be the definitive life of Channing.

CALVIN D. LINTON

Fine Firstfruit

The Pre-Conquest in England, by M. Deanesly (Oxford, 1961, 374 pp., $6), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History, Fuller Theological Seminary.

This volume is important as the first of a new series of five works which, written by different scholars, will together constitute a new Ecclesiastical History of England.

Yet it is also important in its own right, for to one of the most obscure and difficult periods Professor Deanesly things a wealth of learning and clarity of judgment to give an informative but vivid and readable account of the early British and Anglo-Saxon churches.

Two minor criticisms may be made. First, the story tends to fade with the work of Dunstan, though perhaps the gap left here will be filled in Volume II. Secondly, we detect a slight tilting of the scales in favor of the Roman rather than the Celtic mission at the time of the conversion of England. But perhaps this is because it did in fact prove to be the dominant trend.

In general, we must certainly be grateful for this historically-excellent firstfruits of the new series.

GEOFFREY W. BROMILEY

New And Better

New Testament Survey, by Merrill C. Tenney (Eerdmans, 1961 [revised ed.], 488 pp., $5.95; also London: IVF, 464 pp., 25s), is reviewed by W. Boyd Hunt, Professor of Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Faculty members of the Graduate School at Wheaton College have rendered conspicuous service in producing texts for survey Bible courses. Last year Harper brought out Schultz’ The Old Testament Speaks. Now Eerdmans has published a new and much more ambitious edition of Tenney’s New Testament Survey.

This is a day of elegant textbooks, and this volume is evidence that religious publishers are aware of the fact. More than 70 illustrations, some full page, liven up the book’s appearance. The format is impeccable and pleasing. No device has been spared that would make the volume more serviceable. There are charts, appendixes, and bibliographies.

In addition to the new look, new content has also been added, particularly with reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the text and transmission of the New Testament. This is in every sense a “new, revised, enlarged, and illustrated” edition of a proven and popular work.

This is also in every sense a conservative work. The emphasis is decidedly devotional. Critical problems are minimized. There are no references to many of the most prominent names of past and present New Testament scholarship. At the same time, Dean Tenney does not try to do all the thinking for his readers. His handling of eschatological issues is particularly restrained.

This volume is a splendid achievement. Both author and publisher deserve hearty congratulations.

W. BOYD HUNT

Religious Groupings?

The Religious Factor, by Gerhard Lenski (Doubleday, 1961, 384 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Earl L. Douglass, Editor of the Douglass Sunday School Lessons.

Gerhard Lenski, associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, has presented a prodigious and detailed study of how various religious groups in the United States differ in their political and economic outlooks and in their competition for economic advancement. His research, carried out by the Detroit Area Study, apparently involved years of effort and pondering over social and religious problems. He asks whether American society is turning into self-contained sub-communities divided by faith and race.

Reading for Perspective

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

* The Man God Mastered, by Jean Cadier (Eerdmans, $3), Splendid biographical portrait of Calvin, mastered by God, but triumphant over his foes and physical weaknesses.

* Christianity Divided, a symposium (Sheed & Ward, $6), Eminent Protestant and Roman Catholic thinkers meet in discussion not of things which unite but of things which divide them.

* Essence of Christianity, by Anders Nygren (Muhlenberg, $2), A clarification of the meaning of love as it relates to the atonement in the Lundensian view.

Dr. Lenski deals with the white Protestant, Negro Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups, and believes that membership in one of these groups does in a marked fashion determine whether a man will or will not enjoy his occupation, indulge in installment buying, be thrifty, vote the straight ticket, favor the welfare state, oppose racial integration in the schools, have a large family, complete his education, or rise in a class system.

No one should attempt to read this book unless he is prepared to do a lot of hard thinking. Although his style is clear, the author tries to pack so much information and evaluation into every sentence that the reader has to have considerable mental energy to get through the work. But if one wants a book that rings with authority and is tempered by a judicious use of data, then he will find this book remarkably rewarding.

Most of the material is oriented either to doctrinal orthodoxy or what the author calls devotionalism. These, he finds, are usually opposed to each other and approach problems differently. Lest one should get the idea that the book is purely theoretical, I hasten to point out that such everyday situations as the attitude people have toward their work, toward the forces involved in the labor movement, installment buying, freedom of speech, foreign affairs, drinking, child raising, and so forth, are all dealt with in these 350 closely-written, informationpacked pages.

Dr. Lenski examines the influence of religion, education, and science on the patterns of American family life. He reviews the Catholic situation with a frankness not usually manifested by present-day scholars who might be termed academic in their consideration of problems. There is an excellent chapter on the clergy and the place they occupy in the formation of group attitudes and actions.

The chapter on conclusions summarizes the author’s findings, suggests application of the theories which the author regards as sound, and offers predictions as to the results which the changing composition of the American population will bring forth.

There can be no doubt that Dr. Lenski deals with considerations which should be matters of profound concern to all students of modem life, especially clergymen. The author’s devotion to his task, the intelligence with which he has pursued his inquiries, and his determination to let facts, and only facts, speak for themselves commends this book to every fair-minded person.

It is well written but scientific and academic in its vocabulary. For those who are willing to give time and mental energy to the examination of profound issues, this book will prove highly rewarding.

EARL L. DOUGLASS

For The First Time

Gnosticism. A Sourcebook of Heretical Writings from the Early Christian Period, edited by Robert M. Grant (Harper, 1961, 254 pp., $4), is reviewed by Herman C. Waetjen, Assistant Professor of New Testament, School of Religion of the University of Southern California.

New and vigorous research is being concentrated on the origins and the development of Gnosticism. Some of the stimulus may be ascribed to the 1945 discovery of the fourth century Gnostic library at the ancient site of Chenoboskion near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. More of it, however, seems to be due to the vital role various scholars from von Harnack to Bultmann have attributed to Gnosticism in the development of early Christian thought and theology: as, for example, the Gnostic myth of the redeemed Redeemer.

A number of good monographs on Gnosticism have appeared in recent years. Among them is R. M. Grant’s Gnosticismand Early Christianity, a sober study of early Gnosis which attempts to show how Gnosticism emerged out of Jewish Apocalypticism and came to be introduced into Christianity and the Hellenistic world.

Now Professor Grant has provided something of a companion volume for this earlier work. Gnosticism, as the subtitle indicates, is a sourcebook. It is a compilation of selections from the writings of early Church Fathers who strove to refute the countless Gnostic heresies that were springing up in the Church like mushrooms; as well as selections—and this forms the greater part of the book—from the available Gnostic writings themselves.

In this way Gnosticism is allowed to speak for itself, and therein lies the value of this work. For the first time students of the New Testament and the history of Christian thought have an anthology of Gnostic literature. Undoubtedly, the book will be expanded as time goes by and more Gnostic writings are translated. But in the meantime, Professor Grant and his associates are to be congratulated for this valuable handbook.

HERMAN C. WAETJEN

Bible In British Schools

The Scripture Lesson, edited by J. W. Harmer (Tyndale Press, 1961, 312 pp., 15s), is reviewed by Kathleen M. Wilson, Lecturer in Divinity, City of Coventry Training College, Warwickshire, England.

The relations between Church and State in education, as in other fields, differ vastly between this country and the United States. In Britain the Education Act of 1944 states that religions instruction must be given in every school, and that the school day must begin with collective worship. Both clauses are subject to safeguards respecting parental wishes and the freedom of teachers. But without the cooperation of the teacher the religious clauses of the 1944 Act are merely empty words. Unfortunately the attitude of many Christians towards scripture teaching in state schools is destructively critical. This is depressing in a job where problems and difficulties, especially for young teachers, easily obscure the opportunities and joys.

“The Scripture Lesson,” however, avoids this pitfall, and is full of constractive help for the teacher who is require to give religious instruction in accordance with the Agreed Syllabus. It is produced by teachers for teachers. The original edition, published in 1945, has been regularly of use to the reviewer, and this new edition, thoroughly revised, promises greater usefulness both to specialist and non-specialist teachers. The chapter on church history has been extended, and that on archaeology has been re-written. This edition is illustrated with new material on teaching methods and visual aids.

There are a few surprising omissions: no chapter on school worship, amazingly few references to contemporary problems and situations, no classified list of films to complement the chapter on visual aids, as the classified bibliography complements the rest of the book. Neither is there mention of such teaching aids as the ubiquitous tape recorder. But these are minor defects in a book which could help the theological specialist adjust his wave length, and build up the background knowledge of the sympathetic non-specialist on whose effectiveness the implementation of the Act largely depends. The value of the book should stretch beyond Britain as the syllabus is not narrowly national in content.

KATHLEEN M. WILSON

West Of Wesley

John Wesley, Friend of the People, by Oscar Sherwin (Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1961, 234 pp., $5), is reviewed by Clyde S. Kilby, Chairman of the English Department, Wheaton College (Illinois).

The one really commendable thing about this study is the long list of quotations, most of them excellent, about John Wesley and about the spiritual poverty of the century in which he lived. The book is, in fact, little more than these quotations.

Otherwise I find it singularly irritating. It appears to have been written hurriedly. The style is nervous, at times downright bad. (That the author really can write is apparent in a few of the later chapters.) The organization of the material is often distressingly poor as to chronology, and chapters sometimes include subjects foreign to their titles. There are numerous small discrepancies, as for example, on page 116 we are told that Wesley always lived on 28 pounds a year and gave away the rest, but on the next page it is said that he never spent upon his personal needs more than 30 pounds a year. Why confuse the reader even on such minor details? There are many instances of this kind of thing.

Far more important, however, is the impossibility, for me at least, of reconciling Dr. Sherwin’s sympathetic, even enthusiastic, attitude toward Wesley as a great Christian with his conclusion to the study. “What vital message does Wesley’s voice bring us today?” asks Dr. Sherwin, and his answer is, “The religions of the race of men may differ, but moral law—the brotherhood of all men—is an altar at which we can all worship.” John Wesley was what he was because of his belief in Jesus Christ as Saviour. This is Wesley’s vital message to his own age and to ours, not the bloodless moralism that Dr. Sherwin proposes.

CLYDE S. KILBY

Not For Laughs

The Loss of Unity, by Hoffman Nickerson (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1961, 360 pp., 21s), is reviewed by G. S. M. Walker, Lecturer in Theology, Leeds University, England.

Despite appearances to the contrary, this book is intended to be serious. I say “despite appearances,” because the reader might be pardoned for setting it down as a work of comic fiction when he finds chapter titles like the following: “Dutch Scholar lays an Egg,” “Charles’ Aunt versus Royal Theologian.”

Mr. Nickerson deals with the period from the voyages of discovery to the close of the Council of Trent, with some afterthoughts on the present situation. Though his theme is the cultural weakness produced by religious division, he ignores the one really radical cleavage (that between the Greek East and the Latin West) which became a prototype for almost every Iron Curtain. Instead, he concentrates on Western Europe, and towards the end of the book he virtually admits that his main thesis is inaccurate, for he speaks of “our religious tradition” as a recognizable entity which can still be contrasted with other cultures.

The various strands in the story are well co-ordinated, and there are some vivid pieces of descriptive writing. Mr. Nickerson is at his best when he describes the rig of sailing ships. But as soon as he reaches terra firma his knowledge begins to falter. His account of the Church on the eve of the Reformation is woefully inadequate. Savonarola is not even mentioned. The Bohemian Hussites are called “a local affair … which showed no signs of spreading,” at a time when they had been in active correspondence with the Scottish Lollards. And Rome is given less than her due; familiar papal scandals are duly recounted, but far too little is said about those evangelical Catholics who were trying to reform the Church from within before Luther had been heard of.

The inadequacy of Mr. Nickerson’s knowledge is indicated by the irrelevance of his bibliography, some of which is also out of date. He miscalculates the length of the indulgences attached to the Wittenberg relics by 100,000 years. He says that to destroy images in churches was “a violation of all Christian tradition, for even the persecuted Church in the catacombs had made pictures of Our Lord.” In point of fact, the earliest pronouncement on images, that of the Council of Elvira, had prohibited them; it was not until A.D. 692 that canonical permission was first given for pictures of Christ’s human form; and for more than a century thereafter, violent dispute continued. Even more wildly, Mr. Nickerson states that it has always been “an essential part” of the Church’s teaching that only bishops can ordain. Now, quite apart from the powers which Jerome ascribes to the presbyters op Alexandria, there have been cases of valid ordination performed in India by presbyters of the Eastern Orthodox Church; in the West, the majority of the schoolmen believed that under special circumstances presbyters could ordain, and there have in fact been as many as four papal bulls allowing them to do so. It is never wise to confound the teachings of the Catholic Church with the sectarian prejudices of a particular brand of Anglicanism.

Luther, according to Mr. Nickerson, was just a foul-mouthed peasant, and the princes who supported him were pigs and swine. Rabelais, on the other hand, is charming in his obscenities which, since they came from a pen untainted by heresy, are like “the wholesome smell of stable manure.” Mr. Nickerson displays an odd assortment of antipathies which strangely recall the Syllabus of Errors compiled by Pius IX. He believes, for example, that democratic socialism is incompatible with civil liberty, that Higher Criticism is “mumbo-jumbo,” and that Calvin worshiped the devil. It was only to be expected that a man who approves of Rabelais should disapprove of Puritan morality. But Mr. Nickerson places himself in bad company by the theological point on which he has chosen to attack Calvin; on this particular point, only the Albigensian heretics agree with his attack, whereas Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, to name but three, are “devil worshipers” of the first water.

All in all, it is a pity that Mr. Nickerson did not study more of the facts before he wrote this book. It is not merely that historical writing demands a wider knowledge and a better-balanced judgment than he is able to command. The really tragic thing is this: he does want to serve the cause of Christian unity, and he imagines that these ill-informed polemics will promote that cause.

G. S. M. WALKER

Count How Much?

Beliefs That Count, by Georgia Harkness (Abingdon, 1961, 125 pp., $1), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, Chairman, the Department of History, Waterloo University College, Ontario.

It is the conviction of many that American popular theology has in recent years been moving more and more in the conservative direction. The questionable character of this generalization is well illustrated by Georgia Harkness’ latest book, which contains such statements as: “The Bible is not in every word an infallible revelation of God, but a record made through human instruments” (p. 50); and “Biblical scholars no longer believe that the Gospels are exact accounts of the words of Jesus, since these, writings were compiled forty to seventy years after his death and thus reflect only the memories and interpretations of the early church” (p. 28). The Christology of the volume is generally of an imitative nature, and the theological criterion of truth employed throughout the book appears to be a rather naive consensus gentium (e.g.: “We come now to say a few words about the disputed subject, the reality of hell and the possibility of everlasting punishment meted out by God. Here opinions differ greatly among Christians, and anything we say must be tentative”—p. 114).

The book achieves its purpose as a commentary on certain episcopal affirmations read at the Methodist General Conference in 1952, and underscores the fact that American Methodism still has much to learn both from the evangelical beliefs of the Wesleys and from the solid Reformation scholarship of such contemporary English Methodists as Philip S. Watson.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Simeon Stylites

More Preaching Values in the Epistles of Paul, Vol. II, by Halford E. Luccock (Harper, 1961, 225 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by W. G. Foster, Minister, the First Presbyterian Church, Florence, South Carolina.

“We’re tenting tonight

On the old camp ground.”

Using this bit of an old Civil War song to focus attention on 2 Corinthians 5:1, Halford E. Luccock expressed his Christian hope in these words: “And we are in a tent, a temporary habitation. We look forward to moving day, to a permanent home, to a house not made with hands.”

Moving Day has come for Simeon Stylites, Luccock’s pen name in his weekly column in The Christian Century, but not before he left another “values” book that will be valuable to every minister who is seeking penetrating insight into some familiar text, a fresh approach to some vital issue, or a mental catapult that will set the imagination soaring.

Vivid, pithy, unusual, pertinent, homey—but rarely doctrinal or exegetical—describe these preaching values that Dr. Luccock has found in II Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Colossians. Those who have developed a taste for Dr. Luccock’s style will find these as delightful as previous offerings, and close who have not yet enjoyed Luccock could give him a try.

Included in the book is an appreciation of the author, written by Dr. Ralph W. Sockman. Dr. Sockman feels that Dr. Luccock was a man who kept a balanced perspective on quest and conquest, on “know how” and “know why.” These values serve to prove the point well taken.

W. G. FOSTER

Our Best Hope

The Company of the Committed, by Elton Trueblood (Harper, 1961, 113 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by William Haverkamp, Minister, Second Christian Reformed Church, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Trueblood’s books are never dull. This little volume presents the mature thinking of the author on the role of the Church in the survival of our civilization. If the Church is to play a significant part, she must be cherished, criticized, nourished, and reformed. Trueblood holds that the Church of Jesus Christ, with all blemishes, divisions, and failures remains our hope of spiritual vitality.

With a candor that is born of genuine concern, the author tears away the superficial marks of success and points to a situation that is disconcerting. He points to provinces that are lost to the influence of the Church and later makes suggestions for recapturing these provinces. He issues the call for full commitment.

One may not share Trueblood’s basic view of the Church, nor may one be able to assent to all the solutions he offers. But there is no doubt that reading of this book will stimulate genuine concern about the Church and its role in the modern world. It will give many a churchman a deserved jolt, and if it does that it will have accomplished the author’s purpose.

WILLIAM HAVERKAMP

Behold, … All Ye That …

Christ and Selfhood, by Wayne E. Oates (Associated Press, 1961, 252 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain, Christian Sanitorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

The central theme of this book has a clear evangelical sound—Man becomes truly himself, what he was created to be, through his redemptive encounter with Jesus Christ. In Christ God meets man with love and forgiveness, resolves the alienation and estrangement of man’s existential predicament, and provides the focus or integrating principle for meaningful living. “The redemption in Christ aims to remove all subterfuge, artificiality, fictitiousness, and counterfeit attempts at selfhood in order that through forgiveness and reconciliation the genuinely human existence to which we have been called might be brought into focus” (p. 249).

In developing this theme the author draws on a rich and varied source of psychological and theological literature, and suggests many stimulating insights. However, the book is disappointing to the evangelical reader because the author emphasizes the Incarnation and Resurrection to the almost complete exclusion of the Crucifixion, a characteristic of much “encounter” literature. This omission of the Cross is fatal because it robs the Incarnation of its purpose and the Resurrection of its victory. True, man needs a genuine encounter with the Incarnate Son of God and the Living Lord, but the redemptive efficacy of that encounter is in the expiatory, atoning, justice-satisfying transaction of the Cross. Psychological dynamics need to be understood, but insight is no substitute for moral cleansing. Subjective commitment is essential and may even result in “peace of mind” apart from a genuine encounter with the crucified Saviour (a non-Christian commitment may also produce an integrated selfhood), but it is hollow from the evangelical viewpoint apart from the objective transaction of the Cross.

THEODORE J. JANSMA

Pastoral Letters

Answers to Anxiety, by Herman W. Gockel (Concordia, 1961, 179 pp., $3), is reviewed by Robert Strong, Minister, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Montgomery, Alabama.

The Missouri Synod Lutherans have set the pace among the denominations in the use of TV to present the Gospel, and Dr. Herman W. Gockel has been the key figure in the undertaking. In this his latest book he deals with the Christian’s problems born of anxiety. Each chapter is a letter to a composite figure named Mark. Not as a psychiatrist but as an experienced pastor Dr. Gockel brings the Scripture helpfully to bear upon such questions as: “What if I should die right after I have committed a sin and before I had an opportunity to ask God for His forgiveness?” This is an excellent book for young or new believers.

ROBERT STRONG

Sunday School Lesson Commentaries

The Standard Lesson Commentary for 1962, edited by Orrin Root and John W. Wade (Standard, 1961, 448 pp., $2.95); Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide, edited by Frank S. Mead (Revell, 1961, 384 pp., $2.95); Peloubet’s Select Notes, edited by Wilbur M. Smith (Wilde, 1961, 550 pp., $2.95); Uniform Lesson Commentary, edited by Arthur H. Getz (Muhlenberg Press, 1961, 320 pp., $2.95); Broadman Comments, edited by H. I. Hester and J. Winston Pearce (Broadman, 1961, 437 pp., $2.95); Rozell’s Complete Lessons, edited by Ray Rozell (Rozell, 1962, 318 pp., $2.95); Higley Sunday School Lesson Commentary, edited by J. A. Huffman (Lambert Huffman, 1961, 527 pp., $2.95); The Douglass Sunday School Lessons, edited by Earl L. Douglass (Macmillan, 1961, 475 pp., $3.25); Jesus and the Ten Commandments, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker, 1961, 79 pp., $1); Points for Emphasis, by Clifton J. Allen (Broadman, 1961, 215 pp., $.95); Illustrating the Lesson, by Arthur House Stainback (LeRoi Publishers, 1961, 109 pp., $1.50), are reviewed by Alvin B. Quail, Dean, Whitworth College.

The International Sunday School Lessons continue to be widely used among the various religious denominations. It is possible in this review to describe some of the Uniform Lesson Series along with certain teaching aids that commend themselves because of the scholarship and care which they manifest.

The Standard Lesson Commentary for 1962 is the ninth of a yearly series. Eight pages are devoted to each week’s lesson. The commentary begins with statements concerning “Jesus and the Gospel” and “The Law of God and the Love of God.” Each lesson is developed by presenting the scripture reference first. The biblical text is followed by the lesson background and a verse by verse explanation of the text. There is a section on “Discussion and Application” with several key questions and answers for daily living. The entire treatment is Bible centered and well organized for learning.

A distinctive feature of the Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide is that the lesson text is in both the King James and Revised Standard Versions. The effective use of visual aids is described and accompanied by audio-visual reference materials which are correlated with each Sunday’s lesson. In addition to historical and biblical backgrounds there are notes on the printed text and interesting topics especially prepared for intermediate, seniors, young people, and adults. A list of home daily Bible reading has been prepared to parallel the lesson topic for each week.

The early part of Peloubet’s Select Notes contains audio-visual selections for each lesson, followed by a bibliographical section. Each lesson begins with a general biblical reference followed by the printed text reference which comes later in the lesson treatment. The beginning outline also contains a Bible devotional reading and scriptural references to accompany suitable topics for all age levels. An introductory approach is suggested for younger and older classes. There is an outline of each lesson followed by a thoroughly-developed exposition for each topic and Bible verse. The commentary is comprehensive in its treatment.

In the Uniform Lesson Commentary four writers combine their efforts, each preparing a quarterly commentary. The background of the lesson is presented first. This is followed by “Comments on the Text” in which each Bible verse receives attention. The “Gist of the Passage” is next in order, followed by “Lesson Sidelights” and a series of questions to ponder during the week. Daily Bible readings of the next week are at the conclusion of each lesson. This book consists of biblical expositions which are topically outlined. The entire lesson commentary is concise in its presentation.

The introduction of Broadman Comments relates Jesus to the Ten Commandments, followed by teaching aims for the quarter and each week’s lesson. A list of supplementary reading is provided for the entire quarter. The lessons are organized with a section devoted to the “Lesson in … Word,” and one on “The Lesson in Life.” A suggested approach to the lesson is given in conclusion. There is a brief listing of suggested visual aids. One should write to the publisher for information on where the visual aids may he secured.

The early part of Rozell’s Complete Lessons contains a foreword to teachers, outline of the lessons for the entire year, and an introduction to the first quarter. The Scripture is first presented followed by a lesson introduction. lesson is developed basically in a topical manner with a careful correlation with the Bible. The concluding statement contains a summary and a transitional statement in preparation for the next week’s lesson. A special feature “For the Teacher Only” is provided in the early part of each lesson. The editor has stressed fresh applications and gives directions for using the blackboard.

The Higley Sunday School Lesson Commentary is organized to include Scripture text, daily Bible readings, teaching outline, and an exposition of each Scripture lesson verse. An object lesson is carefully prepared with a theme, materials, and procedures for each week’s consideration. A special feature of Higley’s is the “Pump Primer.” At the conclusion of each lesson the “Pump Primer” provides 10 stimulating questions for the student. These may be handled by the teacher in a variety of ways. The topics for each week are expressed and developed appropriately for the age levels ranging from primary to the adults.

The Douglass Sunday School Lessons begins with a list of lessons and Bible references for the four quarters. Next is a comprehensive statement of the “Value in the Uniform Lessons.” This is followed by “A Word to Teachers in Procedures” and a quarterly introduction. The Scripture presentation is accompanied by a lesson plan topically outlined. Instead of using a verse by verse seatment, the topics receive comments with a careful buttressing of biblical references. The lesson concludes with suggested topics and questions for discussion. The hints for teachers, which appear at the end, are closely related to the materials first presented. The entire commentary evidences scholarship and organization.

Jesus and the Ten Commandments is the first book in a Bible Companion Series for lesson and sermon preparation. The author brings to his commentary a rich background of pastoral ministry and experiences in preparing the “Gist of the Lesson for Sunday School Teachers.” The writing is done in a scholarly and careful manner. Jesus and the Ten Commandments is a commentary of particular value to teachers of youth and adults.

Points for Emphasis is a pocket commentary which has been carefully organized to include the essential references and topics for each lesson. Even though the treatment is concise there are comments on each phase of the lesson. There a section for practical application called “Truths to Live By.” This lesson “compact” may be easily carried in a small purse or coat pocket for ready reference and convenient study.

The foreword of Illustrating the Lesson states that this is not a commentary. There is, however, a well-prepared outline of the lesson with appropriate Scripture references. The distinctive feature of the lesson treatment is the large number of excellent illustrations which accompany each topic of the lesson.

ALVIN B. QUALL

Persuaders

Persuasion and Healing, by Jerome D. Frank (Johns Hopkins Press, 1961, 282 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, Director of Health Services and Lecturer in Psychiatry, University of Illinois.

In the topsy-turvy world of psychotherapy where scarcely anything is really what it seems, quotes from Alice in Wonderland seem especially apt as chapter headings for this “Comparative Study in Psychotherapy.” Dr. Frank, with Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Harvard, is Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and a recognized authority in the field of psychotherapy.

In its treatment of psychotherapy alone, the book would be a solid contribution to the literature of the field. Dr. Frank begins with a broad survey of psychotherapy in America, then presents his own conceptual framework for psychotherapy as being the correction of the patient’s unconscious “assumptive system.” He deals in turn with the psychiatrist himself, then with psychotherapy as practiced individually, in groups, and in the mental hospital. The book closes with a comprehensive view of “American Psychotherapy in Perspective.”

The author’s theoretical orientation appears to be a combination of the Freudian and Pavlovian systems with learning theory. From this eclectic position, he criticizes freely such weaknesses of psychoanalysis as its overemphasis upon psychological factors, its neglect of sociocultural forces, and its emphasis upon early life experience rather than current faulty interaction patterns. He objects to the all-inclusive scope of analytic theory and to the fact that its doctrines are by nature both irrefutable and untestable. Such “evocative” therapies as client-centered counseling or psychoanalysis probably influence patients as much as directive methods, Frank concludes, in spite of their claims for neutrality and objectivity.

Religious healing and revivalism are considered in two chapters that appear almost as artefacts interrupting the comprehensive sequence already described. Frank appears to have been strongly influenced by the views of the British psychiatrist, Sargant, as set forth in his Battle for the Mind. Like Sargant, Frank finds similarity between religious healing, religious conversion, and the political thought reform of the Chinese and the Russians. In each instance a “sufferer” is converted under the emotional pressures of a “persuader.”

In contrast with the rest of the book which is based upon first-hand experience and direct acquaintance with psychotherapy, Frank relies upon other authors for his information on religious conversion and seems to have little first-hand knowledge of religion upon which to base his psychologizing.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

Book Briefs

House Without a Roof, by Maurice Hindus (Doubleday, 1961, 562 pp., $6.95). Story of people and history of Russia told to create greater understanding of present-day Russia.

The Service of Chaplains to Army Air Units 1917–1946, by Daniel B. Jorgensen (Government Printing Office, n.d., 344 pp., $3). This volume is a history of the development and service rendered by the United States Air Force Chaplaincy. With text and pictures it tells the story of men who, in the world’s strangest parishes, conducted services, rendered council, buried the dead, cheered the living, and improvised communion cups from sections of bamboo. This book opens a window on the chaplaincy.

Man’s Guiltiness Before God, by Thomas Goodwin (Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1960, 567 pp., $6.95). Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, with The Covenant of Grace, by Thomas Brooks (Sovereign Grace, 1960, 316 pp., $3.95). Obadiah and Habakkuk, by Edward Marbury (Sovereign Grace, 1960, 763 pp., $6.95). Reissues of works of classical Calvinistic Puritan divines.

Ten Torchbearers, by Dorothy Heiderstadt (Thomas Nelson, 1961, 192 pp., $2.95). Ten interesting profiles of ten religious leaders (Roger William, George Fox, etc.) who planted their faith on American soil.

What China Policy? by Vladimir Petroy (Shoe String Press, 1961, 141 pp., $4.50). Yale research of arguments for and against recognition of Red China.

The Heart of Things, by Nathaniel Beattie (Revell, 1961, 119 pp., $2). Minister and surgeon describes striking analogies between facts of medical science and Christian truths.

Yankee Si! by Edmund W. Janss (William Morrow and Co., 1961, 182 pp., $3.75). The moving story of a dedicated American and thousands like him who have “adopted” starving homeless children the world over.

The Twentieth Century New Testament (Moody, 1961, 449 pp., cloth $3.50, paperback $1.29). This translation popular 50 years ago, forgotten, today revived.

Your God and Your Gold, by Leslie B. Flynn (Zondervan, 1961, 137 pp., $2.50). Money talks and the author describes its many voices.

The Christian Year, edited by H. W. Dobson (Bles, 1961, 312 pp., 18s.). Canon Dobson has added some notes and occasional devotional quotations to the Prayer Book Collects and J. B. Phillips’ translation of the Epistles and Gospels, but the book is valuable beyond strictly Episcopalian horizons.

The One Work, by Anne Gage (Stuart, 1961, 139 pp., 21s.). A journey towards the self. The author’s mystical reflections following journeys through the religious centers of the East; an illustrated work on syncretistic mysticism.

Chris’s Drama, by Nigel Richmond (Stuart, 1961, 212 pp., 21s.). The Nature of Spiritual Growth; an interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel. An interpretation of Matthew in terms of evolution and psychology and symbolism; the text is printed section by section, but new canons of interpretation would be necessary in order to classify this exegesis.

The Secret of the Plateau, by E. W. Crabb (153 pp.); The Caravan Family, by Elizabeth Ashley (150 pp.); The Delmore Feud, by E. J. Warde (153 pp.). All are Victory Press, 1961, 6/6. All are books for 10–15 year olds. Adventure stories with a Christian background.

Paperbacks

Challenge of the Space Age, by J. W. Klotz (Concordia, 1961, 112 pp., $1). The story and the challenge of man’s thrust into space.

How About Christianity?, by A. D. Haentzscel (Concordia, 1961, 117 pp., $1). A conversation about the things that frequently prevent thinking people from giving Christianity a fair hearing.

Life After Death, by Lehman Strauss (Good News Publishers, 1961, 64 pp., $.50); How to Win Your Family to Christ, by Nathanael Olson (1961, 64 pp., $.50). Condensations of originals for reading in one evening.

The Eucharistic Memorial, Part II—The New Testament, by Max Thurian (John Knox, 1961, 133 pp., $1.75). An ecumenical study in worship. First published in 1961 in French.

Prophecy and Religion, by John Skinner (Cambridge, 1961, 360 pp., 10/6, $1.45). A portrait of the prophet and an exposition of his prophecy. First edition 1922.

The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion, by Martin E. Marty (World, 1961, 224 pp., $1.45). An examination of the effect of such American freethinkers as Thomas Paine, Clarence Darrow, Robert Ingersoll, Ralph Waldo Emerson, et cetera, on the development of religious thought in America.

One to One, by Erling Rolfsrud (Augsburg, 1961, 116 pp., $2). Practical suggestions and tips on how to deal with and understand the deaf and the blind person.

The Servant Messiah, by T. W. Manson (Cambridge, 1961, 103 pp., 7/6, $1.25). A competent study of Christ as Messiah, modified since presented as the Shaffer Lectures at Yale in 1939.

The Church in the World, by R. R. Caemmerer (Concordia, 1961, 108 pp., $1). Study of New Testament strategy for church’s triumph over the world. First issued in 1949.

Training Lay Leadership, by Guido A. Merkens (Concordia, 1961, 68 pp., $.75). Helps and suggestions on how to be a leader in the church, although a layman.

How Far Down the Road? by Edward R. Sneed (Edward R. Sneed, Clayton 5, Mo., 1961, 176 pp., $1). A cry to salvage freedom for America.

Churches and Immigrants, by J. J. Mol (Research Group for European Migration Problems Bulletin, May 1961, 86 pp., $1.50). A sociological study of the effect religion plays in the adjustments faced by immigrants.

The Case for Protestantism, by Thomas C. Hammond (Thomas C. Hammond, 1961, 95 pp., 9s, Australian). Being a selection of radio broadcasts in Sydney, New South Wales.

Religion in America Past and Present, by Clifton E. Olmstead (Prentice-Hall, 1961, 172 pp., $1.95). Concise, colorful panorama of American religious life from colonial days to the present.

Teach Us to Pray, by J. W. Acker (Concordia, 1961, 133 pp., $1). Solid, quiet discussion of the nature and purpose of true prayer.

The Spirit of Life or Life More Abundant, by Tom Rees (Hodder and Stoughton, 1961, 192 pp., 4s. 6d.). Through short devotional readings, author seeks to make Holy Spirit a living reality for Christians today.

Rufus Jones Speaks to our Time, edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick (Macmillan, 1961, 289 pp., $1.95). An anthology, edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick, of Rufus Jones, Quaker, and leading historian of mysticism. (First edition, 1951.)

Reprints

A Lifting Up for the Downcast, by William Bridge (Banner of Truth, 1961, 287 pp., 5s). A paperback of 13 sermons on Psalm 42 by a seventeenth-century Puritan dealing with spiritual depression.

Matthew XXIV, by J. Marcellus Kik (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1961, 115 pp., $2). Concise, readable exposition of what is generally regarded as a difficult chapter.

Ancient, Medieval and Modern Christianity, by Charles Guignebert (University Books, 1961, 507 pp., $7.50). Christianity interpreted in terms of evolution.

An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by John Brown (Banner of Truth Trust, 1961, 728 pp., 18/-). Combines devotional and exegetical thoroughness.

How Love Grows in Marriage, by Leland Foster Wood (Channel, 1961, 254 pp. $3.50). Love in marriage and how it matures, or should.

The Select Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. Ill (Banner of Truth Trust, 1961, 382 pp., 15/-). Treatise concerning religious affections.

Out of the Earth, by E. M. Blaiklock (Eerdmans, 1961, 92 pp., $2). Popularly-written book on archaeology and New Testament; each chapter, save one, revised.

Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced, by D. M. Canright (Baker, 1961, 418 pp., $3.50). Testimony of onetime staunch Adventist, now long dead (1919), against errors and heresies of Seventh-day Adventism.

In prospect for 1962 is a growing revolt against statistics as an index of spiritual health. According to key observers of the religious scene, American church leaders are increasingly skeptical of arithmetical approaches to religious vitality.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY sampling at the turn of the year confirmed this tendency of an increasing number of influential churchmen to discount numerical data.

This de-emphasis on statistics comes, curiously, during an appreciable leveling-off of the U. S. religious boom of recent years, and at a time when many observers are beginning to inquire about the pragmatic success of ecumenical mergers in addition to spiritual trends in general. Church membership gains are barely keeping pace with the population increase. Fewer students are enrolling in accredited seminary programs leading primarily to the pastoral ministry (see box). Construction of new churches fell off in 1961 for the first time in a number of years. Some Protestant causes are sorely lagging in financial support.

Dr. D. Elton Trueblood, recognized authority on the American church scene, foresees an upsurge, however, in the growth of small fellowships of Christian witness, extending across theological lines.

He distinguishes between a growth “on paper” and “in reality,” citing the fact that membership figures are “deceptive.”

“I hope for a great deepening of the lay ministry,” Trueblood adds, “but I am not sure it will occur.”

Dr. Edgar H. S. Chandler, religious affairs adviser of the United States Information Agency, also tends to give less attention to religious statistics.

Chandler expects a “deep implementation of the ecumenical spirit” to characterize American church life during 1962. He is executive vice president of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago.

Miss Lillian R. Block, managing editor of Religious News Service, says there are many reasons why less emphasis is being given cold facts and figures.

“There are more and more church members,” she says, “but the increase is not showing that the world is more deeply religious.”

Miss Block expects “a hassle” to develop out of the admission of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches. She also predicts a continuing clergy debate on fallout shelters.

Louis Cassels, religious news analyst for United Press International, likewise senses a widening suspicion that “big growth” figures are misleading. “I see a little less concern for counting sheep,” he says, “and a little more with finding sheep.” He adds that there appears to be more consciousness that the really important things cannot be measured quantitatively.

Seminaries Show Small Enrollment Gain

Fall enrollment figures in accredited seminaries showed a small increase over the previous year, according to the American Association of Theological Schools.

The increase for 1961 over 1960 contrasted with a decline in 1960 as compared with 1959.

Total enrollment of theological students in the member schools of the American Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada in the fall of 1961 was 20,466 as compared with 20,032 in 1960.

Canadian schools showed a 10 per cent increase in 1961 over the previous year. The U. S. increase was less than two per cent.

The AATS said that students enrolled in programs leading primarily to the pastoral ministry were slightly fewer than in 1960. Associate Director Jesse H. Ziegler declared: “The staff of the AATS have no clear answers as to the failure of the churches to enlist men for their ministries in numbers comparable [to population, church membership, and college enrollment increases]. Possible reasons that have been suggested are competition with recruitment by industry, questioning regarding the relevance of the church and its ministry, rising costs of theological education especially for married students, relative lack of grants comparable to other fields to assist the student without financial resources, lack of clarity regarding the ministries of clergy and laymen, lack of as clear voices speaking appreciatively of church and ministry as those speaking critically.”

Perhaps the biggest religious statistics story in 1962 will be the expected emergence of the Southern Baptist Convention as the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The overtaking of The Methodist Church in membership totals has received little mention in Southern Baptist promotional material. As of the end of the year, U. S. Methodists numbered slightly more than 10 million and Southern Baptists slightly less.

A particularly relevant observation was made last month by John T. Sisemore, superintendent of Adult Sunday School work for the (Southern) Baptist Sunday School Board. Sisemore told a group of Baptist administrators in Nashville that the “most critical problem” of Southern Baptists is this:

“In trying to win the lost, we have failed to hold those we have already reached” and to reclaim others.

Dr. Kermit Long, president of the Methodist Council on Evangelism, also had a scolding for his colleagues. He said that in one of its early years in America The Methodist Church grew by 153 per cent while the population increased only 36 per cent. Said Long:

“Our record today is so sad and sickening that, give us a little more time and they will soon write us off.”

He told the Western Jurisdiction Workshop in Evangelism that “with all our education, our theology, our fine buildings, our image of the church, we are doing less to win people to Christ and our unschooled forefathers who rode the frontier spreading scriptural holiness.”

“Evangelism is the lifeline and the heartbeat of the church,” he added. “It is our mainline business, and we ought never trade a streamliner for a hand car. But this is what we are doing.”

“We no longer are fishers of men but keepers of the aquarium. Among our churches it has become a matter of ‘you swipe from my fish bowl and I’ll swipe from yours.’ ”

The Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, asserts that in 1962 “stronger lines of delineation will be drawn between evangelicalism and ecumenicity as further steps are taken toward a massive world church.” Says the Assemblies leader:

Protestant Panorama

• “Question 7,” Lutheran-produced film which takes its theme from the East German church-state struggle, was named last month as the best motion picture of 1961 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures’ committee on exceptional films. A spokesman for the independent reviewing organization said the film presents with “considerable cinematic competence the most important theme of the twentieth century, to wit, the encroachment of the state into the realm of the individual’s conscience and belief.”

• A proposal to “strengthen its democratic principles” will be presented to Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s 45th regular convention in Cleveland next June. A 76-page report by the synod’s survey commission calls for “restoration of two-way communication between congregations, districts, and the synod so that congregations can have a greater part in formulating the church body’s plans and programs as well as in carrying them out.”

• The Schwenkfelder Church, one of the oldest and smallest of the world’s Protestant denominations, marked the 400th anniversary last month of the death of its founder, Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig. The church has only five congregations, four in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and one in Philadelphia, with a total of 2,500 members.

• An atomic research reactor donated by American Episcopalians is in operation at St. Paul’s University in Yokosuka, Japan. It will be used for research, training and medical applications.

• A “religion and arts festival” sponsored by the United Churches of Greater St. Petersburg, Florida, will be a prominent feature of the city’s first “Art Month” in March.

• Special services this week mark the 175th anniversary of Louisburg (North Carolina) College, which claims to be the oldest church-related junior college in the United States. The Methodist school has a current enrollment of 552.

• Two ministers are among sponsors of a new group called the Capital Punishment Information Council of New Hampshire and formed to fight the death penalty. The clergymen are the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, an Episcopalian, and the Rev. R. E. Morin, a Unitarian.

• The Zondervan publishing firm will introduce The Amplified Old Testament next month. The work is a counterpart of The Amplified New Testament, of which nearly 750,000 copies have been distributed.

• A “study” made of tar paper and sawdust bags stands on the lawn of the Congregational church in Freeport, Maine. It was erected by the minister, the Rev. David Day, as a protest against what he considers to be the inadequacy of the country’s fallout shelter program. Day proposes a federal survival program, effective world law, and responsible Christian peacemaking.

• The Assemblies of God will sponsor a series of nine film and audio ministry seminars for pastors, Christian education directors, and laymen around the country. • The seminars will be conducted by the Rev. Willard Cantelon, an evangelist and specialist on audio-visual methods. A film production studio in Burbank, California, has been purchased for conversion into an audio-visual production center.

• The West Indies Mission says that its “Wings of the Morning” gospel radio broadcast has gone off the air in Cuba. It had been transmitted without interruption for nearly 20 years and was reported to be the last evangelical program being aired in Cuba.

• Baptists in Lugano, Switzerland, are building the first free church chapel in the Tessin canton, a predominantly Roman Catholic area. The Italian-speaking Baptist congregation currently has some 30 communicants. They are receiving financial aid from other Swiss Baptists and from the Southrn Baptist Convention in the United States. The new church will cost about $46,500 and will seat 100 persons.

“Current trends toward greater interest in the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church will continue. Many so-called old-line denominations will experimentally participate in the phenomenon of glossolalia and the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit.”

He also predicts that missions boards will be forced to re-evaluate their approaches as nationalistic surges make world evangelism more difficult.

The Sloniker Prints

The Smithsonian Institution is circulating 60 prints from the “Sloniker Collection of Twentieth Century Biblical and Religious Prints” of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Represented are artists from 14 countries, including Chagall, Ciry, Dali, Derain, Kokoschka, Picasso, Redon, and Rouault. Most of the prints are from woodcuts or etchings in black and white.

A picture is readily classified as religious if the artist indicates a Scripture text from which he received his inspiration, if the title indicates biblical characters, events or places, or if he chooses a recognizable event. But what does one search for in a scriptural work? And how does a Christian look at art?

Most Christian critics would be willing to suggest that first, one looks for an orderly and balanced plan; second, truthfulness in using the information given in the Bible; third, a moving emotional appeal, and finally, possibly simplicity. Since religion is sometimes defined as a quest for values of the ideal life, each viewer is bound to choose one of these criteria as the most important one. Some people are interested in the ideals of religion, others stress the practices in attaining the ideal life, and still others wish to understand the world-view relating to his quest of the ideal.

While the Sloniker prints were on display last month in The George Washington University Library, Washington, D. C., CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked Mrs. Rose Van Dyken, a Christian artist, for the appraisal. Her comments follow:

“Some ugliness and distortion can be accounted for in the state of our world today, and this shows itself in many prints. The Christian has a plan for his life as well as order. A non-Christian is chaotic. A Christian knows why b is here on earth and where he is going after this life, while the unbeliever hasn’t found the answer to these questions and is searching and confused. Is it little wonder that this shows up in the works produced by contemporary artists?

“People these days are exceptionally prolific in art and art forms but not many choose religious art as their theme. The early painters worked exclusively for the church, but slowly the subject matter has changed to more secular themes.

“In the group of 60 prints, 22 are sincere in their portrayal of the Bible story and characters, but only about eight could be chosen as moving. The other artists have used distortion or vulgarity to call attention to their work. Confusion and use of unrelated backgrounds or activity characterize some.

“Salvadore Dali has a very simple and effective line drawing of the Crucifixion. The face of Christ does not show because the drawing is made as if from God’s view looking down on his suffering son. It shows the humanity of Christ, the extreme suffering of our Lord, and his loneliness. It is very moving and it is appealing to those who object to a portrayal of the face of the Messiah.

“Picasso chose Salome’s dance for his biblical theme and in such a choice there is nothing uplifting, for the work portrays human degradation.

“In a contemporary show it is strange to find no purely abstract work. However, since the subject matter of the Bible is definite, a representational type of technique seems called for.

“Art from many countries was discernible: the light French touch, a cactus as foreground in a Mexican picture of the flight to Egypt, and oriental facial features and flower designs in the woodcuts of the far-eastern artists.

“Michael City has two strong woodcuts of early saints. Both characters are simple, devout, and their piety was easily evident in posture as well as visage.

“A head of Christ by Odillon Redon is very moving and sad. His head is pierced by thorns and the eyes are exceptionally beseeching.

“ ‘Flight into Egypt’ by Robert Sargant Austin, shows rocky land to indicate hardships. Joseph looks determined and hardworking as he hurries forward to an unknown future and Mary is shown to be a loving mother sheltering the child in her arms. They are very alone and tender and sad.

“Churches tend, regrettably, to minimize art as a creative blessing from God. Many are willing to invest in fine furnishings, but few ever seek out original paintings or murals.”

Weighing School Prayers

The U. S. Supreme Court plans to issue a ruling on whether it is constitutional to say daily prayers in public schools.

The ruling will come in a test of a New York state practice. A prayer recommended in 1951 by the New York Board of Regents for all public schools reads as follows:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.”

Challenging the use of the prayer are five Long Island families. Two of the families are described as Jewish, one as Unitarian, one as members of the Ethical Culture Society, and one as nonbelievers in any religion.

The families contend that “the saying of the prayer favors belief in religion over non-belief.”

The regents, in approving the prayer for use in public schools, had said it was in the public interest to teach children “as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, that Almighty God is their creator and that by him they have been endowed with their inalienable rights.”

Southern Travellers

Colorful posters were cropping up this week in the steaming jungles of the South American interior. Indians were preparing for long treks to the big city. Prayer chains were in full swing in five countries where Billy Graham and his evangelistic team are about to launch a crusade tour lasting for more than a month.

Graham’s first rally is scheduled for Caracas, Venezuela, January 20, to be followed by visits to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Graham even hopes that a service still can be arranged in Georgetown, British Guiana, where the Marxistinclined Prime Minister, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, influences a predominantly Protestant population.

While in the Washington, D. C., area last month for a series of engagements, Graham found himself in an unexpected audience with another South American-bound traveller, U. S. President John F. Kennedy, whose parting jest was, “I’ll be your ‘John the Baptist.’ ”

Graham’s unexpected meeting with Kennedy occurred just a few days before the President and his wife flew to Venezuela and Colombia. Some Protestant observers had hoped that Kennedy would use his influence in Colombia to ease discrimination against non-Catholics.

Graham had gone to the White House to visit an old personal friend and Southern Baptist colleague, Brooks Hays, recently named a presidential aide, Kennedy spotted Graham in a hallway and sent press secretary Pierre Salinger to summon the evangelist into the President’s private office. There they conferred alone for about 20 minutes, after which Kennedy introduced Graham to Undersecretary of State George Ball and W. Averell Harriman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Graham refused to reveal the nature of their discussion.

Graham’s engagements in the Washington area included an address to 3,000 Naval cadets at Annapolis. He also inaugurated a series of Protestant services at the Pentagon before a crowd of some 7,000. His turn-of-the-year schedule called for several addresses in Illinois and the offering of the opening prayer at the Orange Bowl football game in Miami. He was to leave then for a two-week vacation in Central America.

Here are the dates for Graham’s South American appearances:

Brotherhood In Rome

Brooks Hays, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1957–1959), disclosed last month that he paid a call on Pope John XXIII during a visit to Rome October 23.

Hays and his wife talked with the Pope for about 15 minutes in a private reception room in the Vatican.

“Pope John and I met as fellow Christians,” said Hays, “without concern at that moment over differences between the religious bodies with which we are identified.”

Hays is now a special assistant to the president. At the time of the papal visit, however, he was an assistant secretary of state.

Hays emphasized that his call at the Vatican was not as a representative of the Southern Baptist Convention and “was wholly unrelated to my governmental duties.” He said he visited the Pope as a private citizen.

The high point of their talk, Hays said, was the Pope’s statement, “We are brothers in Christ.”

It was an historic meeting, the first between the head of the Roman Catholic church and a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, which, with nearly ten million members, is the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States. It was one of a recent series of meetings the Pope has had with Protestant leaders, beginning with the historic call of Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, then Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1960.

Another recent visitor to the Pope was Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger of the Protestant Episcopal Church in, the United States. Their half-hour talk. was described by the Vatican Press Office as “most cordial.” Lichtenberger paid the visit while in Rome en route to the World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi.

There was speculation as to why Hays’ Vatican visit was not known for nearly two months. Hays said it was in no way confidential, and added that it was on the regular list of audiences. Its significance was apparently missed by newspapermen in Rome, he declared, remarking that they must have concluded that Hays was “just another of those pesky American tourists who take up the Pope’s time.”

Peace Corps Baptists

Another Southern Baptist was appointed to a leadership post in the Peace Corps last month. He is Lloyd Wright, former director of public relations for the Baptist General Conference of Texas, who was named director of community relations for the Peace Corps.

Wright will work under the direction of another Southern Baptist, associated, Peace Corps director Bill Moyers. Dr. Paul Geren, second in command of the Peace Corps agency, formerly was executive vice president of Baylor University, a Southern Baptist institution.

A Public Function?

An 82-page legal study, on which a battery of Roman Catholic lawyers had hammered away for some eight months, was released to the public last month as a constitutional rationale for federal aid to parochial schools.

The study concludes that church-related schools perform a public function and that therefore they are entitled to government support. A number of Supreme Court decisions are cited.

The study also concludes that there exists no constitutional bar to aid parochial-school education in a degree proportionate to the value of the public function it performs. The problem of figuring out the proportion is to be left to accountants.

Birth Control Controversy Spreads

The birth control issue burst into prominence again last month: A Yale University medical expert faced trial on charges of violating Connecticut’s 82-year-old law which bars the use of contraceptive devices. Prominent Roman Catholic theologians handed down conclusions which permit the use of contraception pills by women in danger of being raped. And a manufacturer of such pills disclosed that “upwards of one million women” are now using its product.

The Connecticut case involves Dr. Charles Lee Buxton, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecological department at Yale, and Mrs. Richard W. Griswold. Buxton and Mrs. Griswold are officials of a planned parenthood center in New Haven. Both were arrested when the center began issuing advice to clients in violation of the state law.

Last June the U. S. Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the law—because there had been no arrests involved. Later it was reported that the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut would initiate a test case.

In Rome, Studi Cattolici, an authoritative Roman Catholic publication, carried the findings of a study conducted by three Vatican theologians, the study having been promoted in part by sexual abuse of nuns in the Congo some months ago.

Msgr. Ferdinando Lambruschini, a professor of moral theology in one of Rome’s seminaries, said married women are forbidden to use the pills, but that they can use the abstention technique for avoiding children.

The rape victim who lacks this alternative can take the pills, he concluded.

A Roman Catholic spokesman in Washington intimated that there might be some disagreement on the point among other Roman Catholic theologians.

Another Roman seminary professor defended the Studi Cattolici conclusions saying that a farmer has the right to defend his property with arms and any human being in certain circumstances is justified in suspending various bodily functions. In like manner, he said, given the circumstances of threatened rape, the female victim would be justified in defending herself by arresting the germination function of the egg cell.

In Chicago, a statement issued by G. D. Searle and Company said that more than a million women use its birth control pill, Enovid, regularly. The statement commented on the deaths of two Los Angeles women said to have taken Enovid.

Dr. Irwin C. Winter, company medical director, said there was no evidence to indicate the drug contributed to the deaths.

Enovid, which controls ovulation, was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and the Council on Drugs of the American Medical Association as safe for use as an oral contraceptive. A company spokesman said that the drug has become widely used in America, England, and Japan.

Furthermore, the study concludes that “the government has no power to impose upon the people a single educational system in which all must participate.”

The study was released by the Legal Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in Washington, D. C.

A Veto In Delaware

A bill to reinstate capital punishment in Delaware got as far as the governor’s office. Governor Elbert N. Carvel vetoed it.

The death penalty was abolished in Delaware in 1958, but the General Assembly recently approved a bill to reinstate capital punishment for such criminal offenses as murder, rape, treason, and kidnaping.

The Unsubmitting

Two Spaniards were sentenced to prison last month for “unlawful printing and distribution of Protestant propaganda.”

Salvador Salvado and Jose Grau, in addition to being consigned to a month in jail over Christmas, also were assessed for costs entailed in their trial before a Barcelona court.

According to police, the two had published material without an identifying imprint and without submitting it to a censor as required under Spanish law. Salvado and Grau were identified as members of the Worldwide European Fellowship, Inc. Among those who witnessed their trial testimony was an American consul general.

Grau was reported to have taken a book to a civil censor, who referred it to an ecclesiastical censor. Grau refused to submit it to Roman Catholic scrutiny.

The court verdict came even as a leading Spanish Catholic publication promised a more conciliatory attitude toward the country’s very small Protestant minority.

Conflicting Orders

Protestant missionary activity in Ecusdor is proceeding normally under the newly-proclaimed president, Dr. Julio Arosemena Monroy, who came to power amid charges that he was a leftist.

“The foreign press has exaggerated the significance of the President’s trip to Russia and his refusal to break relations with Cuba,” said a spokesman for HCJB, Quito’s world-famous missionary radio station. “Relations between the evangelical community and the new government are as cordial as ever.”

A new radio station aimed at reaching between 50,000 and 100,000 Quechua Indians with the Gospel went on the air last month at Colta. There was no government interference.

HCJB personnel were also distributing pre-tuned radio receivers.

Staff personnel at HCJB studios sweated out several difficult days, however, during the government changeover. Though they were treated courteously by both military and civil officials, contradictory orders were being received continually. On the final night of the political struggle, the Ecuadorean Congress asked the station to transmit session, but the chief of the armed forces ordered the transmission cut. Station officials politely declined, and the outcome of the session confirmed the soundness of their decision.

Orthodox Overview

Eastern Orthodox came out of the New Delhi Assembly playing a new role in the ecumenical movement, according to Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America and a member of the World Council of Churches presidium.

“We are no longer ‘just present,’ ” said the prelate on his return from India, “we are full-fledged members.”

A change in posture toward the ecumenical movement was reflected in the Orthodox hierarchy’s decision to discontinue the practice of issuing independent statements on the subject of unity at ecumenical meetings. Archbishop Iakovos characterized the decision as a change of tactics. He said the Orthodox prelates felt they could register their opinions more effectively in helping to shape policy in committee work.

[Some observers feel that Orthodox prelates now carry far more weight in ecumenical policy formulation because of gains in numerical strength through addition of large Orthodox churches into WCC membership. Some statistical analyses show Orthodoxy to hold a numerical advantage following acceptance of the Russian Orthodox church.]

The New Delhi meeting, Archbishop Iakovos declared, was “the best and most productive” of the WCC assemblies to date.

He predicted that the Roman Catholic church will come into the ecumenical movement if the World Council “stops playing an ambiguous role.” This was apparently a reference to the controversy over whether the WCC is to be viewed merely as a common fellowship or whether it has super-church objectives. The archbishop said that critics who wrongly attribute a super-church character to WCC can help to stabilize the direction of the contemporary ecumenical movement.

Roman Catholic participation in the ecumenical process will be a matter of progression, he asserted, with limited activity at the outset and more as time goes on. He said he considered the Delhi admission of the Orthodox churches to be pleasing to Pope John XXIII but distressing to other members of the Roman hierarchy. Rome increasingly has been placed on the defensive, he observed, through ecumenical mergers, since Rome’s failure to participate means her isolation. Asked what problem the papacy would create were Rome to join the WCC, he said “none at all,” provided that papal infallibility and authority are “limited to Roman Catholics.”

As for Orthodox ecumenism, Archbishop Iakovos stated that a planned ecumenical council will be convened “before 1965.” The likely location, he added, is the island of Rhodes, where previous pan-Orthodox meetings have taken place.

Hailing Pope Leo

Pope John XXIII, in an encyclical letter commemorating the 15th centenary of the death of Pope St. Leo the Great, made a new appeal for Christian unity. At the same time, he made it clear that by Christian unity, the Roman Catholic church means unity under the authority of the Pope.

Hailing Leo, the Great, who held the papal post from 440 to 461, as the “doctor of the unity of the Church,” Pope John also noted the opposition he faced from enemies of the church. In doing so, he stressed that the “sad conditions” prevailing in the fifth century were similar to those in Communist countries today where millions of Christians are suffering religious persecution.

The new 10,000-word encyclical, known as “Aeterna Dei Sapientia” (The Eternal Wisdom of God) from the first three words of the Latin text, was dated November 11, the date of Pope Leo’s death 1,500 years ago, but was not released to the public until after the close of the World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi December 6.

Sanctuary For The Scrolls

A sanctuary to house some of the Dead Sea Scrolls is being built in Jerusalem in connection with the Israel Museum. It will known as “The Shrine of the Book” and will be made possible by funds from the D. S. and R. H. Gottesman Foundation of New York. The Gottesman fund was established by the late D. Samuel Gottesman, industrialist and philanthropist, who donated four Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel in 1955.

Documents to be stored at the Jerusalem sanctuary include the Bar Kochba documents, 15 letters dispatched by the Hebrew military leader in 135 A. D.

Libyan Deportation

A Church of Christ minister is being deported from Libya, apparently because of his missionary activity.

Federal police in Tripoli cancelled the resident visa of Bob Douglas, who was working for the Church of Christ in Benghazi, Libya, and gave him an exit visa.

Douglas is supported by the Sixth and Arlington Church of Christ in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Lawrence Taylor of Tripoli, the only other Church of Christ minister in Libya, said Douglas had merely taught Libyans who came to his home and church. Taylor blamed Moslem pressures for the move to oust Douglas.

Dr. Sam Retires

A community-wide tribute to a nationally-known clergyman was paid at an interdenominational service last month in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall on the eve of his retirement.

Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker, who has been rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh for nearly 10 years and is a contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, retired December 31.

He will move to his family homestead, “Burnside,” at Stevenson, Maryland, where he expects to add to the 25 books he has written and work on the “One Reach One” series of television films sponsored by the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation.

Shoemaker formerly was rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, New York.

An advocate for practical, personal Christianity, Dr. Sam, as he is affectionately known to hundreds, was instrumental in founding the Pittsburgh Experiment.

The “experiment” is more of an organism than an organization. It is the use of small cell groups who meet for prayer and witness to the power of Christ in steel mills, offices and the market place.

“The Communists would expel us from the party for being as inarticulate and inactive as most Christians are,” Shoemaker said.

“We can’t work by murder and mendacity as the Communists do,” he added, “but we can work with the same passion.”

Sidelined Scot

The Rev. Tom Allan, the most fervently evangelistic voice in the Church of Scotland, suffered a severe heart attack last month.

At Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, Allan’s condition was reported improving after several days, but he faced a period of recuperation lasting many weeks.

Allan, who has been prominently assocated with the “Tell Scotland” movement since its inception and with summer seaside mission work, is minister of St. George’s Tron Church, in the heart of Glasgow’s central business district.

Archbishop Nikolai

Archbishop Nikolai, long the most controversial figure in the Russian Orthodox Church, died of a heart attack last month at the age of 69.

For years the Moscow Patriarchate’s chief liaison with churches in the West, Nikolai had been frequently criticized abroad for his apparent stand in support of the Communist regime and especially of its widely propagandized “peace” campaign. More recently, however, there has been speculation that Nikolai lost favor with Red leaders through attitudes toward the West that were too conciliatory (see editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 22, 1961).

Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomna—the ecclesiastical title for the diocese of Moscow—until his relinquishment of the post last year under circumstances never fully revealed, Archbishop Nikolai had for 16 years been the top-ranking prelate of the church next to Patriarch Alexei of Moscow.

As metropolitan, Archbishop Nikolai was replaced by Archbishop Pitirim, former Metropolitan of Leningrad. Meanwhile, his other duties as chairman of the Russian church’s department of foreign affairs were taken over by Archbishop Nikodim, the church’s youngest bishop, who previously had been head of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Jerusalem.

Nikolai’s body lay in state at Zagorsk monastery, where a delegation of U. S. churchmen headed by Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. placed beside his bier a wreath of flowers. The churchmen were in Moscow during a stopover on their way home from the World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi.

Nikolai’s funeral took place the following day in the cemetery of a neighborhood church. No prominent Soviet personages attended.

His death came a month after he had telephoned the patriarchate office to report that he was feeling “not quite well.” Half an hour later, he was admitted to the city’s leading hospital, where doctors found he had suffered a heart attack. Within 15 days he was reported to have experienced a “radical improvement” and was allowed to receive visitors. Almost every day he was visited by church colleagues and personal friends and his room was filled with flowers. However, two days before his sudden death, the doctors diagnosed a second heart attack and cancelled all further visits.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. William Hiram Foulkes, 83, one-time moderator of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; in Newark, New Jersey … Aaron Budimba, 90, a Congolese who served with U. S. reporterexplorer Henry Stanley and who until recently worked in an American Baptist mission; in Lukunga, Congo … Dr. Thomas Hendricks Taylor, 76, former president of Howard Payne College; in Brown wood, Texas … Dr. Charles F. Sims, general secretary of the South Carolina Baptist Convention; in Greenville … Frederick Passler, 50, missionary pilot and evangelist, killed when his plane crashed in a Mexican jungle.

Appointments: As dean of the Graduate Seminary of Phillips University, Dr. J. Daniel Joyce … as executive secretary of the American Baptist Union of the San Francisco Bay Cities, the Rev. Lynn E. Hodges … as general secretary of the European Baptist Missionary Society, the Rev. Herbert Mascher.

Election: As president of the Canadian Lutheran Council, Dr. Otto A. Olson, Jr.

Inauguration: As ninth president of Oklahoma Baptist University, Dr. James Ralph Scales.

Quote: “I saw there were no Catholics in the astronaut team and among fliers of research aircraft, so I thought I’d better get with it.”—Major Robert White, X–15 test pilot.

Many times Nikolai had condemned American “imperialist policies.” He referred to the U-2 incident as one of America’s “aggressive acts which have nothing in common with Christianity.”

Miss Lillian Trasher

Miss Lillian Trasher, 74, world-famous “Mother of the Nile,” died last month at the Assemblies of God orphanage which she had headed for some 50 years.

The orphanage at Assiout, Egypt, houses some 1,400 children and is one of the world’s largest.

Looking at the position of the evangelicals in the Christian Church today, one may thankfully admit that they stand on more solid ground than they did 25 to 30 years ago. Evangelicalism has become somewhat more ‘respectable” than it used to be. There is a revival of evangelical scholarship, an improvement in evangelical literary production and similar advances. Yet while admitting all these reasons for encouragement and optimism, one must also confess that the evangelical cause still lacks real power and effectiveness in the Christian Church at large. So-called liberalism whatever its guise—or disguise—still largely dominates.

While many of the major religious denominations still hold to an evangelical confession, usually these statements of faith originated in the seventeenth century if not earlier, and are now mere relics of the past, rather than living expressions of contemporary faith. Moreover, if one comes to know any one denomination at all intimately it soon becomes clear that the control of the administrative organization as well as the educational institutions often rests in the hands of those who are concealed, if not avowed liberals. The evangelicals may talk all they like within the confines of their individual congregations or even conferences, presbyteries or councils, but in the long run doctrinal indifferentism, if not unbelief, usually has its way.

Much the same appears to be the case in interdenominational movements. At one time evangelicals led the van of such “ecumenical” bodies. The Evangelical Alliance, many interdenominational missionary movements, and other similar organizations tended to dominate the interdenominational scene, but now all has changed. True, many of these movements still exist but they seem to wield little influence, except on the fringes of the Church. Leadership today rests in the hands of the World Council of Churches and the like, many of whose leaders are at least theologically indecisive in temper if not of the same stripe as those to whom doctrinal convictions mean little. Liberalism has taken over the interdenominational field.

In what might be termed the nondenominational field one finds the same situation. At one time throughout the Western world the evangelicals largely dominated the fields of education, public charity, and political reform. One only has to mention the names of men like Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, and others to bring this fact to mind. Here also today, the evangelicals have largely lost their heritage. Partially as a result of the rise of the so-called “social gospel,” they have forsaken these activities, and again the liberals have stepped in to place education, charity, and political reform on a humanistic foundation.

Some may object that this picture is too pessimistic. We have various evangelical movements, organizations, and groups which are very active. While this may be so, the question is: how much real influence do they have? Do the evangelicals make themselves heard in the world at large, or are they vociferous only within their own buildings? If they do make themselves heard in the world at large, do they speak constructively in the name of Christ, or are they usually destructively critical, so that they find themselves categorized as a “lunatic fringe”? The present writer has sat in church courts many a time and listened to debates concerning the church’s work, but although evangelicals were present they seldom took any part, and when they did, only too frequently they had little to contribute. So often their failure to do their “homework” quickly became clear. The liberals remained, and usually continue to remain, in control.

Decline by Default

Quite naturally one asks why this is the case. Why have the evangelicals failed to maintain their position in the Christian Church when during the nineteenth century they obviously had control? Some blame the rise and popular dissemination of scientific ideas. Evolution, relativity, and all the other scientific theories have destroyed modern man’s faith. Others point to the economic order and suggest that men have become materialistic with the growth of prosperity and so lose their interest in spiritual things.

Although much may be said for these and similar explanations, the real reason would seem to be the evangelicals themselves. In making a survey of the past century, one cannot but draw the conclusion that evangelicals, caught off balance by the intellectual, economic, and social developments of the times have simply failed to come to grips with the contemporary situation. If one attends an evangelical church of any denomination, one soon discovers that most of the pattern of thought expressed represents that of the nineteenth century middle class. Watch the programs followed or the techniques employed and the same thing becomes obvious. This does not mean that the Gospel should change with the ages, but the problems with which it must deal do alter. So often the modern evangelical, like the thoroughgoing Marxist, still fights the battles and problems of the 1850s. Evangelicals have suffered defeat by their own default.

One obvious area of default appears in that of churchmanship whether at the denominational or interdenominational level. The evangelicals in the various denominations have preached the Gospel, it is true, but when they have faced the responsibility of action in their church’s courts or administration they have shown themselves woefully lacking. In doctrinal issues they have displayed some interest, but to the appointment of church secretaries or even of theological professors they have only too often manifested frank indifference. The eventual control of their denomination by efficient administrators indifferent to doctrinal issues has frequently resulted, and before they knew it evangelicals have found themselves on the outside, tolerated perhaps, but ineffective in the larger work of their church or interdenominational group.

Not infrequently at this point, some evangelicals, awakened to their position, have endeavored to rectify the situation by taking action in the courts of their church or have tried to warn the church by publication; but by and large they have gained little or no support from the other evangelicals. The latter will devote large amounts of time to organize interdenominational prayer-meetings or evangelistic campaigns, but they are unwilling to take a stand within the church for the crown rights of Christ, and they refuse to give any effective support to those who do.

Another area of default one may find in the realm of thought. Most evangelicals, with the exception of some scholars in the Reformed tradition, do not seem to have worked out their own intellectual position particularly in relation to contemporary thought: science, history, economics, sociology and the like. Such seems to be the case even in most so-called Christian colleges where the authorities often lay more stress upon chapel attendance and the evils of tobacco than they do upon academic standards or faculty research. This has meant that to a large extent evangelicals have fallen out of the intellectual race. Non-evangelicals generally regard them as intellectual nonentities which most of the time they are, simply because they have defaulted in the application of their Christian faith to the thought of their time. Here too defeat has come by default.

The Drift to Isolation

The outcome of all of this has usually been isolationism. Failure to assume their responsibilities within church courts or within other Christian movements has eventually led to a situation from which the only escape has been separation—sometimes within the denomination by ignoring it, sometimes by physical removal from it. It has also meant intellectual isolation often resulting in obscurantism tainted with religious pride. Defeat has to a large extent meant ineffectiveness except in very limited aspects.

What might one offer as the explanation for this state of affairs? To this the first and perhaps surprising answer would seem to be sheer worldliness. One finds that Mr. Pious Talk only too frequently fears what liberals and the like may say about him or do to him.

Another type of worldliness exists which one can only term laziness, both spiritual and intellectual. It comes out in so many ways when one attempts to arouse evangelicals to action. New ideas, new forms of ecclesiastical activity bring forth pious phrases and platitudes, but generally fail to result in anything more. They all with one accord begin to make excuses in order that they may remain comfortably in their old retreats.

Spiritual Issues

Spiritual causes also lie at the root of this default. One may of course say that the worldliness already mentioned is a spiritual problem, which it truly is. But one finds too that so frequently evangelicals have a false spirituality which consists of a refusal to take action. “If we just place the matter in God’s hands, He will solve the problem,” is a frequent rejoinder. But such people fail to realize that God acts through men. His people are his instrument. With all their talk about the Bible as “the Word of God,” and the importance of prayer, so often they seem to take neither seriously, for James stated that “faith without works is dead.” One sometimes wonders how vital most evangelicals’ faith really is.

Even more fundamental, however, one receives the impression that so many evangelicals have been immobilized by a false spirituality which derives from an erroneous doctrine of the Church. They tend to regard the visible, organized Church as relatively unimportant, primarily because in it one finds many who have little faith, if any at all. They seek for a church on this earth which manifests perfection, and unless it does, they feel that they have no personal responsibility to it. Consequently they refuse to take action because they see no point even in trying.

What evangelicals in the various denominations need today is a renewed sense of the sovereign power of God manifested in Christ Jesus and a revived sense of responsibility to Him as their Lord. A Luther, a Calvin, a Cromwell, a Jonathan Edwards did not call it quits when he saw the Church falling upon evil days. Rather he raised his voice in protest, and with increased vigor set forth to reform the Church by every means possible. Today evangelicals are suffering defeat by default because they fail to realize that Christ has called them to action in his Church to the glory of his Name.

W. STANFORD REID

McGill University

Montreal, Canada