Major Religious News Stories of 1960

Here is a résumé of significant religious developments during 1960 as reported by CHRISTIANITY TODAY news correspondents, Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service, and Christian News Report:

EVANGELISM: Billy Graham and associates witnessed heartwarming response during a 10-week evangelistic trek of Africa and a five-week tour through Germany and Switzerland. In West Berlin, 25,000 students heard Graham’s plea for Christian commitment.

THEOLOGY: The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches recommended adoption of a Trinitarian statement of faith … The drift of Continental neo-orthodoxy from Barth and Brunner to Bultmann and a renaissance of liberalism, was brought into clear focus by CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

MORALITY: Preoccupation with sex, already at an all-time high, continued with the encouragement of books, magazines, films, and television programs … Alcoholism, with 5,000,000 U. S. victims, loomed an ever-greater domestic problem. So did the rising national crime rate, which continued to outpace the population increase.

ECUMENICITY: The Archbishop of Canterbury, world’s ranking Anglican, spent 45 historic minutes with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican … Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. personally proposed a merger of four or more of America’s largest denominational groups … Dedication of the 19-story Interchurch Center in New York City highlighted trend toward geographical centralization of Protestant administrative activities … The 2,250,000-member American Lutheran Church was formed out of a three-way merger.

MISSIONS: Political upheavals set back missionary activity at scattered points across the globe. Hardest hit was Congo … The Presbyterian Church in Korea, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, was largely reunited after a four-month schism … The Rev. Paul J. Mackensen, 35-year-old Lutheran minister, returned to the United States after 12 years in Communist China, including five in prison. He was believed to be the last American Protestant missionary on mainland China.

CHARITY: Christians the world over rallied with funds and supplies when earthquakes and tidal waves in Chile caused extensive damage to church facilities.

EDUCATION: The U. S. government exposed scores of “degree mills,” including a number which purported to be religious institutions … Protestant seminarians joined sit-in demonstrations, and a student’s arrest in Nashville nearly precipitated wholesale faculty resignations at Vanderbilt University Divinity School … The University of Chicago’s Federated Theological Faculty, a unique 17-year ecumenical experiment, ended in failure. Although the federation was dissolved, constituent seminaries survive, each operated independently.

CHURCH-STATE: Senator John F. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic ever to be elected President of the United States, following months of controversy … A National Council of Churches official publicly pressured the Air Force into withdrawing a reservist manual which purported to describe Communist infiltrations into U. S. church groups … The U. S. Supreme Court agreed to rule on the constitutional issue involved in Sunday blue laws and birth control legislation.

Archbishop’s Expulsion

The Haitian government expelled the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port-au-Prince last month. He was reportedly accused of being implicated in support of Communist-inspired students seeking to overthrow the regime of President Francois Duvalier.

Archbishop Francois Poirier, 56, French-born head of the Port-au-Prince see since 1955, was arrested in his office and taken aboard a Florida-bound plane.

In Miami, where he had a stop-over en route back to France, Poirier denied charges against him.

Church sources in Haiti have been quoted in the past as stating that the root of church-state tension in Haiti includes government resentment of the preponderance of French-born priests among the Roman Catholic clergy of Haiti.

Jewish Influence

The center of Jewish religious life in Europe has shifted since World War II from Eastern Europe and Germany to England, according to the former chief rabbi of Ireland.

Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, in an address last month at the 62nd biennial convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, said that England now has “by far the most vital and influential Jewish community in Europe.”

2000 A.D.

The year 2000 will see the Soviet Union a “free and democratic” country and peace will be established between Israel and the Arabs, predicts Premier David Ben-Gurion of Israel.

Ben-Gurion made the forecasts in a letter made public last month by Dr. M. N. Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

The American Reform Jewish leader had asked for Ben-Gurion’s views on the future for inclusion in a time capsule. The letter was to be added to a sealed capsule in the union’s House of Living in New York City.

Ben-Gurion also predicted that by the year 2000 cancer would be conquered, the United Nations would lead the world as a “moral force” if not a world government, and that a Jew “may be” elected president of the United States.

Labor And The National Council

A year after settlement of the 116-day steel strike (see “Steel Differences Settled; Everybody Loses,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Jan. 18 issue, p. 23) a special 17-member committee of the NCC Department of the Church and Economic Life issued a study report concluding that such work stoppages are no longer useful. The report avoids pronouncing such crippling strikes to be morally wrong, and views them rather as a “basic right”: “Our society, though still maintaining the basic right to strike, has advanced to the point where work stoppages will increasingly be felt to have outlived their usefulness.” While this implies that strikes of this magnitude once were useful, the report does not state what strikes are or are not useful for.

The Rev. Cameron P. Hall, executive director of the Economic Life department, characterized the report as a study document, not an official NCC statement. Hall emphasized that a special committee led by Charles P. Taft, chairman of the Economic Life department, prepared the report, and that no company or union representatives had any part in its preparation. The report claims “one clear lesson of the steel strike is that the provisions of the Taft-Hartley law for dealing with emergency strikes are inadequate, and the law should be revised.” The report left quite up in the air the question of what Taft-Hartley revisions are advisable.

Labor and Economic Life

NCC has not generally informed its constituency that the membership of the General Committee of the Department of the Church and Economic Life includes 18 salaried union officials, and a staggering array of churchmen of liberal political views. The larger committee is made up of 14 members of the Division of Christian Life and Work, 107 members at large (among them H.E.W. Secretary Arthur S. Flemming) and 12 members from other NCC units. Among the salaried union officials on the General Committee are Walter P. Reuther, President, UAW, AFL-CIO; designated as Lutheran (Missouri Synod) (Reuther has sometimes listed himself as Methodist, but as a youngster attended a Missouri Synod Sunday School); his brother, Victor G. Reuther (Methodist), Administrative Assistant to the President, UAW, AFL-CIO; Elmer F. Cope (Evangelical United Brethren), Secretary-Treasurer, Ohio AFL-CIO; Nelson H. Cruikshank (Methodist), Director, Department of Social Security, AFL-CIO; the Rev. W. G. Flinn (Christian Churches), Grand Lodge Representative, International Association of Machinists; George T. Guernsey (Methodist), Associate Director of Education, AFL-CIO; Paul L. Phillips (Methodist), President, United Paper-makers and Paperworkers Union; John G. Ramsay (United Presbyterian), International Representative, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO; Dallas Sells (American Baptist Convention), President, Indiana State AFL-CIO; Boris Shishkin (Greek Orthodox), Assistant to President, AFL-CIO; Donald W. Stone (Methodist), International Secretary-Treasurer, Amalgamated Lithographers of America; James A. Suffridge (Methodist), International President, Retail Clerks International Association; Elwood P. Swisher (Methodist), Vice President, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union; Charles C. Webber (Methodist), AFL-CIO Representative for Religious Relations; Charles F. West (United Presbyterian USA), Grand Lodge Representative, International Association of Machinists; and Albert Whitehouse (Christian Churches), Regional Director, District 25, United Steelworkers of America. In addition, the General Committee includes a group of representatives of the Division of Christian Life and Work, among them Tilford E. Dudley (United Church-Congregational Christian), Director, AFL-CIO Speakers Bureau.

It is noteworthy that 10 of the 18 salaried union officials on the NCC General Committe of the Department of the Church and Economic Life are Methodists. No less significant is the fact that Dr. Webber, an ordained Methodist clergyman on the AFL-CIO payroll, acts as Secretary of the Religion and Labor Fellowship in Washington, D. C. The movement aggressively indoctrinates clergymen in the legislative objectives of organized labor (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY “Labor Leaders Look to the Churches,” Mar. 17, 1958, issue, pp. 22 f.).

C.F.H.H.

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