WHAT’S THE WORD?
“And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” Thus the record in First Kings 4 for King Solomon. I wonder if he could hold his own with a New York cab driver, at least as cab drivers are quoted by hard-pressed columnists. Me, I get beyond cab drivers. Let me tell you about the driver of an airport limousine. (Nothing but the best for CHRISTIANITY TODAY!)
We were going to the St. Louis airport, and in that whole long limousine I was the only passenger. So we talked first about the stoplights, and he observed that “if you get the first one wrong, the rest of them will be wrong for the whole trip.” (I think there is a sermon lurking there.) Then he asked me if I liked the air-conditioning, and I said X did. He said he didn’t, because he hadn’t been too well and he thought the air-conditioning gave him sinuses. But when I told him to go ahead and turn it off, he said No, No; I guess he preferred a little martyrdom each day, especially if it was properly noticed.
In reply to my further discreet inquiry about his health, he said he thought he had a stomach ulcer because before driving the airport limousine he had been driving a cross-country tour bus, “and them people can sure ulcer a fellow.” (A lot of people ulcer me, too.) But the good old job, he said, had been when he was driving a pack team of supplies every week up some valley in Montana (my favorite state, by the way). Then the conversation turned to pack mules, guns, rattlesnakes, and blacksnakes—“and if a feller ain’t seen a blacksnake for awhile he’d better watch out for rattlesnakes.” Well, I haven’t seen many blacksnakes lately!
As we parted I thought I should say a good word for Christ. How would you touch that man’s mind and heart? “I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” I said. “God loves you.” “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve heard all that.” But if he ever really hears it the ulcer just may go—or even his sinuses.
EUTYCHUS II
AFRICA
Your (July 31) issue on AFRICA: CONTINENT IN CRISIS is superb. You are to be congratulated on such a fine piece of research in an area of the world where reliable statistics are not easy to secure.
The five major regional articles are lucid, comprehensive, penetrating, and eminently fair to all concerned. The authors show wide acquaintance with their subject and good judgment.
Enclosed please find my check … [for] copies for my students in missions.
J. HERBERT KANE
Director of Missions
Lancaster School of the Bible
Lancaster, Pa.
Could you please send … twenty copies for our Africa prayer group.
KEITH M. HOOD
Grace Church of Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Your survey of the Protestant impact on Africa offers much that is heartening, some that is disturbing—and certain discrepancies. These discrepancies come to light when figures and ratios used by your correspondents are compared with those in the table of statistics. This would seem explainable only by the almost total ignoring of the French Protestant missions in Africa by the observers who reported their surveys.
Before me I have a report of the Société des Missions évangeliques de Paris, outdated (October, 1945), it is true, but revealing that after the descriptions of the occupations, there were still three overseas members of the Reformed Church of France to each of the 700,000 Continental Protestants. Your tabular summary reflects, for instance, that the Protestant community on Madagascar substantially outnumbers Roman Catholics (1,445,751 to 1,174,455), that Cameroon has 554,254 Protestants. The Paris Society also reported a quarter-million believers in what was then Frendi Equatorial Africa, with 150,000 in French West Africa.
An interesting sidelight, however, is revealed in a personal letter from Dr. Roland de Pury, who serves the Malagasy Church. “Our churches are weak,” he notes, “because of the prevalence of ancestor worship. It would almost seem that these people are more afraid of offending ghosts than of slighting their Saviour”.…
C. J. KEARNEY
Alexandria, Va.
I … noted that under “Africa: Religious Population” … the statistics [listed] 318,000 Jewish people.…
There are many more Jewish people presently in Africa on a non-resident basis. Likewise, thousands of Jews have had to flee from Algeria and Morocco in the past three years. Many Jews who had no particular religions convictions have concealed their identities and are generally bypassed in such a census.
Unfortunately … even less is done in Africa to evangelize the Jews than the little which is done to point Muslims to Christ.
MARTIN MEYER ROSEN
Minister in Charge
Los Angeles District Headquarters
American Board of Missions to the Jews
Hollywood, Calif.
I have read your July 31 issue on Africa with considerable interest and would appreciate the opportunity to point out … the following inaccuracies and misconceptions. On page 5 it is stated that the Dutch Reformed Church is the “state church” in South Africa. There is of course no state church in South Africa. The churches enjoy complete independence.…
On page 15 the Reverend Don K. Smith states that “the Republic of South Africa is proposing to erect barbed-wire fences on its boundaries, and traffic is checked at an immigration post at the site of Livingstone’s great discovery, the Victoria Falls.” The Reverend Mr. Smith made this statement in the context of describing rigid “boundaries” in Southern Africa. The barbed-wire fences which South Africa is erecting are to contain animal foot-and-mouth disease originating in the British protectorates, particularly Bechuanaland, and have no significance whatsoever in the sense the Reverend Mr. Smith implies. South Africa also has no immigration post at the Victoria Falls, only a customs office at Beit Bridge, the northern entrance to the country on the Limpopo River.…
E. M. RHOODIE
Public Affairs Officer
Information Service of South Africa
New York, N. Y.
As a subscriber who usually finds CHRISTIANITY TODAY worthwhile, I have just discarded the current issue on Africa. I hope there will be no more special issues. Few readers read all of a journal. When the contents range freely over a wide field, there will always be one or two items of interest. On a one-shot deal like a special issue, the shot misses many readers.…
J. TROY HICKMAN
Corpus Christi, Tex.
The issue contains a wealth of helpful material, and it represents an enormous achievement.…
EUGENE R. BERTERMANN
Executive Director
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Foundation
St. Louis, Mo.
Issues of this type are, in my judgment, as important as those on the heavier or deeper side.… All the splendid items combine, in my opinion, to make this particular number quite a memorable one.
WILLIAM J. JONES
American Sunday-School Union
Philadelphia, Pa.
POLITICAL SCENE
I am surprised that in your analysis of “GOP Ticket: The Religious Factors” (July 31 issue) you did not mention Gold-water’s habit of profanity. More than once on television I have heard this man refer lightly to the name of God.…
LYNDON B. PHIFER
Tallahassee, Fla.
If “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality” were revolutionary words in the eighteenth century, then “UN-ism, World Brotherhood, and Peace” are the words for today’s self-styled “revolutionaries.” When these topics are subtracted from popular religious statements there remains little for individual souls who seek identity with the Divine and escape from an ever-increasing authoritarian collectivism. The sincere seeker today sees Christianity divided into two hate-filled camps, both shouting invectives—“fundamentalists fascist” and “modernistic marxist”—and both sides base their attacks on love! CHRISTIANITY TODAY provides a source of inspiration which churches so long have ignored.…
ERNEST S. LEMIEUX
Chaplain, U. S. Navy
U. S. Naval Weapons Laboratory
Dahlgren, Va.
ONE WORLD, One CHURCH
Dr. Max Lackmann of Germany is in our country speaking to college, seminary, and other groups, and is advocating the physical reunion of the Roman Catholic Church with Protestant churches (including the Lutheran Church). Dr. Lackman has also written a book on Catholic Unity and the Augsburg Confession which is on display in a library of a theological seminary in Leningrad, Russia, along with other books by liberal and modernistic authors, who deny some fundamental teachings of the Bible. The union of all churches into one world-wide church is also the underlying and hidden purpose of the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, as well as the United Nations. By all these movements toward one church and one world government we are paving and preparing the way for … anti-Christ.
EMIL H. MUELLER
Covina, Calif.
THE NEWS FROM PRAGUE
You are to be congratulated on the news report … “Engineering Peace in Prague” (July 31 issue). Thank God your publication was represented. This is the type of information that needs to be widespread.
R. WILLIAMS
Woodland Hills, Calif.
It should alert all evangelical Christians to wake up. Christianity and Communism cannot co-exist without Christianity being the loser.
ODIE GREGG
Hackleburg, Ala.
RESTORATION
I appreciated so very much your news report of the North American Christian Convention (July 31 issue).…
I think that you have not only presented the facts regarding the Restoration Movement but have captured the very spirit which is giving to it life.
EARL C. HARGROVE
President
Lincoln Christian College
Lincoln, Ill.
YOUR REPORT … CLEARLY AND ACCURATELY REPRESENTS THE GENIUS OF THIS CONVENTION. WE ARE ONE WITH YOU IN THE OBJECTIVE OF CHRISTIANITY TODAY “TO HELP RESTORE TO PROTESTANTISM THOSE PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES ESTABLISHED BY THE APOSTLES.…”
PAUL BENJAMIN
National Information Director
North American Christian Convention
Lincoln, Ill.
I was very pleasantly surprised.…
Most usually our group has been referred to as the Disciples of Christ. I am happy to know there are those who are beginning to see the trend of modernism which has crept into the Disciples churches, and also to see the position taken by independent churches.
NORMAN E. TONEY
Church of Christ
Mount Auburn, Ill.
Your accuracy in handling the position of each of the various segments is much appreciated, and is indicative of a keen understanding by Mr. Farrell. The divisions are most unfortunate, … yet each does appreciate accurate reporting.
GENE DULIN
Toronto Christian Mission, Inc.
Toronto, Ont.
THE GOSPEL
L. Nelson Bell (A Layman and his Faith, July 31 issue), in his analysis of the race problem from the Christian viewpoint, has said what should have been said a long time ago by the leaders of our major denominations. When church leaders should have been reprimanding the self-proclaimed martyrs among the clergy who went into the South to stir up trouble and get themselves arrested, they were blindly patting on the back those who were making such irresponsible gestures.
It would seem that we have become so enamored with our own importance that we are telling God that the preaching of the Gospel is too slow a method of doing his work; that since we have not been successful enough with our preaching and teaching, we will force it upon an ungodly society, whether they want it or not. Truly, as Mr. Bell says, “she [the Church] is offering a mess of temporal pottage” to a world in need of the saving grace of God. Too much of the Church’s effort is nothing more than good sociology, and maybe even that could be debated.…
J. RAY NEISER
The Methodist Church
Lacrosse, Wash.
None will argue for the establishment of concord by means of tyranny.
However, we must beg leave to claim justification of “those church leaders who have left their pulpits for the streets.” Whether an elect saint is preaching Christ crucified or risen, or endeavoring to advance through chinks in the racial barrier, he will achieve no victory (or defeats) by remaining in the officers’ mess in time of battle. “A work of regeneration” cannot be brought about in the Assembly of the Regenerate … but must be accomplished “out there.” It is only “in the streets” that men need to hear someone “preach the way to a new heart,” or utter “words of reconciliation,” or minister the “message of a balm to the soul”; only in the streets can the love of Christ be shed abroad in the hearts of men.…
HENRY A. GOERTSON
New Westminster, British Columbia
In these troublous times, marked by much shallowness, Dr. Bell is to be commended for his depth of perception and discernment.
MARY L. LYONS
West New York, N. J.
COMMUNICATION
I have read with interest the article on “The Morals Revolution and the Christian College,” by David L. McKenna, in the June 19 issue.… I am sympathetic to the point of view in the article, but I’m afraid it is unlikely to get the student cooperation which the author hopes for. I feel it is too hostile, e.g. the caption, “A Plan for Striking Back”.… I think the “open communication” called for will not come to pass because the tone of the article is too dogmatic, with little evidence of real feeling for our awareness of the feelings of youth.…
LESTER A. KIRKENDALL
Dept. of Family Life and Home Admin.
School of Home Economics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Ore.
TO BRIDGE A CONTINENT
Concerning what might be called the “Synchronized Service”: A few months ago a brand-new experience came to me unsought, and the impression was so deep and profound I should like to share it with my fellow ministers especially. One of my members lost her daughter in the province of British Columbia, at the other end of Canada from where we are. It was not possible by reason of age for the parents to travel all that way, and yet they felt that at the hour of the service they should like to be linked in that bond which is the “communion of saints.”
I was asked to conduct a service timed as near as possible allowing for the time barrier which separates East from West and this to be conducted in the home of the parents. It was simple, and a deep sense of that unity which united us in sorrow as in joy was refreshingly evident. If other ministers have had this experience I would like to know, for it seemed to me that this was a “new frontier” of comfort that should be explored, for the sake of the loved ones and our Master. In my friend’s own words, she felt that she was very near the loved ones in Western Canada and she did not feel spiritually isolated.
WILLIAM BLACK
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
Dresden, Ont.
RELIGION AND THE SUPREME COURT
The July 17 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY carries a long letter by Mr. Floyd Robertson of the Office of Public Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. This letter seems to be written on the assumption that states’ rights are the most important element of the American political system. Another assumption, equally false, seems to be that a constitution should never change by interpretation.
Mr. Robertson correctly asserts that before 1940 and the historic Cantwell v. Connecticut case the United States Supreme Court did not control the actions of states respecting religious practices. He apparently believes that this was the proper relationship. In view of the Constitution of 1789 it was, perhaps, the proper relationship. But the Constitution has changed a great deal since 1789 both in terms of interpretation and in terms of amendment. The resultant change and especially the change that occurred with the ruling in the Cantwell case have been notable achievements in the defense of freedom of religion. Were it not for Mr. Robertson’s devotion to states’ lights, he would recognize that the Cantwell and subsequent cases on free religion that rest on the Cantwell decision have been the landmarks of American constitutional history reflecting our rights of the free propagation of religious beliefs.
Since that great and memorable Cantwell case, the Supreme Court in a host of decisions has broadened religious liberty by striking down limiting state and local laws. Some of these laws restricted the distribution of tracts on the streets, some of them restricted door-to-door propagation of religious beliefs, some of them denied the right of use of public places such as parks and streets for religious witnessing, and one of them forced children against their beliefs to salute the flag. These the Supreme Court, on the basis of the Cantwell case, struck down as invasions of freedom of religion.
Those of us who think that freedom of religion is the highest of all political values can do nothing but applaud the chain of cases which began with the Cantwell case.…
WALFRED H. PETERSON
Prof. of Political Science
Bethel College
Saint Paul, Minn.
CHRISTIAN SCHOOL AND THE BAGEL
The June 19 issue contained two letters (Eutychus) telling of the need for more Christian schools on the elementary and secondary level. Both writers held to the position (as I do) that more of these schools are needed today.…
All too often we see Christian schools sacrifice quality education for mere doctrinal training.… Forgotten is the need for employing state-certified administrators and teachers, the construction of adequate buildings, and the functional equipping of classrooms.
While I realize that one of the primary aims of the Christian school is to help win the student to Christ and to build a sound biblical frame of reference within him as he matures in the Christian life, the physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development of the student must also be taken into consideration.
During my graduate study in the area of Christian education I examined Christian schools, in both their philosophy and practice. It bothered me to see Christian grade and high schools without libraries, gymnasiums, cafeterias, science labs, and so on. How can these students be trained to their fullest for God if the tools with which to train them are missing?
Yes, money is the big problem. How many Christians are refusing to support Christian schools because the local Christian school is more concerned about training the child in some narrow doctrinal mold rather than help him to integrate his growth in the Christian graces into his total growth pattern, and to relate this growth to the needs of the world around him?…
Unless our evangelical schools are founded and operated on sound evangelical and educational principles and are operated in and with buildings, equipment, and educators that are comparable to those found in the neighboring public schools, we as evangelicals will never be able to conduct the schools which we need to do the job which we are not now doing.
DICK CRIST
Portland, Ore.
After twelve years in public schools I went to an excellent Christian liberal arts college for four years and then spent three years in a large state university. For me, both secular and Christian educational experiences were excellent.
But I learned at the university that one major drawback from my Christian college years (among many benefits) was a loss of contact with the real world of beer and bagels. In my life and in the lives of friends from Christian colleges I noticed an extraordinary difficulty in witnessing for Christ to people in this outside world.…
If four years of Christian college can partition reality and blunt the witness, then twelve more years can only maximize this Christian isolationism. For if we start with Christian playmates in the Christian kindergarten and follow them all the way through to their Christian college graduation (plus, perhaps, Christian graduate school), what should we be prepared for but a Christian world afterwards?
And the tragic thing is this: all too often a Christian world is attained. By making careful (but by now quite natural) choices—Christian friends, Christian partner or business associates, Christian organizations, and a full round of activities in a Christian church—this product of a thoroughly Christian education succeeds in fulfilling that well-known commandment: “Be ye neither in the world nor of the world.”
ROLAND F. CHASE
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
HIGH COST OF LOW STANDARDS
I have read with genuine interest each article that you have published in CHRISTIANITY TODAY on the church-related college. My interest in the Christian college is of long standing. I took my undergraduate work in a church-related college and have taught for thirty-nine years in one.…
Two years ago there came to my home a young man with a problem, and his problem being one under which I had suffered for many years, I naturally was moved by it. This young man is now a teacher in the public schools; he is married and father of two children. He had been convinced by the literature and personal visitations from a representative of a much advertised college to select it for his undergraduate work. True—the college was not a member of any standardizing association, neither did its faculty carry the approved number of teachers with earned doctor’s degrees, and its material equipment [was] below standard. He was assured that these things made but little difference, as its faculty was definitely Christian. He chose to invest not only a large amount of money but also four years of his life. He is now a teacher who truly loves his work. He would like to advance in his profession, but in order to do so he finds that he must do graduate work and secure advanced degrees, and that no graduate school of desired standing will accept him without [his doing] additional work and [securing] a degree from an accredited college. The requirements now placed on this man if he is to advance in his profession are next to impossible; yet if he is to advance he must recognize and accept the standards of his profession.…
A businessman who knowingly sells a bill of inferior goods to any individual through misrepresentation is not Christian, and it is my conviction that the selling of education is no different than the selling of a piece of merchandise.
R. E. MOHLER
McPherson, Kan.
NO COFFEE ALLOWED
Joe has been reading your magazine and has gotten quite worked up over the cigarette squabble. “It’s a personal matter,” he said. “And besides, a similar case can be made out against coffee.”
I didn’t see how this could possibly be true until I began to read on the subject and to recall some events in my own life. These supported Joe’s contention. There were two clippings in my file, as follows:
1. A fire in the Blue Mountains National Forest destroyed over 5,000 acres of timber last week. Rangers investigating the fire blamed it on a half-drunk cup of coffee, carelessly thrown from a car. The hot coffee is thought to have ignited the dry grass along the road.
2. The Wide World apartment building was completely destroyed by fire last night with the loss of ten lives. Investigations so far indicate that the fire was caused by a half-consumed cup of coffee left standing on a bedside table when the occupant fell asleep.
My own experiences were as follows:
Many times when I returned home from travel by bus or plane my wife has said, “Where have you been? Your clothes reek of coffee.”
I have been embarrassed often by the sight of otherwise respectable people blowing coffee fumes into each other’s faces. A careless diner dribbled coffee grounds on my sleeve. A thoughtless coffee addict burned my child’s arm with his hot cup.
The airlines know how dangerous coffee can be. Going to board a plane I passed a sign which said, “No coffee drinking beyond this point.” When I got to my seat, a sign in front of me said, “Fasten seat belts. No coffee drinking.”
It was a pretty solemn day when the doctor told us our uncle was dying of cancer of the lungs. “Probably from drinking too much coffee,” he said. His subsequent remarks indicated that he was warning the rest of us. But I’ll be O.K.
Joe was right. But as for me I drink coffee but have never smoked. I’d rather fight than switch.
MALCOLM FORSBERG
The Sudan Interior Mission
Wheaton, Ill.
