A Grass-Roots Drive for Spiritual Recovery

The summer of 1964 seems to have given birth to a rank-and-file movement for spiritual recovery in mainstream Protestantism. New organizations are springing up to combat theological dilution within the large American denominations. Behind the drive is a renewed spirit of determination, especially among laymen, to demonstrate the integrity of the Scriptures and their supreme relevance to modern problems.

Foremost in the movement as of now is an organization called Concerned Presbyterians, composed exclusively of members of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). But similar groups are emerging in at least three other large U. S. denominations.

Champions of orthodoxy have long chafed over theological deviations and neglect of spiritual priorities in leading religious bodies. In the forepart of this century, however, these protests resulted mostly in defection and schism. The new approach is to work within the framework of existing denominations and to seek recovery of their historic purpose through established channels.

The current grass-roots drive makes no effort to conceal its distrust of the National Council of Churches. It is committed to no specific alternative. But the NCC is deplored as providing the machinery for achievement of liberal programs while its leadership is insulated from any need for answering to individual church members for its actions.

Inasmuch as it is virtually, by definition, a campaign for the recovery of theological orthodoxy, the movement’s objective, as one spokesman put it, is simply “revival in the Church.” The main goal is to reestablish the priority of the Church’s challenge of men and women to the necessity of spiritual regeneration. Also important is the Church’s responsibility for grounding believers in scriptural truth. In many churches ministers are under increasing criticism for the investment of time and energies in ecumenical and social concerns while the primary task of evangelism is neglected. In addition, the complaints of the laity increase over the neglect of orientation in basic biblical doctrines by many Protestant pulpits.

These biblical priorities seem to run afoul of current interest among some Protestant leaders who contend that redemption is a concept now best applied to certain programs of social reform. The Church’s political involvement in select public issuesTwo generations ago the emphasis was on pacifism; a generation ago it was on prohibition; presently it is on civil rights, relief for the needy, and rapprochement wth the Communist world. is regarded by many denominational officials as an ultimate test of genuine moral concern.

The alternative view of the new crusaders is that the Church’s job is to see that individuals are confronted with the necessity of spiritual commitment and equipped to serve in their separate vocations as the salt of the earth.

The group known as Concerned Presbyterians was organized last month during the annual Presbyterian Journal Day observance at Weaverville, North Carolina, in the mountain resort area near Asheville. The Journal, an independent weekly (circulation: 22,500), will reflect the group’s emphases. Goals of the organization, listed in a resolution to Journal directors, include concern for “the integrity of the Word of God … a return to serious and intensive prayer … a new zeal for evangelism and world missions … a new seeking for the power of the Holy Spirit … a new dedication to love and concern for one another in Christ.…” The group also called for “union with Reformed bodies who are obviously and sincerely dedicated to the Reformed interpretation of the Scriptures” and “a plan for the use of the funds contributed to our Church’s causes that will enable individuals and churches to give as the Holy Spirit leads them, with the assurance that the funds will be used only for the purposes for which they were given.” Named as co-directors of the steering committee were Kenneth Keyes of Miami, former president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and Roy LeCraw, former mayor of Atlanta.

The grass-roots drive is expecting counter-criticism, since ulterior motives are frequently ascribed to reform movements in ecclesiastical circles. For this reason, participants are zealous not to embrace the cooperation of those whose antipathy to the NCC rises out of wrong reasons (e.g. racism).

The new crusaders stress that social concern falls within the proper province of Christian thinking, but they deplore its replacement of evangelistic priorities and its attachment to political methods and programs.

Their battle for recovery admittedly faces a formidable institutionalism that resists any turnabout. Some laymen, realizing that the institution holds a whip of security over its clergy, expect little help from ministers. Others are more optimistic. They refuse to contemplate any growing cleft between laity and clergy and see limited signs of denominational renewal in areas where ministers themselves are concerned and active.

Sit-In Settlement

Nine clergymen were released from a Tallahassee, Florida, jail last month after serving four days of sixty-day sentences imposed as a result of sit-in demonstrations in 1961. The men—four white and three Negro Protestants and two rabbis—chose the jail terms instead of $500 fines after three years of unsuccessful appeals (including one to the U. S. Supreme Court).

“We received no preferential treatment, and the other prisoners were very congenial,” commented Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, well-known United Presbyterian churchman.

A tenth minister, the Rev. Ralph Lord Roy, paid the $500 fine after his request to join the other clergymen “within a few days” was turned down by the judge. Roy said pressing pastoral duties made it necessary to remain in New York. He recently became minister of two Methodist churches.

Members of a freedom-riding group testing discrimination in interstate transportation terminals, the ministers were charged with unlawful assembly after attempting to integrate an airport restaurant. A Florida appellate court ruled that they had pursued their demonstration to “unreasonable lengths imposing unreasonable burdens on others.” The ministers had canceled flight reservations repeatedly, frustrating attempts by the airlines to accommodate other would-be travelers.

The Amish Dilemma

A bill is being considered by Congress to exempt the Old Order Amish from participation in the social security program, and Treasury Department legal experts say “there is no valid constitutional objection to the proposed exemption.”

Republican Representative Richard S. Schweiker introduced the measure, which would permit members of churches whose established doctrines forbid participation in such programs on religious grounds to waive their benefit rights and be exempted from social security taxes. While the Old Order Amish have been in the forefront of the campaign for such a law, other groups which proscribe insurance also would be relieved of the dilemma.

The administration has not indicated support of Schweiker’s bill, but an opinion from Treasury Department General Counsel G. d’Angelot Belin sees no constitutional bar.

The government, which has maintained a moratorium on collections of the tax from the Amish, has proposed that members pay into social security and, upon retirement age, the money paid as “taxes” be refunded in monthly installments equal to the social security benefits for which they would ordinarily qualify.

Amish leaders have contended that the tax is really an insurance payment and understood to be such by the government itself. The sect, and many small ones similar to it, believe that individuals, by fruitful industry in their younger years and reliance on God throughout life, should look to no outside sources for help in their old age.

In the last few months, in anticipation of settlement of the crisis, Internal Revenue Service has quietly placed liens against many properties, particularly in Pennsylvania, in an effort to collect taxes held in abatement by the moratorium. Two years ago tax agents impounded horses and livestock of Amish who refused to pay the tax. The impounding stopped after a wave of public protest.

The Nominees

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, selected last month as the Democratic party’s nominee for Vice-President, is a member of the First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) of Minneapolis and holds affiliate membership in a Methodist church at Chevy Chase, Maryland, a Washington suburb.

Humphrey and President Johnson will run on a platform that takes no stand on the controversial prayer amendment proposal. By contrast, the Republican platform supports, with qualifications, a constitutional amendment “permitting those individuals and groups who choose to do so to exercise their religion freely in public places.”

On the eve of the Democratic convention Johnson entertained evangelist Billy Graham and his wife at the White House. The president attended Sunday services at the National City Christian Church where Graham spoke. The evangelist also called on Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater at Goldwater’s invitation.

Winona Breaks Fuller Link

Trustees of the Winona Lake (Indiana) School of Theology voted unanimously last month to invoke a reversion clause in their December, 1961, agreement with Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. They requested immediate return of the title to the Indiana campus.

The initial agreement, which climaxed a decade of consultation and planning, made the Winona Lake school the summer division of Fuller. Some 130 students were registered this year.

Reasons for the “drastic and necessary” action, according to Winona President John A. Huffman, were multiple. These included, he said, “gradual deterioration” of Fuller’s doctrine of the Scriptures; the signing of Fuller’s statement of faith with “mental reservations” by some Pasadena campus faculty members; the elimination of English Bible requirements from the curriculum; and the projected phasing-out of the master’s degree program at the Winona school.

A Question Of Language

The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Protestant Episcopal clergyman and sometime playwright, was reprimanded by the Bishop of Michigan this month for using profanity in one of his dramas.

Although he was not named, Boyd, chaplain at Wayne State University, was obviously the clergyman singled out for criticism by Bishop Richard S. Emrich in a church newspaper. The bishop noted that a one-act play written by Boyd was “banned because of its profanity by the radio station of a great university.”

The twelve-minute drama, Boy, a social protest play, was turned down by the Michigan State University educational television station because it includes the words “damn” and “nigger.”

Emrich stated that “since the clergyman preaches and practices high and sensitive standards in race relations, it astounds me that his standards in language are so low.”

A Bid For Attention

Religious “non-commercials” may soon be seen as well as heard.

The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., which has tested several low-pressure radio spot announcements by Stan Freberg and is now beginning to run them in major U. S. cities, is contemplating a similar campaign on television, according to Richard Gilbert, executive director of the church’s radio and TV division.

No dates have been set, no one has been commissioned to do the spots, and there is some uncertainty about where to get the money. However, Mr. Gilbert says that “we are pushing ahead to see if we can develop some TV spots.”

The original radio announcements reached the general public in the form of the cold print of advance press publicity, a medium for which they were not designed and which exhibited them at their least effective. Mr. Gilbert says they are at their best when sandwiched in between layers of “top forty” tunes, rock n’ roll, and the other elements that make up the daily fare of radio.

Freberg’s reputation for “goofy, spoofy” commercials; the fact that he uses a swinging group of forty-five singers and musicians; and the whole ambience of show business surrounding the venture—it is these things, perhaps, that have evoked such comments as “nauseous,” “most offensive,” and “grotesque.”

According to Mr. Gilbert, most of these comments come from people who have only read about the spots, not heard them. Speaking for the program are these points:

• Most people who heard the spots in the cities where they were tested remembered them and reacted favorably to them.

• Since the announcements do not make a “religious” sound, they have been able to escape the limbo to which most religious programs are consigned—the early-morning devotional hour, prayer after the late-late show, and the “Sunday ghetto.”

• In Detroit and St. Louis, the two cities where the pilot tests were run beginning last August, research showed that 99 per cent of those who had heard the announcements got the message straight; moreover, 75 per cent of those polled in Detroit and 79 per cent in St. Louis said that the spots made them “wonder about living with God.” One denominational official said that he considered the tests “wildly successful.”

Mr. Freberg, who took on the assignment as a kind of mission, waiving his usual fee, says he uses an “espionage approach” to “sneak up on” the listener.

“I believe,” says Mr. Freberg, “it [the program] is the first major step the Christian Church has taken in broadcasting to attempt to reach the subconscious mind of the young American, who will do anything in his power to snap off anything of an even remotely religious nature.”

One of the three spots he developed goes like this:

First voice: Look, I’m quite self-sufficient … I made myself what I am, thank you.

Second voice: But don’t you think all of us, occasionally, could use a little divine … uh …

First voice: (Ahem) Gee, I’ve got to run … here’s my card anyhow … I’m a vice-president now …

Second voice: Well good …

First voice: Yes indeed.

Second voice: But your name … it’s just penciled in here …

First voice: (Ahem) Well, there’s a big turnover in personnel. You know how it is.

Second voice: Uh-huh. Well, that’s just about how it is in life, isn’t it?

First voice: Pardon?

Second voice: We’re all just penciled in.

Music:

“Where’d you get the idea

You could make it all by yourself?

Doesn’t it get a little lonely, sometimes,

Out on that limb … without Him?

It’s a great life, but it could be greater—

Why try and go it alone?

The blessings you lose may be your own.”

GEORGE WILLIAMS

Unpopular Alien

Two Americans have consistently hit the British headlines during the past months, and both have been handled roughly. One is Barry Goldwater, whose policies have perhaps been imperfectly understood in many quarters. The other is “Big Jim” Taylor, leader of one section of the Exclusive Brethren (see “The Uttermost Farthing,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, May 8). Delegates to a Methodist conference roared applause when the Brooklyn draper was compared unfavorably with Lenny Bruce, who had been refused entrance to Britain as an undesirable alien. Taylor’s teaching was described in the House of Lords as “the antithesis of Christianity,” but the Home Secretary had earlier ruled that he could not be excluded because he had broken no law.

Last month more than a thousand Brethren met for a three-day conference at Dorking, near London, evidently undismayed by the fact that five times that number have left the movement during the past four years in protest against the leader’s instructions about separation from unbelievers. This doctrine has resulted in broken homes, suicides, and untold distress. Sixty examples of such were collected by Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, a Conservative Member of Parliament whom the elusive Taylor reluctantly agreed to meet for discussion. Mr. Cooke interrupted his holiday and returned to London for the occasion, but Taylor did not keep his promise. Eventually an unsigned telegram came from New York, saying, “Will not meet you for substantial reasons.” The substantial reasons were said to have been not unconnected with the manhandling “Big Jim” had received from some irate women the previous day. Mr. Cooke is now preparing further representations to Parliament to debar Taylor from future visits to Britain, while company director Leslie Pearson, whose Exclusive wife has left him, is contemplating an appeal to the American Senate.

A reliable source not given to humor tells of Taylor’s advice to a worried brother who had found a television set in his motel room: “Take a sheet off the bed and cover it.” British comedians have not been slow to realize the immense possibilities in this line of thought.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Adventure In Adversity

From their “picture window on the Wall’ in their parish house apartment, the Rev. Ralph Zorn and his wife have a clear view into East Berlin and Communist Germany.

“It makes an interesting evening’s diversion for us,” Zorn says. “Hulda and I and the five kids may take turns with the binoculars. Sometimes when we focus on the Communist guards we find they are looking right back at us. Kind of eerie.”

Zorn, formerly a Lutheran pastor in the United States, has for two years served an Evangelical church in West Berlin some 500 yards from the notorious, Communist-erected wall that divides the city. At least four tunnels have been dug by East German refugees under the wall into his parish. He attempts to minister to both East and West Berliners and as an American citizen is able to make regular visits to the Communist side.

During one of his trips last winter Zorn called on a 70-year-old widow who lived alone. He found her cutting apart one of the beds in her flat—just to have firewood.

Zorn related numerous similar experiences when this correspondent visited him recently during a tour of Berlin. He spoke of dreadful circumstances in which Christians in East Germany, particularly younger ones, have been targets of ridicule and discrimination because of their faith.

“I know of a ten-year-old girl who attends church regularly,” he said. “Sometimes on Monday morning, when she arrives at school, she will be taunted by her teacher. On one occasion the teacher and all other students in her class pointed their fingers at her and shouted, ‘Stupid Christian girl.’ ”

Teen-agers in East Germany who avow their faith probably forfeit any opportunity to attend college. Zorn showed me a silver pin with a cross on it.

“In East Germany, it takes real conviction to wear this pin,” he said. “If you do, you’re immediately susceptible to ridicule and attack. Any young person who wears this quite likely sacrifices his chance for higher education. Yet thousands do wear the pin unashamedly.”

Zorn at 38 is a handsome, youthful man with a heavy shock of hair and deep blue eyes. He grew up in New Jersey, studied at Concordia Seminary (Missouri Synod), St. Louis, and held pastorates in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York City before going to Germany.

Mrs. Zorn is a German who came to the United States to study. The couple met while she was a foreign student in North Carolina.

Zorn’s church, called the Church of Peace, was constructed seventy-five years ago. The former pastor left at about the time of the construction of the wall. The red brick structure includes a tall steeple, a vigorous, noisy system of bells, and some artistic wood carvings near the pulpit. It is located in a poor section of West Berlin.

“Berlin really doesn’t have the slums of Latin America or Asia,” said Zorn. “But this is the worst section.”

He declared that in contrast to East Berliners, whose faith apparently has been strengthened through persecution, West Berliners are indifferent toward spiritual things and few attend church. “They suffer from the stifling environment of a state church,” he said.

To help arouse interest among young people Zorn and his wife promote an intensive program of recreation at their parish house, believing that “sometimes you can spread the story of Christianity at the ping pong table instead of the pulpit.”

Zorn is uncertain about his future as a clergyman. He may devote his career entirely to a ministry in Germany. Or he may return to the United States.

“Working and living so close to the Wall, so close that you see it every day, you understand about the complexities of life and politics here,” he said. “If there ever was a need to apply the principles of the Christian Gospel, it is here in this divided city. The solutions lie not so much in money as in people. We need dedicated Christians to come here and work.”

ROGER SWANSON

Suspected Subsidy

A “subsidization of sabotage” is what a Dutch Reformed journal in South Africa calls the World Council of Churches’ $56,000 contribution to assist political prisoners there.

An editorial in Kerkbode, official organ of the largest of the Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa, says the money is not given out of sympathy with the needy but to support persons who take issue with a certain political policy.

Indicting Makarios

Petrusblatt, weekly organ of the Berlin Roman Catholic archdiocese, sharply criticized Archbishop Makarios, president of Cyprus, for “promoting force, terror, and hatred and playing with war.” It called the Greek Orthodox leader “a nuisance for the world, Christians and the Church.”

“Should one not expect of a bishop of a Christian Church that he would rather try everything to reconcile conflicts on his island?” Petrusblatt asked, adding:

“It is not our business to find out whether the Greeks or the Turks are more to blame for the situation, but the annoyance which Makarios causes falls back on the whole of Christianity.”

In New York, meanwhile, the leading American Orthodox churchman came to the defense of Makarios. Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America deplored what he called the “abusive attacks,” including “scurrilous lampooning in vile cartoons” of Makarios in the American press. The U. S. churchman said that while it may seem “strange and untenable” that the leader of Cyprus Greek Orthodoxy also is the elected leader of the country, the “history of centuries-long Greek persecution and enslavement at the hands of the Turks” makes Archbishop Makarios’s role “eminently explainable and consistent.”

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