Book Briefs: February 4, 1966

The Christian Is Witness

The Witness: Message, Method, Motivation, by Urie A. Bender (Herald, 1965, 159 pp., $3), is reviewed by Herman J. Ridder, president, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Although he makes no reference to it, D. T. Niles’s famous definition of witness fits Bender’s description: “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.”

Because he sees the Christian as a witness whether or not he wants to be one, the author begins his treatment with some of the key hindrances to witnessing. The reader sees himself implicated in a variety of ways. The hindrances are real.

Describing witness, Bender says: “To witness is to report; to present the evidence growing out of personal experience. That is all” (p. 54). “Every aspect of personality expressed outwardly in any form projects an image and carries a message” (p. 65). Or again, “Witnessing is being oneself before others, the new self in Christ Jesus …” (p. 66). And this is the burden of his presentation throughout the book. He is anxious to convey the impression that witness is not some special activity engaged in under certain structured conditions but is rather the natural expression of the Christian in any kind of situation.

Bender has his eyes open to the world. He sincerely wants to let the world “write the agenda” as the Church seeks to relate the Gospel of Christ to the world’s need. He sees witness as what it indeed is: hard, exacting labor. One sometimes tires of the approach that suggests that evangelism can be “made easy.” There are no easy ways of discipleship, which involves the bearing of a cross.

Bender is so concerned about the naturalness of witness that he is led into a fatal overemphasis on it, thereby neglecting the other side of the coin. Repeatedly he disparages organization as it relates to evangelistic efforts. “… mission boards have been organized, outreach programs have been set up, and individuals have been sent great distances to fulfill a mission whose major resource lies untouched” (p. 76). He sees little value in “special calls, appointments, and assignments” (p. 77). In fact, he suggests that “even friendship and visitation evangelism, so-called, are inherently dangerous.… The real problem with organized activities is that they are organized. This results too often in a stiff formality, a job to be done and gone, and the report for the record” (pp. 88, 89).

Obviously, there is a kind of organization that is stultifying and lifeless. There are methods of evangelism that have lived far beyond the period of history for which they have been created. And the church that assumes it is doing evangelism just because it is busy going through the motions, even if they have no effect, obviously needs to take a long look at itself and allow the Spirit to breathe new life into its witness. But to say that witness suffers when a congregation carries out an aggressive and attractive program of evangelism that leads its members into an increasingly natural participation is to deal harshly with the facts. For many, naturalness in expression comes by way of a program, such as visitation evangelism, that places them in a situation where a positive witness is required. When they find God’s Spirit powerful in that situation, they later find the confidence to trust him in all of life’s relationships.

And that’s all Bender really wants. With that I couldn’t agree more. His style is refreshing and his presentation clear. The book lends itself to individual or group study.

Next witness!

HERMAN J. RIDDER

Was Hemingway Right?

Sin, Sex and Self-Control, by Norman Vincent Peale (Doubleday, 1965, 207 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Peter Van Tuinen, minister, Trinity Christian Reformed Church, Artesia, California.

This hook, the latest from the facile pen of Dr. Peale, is directed to the moral challenges of our time. Considering the twilight of honesty, the breakdown of sexual morality, and the instability of the family, the author applies his well-known methods of “positive thinking” to meet these challenges.

He proceeds from the observation that our present moral decay results from the breaking down of outer controls. Authority is questioned. The sanctions of the Bible are no longer accepted. What is needed is that people develop inner controls to replace the outer ones. This book is intended to furnish the confidence and the incentive necessary to gain inner control.

In this attempt, the author gives some good counsel, fortified by the usual illustrations from his experience in personal counseling and from other biographical material. He illustrates the troubling consequences of dishonesty and points up the fallacies in the reasoning of those who argue for sexual freedom. In his discussion of the family, he gives some sound advice for parents on the responsibility of training children toward self-discipline and maturity. In all his counsel, he indicates that self-discipline in the light of proper standards is the only satisfying way of life.

One appreciates Dr. Peale’s forthright stand for high moral standards and self-discipline and his emphasis on individual responsibility. His book may well lead some readers to pause and reflect on their pattern of living. If it does, these readers will find some simple and practical techniques for evaluation and correction of their habits of thought and life.

But if Peale were not so well known, his readers would be surprised to learn that he is a minister of the Gospel. His use of Scripture is not that of one who is a student of the Word but of one who adapts familiar quotations from it to suit his point. Moreover, neither his premises nor his goals are in line with the teachings of Scripture.

His whole approach presupposes “a tremendous amount of confidence in the individual,” a confidence Peale justifies on the grounds that Jesus had this, too (pp. 13,205). What about Jesus’ declaration that one cannot see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again? Hasn’t Peale read that? Yes, he has. “Replacing self with selflessness [is] so difficult that the Bible compares it to being born again. There is no easy prescription. There is only one rule that applies in virtually every case: control yourself. That is the secret: control, control, control” (p. 108). Religion can make the necessary change in a person; but “it can happen without religion too” (pp. 194, 195), only it is much harder that way. This is a flat contradiction of the teaching of Jesus, one that comes to focus in Peale’s assertion that “he [Jesus] put no limitation on the power of the human spirit to lift itself above itself” (p. 205).

Peale’s basic premise is unbiblical. He finds cause for optimism in a theory that mankind is actually evolving a higher morality. External authority is breaking down, but man will develop the inner control to take its place. We are now in the interim period in which people are misusing their new freedom from outer controls. Every person who follows Peale’s advice will become a moral force in the world to help the evolution along (pp. 12, 41, 204). Incidentally, Peale doesn’t stay consistently with his theory. Having set it forth, he forgetfully attributes the twilight of honesty to the fact that “inner restraints have been weakened” (p. 14).

This book is really a book on mental health rather than on Christian morality. Peale refers to Hemingway’s flippant judgment that “what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after” as “nonsense,” but most of the book appears to be a demonstration that Hemingway is right.

Sin, Sex and Self-Control is easy reading. It is a store of practical suggestions for gaining self-esteem. It is a book that would fit well in the Moral Rearmament library. But it is not Christianity.

PETER VAN TUINEN

Two Worlds Are Ours

Sacred and Secular: A Study in the Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Aspects of Christianity, by Arthur Michael Ramsey (Harper and Row, 1965, 83 pp., $3), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The subtitle of this book indicates exactly what this book is: “A study in the other-worldly and this-worldly aspects of Christianity.” Anyone who has been troubled of late by reading about a secularized, wholly this-worldly, religionless Christianity will find this book reassuring and stabilizing. And, for that matter, any Christian who has compartmentalized his secular and religious life, or who has so spiritualized his life that the fun and pleasure of the good earth seem alien to his spiritual interests, could find this book, with its incarnational approach to the understanding of Christianity, a healthful corrective experience.

Against those who would wholly secularize and naturalize Christianity, Dr. Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, says bluntly that we would be “hindered and not helped if we were to slip into treating words such as ‘other-worldly’ and ‘supernatural’ as bad words.” In Christianity, says Ramsey, earth and heaven bespeak a duality but not a dualism; “Christianity came into history passionately other-worldly in spirit, and this characteristic did not hinder but rather enhanced its impact upon the world.”

The archbishop is right, and they who urge Christianity’s greater secularization for greater impact on the modern world are confronted with the historic fact that it was an understanding of Christianity that had a distinct “other-worldly” dimension that profoundly shaped the Western world. As Ramsey asserts, “the concept of religionless Christianity is very vulnerable to criticism and probably meaningless,” though he rightly recognizes that “like many misleading conceptions it has behind it a truth which is often forgotten and urgently calls for attention.” For there are indeed versions of Christianity so “spiritual” that they eschew the very world into which Christ came and the very flesh in which he became incarnate.

The author explicitly disowns a notion that can within the Christian Church be regarded only as ridiculous, the notion that Christianity must accommodate itself to what the modern man of the scientific twentieth century is able to believe. “Learn what we can from the modern world about the new understanding of our faith, that faith may, when presented well no less than when presented ill, incur rejection by many. We dare not forget the words of St. Paul: ‘We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto Gentiles foolishness.’ ” Some clever but superficial adherents of a new hermeneutic could ponder the claim of Kierkegaard (who was also clever but never superficial) that where there is no possibility of offense, there is also no possibility of faith.

Those who say that Christianity must be reinterpreted to become something the modern non-Christian is able and willing to believe, are themselves either unable or unwilling to recognize that they have lost all contact with the Gospel. They surely fail to see that a “this-world” which has no relationship to an “other-world” is thereby itself devaluated; not only does all the greatest art and drama possess its greatness through its transcendent reference, but even a blood-curdling curse is pallid without such a reference. A wholly secularized Christianity provides no basis for either great good or great evil; it reduces both to the significance of a sneeze or a backscratch.

In developing his theme that “two worlds are ours” and that there is therefore an authentic Christian humanism, Ramsey gives special attention to some other historical forms of synthesis developed in the history of the Christian Church. He closes with a chapter on what Christianity can learn about itself and the presence of its God in the world through a study of the state, the conscience, the sciences, secularism, humanism, and Christian civilization—phenomena that in some religious traditions fall within, or very near, the category of common grace.

These few brief lectures, written with grace and clarity, speak to a perennial problem particularly acute in our time.

JAMES DAANE

Earnest And Sober

I Believe in the Holy Ghost, by Maynard James (Bethany Fellowship, 1965, 167 pp., $2.97), is reviewed by Norman Shepherd, instructor in systematic theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This book breathes the earnestness of a gospel minister calling upon preacher and people alike to repent of the sin of neglecting the Holy Spirit. His appeal is grounded in the infallible Word of the Spirit speaking in Scripture, reinforced by the word of fellow Christians testifying to the powerful operation of the Spirit in their own ministries.

This dual motif is characteristic of the volume as a whole. Regenerating power awaits the call of “ruined men” (p. 24); the pearl of great price must be supplemented by “the pearl of greatest price,” entire sanctification (p. 126); the once-for-all outpouring of the Spirit must be followed by a “personal Pentecost” (p. 76). There is truth in all of this, but the reader must continually ask whether the author has not unintentionally contributed to the neglect of the Spirit through insufficient attention to the sovereign efficacy of his operations.

In view of the current interest in glossalalia, the brief and superficial attention given to the phenomenon is disappointing. Perhaps it is just the brevity that gives rise to M. Lloyd-Jones’s comment reproduced on the dust jacket commending the excellence of this section. More likely, it is the fact that James does not insist that every believer must have the gift and grants that not every manifestation of tongues is of the Holy Spirit.

We can applaud the sobriety, but we regret that the author does not treat the question many of his readers doubtless have: whether the Church today ought to expect in its midst gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing in the sense in which Paul thought of them. The answer to that question lies, in part, in an appreciation of the role played by these gifts in the unfolding revelation of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ as a whole; but unfortunately James does not illuminate this topic.

NORMAN SHEPHERD

On Growing Old

The Psychology of Aging, by James E. Birren (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 303 pp., $6.93), is reviewed by Melvin D. Hugen, pastor, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

On the bookshelf marked “Psychology” may be found everything from handbooks on how to live with a neurotic wife to esoteric research reports wholly unintelligible to the uninitiated. This book falls about 80 per cent up the scale between these two extremes. Written primarily for students of psychology, it treats the biological, social, and psychological changes and influences operative in the second half of man’s life-span. Dr. Birren has organized research information to present an integrated and specific picture of the continuing transformation of man through aging.

Old age is a strange and usually hostile world whose ways and weapons outsiders often do not understand. In view of the rapid increase in life expectancy, the development of such an understanding is increasingly important for the Church and the rest of society.

Aging is not a simple process. Birren suggests that it is useful to think of three types: biological, psychological, and social. He effectively destroys some of the stereotypes of biological aging, e.g., that elderly people are usually senile.

One of the more interesting findings about psychological aging is that the “attitudes of older persons reflect more a concern with the conditions of living than a fear of death” (p. 247). Discussing the great amount of time and energy the older person spends reviewing his past, Birren suggests that this is not just garrulous story-telling or reminiscences but rather an attempt to organize or reorganize his attitudes toward his life. There seems to be a need to arrive at an “acceptable image of himself and of the influences he will leave behind” (p. 275).

The chapter on the social age of the individual brings out problems arising from the fact that “in urban areas, there are few functions … an aging individual can meaningfully perform for himself or his family.” The resulting sense of uselessness is aggravated by the family’s being “better able to provide for the social and psychological dependency of the children than for that of older adults” (cf. pp. 35 ff.). These and other social factors require the Church to rethink her ministry to the elderly.

MELVIN D. HUGEN

Chaos

The Kingdom of the Cults, by Waller R. Marlin (Zondervan, 1965, 443 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, professor emeritus of English Bible, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Deerfield, Illinois.

The author of this encyclopedic work (about 240,000 words of text, excluding the indexes) has devoted the last twenty years to an exhaustive study of the major cults of our country and has written six volumes and numerous pamphlets on the subject. This is no doubt his major work. Twelve cults are discussed: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormonism, Spiritism, Father Divine, Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, The Church of the New Jerusalem, Bahaism, the Black Muslims. Unity, and Anglo-Israelistn, including the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong (when I was last in Westminster Chapel, London, half the questions asked me related to the teachings of Armstrong, whose radio ministry and publications are very influential in Great Britain).

The author also gives us three introductory chapters, one of which is on the “Psychological Structure of Cultism,” and four concluding chapters on such matters as cults on the mission fields and cult evangelism. In the appendix are brief discussions of the Unitarians and Rosicrucians and a long chapter on Seventh-day Adventism, in which Martin contends that the Adventists are to be considered within the pale of evangelical Christianity.

The author gives a threefold consideration to each of these cults. First, he provides a historical background, sometimes, as with Mary Baker Eddy and Pastor Russell, going into great detail on such matters as sources and court documents. He then gives a careful statement, with quotations from official publications, of the cult’s teachings, especially as they relate to great Christian truths. Finally, he points out how these various teachings are contrary to the Word of God. Here he is at his best, showing himself a careful student of the original languages of the Scriptures. An excellent illustration is his marshaling of evidence to contradict the meaning Jehovah’s Witnesses give the verb analusis, “depart” (pp. 68, 69).

I think one might say that most cults are characterized by four things. First, they pretend to give a more accurate interpretation of the Scriptures than has the Christian Church, and thus claim to exalt the Scriptures. The title of Mary Baker Eddy’s book is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and of Pastor Russell’s works Studies in the Scriptures, while the Book of Mormon cites thousands of verses from the Bible (King James Version). Unity uses Christian terminology throughout its literature. In reading this material one is continually reminded of the word of our Lord, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). (I was amazed to note in the definition of Christian Science in the American College Dictionary this statement: “a system of religious teaching based on the Scriptures.”) Second, the leaders of these cults believe, or at least pretend to believe, that they are especially anointed prophets for a new day, with a revelation from God, and they even go so far as to say that their peculiar ministry is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Third, the cults are unequivocably wrong in their interpretation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, denying his vicarious atonement, bodily resurrection, and true deity. All are to be judged by the very question that Jesus himself asked of the Pharisees, “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” (Matt. 22:42). Fourth, practically all these cults seem to hate the Church. Thus, for instance, in the literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses it is said that the clergy are “willingly or unwillingly the instruments of the hands of Satan.” Armstrong goes so far as to say that for 18½ centuries the Gospel was not preached, and the world was deceived into believing a false Gospel!

It is to be hoped that in a new printing someone will correct the book’s many typographical errors.

For years to come, this volume will be widely recognized as the outstanding work on the history, teaching, and tragic errors of the cults of our age.

WILBUR M. SMITH

Call To Action

Nothing to Win but the World: Missions at the Crossroad, by Clay Cooper (Zondervan, 1965, 152 pp. $2.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The author is founder-president of Vision. Incorporated, which assists foreign missionary societies in matters of recruitment, financial assistance, and interpretive reporting. The book has twenty-seven chapters of three to five pages each, covering diverse topics relating to missionary endeavor. Included are such subjects as prayer, use of money, divine love, service, recruitment, and the number of women missionaries as compared to men. The book contains many illustrative anecdotes, is epigrammatic, and has a certain attractive flair. Written for the average lay person, it is intended to push him into action—to get him to do something constructive with his life, his prayers, and his money.

In the opening chapter, the author inveighs against Christian jitters and fears of Communism which he calls “redphobia,” and which he discounts only to demonstrate his own “redphobia” by numerous and repeated references to the enemy we need not fear. He has also fallen into an old propaganda trap about the disproportion of women to men on the mission field. “Perhaps not more than twenty thousand Protestant missionaries are actually at their foreign posts at any one time. The male head count among these is so disproportionate as to be absurd.” Prior to this he cites instances of twenty-six single women to three single men, forty-one American women with no male representation, and others. The actual figures for North American missionaries show approximately fifteen women to every ten men. This ratio can hardly be called “absurd.”

In a desire to paint a sweeping word picture, the author at least once ends up advocating some bad theology. “The fate of humanity trembles on the brink. Hope hangs by a tenuous thread. One thing frightens the godless forces bent on enslaving the earth. It is the prospect that Christians might wake up and start acting their beliefs. Love in action would soon rivet the attention of the world upon Christ, and bring every eye to rest in adoration upon Him.”

HAROLD LINDSELL

Book Briefs

The Roots of Ghana Methodism, by F. L. Bartels (Cambridge, 1965, 368 pp., $9.50). The story of the growth of the Methodist Church in Ghana.

Deutero-Isaiah: A Theological Commentary on Isaiah 40–55, by George A. F. Knight (Abingdon, 1965, 283 pp., $5.50). Another valuable plowing of a well-plowed field.

Monks, Nuns, and Monasteries, by Sacheverell Sitwell (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 205 pp., $12.50). A good writer and wide traveler presents in words and pictures the art and architecture of Europe’s monasteries and churches, all touched with beauty, human interest stories, and religious feeling.

Toward Understanding Thessalonians, by Boyce W. Blackwelder (Warner, 1965, 160 pp., $3.95). A popular, Arminianistic commentary.

The Word God Sent, by Paul Scherer (Harper and Row, 1965, 272 pp., $4.95). Sermons by a master preacher with companion essays on the art of sermon-building.

Vatican Imperialism in the Twentieth Century, by Avro Manhattan (Zondervan, 1965, 414 pp., $5.95). A critique of “the greatest engine of spiritual aggrandizement in existence.”

We’re Never Alone: A Modern Woman Looks at Her World, by Eileen Guder (Zondervan, 1965, 148 pp., $2.95). The author, member of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, discusses the things women worry about. Perceptive and well written.

Who Is Man?, by Abraham J. Heschel (Stanford University Press, 1965, 119 pp., $3.95). A great Jewish scholar argues that man is “a being in travail with God’s dreams and designs, with God’s dream of a world redeemed,” through social action and concern.

Morality and the Muses: Christian Faith and Art Forms, by Johan B. Hygen (Augsburg, 1965, 113 pp., $3). An attempt to understand art in the total human context.

Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality, 1780–1845, by Donald G. Mathews (Princeton, 1965, 340 pp., $7.50). Of particular interest, since Methodism became the largest U. S. Protestant group and the one most evenly spread throughout the United States.

The Untold Story of Qumran, by John C. Trever (Revell, 1965, 214 pp., $8.95). The adventure and intrigue that followed the discovery of the most valuable archaeological documents of our time, by the first American to see, examine, and photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, by Edward A. Synan (Macmillan, 1965, 246 pp., $5.95). An exploration of the responses to the Jews made by popes of the fifth to fifteenth centuries; by a Roman Catholic.

The Church Secretary: Her Calling and Her Work, by Katie Lea Myers (Seabury, 1965, 128 pp., $3.50). Much good advice about a demanding position.

If I Could Pray Again, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1965, 119 pp., $2.50). Prayers uttered in the uncommon and untutored language of the heart.

The Guilt of Sin, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1965, 124 pp., $2.50). Sermons on sin and guilt by the famous attorney-turned-evangelist.

The Rock and the River, by Martin Thornton (Morehouse-Barlow, 1965, 158 pp., $3.75). A timely, scholarly, hard-hitting book by an author who is not awed into jelly by the pretentious claims of much of modern theological scholarship.

Using and Maintaining Church Property, by Allen W. Graves (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 186 pp., $3.95). Practical advice useful to any church.

The Zondervan Pastor’s Annual for 1966, by William Austin (Zondervan, 1965, 384 pp., $3.95). Fifty-two morning services, fifty-two evening services, sermon outlines and illustrations, mid-week meditations and programs, services for special days, funeral meditations and Scriptures, communion thoughts and themes, wedding ceremonies. Evangelical, Baptistically orientated, and frequently superficial.

Acquiring and Developing Church Real Estate, by Joseph Stiles (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95). Much practical light and wisdom for an area where mistakes outnumber pews.

So Great Salvation, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1965, 128 pp., $2.50). Sermons dealing specifically with salvation.

Depth Perspectives in Pastoral Work, by Thomas W. Klink (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 144 pp., $2.95).

Paperbacks

The Bible and Social Ethics, by Hendrik Kraemer (Fortress, 1965, 38 pp., $.75). The author seeks a “purely biblical social ethic,” one that begins with the Church rather than the regenerated individual Christian. Worth careful study and appraisal.

The Puzzles of Job, by Ord L. Morrow (Back to the Bible, 1965, 123 pp., $.39). Radio speeches of the “Back to the Bible” Broadcast.

Multiple Ministries: Staffing the Local Church, by Martin Anderson (Augsburg, 1965, 104 pp., $2.50).

What Is the World Coming To?: A Study for Laymen of the Last Things, by Nelson B. Baker (Westminster, 1965, 157 pp., $2.25). An evangelical discussion of the end-of-time events as announced in the Bible.

The Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Passion, by Paul G. Lessmann (Concordia, 1965, 109 pp., $1.75). Orthodox and prosaic.

The Indians of the Western Great Lakes: 1615–1760, by Vernon Kinietz (University of Michigan, 1965, 427 pp., $2.95). Their customs, ways of life, and religious beliefs and practices.

Forms of Extremity in the Modern Novel, edited by Nathan A. Scott. Jr. (John Knox, 1965, 96 pp., $1). For those who like to see theological backgrounds behind literary writings.

Fatigue in Modern Society: Psychological, Medical, Biblical Insights, edited by Paul Tournier, translated by James H. Farley (John Knox, 1965, 79 pp., $1).

The Cruciality of the Cross, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1965, 104 pp., $1.45). A discussion of the Atonement that reflects Forsyth’s peculiar view of God’s holiness and love.

Son of Man, Son of God, by E. G. Jay (McGill University, 1965, 116 pp., $2.50). A provocative study with some questionable conclusions.

Awkward Questions on Christian Love, by Hugh Montefiore (Westminster, 1965, 125 pp., $1.45). Perceptive essays on God, the sinlessness of Jesus, atonement and personality, and the Church as an “in” or “out” group.

The Soul of Prayer, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1965, 92 pp., $1.45). A good discussion for laymen by a line theologian.

His Witnesses, by John H. Piet (Book World, 1965, 166 pp., $1.25). An objective study of the Acts of the Apostles, Galatians, First Thessalonians, Philippians, Ephesians, and Romans chapters 1 through 8.

By What Authority?, by Bruce Shelley (Eerdmans, 1965, 166 pp., $1.95). The author looks at the positions of the second-century church fathers on the question of authority in religion and church.

Christian Deviations: The Challenge of the New Spiritual Movements, by Horton Davies (Westminster, 1965, 144 pp., $1.45). A revised edition of The Challenge of the Sects, this is a discussion of substance of such groups as the Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many others.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.