Latourette’s Appraisal: Christian Influences in the Modern World

Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette, at eighty-three, is still actively traveling around the world lecturing, teaching, and writing. Sterling Professor of Missions and Oriental History emeritus at Yale University, he is a patriarch among both church historians and Far Eastern historians. His autobiography “Beyond the Ranges” is scheduled to appear this fall. Readers will welcome this opportunity to learn Dr. Latourette’s assessment of the current religious situation, given in an interview conducted by Editor Carl F. H. Henry ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Q: You have always thought of Christianity in global terms, Dr. Latourette. How do you calculate the impact of Christianity and of Christ upon our generation?

Latourette: I am convinced that Christ has never been as widely and deeply influential in the world scene as he is today. First, because Christians—those that bear the Christian name—continue to grow in numbers. The global planting of Christianity in the nineteenth century was connected with Western colonialism and imperialism, and one would expect that with the passing of Western colonialism and imperialism and the Communist conquest of much of the world, these Christian churches would disappear. Exactly the contrary has happened. In no country, so far as I am aware, have Christians completely disappeared. They are still very strong in Russia. I’ve just learned that there are still Christians in North Korea.

Q.: The churches are closed down in North Korea.

Latourette: Yes, they are completely closed down, but the Christians are still living in the mountains and meeting in the mountains in small groups. And they continue in China. They have been dealt very severe blows there, particularly by this cultural revolution they’ve had lately. But we know there are Christians there, and we hear that some conversions are still being made—very quietly, but they are still being made. In some countries and areas, the proportion of Christians is rising. In India fifty years ago, we counted about one out of a hundred who called themselves Christians. Today Christians number about three out of a hundred, and the population of India has mounted from about 300 million to about 500 million.

Q.: Do you think that the swift growth in population will overtake these proportions?

Latourette: I think there is no indication of it now. South of the Sahara the number of Christians is growing very rapidly. They are still a minority; I think that of all African countries possibly only in South Africa would a majority call themselves Christians. In Indonesia a tremendous growth of Christians has been reported within just the last few months. We don’t know all the reasons for it, but we know the growth is taking place. In Japan the number of Christians has never been very large.

Q.: About one per cent of the population?

Latourette: About 1 per cent, or about one-half of 1 per cent in the proportion of church members. But a spot census not many months ago showed about three out of a hundred call themselves Christians, although many are not church members. And in various parts of the world there are gains. In Latin America, the great majority call themselves Catholics. But a friend of mine who taught theology in Chile, the late Father Gustave Weigel, when I first met him about fourteen years ago, said Christianity is dead in Latin America. I don’t think he would say that now—not even of the Catholic Church.

Q.: Here in America, Dr. Latourette, some theologians, let alone secular philosophers, are saying God is dead. What do you think about the present state of American Christianity?

Latourette: I think it is still very vigorous. Of course, as you know, the proportion of church members in this country has been mounting fairly steadily: about five out of a hundred when our nation became independent; about twelve out of a hundred at the time of the Civil War; to about twenty-five out of a hundred at the turn of the century. Today—if you include Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Jews, about two-thirds of the population call themselves members of a religious community—the vast majority of those being Christians. Now, how much of vital Christianity there really is, you can’t measure statistically.

Q.: I was going to say that you seem to place such a premium on numerical growth (and I suppose certainly one ought not to consider lack of growth an asset in Christian circles) that I wonder whether you really think Christianity is by definition a minority movement in relation to the world population?

Latourette: Of course it is. And with the present explosion of population, particularly in India and China, Christians or those who call themselves Christians are a smaller minority than they were fifty years ago. The proportion of those bearing the Christian name who are really Christian only God knows.

Q.: Do you think that just as in recent times there has been a global expansion of Christianity, so also there has been a global manifestation of anti-Christianity and anti-Christ?

Latourette: That’s not new. The historian as he goes back over the ages has seen that again and again. Today it has taken at least two drastic forms. One is the growth of Communism; the other, of course, the decline of Christianity in Western Europe—where nearly everyone is baptized and a good proportion are confirmed, but where for a large proportion Christianity is purely nominal. That has been going on now for a century. Since the industrial revolution, the population that has worked in the factories and the mines has never really been held to the Church. They are in both Catholic and Protestant countries; yet as far back as the eighteenth century and certainly the nineteenth century, most of those who worked in factories and mines were largely lost to the Church.

Q.: Do you think the Church has reason to lose heart because of the expansion of totalitarian Communism?

Latourette: Surely not. She has survived dark hours in the past. Islam tore away about half of Christendom about A.D. 700, and the rest of Christendom was threatened partly by internal decay and partly by waves of barbarians sweeping down from the north. And we ought not to forget the condition of the Church in fifteenth-century Europe.

Q.: If you were to venture a guess about the year 2000—and guessing, I suppose, is hazardous for a historian—how would you position Christianity among the world religions and ideologies at the end of this century?

Latourette: Well, as you know, I believe that our Lord may return at any time and bring this present stage of history to an end. That may well come between now and the year 2000. If he delays, my guess is that Christianity will continue to be more deeply rooted in indigenous leadership and indigenous movements, and among more people and in more countries than any other religion has ever been. You see, Christianity today is more widely distributed geographically than any other religion has ever been. There is no exception to that among the major religions of mankind—Confucianism, which of course is dying; Buddhism, which has been declining now for a long time; Hinduism, which is almost entirely confined to India; or Islam. Christianity is not only more widely distributed; it’s also more deeply rooted. It’s not a Western European phenomenon. That is seen in many different ways, of course, both in Protestantism and in Roman Catholicism. Within the last eight years, the East Asia Christian Conference has come into being through the initiative of East Asians and Southeast Asians. These Christians are not content to be just little ghetto communities; they are reaching out to win their own people to the Christian faith and sending missionaries to other countries. For example, not long ago a Filipino whom I knew had been a missionary in Iran. The Korean Christians have been sending missionaries to East Africa without financial assistance from Europe or America, and on their own initiative. And the number of indigenous clergy is growing. It is significant that during World War II, when missionaries were either imprisoned or killed or repatriated, in some areas the number of Christians grew. That was true in the Batak country in Indonesia; there all the missionaries were either imprisoned or killed or exiled, and yet they grew by about 100,000 during the war years and the period of Japanese occupation.

Q.: Apparently quite a vigorous revival is going on in Indonesia right now.

Latourette: Very much so. And the same thing is true in Burma. All the missionaries had to leave during the Japanese occupation, and yet among the largest of the non-Burman peoples, the Karens, the Christians grew in numbers.

Q.: They’re up in the mountains facing the Communist frontier, aren’t they?

Latourette: Some of them are, and some of them are in the south. There are other signs of new life in Asia, also. Studying at Yale this year we have a young man from the Naga hills of India whose father was a headhunter; he’s now planning to go back and teach the Bible.

Q.: Are there other features of Christian expansion in our time that give you some basis for optimism?

Latourette: Well, I’ve just mentioned a few in the non-Occidental world. But within the so-called Christian world new ventures are taking their place, as you know perfectly well. The great evangelistic meeting last year in Berlin, the World Congress on Evangelism, was something completely new; nothing of that sort had ever happened before. In Germany the evangelical academies are trying to deepen Christian commitment, and there are a number of other movements—such as Kerk en Werld in Holland, and the Iona movement. In our country about every week I hear of some new movement showing very great vigor, springing up largely among the laity as well as among some of the clergy, such as Faith at Work. And you probably know many other new ways that I don’t know about.

Q.: There are many cell groups, Dr. Latourette, and many new movements, some of them quite detached from organized Christianity and the institutional church but with a real feeling for New Testament realities and biblical truth.

Latourette: I’m glad to say I hear about a good many of them. And I’m not concerned particularly with the growth of institutions as such. What concerns me is that lives are transformed and Christians continue to meet together for prayer and fellowship and to witness to others.

Q.: What do you think is the essence of the Christian confession, Dr. Latourette? What do you believe?

Latourette: Well, I was taught, and I still hold to it very strongly, that the best brief summary is in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And later on in John’s Gospel, as you know, our Lord is quoted as saying, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” That seems to be the very heart of the Gospel.

Q.: What about affirmations of the early ecumenical creeds, such as the bodily resurrection and the virgin birth of Christ?

Latourette: Oh, I believe those myself. Of course they are very widely questioned among a good many people who, I think, are honestly trying to follow Christ. As a historian one has to examine his documents, and I’ve had to question them. But I personally believe that the historical evidence is for the virgin birth and for the bodily resurrection of our Lord.

Q.: You take a positive view, I understand, of the significance of the evangelistic impact in our time, such as represented by evangelist Billy Graham in the large crusades.

Latourette: Oh, yes.

Q.: Dr. Latourette, I understand that you are writing the history of the American Bible Society. Do you think that the Bible and the future of Christianity are closely interrelated?

Latourette: I believe the Bible is God’s Word, and of course the evangelical faith has been very closely linked to the Bible. We are celebrating the 450th anniversary of Luther’s starting of the Reformation. You remember that when he was hailed before the great dignitaries of church and state at the Diet of Worms, he said, “Unless I, Luther, am convinced by reason and by Scripture, I cannot retract anything I have said.” Of course he based his faith on that great passage in Romans, “The just shall live by faith.” Only he said “faith only,” sola fide. Paul got it from Habakkuk. You remember the kind of world in which that was first given. The writer of Habakkuk was almost driven to despair by great forces coming down from the north and destroying men with no regard for the weak and no regard for anything righteous. Why does God allow that? Why does he stand silent when the wicked gather to gobble up a man more righteous than they? And the word came to him, “The righteous shall live by his faith.” Incidentally, many years ago a colleague of mine lost his wife in pregnancy—Douglas MacIntosh, whose name you know.

Q.: Douglas Clyde MacIntosh, who wrote The Problem of Religious Knowledge and other books?

Latourette: Yes. When he had his turn at leading chapel, he said, “You wouldn’t expect me to ignore what’s happened since I was last here.” And he simply read from the last verses of Habakkuk: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet …

Q.: When you were president of the American Historical Society, Dr. Latourette, you gave quite an unusual president’s address.

Latourette: The title was: “The Christian Understanding of History.” What I attempted to do was to state what that understanding is, and then to state why I thought it is confirmed by history itself.

Q.: What light do you think Christianity sheds upon the history of our times?

Latourette: Well, I’ve often thought of those three parables in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew that our Lord gave. Remember, he talked about the wheat and the tares—the wheat and the weeds—growing together. They grow together until the harvest. I think that’s happened. Then he went on to say that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, and when it grows it becomes a tree and the birds lodge in it; and it’s also like leaven, that leavens the entire lump. Now both of those things have happened; all these three things have been borne out so far in history. Whether our Lord had that in mind when he gave them I don’t know, but they have certainly been confirmed historically.

Q.: What Christian ideas and ideals do you think have had a significant influence in shaping the American outlook?

Latourette: I could write a book on that.

Q.: Do you think that anything that distinguishes America among the nations is due to a Christian ingredient somewhere in its historical conditioning?

Latourette: Yes. You remember that the dollar bill has on its back the great seal of the United States, and part of it is a pyramid with the eye of God above it and the Latin words Annuit Coeptis, “He smiles on our beginnings.” Underneath is Novus Ordo Seclorum, “A new order of the ages.” Our founding fathers believed they were starting something new here. And of course Abraham Lincoln included in his Gettysburg Address the thought that ours is a great new adventure. Now that came out of the Christian dream, something new in this world—government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln defined it. I think that vision had a Christian origin. It’s not the only way in which we’ve been shaped. Of course, we’ve had many movements that were begun by Christians, often secularized as they go on. There was the whole movement for world peace that evangelicals in this country were organizing back early in the last century; this has issued now in our share in the United Nations. The U. N. would never have been but for the Christian dream.

Q.: In its origins it had more of a spiritual orientation than it now has?

Latourette: Yes. And of course the Red Cross. That was begun by Henri Dunant, a young man from Geneva who had a warm Christian experience in his youth. He was a businessman who was present at a big battle in northern Italy in 1859, and he was horrified at the lack of care for the sick and the wounded. So he wrote a best-seller describing it, and said, “Isn’t somebody going to do anything about it?” He and a number of other young Christian men from Geneva organized the International Red Cross. The symbol is Christian, but now it has become pretty well secularized. Both basketball and volleyball were invented by the YMCA to produce wholesome, physical life. Those are minor examples, but they have affected thousands of people. I rather think—though I can’t prove this—that the modern Olympic Games were initiated by Christians also.

Q.: Do you see any signs on the horizon in the present materialistic milieu of a new American creed, a defection from the heritage of the past?

Latourette: No, I don’t see that. Of course, there is a great deal of ignoring of that heritage, but there is also much remembrance of it. I happen to be an honorary member of both Kiwanis and Rotary in my home town, for example, and at each luncheon we solemnly rise and pledge our allegiance to the flag and sing “America” or “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “America” was written by a clergyman in his theological student days, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a very devout Episcopal layman.

Q.: What is your assessment of the spiritual state of the churches in America?

Latourette: It varies greatly. I don’t think one ought to generalize too much. I’m a little suspicious of this growth in church membership that probably means a watering down of the quality of church life. But that can’t be proved.

Q.: Do you think that the churches are sometimes onesidedly blamed for our problems in connection with racial tensions and other social problems?

Latourette: Yes, I think they are. But I think that’s partly a tribute to the churches. People expect something of the churches they don’t expect elsewhere, and when the churches don’t live up to that expectation, they blame them for it.

Q.: What are the weaknesses of American Christianity as you see them reflected among university students?

Latourette: I think that the student scene is more varied than I’ve ever known it in all my years of teaching and living at a university. Of those who are not Jews, the great majority who come have been baptized; and if they are in churches that confirm, they’ve been confirmed. But that doesn’t mean much to them; they are in the adolescent age when they’re questioning everything, including the faith in which they’ve been reared. On the other hand, I increasingly run across a number who are convincedly Christian, willing to face all the problems and the facts, and to witness—sometimes in somewhat bizarre ways and sometimes just quietly. In my student days at Yale, sixty years ago, practically everybody was a member of a church. Chapel was required; everybody went. My class voted to continue it. There were class prayer meetings after chapel which a few people attended, a declining number from freshman year on. Required chapel disappeared in the 1920s; there still is voluntary chapel; but there is no daily chapel for undergraduates. Sunday chapel is fairly well attended. And there are some prayer meetings when small groups of students get together, but nothing of a public kind. Whether that means a real decline in the average of Christian living on the campus I don’t know.

Q.: Are there any ideas on the horizon today that seem to spell danger for the churches?

Latourette: Oh, plenty of them. That is not new. Remember our Lord was crucified, and he seemed to die in frustration and failure.

Q.: So if you’ve sometimes been called an inveterate optimist, Dr. Latourette, it isn’t because you underestimate the power of evil in our time?

Latourette: I should say not. And as a historian, of course, I recognize that—as Paul said—to the Jew the Cross is weakness and to the intellectual it just doesn’t make sense, but the weakness of God is stronger than men. As a historian I’ve tried to ask how that has happened. And the foolishness of God is wiser than men. I have wrestled with that problem personally as well as in writing.

Q.: The Apostle Paul said that Christians are more than conquerors. Do you think, Dr. Latourette, that his statement needs to be revised in the twentieth century—that Christians are really an isolated and battered minority?

Latourette: No. Of course I think he meant there that individuals are more than conquerors, facing evil in many different ways, personal illness and bereavement and then great mass evil. But historical facts bear out that they are more than conquerors. They’re not just content to get through unscathed themselves. From them issue great purposes, and often in very strange ways. I didn’t know until a few years ago that President Franklin Roosevelt had Holy Communion in the White House on each one of his inaugurations—a friend of mine who had long been a missionary in China served him Holy Communion at the White House at least once. Roosevelt didn’t want to do it in public because that would be too spectacular. For all Roosevelt’s joking, he would never hear religion disparaged or joked at. Now I don’t know what the good Lord thought about Franklin Roosevelt; it’s not for me to judge. But there is the influence of Christ even upon that life.

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