Wycliffe Translators: A Controversial Success

Among the several major evangelical enterprises to spring up in the last generation, none has pioneered more daringly than Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. And none except the far-reaching ministry of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has been more remarkably successful. Wycliffe now counts 1,700 career personnel assigned to overseas posts in a dramatic effort to get the Gospel to obscure peoples in languages they understand best. Total Wycliffe “membership” stands at nearly 2,000, making it the world’s largest Protestant missionary organization.

Evangelical breakthroughs almost invariably occur under strong leaders. Bob Pierce has been the Billy Graham of the evangelically rooted World Vision movement and through plaintive pleas and skillful promotion raises millions of dollars annually for orphan care and general relief work in the Far East. Dapper Bill Bright has led Campus Crusade for Christ, with its simple but intensive evangelistic zeal, into hundreds of colleges in the United States and abroad. In the case of Wycliffe,Named after John Wycliffe (c. 1319–1384), the “Morning Star of the reformation,” who broke a 1,000-year tradition when he translated the Scriptures into English. the genius has been that of soft-spoken W. Cameron Townsend, now 71, whose diplomacy has won him entrée to scores of traditionally anti-Protestant government residences in Latin America.

Fifty years ago this month, Townsend, product of a California farm family, arrived in Guatemala as a $25-a-month salesman for the Bible House of Los Angeles. The real challenge came with his discovery that the Scriptures were of no use to the Indians because they could not read Spanish. Prodded by their complaint that “God doesn’t know our language,” Townsend set out to translate the New Testament into the then-unwritten Cakchiquel dialect. Although it took twelve years, Townsend not only achieved that goal but also inspired similar projects across Latin America and subsequently in other parts of the world.

Out of these projects grew Wycliffe, which was incorporated in 1942 and today operates on a budget of about $5,000,000. Personnel and bases are now located in twenty-one countries stretching from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Straits, where Dave and Mitzi Shinen are marooned for most of the winter, to New Guinea, where Alan Pence runs a compound of 120 buildings.

A key adjunct to the translation work is a vast transportation system and communications network—some forty aircraft and 254 radio stations.

Main Wycliffe headquarters, now in overcrowded offices in Santa Ana, California, will soon move to Dallas, where a modern new complex is planned. The Dallas facilities will have an administrative building, an educational unit that includes a museum, an auditorium, a library and research facilities, and retirement housing for missionaries.

Townsend’s dynamic thrust for Christianity through translation and literacy grows out of effective recruitment of talented linguists who bring with them guarantees of financial support. Part of the secret, however, has been abandonment of some traditional evangelical missionary principles—there has even been some hesitation as to whether Wycliffe personnel should call themselves missionaries. As a result, Wycliffe has been a controversial subject, and Townsend has been at odds with some of his evangelical peers.

The backbone of Wycliffe strategy has been legal contracts with the governments of countries in which the organization operates. These contracts are somewhat parallel, though counter, to the Vatican concordats prevailing for the most part in Latin America. Wycliffe gets official access to, and government help for, areas previously dominated by Roman Catholicism or pagan religions. In return, the organization vows to aid the peoples of these areas, who are sometimes minority groups with only second-class legal standing. The help takes the form of reducing their languages to writing and providing local transportation and communication. Townsend’s critics contend these treaties are brazen violations of the American concept of church-state separation.

What bugs many evangelical missionaries is that Wycliffe personnel, in living up to their contracts, readily serve as chauffeurs for Roman Catholic priests and nuns in jungle and remote areas where Wycliffe planes are the only means of getting around. Because of this, Wycliffe is accused of aiding the propagation of superstitions that the missionaries are trying to counter.

Another charge often hurled at Wycliffe workers is that of implicit duplicity. In hostile field environments, they are known as representatives not of Wycliffe Bible Translators but of the secularly oriented, scientific and educational Summer Institute of Linguistics. Actually the two organizations are twins, with the same board of trustees and headquarters. The secular image is undergirded by the fact that only 5 per cent of Wycliffe members are ordained. Back home, money is raised among evangelicals not through the secular image of the Summer Institute but through emphasis upon the Wycliffe name and the organization’s Bible-translation work.

The Institute, however, is no mere gimmick. Linguistic schools have been conducted each summer for some thirty years and have been the initiating stage for workers going out under the Wycliffe banner. (Another step is several months of basic training in a rugged survival camp in a remote part of Mexico.)

Another complicating factor is that the transportation and communications arm of the Townsend enterprise is a separate corporation known as Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. It has headquarters in Waxhaw, North Carolina, and a different board, but its elections are controlled by the parent group.

Because its multi-faceted venture is a distinct departure from the established evangelical pattern, Wycliffe has had an uphill fight for a good image. During the fifties, it withdrew from the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, a coordinating agency for conservative Protestant missionary boards, because its practice of transporting priests was coming under so much fire that Wycliffe officials feared they might eventually be forced out of IFMA.

Methods aside, Wycliffe is getting a big job done, and some objective observers contend this is actually part of the controversy. Typically, Wycliffe workers who move into a field where other missionary groups have relied on conventional approaches will in ten years have chalked up four times as many converts. That doesn’t make for the best relations.

Undaunted, Wycliffe is pressing ahead. Its appeal to eager, intelligent young people is enhanced considerably by a specific goal: to decipher all the world’s “un-Bibled” languages by the end of the century. A popular estimate is that there are 2,000 to go. Not even the Wycliffe doctrinal requirement that its members affirm inerrancy of Scripture seems to deter the flow of recruits. The prospect of working in Communist countries is their next big challenge.

‘MR. BROWN’ COMES DOWN

If Jesus Christ came to earth today, would men worship him or still hound him to death? The ninety-minute film Mr. Brown Comes Down the Hill provides tragic but convincing answers.

The film, released in America last month, was produced in Britain two years ago by the controversial Moral Re-Armament movement. It is based on a play by the late Peter Howard, the high-salaried political columnist who joined MRA and became its worldwide leader.

Key Bridge: Forty Churchmen Signal Opening Of Major New Evangelical Drive

In the quiet seclusion of a basement motel room, influential evangelical churchmen met the last three days of September to explore joint endeavor. They came out determined to champion a mighty drive for biblically oriented impact upon the nation.

“This was not merely a fruitful exchange,” said Editor Carl F. H. Henry, who took turns presiding with evangelist Billy Graham. “It was a great first step toward mobilizing 40,000,000 American evangelicals.” Henry and Graham had convened the meeting, held at the Marriott Key Bridge Motor Hotel, Arlington, Virginia, after a widely favorable response to CHRISTIANITY TODAY articles and editorials urging evangelical unity.

Evangelism Plus. The forty Key Bridge participants set up a ten-member committee to study the feasibility of a formal evangelistic crusade of unparalleled dimensions, perhaps in 1973. And a number of suggestions were offered—also for study—to further transdenominational evangelical cooperation beyond evangelism (see editorial, page 25).

The discussion took place in a comfortably furnished room under the gaze of a portrait of Francis Scott Key, best known for his authorship of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The motel takes a Key motif because it is located near Key Bridge, which spans the Potomac between Arlington and Washington, D. C. The motif was very appropriate for this meeting of evangelistically minded churchmen, for Key played a major part in the founding of 25,000 Sunday schools in the early part of the nineteenth century.

No New Structures. Theological and ecclesiastical differences were not discussed at the Key Bridge Meeting. Participants made no move to compromise present denominational loyalties, and there were no proposals for a new organization.

Southern Baptist participants at the Key Bridge Meeting reported growing sentiment within their denomination for more cooperation with other groups in evangelistic efforts. The Southern Baptist Executive Committee recently gave favorable attention to a formal proposal for a “mutual pooling of our collective resources for worldwide evangelism” and assigned the plan to the Home Mission Board for implementation.

The idea for an evangelism drive in 1973 grew out of “Dialogue: Cape Kennedy,” held August 31-September 1 at Cocoa Beach, Florida, and attended by a number of Southern Baptist clergymen. The plan has been spearheaded by a pair of Southern Baptist pastors, Jess Moody of West Palm Beach, Florida, and Alastair Walker of Griffin, Georgia, with the encouragement of C. E. Autrey, director of evangelism.

The participants at the Key Bridge Meeting were:

BAPTIST—Southern: C. E. Autrey, evangelism director, Home Mission Board; H. Leo Eddleman, president, New Orleans seminary; John Havlik, associate evangelism director, Home Mission Board; Duke McCall, president, Southern Baptist seminary; Jess Moody, pastor, West Palm Beach, Fla.; Robert Naylor, president, Southwestern seminary; Alastair Walker, pastor, Griffin, Ga.; T. W. Wilson, associate evangelist, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. American: Paul Almquist, board chairman, Eastern Baptist seminary; L. Doward McBain, president, American Baptist Convention. Other: Dennis Clark, international secretary, World Evangelical Fellowship; Rufus Jones, president, National Association of Evangelicals; W. Stanley Mooneyham, international vice president, BGEA; George Wilson, vice president and treasurer, BGEA.

PRESBYTERIAN—Presbyterian U.S.: Donald Patterson, pastor, Pensacola, Fla.; Walter Shepard, area secretary, Board of World Missions; G. Aiken Taylor, editor, “Presbyterian Journal.” United: Stewart Rankin, pastor, Silver Spring, Md. Orthodox: Edmund Clowney, president, Westminster seminary.

REFORMED—Reformed Church: Henry Bast, pastor, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Louis Benes, editor, “Church Herald.” Christian Reformed: Anthony Hoekema, Calvin seminary.

METHODIST—Ira Gallaway, district superintendent, Fort Worth, Texas; Charles Keysor, editor, “Good News”; Frank Stanger, president, Asbury seminary; Philip Worth, pastor, Collingswood, N.J.

EPISCOPAL—Peter Doyle pastor, Leesburg, Va.; Peter Moore, director, Council for Religion in Independent Schools.

LUTHERAN—American: Conrad Thompson, evangelism director, American Lutheran Church. Missouri Synod: Robert Preus, Concordia seminary, St. Louis.

CHURCHES OF CHRIST—Reuel Lemmons, editor, “Firm Foundation”; Frank Pack, graduate dean, Pepperdine College; Edward Rockey, pastor, White Plains, N.Y.

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES—Fred Thompson, Jr., pastor, Chicago; Dean Walker, president, Milligan College.

OTHER—Church of the Nazarene: Westlake Purkiser, editor, “Herald of Holiness.” Evangelical Free Church: Arnold Olson, EFC president and first vice president, NAE. Independent: Hudson Armerding, president, Wheaton College.

Mr. Brown, a Christ in modern dress played by Eric Flynn, comes to the world and mixes with the publicans, sinners, and pharisees of this age—drunkards, prostitutes, and modernist bishops. A few find new hope in his message, but the majority hate him for what he is—his purity, his love, his ability to disturb their complacency and idleness.

The situations are so lifelike and the dialogue so relevant to life and devoid of clichés that it is easy to understand why viewers of the film throughout the world have said in effect, This is a Christ we can believe in.

Mr. Brown provokes men to love or hate; they cannot remain ignorant of his presence or his claims. A prostitute decides, “He didn’t threaten anything except my living. And I loved him for it.” A Negro learns to love his persecutors—“If love does [this], heaven help our enemies.”

For Mr. Brown, “the most uncharitable thing on earth is to pretend sin is not sin, and that it needs no cure, and that there’s no cure for it. That’s cruel and loveless.” This is his principal complaint against the modern clergy. “I don’t believe in your sort of God,” he tells four pompous bishops, “with his watered-down ways and doubtful disputations, and theology designed to prove you needn’t take him so seriously after all.” An all-too-familiar pattern emerges. “We shall have to do something about that Mr. Brown,” says one of the bishops. And so they plot to kill him.

This film is a powerful modern presentation of the life of Christ, magnificently scripted and acted. Many viewers of “Mr. Brown,” both in the stage production at London’s Westminster Theater and in the film, have found it at least a first step toward a personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And this alone makes it a worthwhile production.

DAVID COOMES

CHURCH ANTI-POVERTY PROBLEMS

While proponents of a $2,258,000,000 (anti-poverty bill attempted to steer the measure past the reefs of congressional resistance, the poverty war was having controversy of its own at three locations out in the field.

United States Senator James Eastland of Mississippi declared an audit of the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) has revealed $654,000 of “unaccountable” invalid expenditures. When rumblings of financial irregularities first sounded last year, the United Presbyterian national mission board—deeply involved in the preschool training organization—agreed to cover any shortages then and in the future.

If Eastland’s information is correct (the U. S. Office of Economic Opportunity says the audit is not complete), the Presbyterians will be left holding a half-million-dollar bag. Church officials, apparently unruffled, said they had not heard from OEO or its auditors.

In Syracuse, the Rev. Ernest Boston, full-time director of the citywide antipoverty agency, Crusade for Opportunity, wasn’t exactly whistling Dixie either. OEO accused the agency of “flagrant abuses” of the administration’s rules and promptly cut off $1.1 million of community-action program funding. The New York Times said OEO’s audit revealed financial deficiencies and “serious problems of conflict of interest.” Boston presently is organizing a new congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

A “model” anti-poverty project in Pacoima, California, set up to rehabilitate gang youth, struck a snag when James Sherman, 25, project director-elect, was charged with holding up a liquor store.

Although OEO had announced a quarter-million-dollar grant for the project a month before, funds are being held up while Sherman, who has a record of fourteen arrests, goes to court. Sherman would be paid $9,000 a year for leading the project, sponsored by the Pacoima Congregational Church.

PRAYER SOLICITOR?

Foes of the federal ban on public school prayers may find an ally in Erwin N. Griswold, 63, newly appointed as Solicitor General, the top U. S. advocate before the U. S. Supreme Court. Griswold, dean of Harvard Law School since 1946, a Protestant and a Republican, was named by President Johnson last month to fill a post vacated by Thurgood Marshall, who became the first Negro on the Supreme Court.

Griswold was an outspoken critic of the Supreme Court’s June, 1962, decision that ruled the twenty-two-word New York Regents’ prayer unconstitutional. He said then in America: “To say that … all trace of religion be kept out of any public activity is sheer invention.… Must we deny our whole heritage, our culture, the things of the spirit …?”

COURT SHUNS TWO CASES

The U. S. Supreme Court this month refused to review two important religious cases. One appeal opposed a lower-court ruling in favor of the Pennsylvania law that requires public school busing for non-profit private schools. The high court found no “substantial federal question” despite pleas that the law violates church-state separation. The effect is to leave the matter entirely to the states.

The court also refused to review contempt-of-court convictions of Martin Luther King, Jr., and seven other Negro clergymen over Good Friday and Easter demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Last June the court had affirmed the convictions as a violation of an Alabama court order. The pastors face five-day jail terms and $50 fines.

In other church-state news, atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair filed suit in U. S. District Court appealing the Federal Communications Commission’s denial of her bid to force equal time on radio and TV to answer religious programs. And New Hampshire’s Supreme Court ruled non-public schools can’t share in state sweepstake profits.

‘GOOD NEWS’ FOR ATLANTA

A wide spectrum of Atlanta church groups are cooperating to blitz the city and sell one million copies of the modern New Testament translation “Good News for Modern Man” at twenty-five cents each by Thanksgiving. The main push was set for National Bible Week, with the added incentive that at the end of the week, October 22, unsold books had to be moved from a rented building.

The “Good News” translation produced by the American Bible Society a year ago had already passed the seven million mark in sales before the Atlanta order. The work, which uses basic everyday language, was done by Robert Bratcher, a Southern Baptist on the ABS staff. In addition, the ABS produced a special eight-page version of John 14 and 15 with local city scenes for the Atlanta drive.

GRAHAM IN ‘DRIEST DESERT’

“Japan is the driest desert Billy Graham has ever entered,” remarked one observer shortly before the ten-day Tokyo crusade was to begin last week. Someone pointed out that Tokyo has fewer Christians than Moscow—only 15,000 in the Japanese capital out of some 11 million residents.

The sponsors are optimistic. Said Dr. David Tsutada, chairman of the crusade executive committee: “We believe that this crusade is going to be the beginning of a long-lasting spiritual revival that Graham will spread not only throughout Japan but throughout southeast Asia.”

Three and one-half million homes were visited with personal invitations to the crusade, held in the 15,000-seat Nippon Budoan in downtown Tokyo, with the closing service in the 50,000-capacity Korakuen Stadium. This is Graham’s first major crusade effort in Japan, and his first preaching engagement there since February, 1965.

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