Page 6256 – Christianity Today (2024)

One of the better publications that crosses my desk is the Union Seminary Quarterly Review. Like some of the readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I am a “freeloader”; the Review is passed on to me by a friend. I cannot say, however, that this lessens my pleasure or profit in the reading.

An issue which you simply must read is that of May, 1962. If the editors of the Review would care for my advice, I would like to suggest that this particular issue be put out in book or booklet form. The issue carries articles by James Muilenburg, John Knox, Robert T. Handy, Edmund A. Steimle, Wilhelm Pauck, Roger L. Shinn, and Daniel D. Williams. All these names gathered in one issue of any publication would insure its success, and just for good measure there is a book review (“An Assembly of Solemn Noises”) by Robert McAfee Brown which could serve as the last word for anyone who wants to know how to write a book review.

Interest in this issue involves more than just interest in the authorities who have written, however, and this is the reason why the issue of last May is still “current” in religious thought; these men of Union Seminary have been led to write on subjects of perennial interest which are always “current.” Under the aegis of a man named Thomas Laws and the Student Worship Committee of the seminary, these men gave informal lectures, which were taperecorded for publication, on such subjects as “What I Believe It Means to be Saved,” “What I Believe About the Activity of the Holy Spirit,” “What I Believe About the Way God Answers Prayer,” and “What I Believe About Life After Death.”

The discussions and the articles grew out of a sense of need which I think is common to all our seminaries. Allowing that a seminary is called to serve the faith by solid academic achievements, Thomas Laws, in his introduction to the Review, along with his committee of students “would assert that these intellections do not constitute the whole faith.… Many theological students do have an immediate concern for the more ‘confessional’ elements of the Christian faith.” The Student Worship Committee (I am still quoting Laws) “sensing within the Seminary community a need for explicit discussion affecting personal beliefs decided to sponsor a series of informal Lenten discussion meetings.” Four meetings were planned, and two faculty members spoke quite frankly at each meeting. Where there had been an expectation of 30 to 40 students, the issues were taken so seriously that over 200 students regularly crowded the Social Hall for the meetings. President Van Dusen is quoted as having called these meetings “the finest, most meaningful, and most helpful series of talks by faculty in the past 40 years.

Now the question is: Just why in a theological seminary do students feel the need for this kind of material (and the need is felt in every seminary), when the professors spend their days teaching theology, the things of Christ, the Word which we preach, and like matters? A second question is: Do the intellectual pursuits of an academic institution destroy the possibility of communicating the more “confessional” elements of our faith? These outstanding men of Union, recognized for their scholarship the world over, always have this warmth of personal conviction; yet the students feel the need of meetings outside the lecture hall in order that this warmth of conviction can be communicated.

If you think this is a criticism, then you have certainly missed the point. The problem is present in every seminary, and most professors and most students recognize it; at Union they did something about it. Kierkegaard raised the question long ago whether it is possible to “teach” theology. How does one “teach” redemption, or the presence of God, or the divine-human encounter, or communion in prayer, or the forgiveness of sin? The Swiss psychiatrist Tournier in his The Meaning of Persons shows how contact between doctor and patient is impossible until spirit touches spirit or person meets person, uncluttered by the trappings of “personage.” When C. A. Anderson-Scott returned to replace Hoskyns at Cambridge University, I heard him address his opening session, and I remember these words: “I want to keep one eye on the tripos (the English term for a final comprehensive exam) and one eye on the Kingdom of God, but I propose to keep my good eye on the Kingdom of God.” C. S. Lewis warns us about confusing a map with the journey; we can master the map and never take a trip. Robert Clyde Johnson, the great theologian at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has a letter published in a recent issue of “The Pittsburgh Perspective” in which he treats at length this hardy perennial: What is the relationship between theological discipline and spiritual experience? A young minister told me one time, “After three years at the seminary it took me three more years to get my religion back.”

Another question that arises somewhat indirectly from these articles in the Review has to do with the backgrounds of the men who wrote them. It is surprising, or maybe it is not, that so many of them refer to early training in home or college which was limited and narrow in what they think of as the “fundamentalist” approach to the Christian faith. One could do an interesting study on the number of men teaching in theological seminaries who have such a “fundamentalist” background; just to make the thesis more exciting, one might analyze also the religious backgrounds of editors and missionaries, not to mention board secretaries and ecumenical leaders. I resist the temptation to name names, but outstanding men in every denomination come to mind readily. Does this not raise the question (it does for me, anyway) whether we can find men coming into the ministry at all unless there is something of this fundamentalist “seriousness” about heaven and hell, the imminence of the Second Coming, sin and salvation, and the like? The desperate need for men in our seminaries may be related to the disappearance of the family altar, the sophistication of our church schools, the lightheartedness of our summer conference programs, and the reluctance of our church colleges to say anything too challenging about Christ for fear it will be intellectually shameful. Maybe it is time again for some old-time religion.

DEEPER AND DEEPER—The day of the all-around naturalist is over.… Even within a specific discipline, such as genetics, no one person can be conversant with all of the literature in that field. This is an indication of rapid acceleration.… There have been many spectacular breakthroughs.… There has been no such rapid growth of knowledge in any previous period of history.—Dr. IRVING W. KNOBLOCH, “Biology,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, March, 1962, p. 25.

FASTER AND FASTER—A supersonic transport plane that will climb beyond 70,000 feet and cruise at a fantastic 2,000 m.p.h. is being planned by North American Aviation.—Advertisem*nt, The Wall Street Journal, of a joint government-industry project whose development costs are put at $500 million to $1 billion.

DESCENDING INTO THE DEPTHS—A rugged and immobile kind of submarine, the Trieste, has already carried men 6.8 miles down to the bottom of the Pacific. But other men are trying to find ways for the free diver—the Scuba diver—to leave the confines of such machines to swim and work deep down.… Hannes Keller, a young Swiss scientist … has developed a secret mixture of gases which, breathed by the divers, enables them to descend to once-unheard-of depths.—“Death in the Depths, the Price for New Knowledge,” Life, Dec. 21, 1962.

PROBING THE MULTIVERSE—Mariner II has accomplished its mission in a way that constitutes a truly great moment in the history of man’s never-ending quest for more and more knowledge about his own solar system and the multiverse beyond it. In the words of Sir Bernard Lovell, Britain’s renowned astrophysicist, the event certainly deserves to be hailed as “by far the most splendid scientific achievement” recorded to date in the exploration of the boundless reaches of space.… Mariner’s report … will not be thoroughly evaluated for some weeks to come, but there seems to be little doubt at the jubilant National Aeronautics and Space Administration that results will amply justify the fact that this spatial project has involved 2,360 man-years of effort and an estimated outlay of $47 million.—The Sunday Star (Washington, D. C.), Dec. 16, 1962.

INTERNATIONAL EAVESDROPPER—A super-secret American satellite, so sensitive it can eavesdrop on Russian telephone messages, is now orbiting the earth, Newsweek magazine reported.… Newsweek said the satellite, which was developed by Lockheed Aircraft and RCA, can tap Soviet microwave telephone links and pinpoint missile launch sites by their radio guidance signals.—UPI report.

LIFE ON VENUS—Mariner II found no evidence that Venus has a magnetic field. This finding … keeps alive … a theory that Venus is cool enough to support some form of life.… Paul J. Coleman of the University of California … was quick to point out that this did not mean that Venus totally lacks a magnetic field.… There is always the chance that Mariner merely missed detecting a magnetic field.—HOWARD SIMONS, in The Washington Post.

SOUNDING THE ALARM—Education authorities say that cheating in schools is reaching “alarming” proportions. At one New York City high school, estimates were that half of the students cheated in examinations.… Street crime in many cities has reached a stage described as “alarming”.… Juvenile delinquency continues to rise.… Bank embezzlements, too, are at an all-time high.… In Washington, D. C., a recent inquiry into 92 welfare cases showed that more than 50 per cent of the families were wrongfully getting aid for dependent children. An official investigation last year found that at least 14 basketball players at 10 colleges took bribes or failed to report bribe offers to “fix” athletic contests.… Doubts, as seldom before in the nation’s past, are being raised about America’s moral standards.—“Is There a Decline in U. S. Morals?,” U.S. News & World Report, May 21, 1962, pp. 60 f.

FRINGE OR FABRIC?—“We are told that only the ‘fringes’ of our industries engage in dishonest practices,” said [Evan Wright, president of the Association of Food and Drug Officials of the United States].… “If this be so, the fringe is larger than the garment.… Today false advertising and misbranding are more prevalent than ever before. The difference is that the suckers are being born faster, and there are more rapid and sophisticated means of getting them than in Barnum’s time.”—The Washington Post, June 20, 1961, p. 3.

57 VARIETIES—Men’s magazines, specializing exclusively in out-of-focus pictures of nude women, sell at the rate of about $50,000 a year in the District according to conservative estimates.… One newsdealer has 57 varieties of the magazines in his downtown store.—WILLIAM DUKE, “Girlie Magazines Do a Thriving Business Here,” The Sunday Star, May 28, 1961.

‘THE GREAT POX’—Only five years after syphilis had apparently been conquered in the U.S. and was rapidly declining elsewhere, “the great pox” is making an unexpected comeback.… Of 106 nations reporting to the World Health Organization, no fewer than 76 have a rising incidence of syphilis.… A staggering 9,000,000 Americans are estimated to have syphilis, or to have had it.… Teen-agers, either ignorant or overconfident, account for much of syphilis’ increase.—Time, Sept. 21, 1962, p. 74.

CHANGING FASHIONS—It disturbs me much that many women in America let Paris determine what they shall wear. But it disturbs me more that many ministers in America let German theologians determine what they believe. They spend more time with Barth, Brunner and Bultmann than they do with the theologians of the Old Testament and New Testament, and so they end up in confusion and turmoil over what is essential to the biblical message.—Dr. R. B. CULBRETH, Pastor, Metropolitan Baptist Church, Washington, D. C.

Lost But Still There

Loss of the Self: In Literature and Art, by Wylie Sypher (Random House, 1962, 179 pp., $4), is reviewed by Robert M. Davies, Professor of English, Thiel College, Greenville, Pennsylvania.

The Puritans thought themselves wretched sinners in the sight of God, but without serious qualms they cut off the head of Charles I. This was the paradox that so intrigued Macaulay in considering the Puritans: their almost abject self-denial because they were sinful human beings, yet their self-investiture as political regents for Almighty God because they were his sons.

Is man a little lower than the angels, or is he the dust of the earth? In this highly recommended book, Wylie Sypher follows the great change that has occurred in man’s concept of himself since the early nineteenth century. Then the Romantic hero was at the very center of the universe, and, in a measure of speech, he almost became his own universe. His personal emotions, seeking unbounded personal freedom, knew no restrictions.

But in seeking freedom, he modified and attacked the social and political systems so that increasingly he was swallowed up by the statistical mass man his own liberal statism created.

Building upon this historical background, Sypher shows the recent struggle of literature and art to find the authentic self. The existentialists, says Sypher, always assumed that the self has an identity, but the great question has been whether one is being honest in finding it.

Now, however, we are in post-existentialism, and the question arises: What if the self has only an uncertain existence? Suppose the realities of our situation seem to be more actual than the self on which these experiences are imposed? This is the question treated in what has come to be called modern anti-literature.

It is Sypher’s belief that the great creative artists and writers always reveal, without perhaps knowing why or how, the latest scientific discoveries and theories. In this respect, the dissolution of the Romantic hero occurred at the same time science was beginning to question the law of cause and effect in the physical world. For cause and effect is man’s rationalized selection of certain sequences which he thinks he understands. It is now understood that simple chance may actually be more operative in nature than cause and effect. The law of entropy, furthermore, asserts that the universe is constantly drifting toward an unstructured state of equilibrium that is total.

These laws find expression in modern literature to the effect that the destiny of man is obliteration, and our life only a brief rebellion against the randomness into which things are ebbing.

Yet surprisingly, says Sypher, modern anti-literature with its anti-heroes and nihilism and emphasis upon man’s absurd condition cannot really escape an affirmation: even after the self has shriveled, the human remains. “To repeat: we have an existence, however unwillingly, after we have lost an identity; and we do not seem to be able to diminish this existence below a certain point” (p. 154).

It is not likely that readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will agree at all with the efforts Sypher then makes to set up some kind of humanism assimilating various strands of Hindu de-personalization, Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy, and Camus’ existentialism. But they will find in this book an admirably lucid account from a non-theological point of view of many of the spiritual implications in the crosscurrents of modern literature, art, science, philosophy, and political science.

ROBERT M. DAVIES

Cambridge Shocker

Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding, edited by A. R. Vidler (Cambridge, 1962, 268 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British Editorial Director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

An intentional shocker. Ten collaborating theologians, “concerned about the dangerous complacency in the religious world,” tackle such topics as the Bible, the function and value of prayer, the malaise of natural theology, and the science-religion issue. H. E. Root refreshingly outlines the dilemma of philosophical theology confronted by the pitfalls of metaphysical speculation, but after a sly dig at “fashionable biblical theology” (undefined further), the shock treatment begins with: “It is by no means clear that anything like Christian faith in the form we know it will ever again be able to come alive for people of our own time …” (page 6). J. S. Habgood observes: “Theologians want to find a position which is secure against any possible advances in scientific knowledge,” and G. W. H. Lampe makes the misleading statement: “… The religious axiom that God ‘will by no means clear the guilty’ has been dramatically disproved.” Yet H. W. Montefiore unquestionably accepts the Virgin Birth (p. 170).

H. A. Williams is the debunker par excellence of old-time morality. After showing that man’s unworthiness before God has been overstressed in the Book of Common Prayer (the Romans do it better), he argues that the individual who refuses to steal under certain circ*mstances is not moral but just plain chicken. In citing two incidents from recent films, he approves fornication as a healing agency glorifying to God. About lust he writes: “The practice of religion can be a form of lust.… First of all, I make an idol which I call Jesus of Nazareth or the Ascended Lord. Then I try to give myself value by identifying myself with the idol I have made. When the living me at times bursts through, and I become more than my own idol, I consider that I have sinned” (p. 89). Williams goes on to give “Our Lady” a tendentious boost and says he regularly “asks for her prayers.” Prudently he declines to “identify her place in the scheme of salvation.” On page 78, after attributing to Freud a theory formulated earlier and better by Dostoevsky, he strikingly points out we use so much energy keeping in fetters the demon lurking inside us that we experience “the dullness and deadness of many good Christian people.”

The writers have a yen for labyrinthine sentences which leave precise meanings obscure, and even shorter ones baffle, chiefly through ambiguity—e.g. this from G. F. Woods’s essay on “The Transcendent”: “Invincible ignorance of what is not there to be known is not a reasonable ground for depression.”

“Not everyone will agree with the authors’ viewpoints,” says the publishers’ announcement, complacently. Just so. That such self-consciously radical thinking should come from the arid fastnesses of Cambridge University is not surprising-academic freedom is a cherished principle; that it (except for one essay) should have come from Anglican clergymen who have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles is incredible.

J. D. DOUGLAS

With Notes

The Oxford Annotated Bible, edited by Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford, 1962, 1544 pp. plus maps with index, $7.95), is reviewed by Samuel Schultz, Professor of Bible and Theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The Oxford Annotated Bible (RSV), with cross references and running commentary in the form of notes placed at the foot of each page, is designed to aid the layman in reading and study to gain a fuller understanding of the Bible. The format is excellent. Special features in this edition include: articles on how to read and understand the Bible, the history of the English Bible, and the geography, history, and archaeology of the Bible lands; chronological tables of rulers and tables of weights and measures; and new full-color Bible maps with a three-dimensional effect. This edition represents the scholastic efforts of an impressive list of prominent biblical scholars.

The documentary theory provides the framework for the interpretative helps offered the layman in his study of the Bible. With biblical criticism in a state of flux, this theory of documents as reflected here has shifted from Wellhausenism and literary criticism to individual units of tradition as projected in current biblical studies in the light of ancient near-eastern documents discovered in recent decades.

On the basis of this theory, the reader is carefully instructed that the opening chapters of Genesis are “not to be read as history” nor to “be dismissed as childish myths”; that the patriarchal narratives “contain genuine historical memories” preserved “not for history but for religion”; that in the story of the Exodus and the settlement in Canaan we come nearer to historical light, though we are still dealing with idealized history “into which the legal sections of the Old Testament have been fitted”; that in the books of Samuel “we have much good history”; and that in the “stories of Elijah and Elisha there are legendary elements.”

This viewpoint of the theory of documents is reflected in the footnotes and introductions as follows:

1. Predictions are dated after the events occurred: Deuteronomy 28:47, 48 reflects the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.2 Samuel 7:1–29 is a late theological commentary inserted into an early historical source; Nathan the prophet is used as a mouthpiece of the author, who may have been dreaming of a literal restoration of the kingdom of David. 1 Kings 13:2 is dated after Josiah’s time. Isaiah 9:2–7, filled with borrowed phrases referring to the Davidic monarchy, is a passage which may originally have celebrated the accession of a Judean king, perhaps Hezekiah. In the present context it describes the coming Messiah as the ideal king (the king [v. 6] representing the best qualities of Israel’s heroes).

2. Miracles are regarded as projections of the writer’s beliefs: Joshua 10:11—“There were more who died because of hailstones” is a characteristic expression of the writer’s belief that Israel’s victories were miracles accomplished by the Lord’s intervention rather than by the people’s skill in warfare. 1 Kings 17:1–24—the element of the miraculous in the stories (of Elijah and Elisha) must be accepted as an integral part of the writer’s method. 1 Kings 4:1–8:6—in ancient times, miracle stories were considered to be one of the best ways of portraying the importance of a religious leader; we are fortunate in having preserved for us this fine collection of prophetic lore.

3. Events and conditions portrayed in a historical setting in the Bible are frequently regarded as the ideas of late writers reflecting their own times: Exodus 25–31; 35–40; Leviticus 1–27; Numbers 1–10—this material, Document P, comes from priestly writers from the time of the Exile, although the “compiler … has relied upon independent source materials, such as the so-called Holiness Code, and upon numerous traditions which reach back to ancient times.” Numbers 1:5–15—this old name list reflects the twelve-tribe organization instituted in Joshua’s time (Josh. 24). Numbers 2:1–34—the priestly writer conceives the congregation as arranged symmetrically around the tent of meeting. 1 Chronicles 13:1–4–in the time of David, the distinction between priests and Levites did not exist. 1 Chronicles 15:1–24—note the emphasis on the Levites who did not exist as a special class in David’s time; the musical arrangements here set forth were largely drawn from the practice in the chronicler’s own day. Daniel 1–12—this book appears under the name Daniel; the author was a pious Jew living under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, 167–164 B.C.; the six stories and four dream-visions, which come from times of national or community tribulation, are not actual history but, rather, symbolic interpretations of current history.

4. Dogmatic interpretations are based on the assumption that the documentary theory is essentially sound: Ezra 3:1—the law of Moses is not our Pentateuch but the body of laws associated with Moses’ name. Joshua 1:8—“this book of the law” means the legal provisions of the book of Deuteronomy. 2 Kings 22:8–10—the scroll almost certainly contained the earliest form of our present book of Deuteronomy, as subsequent references in this and the following chapters will show.

Constructively the reader of this Annotated Bible is advised that “in this book are the living oracles of God, which may speak to and nourish our spirit when we approach them in true devotion and humility.… In both Testaments God is revealed as compassionate and saving.… The saving character of God was revealed in bringing Israel out of Egypt; but it was revealed on a new level at Golgotha” (p. 1515). In these aspects this study Bible represents a marked improvement over the use of Scripture of several decades ago by the Wellhausenist scholars.

SAMUEL SCHULTZ

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ Preaching for Tethered Man, by Theodore Heimarck (Augsburg, $3.75). Twelve sermons which show the path of freedom to men tethered by fear and darkness.

★ The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition, by Robert W. Henderson (Westminster, $6.50). A historical survey of what happened to “Calvin’s” ecclesiastical teaching office in Scottish and American Presbyterianism.

★ The Natural and the Supernatural Jew, by Arthur A. Cohen (Pantheon, $6). Author defines the theological Jew as one aware of his divine calling, and searches for him in the writings of such men as Martin Buber, Will Herberg, Abraham Heschel, and Mordecai Kaplan.

A Pioneer Work

World Civilization, 2 volumes, by Albert Hyma (Eerdmans; Volume I, revised, 1962, $5; Volume II, 1961, $5; also in paperback at $2 and $2.50 respectively), is reviewed by Milford F. Henkel, Chairman, Division of Social Science, Malone College, Canton, Ohio.

When a professor of history at a secular university attempts to write a work on world history from a Christian viewpoint, it is indeed news. This is one of the few serious attempts to interrelate a Christian world view with the facts of history produced in this century. In view of this purpose, then, one does not expect Dr. Hyma to write from an objective historical viewpoint. He does not profess to do so and would seriously question whether such a position is possible for anyone, and especially for a Christian.

Dr. Hyma is not a novice in the field of history and world history. He has taught history at the University of Michigan for many years and has produced more than 30 volumes, including the world history books in the “College Outline Series.” He is a co-author of The Growth of Western Civilization by Boak, Hyma, and Slosson, for many years a standard college textbook. These scholarly works lacked what Dr. Hyma felt was a Christian world viewpoint. His first world history book which approached this was World History, A Christian Interpretation (Eerdmans, 1942), which was designed as a textbook for junior and senior Christian high schools. His new work, the two-volume, 1,200-page World Civilization, is intended for the college level and for the serious student.

In his writing Hyma allows his personality and viewpoints to be known to the reader. Because of this his style is never dry, but is vigorous and interesting. He carefully documents what he says. He sharply differs with some historians, and does not always present his opponents in the best possible light. It is this style which makes his writing so readable—causing his friends to chuckle and his enemies to be perturbed. A good example of this is his reference to Professor Jan Huizinga (Vol. I, Part 2, p. 199). Hyma speaks of Huizinga’s “greatest error” and tells the reader that Huizinga “wrote the following nonsense.” This reviewer agrees with Hyma in rejecting Huizinga’s position, but wishes he had selected a different tone in his writing. Yet the statements are typical of Hyma, and those who know him can almost hear him speaking.

Many authors of secular world-history books reflect their bias in ignoring the God of creation, in favoring evolution as the only view, in their treatment of Jesus Christ, and in ignoring the contribution of religion to history. Dr. Hyma avoids all these errors. At the same time, all authors have a personal bias, and Dr. Hyma is no exception.

Hyma is committed to the theory of a 24-hour creation day as seen in his textbook and in his recent article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Sept. 14, 1962). Many evangelicals might wish he had been broader and had allowed for the possibility of other theories of creation. Is Hyma correct in considering all other viewpoints as compromises with the “Darwinian school”? (See Volume II, Part 5, page 300.)

Any survey, even one 1,200 pages long, must of necessity be selective, and this selectivity often leads to over-simplification. It is relatively easy to note such over-simplifications in any book, but this certainly does not negate the value of the work.

This book lends itself to a Christian interpretation of history far more easily than do other books, and is without doubt the best textbook on the market for a Christian professor of history.

Hyma’s mysticism or neo-Platonism could raise some question: he speaks of the spiritual creation of plants before the earth (Vol. I, Part 1, p. 2), “the double God Elohim” (Vol. I, Part 1, p. 30), and parapsychology (Vol II, Part 5, pp. 281 ff.).

World Civilization is a vigorously written pioneer work which attempts to set forth a Christian approach to history and is one of the best works in its field. The careful scholar would do well to consider Hyma’s views as expressed in this book.

MILFORD F. HENKEL

Communism Unraveled

A Study of Communism, by J. Edgar Hoover (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, 212 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Harold John Ockenga, Pastor, Park Street Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

This study by J. Edgar Hoover is a most welcome analysis of the entire Communist movement—its philosophy, its strategy and goal, and the danger which it poses to the United States. It is far superior to the author’s previous work, Masters of Deceit, and the study of it should alert many Americans to this world conspiracy. Mr. Hoover, whose knowledge of Communist literature is thorough, has written with great factual accuracy, with astuteness as to Communist teaching and principles, and with appreciation of the Communist purposes. The one weakness we would point out in the book is the lack of footnotes to substantiate the statements made.

The author presents the philosophy of Communism as a system of thought which attempts to determine the reason for man’s existence and man’s relationship to his existence. He points out that Communism, in seeking ultimate truth, embraces a materialism which explains man in terms of dynamic matter alone, thus regarding matter as self-sufficient, self-developing, and self-perpetuating. This rules out a Supreme Being as creator, sustainer, and lawgiver of the universe; rejects the spiritual nature of man, the existence of his soul, and the idea of immortality; and derives moral codes from circ*mstances rather than from spiritual imperatives. Communism teaches historical materialism. This is the Hegelian dialectical method turned upside down, substituting matter for spirit or mind and applying it to the class conflict which, according to Marx, has existed throughout the ages. The dialectic will end when Communism becomes the final and perfect form of society. Peace is conceived as the victory of Communism over all opposites.

Communism teaches economic determinism: that the nature of society at any given time is the direct result of the means of production; that morality, culture, and the state are derived from the means of production and distribution; and that the forms of society change with the economic upheavals. It advocates violent revolution in which the workers seize control of the state, liquidate their so-called former exploiters, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. From then on all efforts are to be directed toward the building of internal state socialism and the bringing about of the world revolution to establish Communism. The final utopian state will be a Communist society of “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need” in which there will be no government, no rulers, no classes, and no exploitation.

Mr. Hoover points out the errors in the principles and practices of Communism. Among those errors are: (1) No explanation is given for the origin of matter and the cause of its motion. To call matter eternal is obviously to endow it with the attributes of deity. (2) There is failure to recognize that for centuries millions of people have acted upon moral codes derived from spiritual values. The ideals of truth, justice, love, and honor are not illusions. (3) Nothing is explained by the so-called dialectic; it merely describes a condition. It does not tell why motion is upward, or why there is struggle, negation of forces, and the emergence of new forms. (4) It is an error to believe that all of life can be explained in economic terms. The motivation of idealism plays a very important part. (5) In the theory of surplus value no consideration is given to such factors as ingenuity or management, the application of technical or scientific refinements in production, and the use of capital. Actually surplus value is not the only source of society’s wealth other than natural resources. (6) Ignored is the fact that many workers own stock in great companies and have improved their conditions by unemployment insurance, minimum wage regulations, a short work week, Social Security, and numerous other gains; they are not so exploited as they once were. (7) No regard is given to the nature of man, in which egoism is a motivation for both labor and creativity. Communism will break up ultimately upon its erroneous conception of the nature of man.

Mr. Hoover adequately contrasts the philosophy of a free Western society with the Communist view, showing that Western culture is built upon belief in God and in the unique value of man, an absolute standard of morals, and humanitarian, idealistic goals. In discussing the danger to the United States from the Communist party within, the author tells how Communist propaganda is embraced by many who are not Communists or fellow-travelers but are used for the advancement of the party’s purpose. He sees resurgent Communism as an especially great threat to our college youth. He relates the Communists’ methodology in penetrating all phases of American life and sends forth a ringing call to Americans for dedication to freedom, to what we may call Christian principles, and to our historio American philosophy.

This book should have a wide circulation. We unqualifiedly commend it as a correct and accurate presentation of the philosophy of Communism, the danger we face from it, and the necessity of meeting it.

HAROLD JOHN OCKENGA

What One Looks For

Israel in Prophecy, by John F. Walvoord (Zondervan, 1962, 138 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Charles De Santo, Assistant Professor of Old Testament, Wheaton College, Illinois.

Dr. Walvoord believes that the Abrahamic Covenant is unconditional and has a definite application to the nation of Israel. Since the Jews have already returned to Palestine and the “powers of the north” (Russia and China) have increased their diabolical influence in the world, Dr. Walvoord looks forward to the consummation of things in the immediate future.

The reviewer, however, found only the first chapter of this book to have any validity. In it the author gives a good summary of the new state of Israel with all its military, economic, educational, and religious gains. The rest of the book gives cause for numerous objections. In the Preface Dr. Walvoord says: “The discussion has centered in Biblical exposition rather than in a comparison of works and ideas of theological and Biblical scholars.” Dr. Walvoord does just this, but he confines himself to the framework of premillennial exegesis and refers only occasionally to amillennial exegetes. He completely ignores the host of modern exegetes who have written on this subject. Many of the so-called “prophecies” which he applies to the Parousia and the Millennial Kingdom, when considered in their historical context, were, in part at least, fulfilled in Old Testament times. Many others, such as Isaiah 35:5, 6, were quoted by our Lord in Matthew 11:5, 6 as having been fulfilled during his earthly ministry.

On several occasions Dr. Walvoord says that he sees no reason why Scripture and prophecy should not be taken in their literal sense. He objects to what he calls “spiritualizing”; yet this is precisely what he does when he “interprets” the Old Testament. He takes Old Testament passages and applies them to Christ. This is what the amillennialist does, also. They differ merely in their “interpretation.” Dr. Walvoord has a convenient hermeneutical system which permits him to interpret Scripture to suit his system. For example, he says that God promised that there would always be a Davidic descendant upon the throne, but he is embarrassed by the absence of Davidic kings during and subsequent to the captivity. Fortunately Hosea prophesied that this would happen (3:4, 5). On pages 91 and 92 he cites a passage in Acts 15:14–18 which is quoted from Amos 9:11, 12. It seems clear to the reviewer that this has direct bearing on the problem of Gentile admission into the Church, and James employs it in this manner. James’s meaning and not Amos’ contextual meaning is the one the passage should retain.

Dr. Walvoord’s thesis will not hold up apart from his “special non-historical hermeneutical” approach. That there are passages in the Old Testament and the New Testament which refer to the restoration of things after the Parousia of our Lord cannot be denied—this he makes clear. Unfortunately, this reviewer cannot agree with Dr. Walvoord’s treatment of “Israel in Prophecy.”

If one is looking for the Dallas premillennial dispensational position on prophecy, this is a good book to read. It states this clearly and concisely.

CHARLES DE SANTO

‘Get Your Program Here’

Religion in American Public Schools, by R. H. Dierenfield (Public Affairs Press, 1962, 115 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by William G. Reitzer, editorial department, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The author, associate professor of education at Macalester College (St. Paul, Minnesota), sent questionnaires to a select 4,000 school superintendents throughout the nation asking about Bible reading, prayer, religious courses, lunchtime blessing, holiday observances, released time, distribution of religious literature on school premises, and other religious practices in their school systems. The replies he received from the 54.57 per cent who responded provide the main ingredients for this volume. The remainder of the book consists of brief histories (1) of religion in American schools, (2) of legislation in the states, and (3) of state and federal court decisions.

Clear, concise, and containing 27 full-page charts, the book will be found to be easily digestible by Mr. Average Citizen. He will learn many helpful facts, such as the extent of homeroom devotional periods (in 33.16 per cent of the school systems), the extent of Bible reading (41.74 per cent), and the extent of Bible courses available (4.51 per cent).

It does appear that the case for complete separation of church and state is more fully stated than the case for limited separation. And in the section “State Court Decisions,” the recent important opinion of Maryland’s highest court favoring Bible reading (Murray v. Curlett) goes unmentioned, whereas the important Pennsylvania case taking an opposite view (Schempp v. Abington Township—Schempp is misspelled “Schlempp” in the book) receives a prominent paragraph. Perhaps it is only because the reviewer stands on the “pro” side of the released-time issue that the chapter on this subject appears to give preponderance to the evidence and sentiment for the “con” side (where Dierenfield seems to stand). Nevertheless, Dierenfield’s presentation has a commendable measure of objectivity.

In view of the three “religion in public school” cases currently before the United States Supreme Court, Professor Dierenfield’s little book will serve as an excellent “program” for all who are being drawn to the sidelines of this crucial religio-political contest now in a most decisive stage.

WILLIAM G. REITZER

Book Briefs

The Star over the Kremlin, by William P. Strube, Jr., (Baker, 1962, 108 pp., $1.95). Popular, anti-Communistic inducements; more excited than exciting.

Natural Theology, by J. F. Doncell, S. J. (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 178 pp., $3). A Roman Catholic philosophical textbook in which one Roman Catholic shows how he demonstrates God’s existence by unaided reason.

Men Aflame, by David R. Enlow (Zondervan, 1962, 120 pp., $2.50). A story not so much about the Christian Business Men’s Committee International as about the results of individual businessmen’s witness to Christ.

Trumpets in the Morning, by Reuben K. Youngdahl (Augustana, 1962, 167 pp., $3). Sermons, about as good as sermons without texts can be.

Strangers No Longer, by Peter Day (Morehouse-Barlow, 1962, 174 pp., $3.95). A study of the Church regarded as the dialectical product of the encounter between the Kingdom of God and the world.

The Life of Christ, by Charles L. Allen (Revell, 1962, 157 pp., $2.50). The rearrangement of the four Gospels into one story in the belief that only thus is the story complete.

Recent Studies in Philosophy and Theology, by David Hugh Freeman (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 150 pp., $3.75). A lucid examination of the relationship of theology and philosophy in the Neo-Thomism of Gilson and Maritain, the Neo-Augustinianism of Dooyeweerd, and the Neo-Existentialism of Tillich.

Altar Prayers for the Church Year, by Clemens Henry Zeidler (Augsburg, 1962, 200 pp., $6.50). Altar prayers for the entire liturgical year; suitable for use in the pulpits of less liturgical churches. A fine production.

Ecce hom*o, by Joseph Jobé (Harper & Row, 1962, 189 pp., $15). The life of Jesus as seen by artists through the centuries and the world over. The book itself is a thing of fine craftsmanship.

Paperbacks

Mark—Gospel of Action, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker, 1962, 86 pp., $1). A bird’s-eye view of Mark. Excellent for study groups.

Our Church Plans for Adults, by Joseph John Hanson (Judson, 1962, 112 pp., $1.25). A manual of valuable suggestions and advice on how to promote adult Christian education in the church.

Current Books and Pamphlets (Missionary Research Library, 1962, 36 pp., $.50). A selected list of books and pamphlets added during the first six months of 1962 to the Missionary Research Library of New York.

No Other Foundation, Commemorative Essays on Menno Simons, by Walter Klaassen and others (Bethel College, North Newton, Kan., 1962, 76 pp., $1.50). A series of lectures which contribute to the rediscovery of the Anabaptist-Mennonite heritage occurring in our time.

If You Marry Outside Your Faith, by James A. Pike (Harper & Row, 1962, 159 pp., $1.25). A provocative discussion of mixed marriages with special reference to Protestant-Roman Catholic combines. Revised edition of 1954 publication.

Understanding Communism, by James D. Bales (Baker, 1962, 88 pp., $1). A quite objective and serviceable study manual for church groups. Marred by unpolished writing.

Communism: Who? What? Why?, by Henlee H. Barnette (Broadman, 1962, 64 pp., $.95). Two hundred questions and answers about the strategy, the tactics, and the historical, factual situation of Communism at home and abroad, by an author who knows his field, spent a month in the U.S.S.R., and interviewed Khrushchev for 2½ hours.

Reprints

What Americans Believe and How They Worship, by J. Paul Williams (Harper & Row, 1962, 530 pp., $6). Covers too much and too little. No mention is made of Reformed churches but Alcoholics Anonymous and Beat Zen are included. The author’s evaluations are cavalier and careless. Revised and enlarged; first printed in 1952.

A Modern Philosophy of Religion, by Samuel M. Thompson (Regnery, 1962, 601 pp., $7.50). A philosophy of religion which is admittedly committed to theism and carries the reader through the development of a positive argument. First published in 1955.

Since the Tambaran meeting of the International Missionary Council, a difficult word has become popular. Wherever one moves in Africa and Asia or takes up a book on missions, the word “indigenization” crops up.

Since Tambaran there has been a growing stress that the Christian church, especially in Africa and Asia, must become indigenous, must become more fully rooted in the local soil and fit into each country’s or area’s specific cultural milieu. Somehow the Church is to reflect more fully than hitherto the human heritage of those among whom it has appeared, although basically it can be rooted only in Christ.

It was felt at the time of the council and is still felt that in most cases the Gospel was unnecessarily “foreign” not primarily because of its inherent foreignness but because it was presented in completely Western cultural garb to the peoples of Africa and Asia. Realization that the Church was often unnecessarily foreign and had too little understanding of or contact with the everyday life and heritage of specific peoples was long overdue. The Church’s liturgy, hymns and music, and sometimes even its language were strange. It was patterned after some Western mother church in Europe or the United States. The genius and the heritage of the people concerned had no opportunity for expression in the rigid form of a Church transplanted from Europe or America. Most missionary leaders agree that this state of affairs must change if the Church in Africa and Asia is to have a future. The change is especially necessary in an age when many African and Asian countries are experiencing a rising national conciousness. Too often we have failed to let these peoples share their “riches” with us; we have prescribed all the patterns in church life. Writing on the Church’s problems in Africa, T. S. Trimingham makes the following pointed observations: “Protestant Christianity has carried with it opposition to the basic elements of African religious expression. Its antipathy to emotionalism, its divorce from art, its lack of true understanding of ritual through which the African apprehends religious truths … are only a few of the things which have led to the arrest and sterility of the African religious genius. In consequence local churches are introverted in their life and deaf to the call of missionary encounter and outreach, hence, too, the birth of pathological forms of African religions.” He then asks how this type of Christianity can possibly counteract Islam, for example, which is expressed as a laymen’s religion, and also the African Separatist movements which, as the existing socio-religious structures break up, will flourish more than ever in rural Africa.

The history of the Church indicates at least five classical reactions to culture:

1. That of men like Tertullian and Kierkegaard can be described as Christ against culture.

2. That of Abelard and some early European and present-day American missionaries expounds the Christ of culture.

3. That of Aquinas is Christ above culture or the merging of culture with the Word Incarnate.

4. That of Augustine, Calvin, and Wesley declares Christ changes culture: he is its Saviour.

The accusation is sometimes made that in Africa we have followed the view of Abelard and the early Europeans; that is, we have made the Western way of life synonymous with Christianity but have viewed indigenous culture as did Tertullian the Montanist: being against Christ, it had to be destroyed. Because of this negative approach we failed to comprehend the relationships of those to whom we tried to bring Christ.

Indigenous forms of song, music, and liturgy must be welcomed into the life of the Church in Africa or Asia. But they cannot be forced from the outside. They must grow spontaneously out of the local Christian community. Only the native Christians can decide which of their customs are useful or to be incorporated into the Church without detriment to the Christian truth. They alone know how closely some particular, seemingly innocuous custom may be linked to paganism in general or to some specific pagan system. Where a close relationship exists between any social custom and paganism, it would be extremely dangerous to allow such a custom in the Church. But as J. H. Bavinck has said, and properly so, there are some things in the life of indigenous peoples of which we can take possession for Christ. He prefers the term possession to accommodation because it excludes any idea of compromise.

In the process of indigenization we must be very careful, however, not to accept indigenous cultures too readily, thereby gravitating to another extreme no less radical than Tertullian’s approach. We can become so “open” to indigenous cultures that we may fail to evaluate them in the light of and by the standards of the eternal Gospel. We must guard against what could be called the anthropological approach to indigenous cultures. This approach is legitimate enough within the limits of its subject matter. For the anthropologist every factor of an indigenous culture has supreme value, but he is primarily interested in what is and not in what should be. How different is the missionary’s approach. He is not and should not be interested primarily in what is, but in what should be according to the standards of the Gospel. While he must know and understand the culture of those he serves or tries to win to Christ, he can never “accept” a pagan culture but must judge and challenge it.

By our present reaction to a too-negative approach to indigenous cultures we may open the door to syncretism. Our too-negative attitude in Africa, for instance, encouraged the Christian church there to create various reactionary sects. We now have such groups as the Zionists, the Ethiopians, and the Millennialists. Usually these people use the vernacular, explain the Bible in indigenous cultural contexts, sing indigenous hymns, and so on. They have reacted to the “foreignness” of the usual church pattern. The urge to express their faith in terms of their own cultural heritage is very obvious. Unfortunately, witchcraft or ancestor worship plays a significant role in almost every one of these sects which, in truth, constitute a bridge back to paganism. We must undercut this development.

As has been indicated, we must not accommodate ourselves too easily to indigenous cultures, thereby risking syncretism. Always we must fight the insidious philosophy which says: “Every people has its Father Jacob, who left them a well.”

In a day of surging national spirit among many peoples, missionaries must examine as never before their approach to the indigenous church. No longer dare we to equate Christianity with a given way of life. On the other hand, a given way of life dare not compromise the uniqueness of the Gospel.

Professor of History of Christianity

University of Pretoria

South Africa

ECUMENICAL JOURNALISM—The Christian Century began the new year with a shorter page (formerly 12 inches, now 11) and a broader subtitle (formerly “an undenominational weekly,” now “an ecumenical weekly”). Commonweal, Roman Catholic lay journal, introduced a monthly column by Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown. Our Sunday Visitor, another Catholic weekly, featured an article on church financing by National Council of Churches executive T. K. Thompson, a Congregational Christian minister. Meanwhile, the Christian Herald for January raised many an eyebrow with a full-page advertisem*nt promoting contraceptives. The Lutheran, most timely of the denominational news magazines, went from a weekly to a biweekly in a publications merger of the newly-formed Lutheran Church in America, which began functioning formally with the start of the new year.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—Only 28 per cent of new churches of major Protestant denominations are being built in the suburbs, according to a National Council of Churches survey. The discovery is contrary to a popular idea that most new Protestant churches appear in suburbs, according to Dr. Glen W. Trimble, who reported to the annual assembly of the NCC’s Division of Home Missions. He said the overall tendency is to build few churches but to have them serve larger constituencies.

The United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education is launching a campaign to find qualified Negro pastors and teachers. A board announcement disclosed that there is a shortage of Negro seminary graduates to replace those who retire or die and to fill needs of integrated churches.

The Christian Index, official publication of the Georgia Baptist Convention, declared war on gambling and published the names and addresses of 702 purchasers of federal tax stamps for coin-operated machines and 76 others who bought federal wagering tax stamps.

Judson College, a new four-year liberal arts school under Baptist auspices, will open in September at a campus in Elgin, Illinois. It will replace Northern Baptist College, which has been associated with Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. The seminary, now located in Chicago, is moving to the suburbs.

The General Assembly of the United Church of Northern India, at its fourteenth session in Kolhapur, unanimously endorsed a plan of union that would form the United Churches of North India and Pakistan. It was the strongest support yet given to the plan, which is running into opposition among other churches participating in the merger talks.

Methodist mission leaders report that Brasilia, ultra-modern capital of Brazil, now has four Methodist chapels, five other preaching points, and four Sunday schools in the city and suburbs.

Campus Crusade for Christ International began operations at Arrowhead Springs, new headquarters site in San Bernardino, California.

An American counterpart to the International Council of Christian Churches’ youth commission was organized in Chicago last month. Albert F. Gedraitis was elected national chairman.

Talks aimed at creating a new cooperative agency to succeed the National Lutheran Council get under way in Chicago this month. Seven representatives each have been named by Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and American Lutheran Church. Eight other smaller Lutheran bodies have been invited to dispatch representatives as well.

MISCELLANY—Ground will be broken soon for an interfaith “Spiritual Life Center” on the Washington, D. C., campus of Methodist-related American University. The $350,000 structure will feature altars for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services. It will be topped by a flame that will burn continually “symbolizing man’s belief in eternal life and eternal spiritual values.”

Christian Legal Society, a new organization offering fellowship for evangelical lawyers and a forum for discussion, stipulates that members must acknowledge the Bible as the inspired Word of God. The group also seeks to promote high standards of legal ethics and to encourage and aid deserving young students preparing for the legal profession. Gerrit P. Groen is first president.

A state study commission in Rhode Island recommended that parochial school students be furnished science, mathematics, and language textbooks on a loan basis, utilizing public funds.

PERSONALIA—Retired Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam underwent a rare brain operation last month to relieve Parkinson’s disease. The surgery involved pumping liquid oxygen into a section of the brain to freeze and destroy tissue that caused the palsy.

Two ordained ministers are among the top ten young men of 1962 chosen by the U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. They are the Rev. Robert W. Castle, Jr., 33-year-old pastor of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, and Dr. Jim Turpin, a Methodist now in Hong Kong giving medical aid to Communist China refugees through Project Concern.

Dr. Everett S. Graffam was appointed executive director of Evangelical Foundation, parent organization of the Bible Study Hour on radio and Eternity magazine, both founded by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. James H. Landes, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls, Texas, was named president of Hardin-Simmons University (Southern Baptist).

Dr. Paul M. Limbert retired after 10 years as secretary general of the World Alliance of YMCAs, succeeded by Fredrik Franklin of Sweden.

Dr. Jerry Beavan, who more than any other man guided the public relations fortunes of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, resigned last month for personal reasons. Beavan’s most recent assignment was direction of the association’s British office.

In Minneapolis, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association announced appointment of George M. Wilson to the newly-created post of executive vice president and treasurer. Wilson formerly was secretary and treasurer.

Dr. Hunter B. Blakely retired as secretary of the Division of Higher Education, Board of Christian Education, Presbyterian Church in the U. S.

Dr. Alexander Mackie retired as president and director of Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund.

Charles H. Kellstadt, retired board chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company, appointed chairman of the National Committee of Religious Leaders for Safety.

WORTH QUOTING—“Separation of church and state was never meant to separate our youth from God. This trend to extricate God and moral teachings from the school is a diabolical scheme and is bearing fruit in the deluge of juvenile delinquency which is overwhelming the nation.”—Evangelist Billy Graham, in a dinner address at the close of Youth for Christ’s Capital Teen Convention in Washington, D. C.

“The gravest error the preacher-prophet can make today in preaching the ‘good news’ of God is to assume that his proclamation is being heard in an atmosphere of Christian understanding and that what he is saying is accepted by his hearers as good news.”—Dr. Jesse Jai McNeil in The Preacher-Prophet in Mass Society.

Deaths

DR. LUDD M. SPIVEY, 76, president emeritus of Florida Southern College (Methodist); in West Palm Beach, Florida.

REV. GEORGE LIVINGSTON BAYARD, 90, Episcopal minister and retired chaplain credited as being the founding father of the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel.

DR. ALPHEUS S. MOWBRAY, 103, retired Methodist minister and former district superintendent; in Belmar, New Jersey.

PROFESSOR KAROLY PROHEE, 88, called the “grand old man” of Lutheran theology in Hungary; in Sopron, Hungary.

A distraught band of devout Siberians knocked in vain on America’s door this month. Their plea, significantly like that of many early American settlers, was for religious freedom. In one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the cold war, they were turned away.

Thirty-two men, women, and children were in the determined party that set out for Moscow from the Siberian coalmining town of Chernogorsk. Some carried babies in their arms. The 2,400-mile trip took four days, and they arrived in the Soviet capital hungry and cold.

There was some light snow in Moscow on the morning of January 3, and the temperature was well below freezing. The group obviously risked their lives in surging past the armed Soviet militiamen who guarded the gates at the U. S. Embassy. They described in detail how they had been persecuted for religious reasons, and they pleaded for help from American officials. They were quoted as expressing a desire to leave Russia, and some reports said they wanted to go to Israel.

The group was herded into a lunchroom building on the embassy compound. They were served coffee and a snack while embassy officials summoned representatives of the Soviet foreign ministry. A bus arrived, too, followed by Russian plainclothesmen.

The embassy refused to let correspondents see the group. The plainclothesmen threatened to confiscate the camera of any Western photographers who took pictures (some were said to have been taken nonetheless).

The group consisted of six men, twelve women, and fourteen children. They described themselves as “evangelical Christians” and complained that they had not been permitted to hold worship services, that they had not been allowed to observe religious holidays, and that in some instances they had been barred from contact with their children.

The group emerged from the lunchroom early in the afternoon. The bus had been backed to the lunchroom door and wooden panels set up to block the view. The panels were removed, however, and correspondents got their first good look. Most of the women wore traditional peasant felt boots, cotton dresses, padded jackets, and shawls. Some of the children were obviously ill.

One man told an embassy official: “We don’t want to go anywhere. They will shoot us.” Another pleaded that they would be arrested.

As they boarded the bus still another man in knee-length boots and a long overcoat turned toward newsmen and cried in a loud voice:

“Those who believe in God and Christ help us. We ask it. We ask that those who believe in God and Christ help us.”

At this point, several men and women in the group wept openly.

The U. S. embassy apparently had offered them no encouragement. Said a spokesman:

“Obviously, we are not in a position to solve this kind of problem.”

He said another group of peasants from the same religious order forced their way into the British Embassy in Moscow last year, and some apparently were relatives of the latest group.

(The Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia said they had received copies of two petitions, including one signed by several thousand believers in the Tarnopol region, an unprecedented gesture in the Soviet Union. The petitions appealed to Premier Khrushchev to halt religious persecution. The synod’s office in New York charges that Soviet secret police persecution of monks at the famed Pochayev Monastery has reduced their number from 140 to 36.)

After part of the group had boarded the bus it drove outside the compound and stopped. Others balked, but finally they, too, walked to the bus.

When all were aboard, the bus drove off, headed for a railroad station and a train presumably bound for northern regions.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

EVALUATION OF THE INCIDENT

Evangelist Billy Graham said the Siberian peasants’ bid for refuge in the U. S. Embassy in Moscow was evidence that the restrictions on freedom of worship in the Soviet Union “are far greater than we are led to believe.”

“It is a tragedy,” Graham observed, “that the United States calls itself a Christian nation and yet seemingly is powerless to help so many millions who suffer loss of freedoms.”

Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, “Lutheran Hour” radio preacher, said:

“It is strange that the right to asylum should be granted for years to a Hungarian national because of religious persecution but not to Russian nationals appealing for asylum on similar grounds. The American embassy in Moscow owes the American public an explanation which goes beyond the bland statement that it was following a policy of undetermined origin in denying to these Russians a right recognized, and in recent years resolutely asserted, by the U. S. government.”

State Department press officer Lincoln White, asked to differentiate the case of Josef Cardinal Mindzenty, who took refuge in the U. S. delegation in Budapest in 1956 and is still there, replied:

“The United States, while not recognizing the doctrine of political asylum, has, in exceptional cases, granted refuge on humanitarian grounds to an individual in immediate and grave danger.”

White said U. S. missions abroad do not normally grant asylum, and the United States does not recognize the right of foreign missions in the United States to grant asylum.

White quoted a paragraph from the U. S. Foreign Affairs Manual which states that refuge “may be afforded to uninvited fugitives whose lives are in imminent danger from mob violence but only for the period during which active danger continues.” He left the impression that there were no other grounds for refuge.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, declared:

“It is lamentable that our embassy in Moscow could find no further means of assisting these evangelical Christians. This incident fits into the pattern of events developing in the Soviet Union in recent months. Numerous reports indicate increasing restiveness of Christians in that part of the world because of religious oppression. It is another indication that communism cannot afford a free and open contest of ideas which includes spiritual values.”

Shouts of “Guerra!” (war) rumbled out of Miami’s Orange Bowl stadium as President Kennedy addressed the just-released Cuban prisoners of war and more than 35,000 of their relatives and friends over the New Year’s weekend.

The cry voiced the determination of the survivors of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion and their fellow refugees from Communist tyranny to return—they hoped soon—as a liberating army to their island homeland just 90 miles away. The whole setting hinted that U. S. involvement would go deeper than the scars of failure from the abortive action of 20 months before.

It was an ominous chant which spelled trouble for the more peaceful work of American churches. Slowly but surely they have been attacking the difficult problems arising out of the fact that more than 200,000 Cubans have piled into Miami in a three-year exodus from Fidel Castro’s lunacy.

Not that the thwarted invaders were any less spiritual than their compatriots. The Rev. Ismael Lugo, Catholic chaplain with the honored Brigade 2506, dedicated the men to God first and their country second in the invocation before President Kennedy spoke. And Juan Cabrera, a Free Will Baptist minister who was a regular soldier in the brigade, reported that worship services were carried on in the prison around a contraband Bible which miraculously appeared in their midst.

Returning prisoners appearing at a testimony meeting at the First Spanish United Presbyterian Church credited their release to answered prayer. And they told of instances of men in the prison finally turning to God.

Yet, for the most part, the prisoners, like their fellow refugees, were not dedicated Christians. Fewer than 50 were evangelicals, and at most 300 were knowledgeable, devout Catholics.

Problems of Resettlement

But the trouble signalled by the war cries stirred by the gallant band of soldiers is expected in resettlement programs stressed by the various church refugee agencies.

It took a year and a half to really launch the resettlement programs. It seemed impossible that the stream of refugees could continue for any length of time, let alone continue to swell. And, at first, many felt Castro’s downfall was imminent. So the Catholic Relief Services agency, the 18 denominations represented in the Protestant Latin American Emergency Committee and working through Church World Service, the Hebrew International Aid Society, and the International Rescue Committee were not set up to do much but offer emergency food, clothing, and medical and housing aid to the Cubans.

The attitude of the refugees themselves was that they could wait right in Miami for their relatives and friends, be on hand to return to their homeland as soon as Castro was overthrown, be among people whose customs and language were the same, and enjoy a climate just like home. They were disinterested in, or afraid of, being resettled in another part of the country where, among other things, their federal aid checks would be cut off.

Nationally, churches were slow to recognize the problem. Locally, churches were reluctant to lose the opportunity for evangelization of the newcomers or to deplete the new Spanish congregations by resettling established members.

But the continued flow of refugees at the rate of 2,000 a week, an increasing problem of unemployment in the city of Miami, and a growing threat of friction with the native population because of it, finally triggered programs for resettling the Cubans in other parts of the country.

Now more than 50,000 Cubans have been resettled, some going to every state except Alaska. A majority of them—30,000—have been resettled through Catholic agencies. Protestants have resettled more than 8,000, Jews nearly 2,000, and the non-denominational International Rescue Committee nearly 12,000.

Resettlement had reached a peak of nearly 1,000 persons a week—as compared with 2,000 refugees a week still pouring into Miami—just before the Cuban missile crisis changed the picture again.

The first effect was the end to twice-a-day commercial plane flights from Havana, which always had full loads of refugees. Some few other refugees still are managing to escape the island. Among the most recent is Dr. Pascual Herrera, director of the Baptist Hospital in Havana, who was forced by the government to stay on the job there. He escaped by boat to join his family, who had been in Miami for more than two years.

The most telling effect of the crisis, however, particularly since the release of the prisoners of war and the renewed talk of invasion, has been an almost complete halt of the resettlement program. Sensing a new hope of returning to their homeland soon, the Cubans are not willing to leave Miami.

Catholics Take the Limelight

The drying up of the pool of refugees willing to be resettled is bringing to the surface some of the frictions between Catholic and Protestant agencies in dealing with the whole problem.

The Catholic Church at first opposed resettlement; it felt it was easier to care for the refugees all from one center and to utilize the more than 100 Spanish-speaking priests and other religious persons who were among the first to be exiled. The large numbers concentrated in the one center also made a more dramatic story to encourage aid.

It was mainly the Catholic Church, along with city officials, that got the federal government interested in aiding the refugees. But Protestants resented the fact that government officials—in the beginning-talked only to local Catholic agancies and set up joint offices with the Catholic refugee center. Francis Cardinal Spellman was photographed handing a $10,000 check to President Eisenhower on the Augusta golf course for surplus food for the Cubans, and it was a front-page picture across the nation. But the same week the Southern Baptist Convention gave a similar amount of money through regular church channels and so got only a couple of lines in local papers.

Since a majority of the Cuban people are nominally Catholic (less than two per cent are Protestants), most of them would have registered for aid with the Catholic agencies anyway. Because of the way in which the government agency was set up at first, however, it was difficult for the Cubans to register with any of the other agencies. This situation was changed with time, and to date 68 per cent of the 150,000 refugees who have registered have registered with the Catholic welfare agency, 8 per cent with Church World Service, 2 per cent with HIAS, and 22 per cent with the International Rescue Committee.

Significantly, while the Catholics have registered nearly 70 per cent of the refugees, they have handled just 60 per cent of those resettled. Protestants have resettled more than 15 per cent, while registering only 8 per cent.

When Church World Service inaugurated the “flights to freedom,” in which planeloads of refugees were resettled in other cities, the Catholics would not make it a joint project and derided the whole idea as impractical publicity-seeking. Now the Catholics have their own “flights to freedom.”

Protestant spokesmen have charged that they could step up their resettlement considerably, but the Catholic agencies are reluctant to let refugees registered with them be resettled through Protestant-sponsored projects. The Protestants themselves have run out of eligible people of their own to resettle. Many of those registered are too old or unskilled to be resettled, or are wives and children who are waiting for husbands and fathers still in Cuba.

Dr. O. G. Grotefend, director of the Protestant Latin American Emergency Committee, emphasized, “We do not attempt to ‘buy’ new church members by assisting them to resettle. But in all honesty, we must admit that a generosity of opinion is generated toward our church by our actions and many of these people are joining Protestant communions. However, this is a result and not a motive of Christian action.”

Hugh McLoone, director of the Catholic refugee center, hotly denied that his agency has ever stood in the way of Church World Service in resettling any Cubans. “We have transferred without question as many as 10 or 12 cases involving 20 or 25 people a day. But many times cases we transferred come back to us after several weeks because they have not been resettled.”

A Successful Program

Despite the friction in the mechanics of resettlement, the resettlement of the Cubans themselves has proved to be highly successful. Both the Cubans and the American communities where they have been relocated are pleased.

Miami’s Protestant churches—particularly the Episcopalians and Methodists—are doing an outstanding job of preparing refugees for resettlement. They are teaching them English (the principal requirement for getting employment) and how to cook American foods, and are giving them medical aid and clothing.

More than half the Cubans aided in this manner are nominal Catholics who heard by word of mouth of the opportunities offered. Some did not know that the Protestant church even existed in their homeland, and others had been told that Protestants were worse than Communists. The Protestant centers do not push religion on the refugees, but they do make it clear that spiritual aid is available and stress that the centers themselves are spiritually motivated.

On the other end, it is the churches in the cities where Cubans are being resettled which are making the programs possible. Members of congregations take complete responsibility for the refugee families. They provide a house and furnishings, a job, friendship, and the promise of continued help until the Cubans become established members of the community.

The resettlement program has so impressed American communities that Grand Rapids, Michigan, for example, has a waiting list of homes who want to take in refugees, even though the Christian Reformed Church already has brought three groups of the Cubans to the city.

So it has been throughout the nation. More than 13,000 refugees have been resettled in New York, nearly 6,000 in New Jersey, nearly 3,000 in California, and more than 2,000 in Illinois. The only bad taste came with an early, poorly organized project in Cleveland which later worked out smoothly through the efforts, mainly, of the Protestant churches of the area.

Meanwhile the Miami churches have been rather successful with their type of local resettlement programs, integrating many of the more than 100,000 remaining refugees into the permanent population. Dozens of churches now have at least one Cuban in a position of leadership.

Nearly 300 Protestant families have provided foster homes for Cuban children separated from their parents. The Miami Diocese of the Catholic Church is aiding five times that number of children with an orphanage-type arrangement at three major centers. The Episcopal refugee center has provided college scholarships to 24 Cuban young people of all denominations, including one youth who will study for the Episcopal priesthood and whose Catholic priest teachers in Cuba told him the Anglican church did not exist in his homeland.

But the major portion of the Cubans still in Miami depend on the church refugee centers mostly for food, clothing, and medical aid to supplement the basic support they receive from the U. S. government—which, incidentally, foots the travel expenses of resettlement.

With the Cuban crisis still with us, 1963 promises to be a year of continued demand upon the chinches to aid and resettle the refugees. The Episcopal church alone has asked its members to contribute not less than $450,000 this year for this work. Baptists are asking their churches in each state to take one month in which they will contribute $10,000 cash plus clothing and food for Cuban relief. Other denominations have budgeted similar amounts for the work.

In addition, Presbyterians, with the aid of the National and Florida Councils of Churches, have prepared a series of radio and television programs to instruct local refugees as to what aid is available, encourage them to relocate, and offer them a spiritual lift. Other programs are designed to prepare other communities across the nation to join in the project and receive Cuban refugees. But the question now is whether the refugees will be willing to be resettled in the light of their hope that an imminent, U. S.-supported invasion will free their homeland so that they can return, many of them to a deeper spiritual life and more vigorous church life than their nation has ever known.

A. T.

LEISURE IN AN EVANGELICAL ATMOSPHERE

The “evangelical market,” associated mostly with literature and insurance, broke new ground last month.

In Miami Beach, a ten-story oceanfront hotel opened its doors to a teetotaler clientele.

In Detroit, a “Christian supper club” promised the best in sanctified entertainment.

Both enterprises use converted facilities. The Miami Beach hotel, the Biltmore Terrace, was purchased by Chicago builder A. Harold Anderson, whose renovation program featured substitution of a citrus juice counter for the liquor bar.

Anderson, a layman of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, arranged daily chapel services, but seeks to avoid the Bible conference approach. He said the hotel merely caters to those who prefer a non-alcoholic atmosphere, whether they be Christians or not.

Charles Pitts, noted Toronto builder and active Christian layman, is experimenting with a similar hotel venture in Fort Lauderdale.

The Christian restaurant in Detroit was the inspiration of Ed Darling, former leader of that city’s Voice of Christian Youth (Youth for Christ affiliated). It is known as the Crossroads Supper Club. Darling also hoped to begin a breakfast club broadcast for Christian women.

“We have labored all night and taken nothing.” So said some Roman Catholic bishops shortly before the Second Vatican Council suspended its labors until next September, after two months of work during which not one full decree or constitution was adopted. At first blush some may consider this a poor performance for what had been billed as the “best prepared” council in history. Even preparatory work of the past two years will be completely overhauled in the next nine months. The pope has created a control commission which will coordinate activity of the working commissions in the interim.

Only four drafts reached the council floor. These were the liturgical schema, the schema on the sources of revelation, the schema on mass communications, and the project, “On the Church,” which was discussed only briefly and in general.

Of the liturgical draft, the amended preface and the first chapter were voted on. Bishops with the approval of the Holy See may now change many parts of the Mass from Latin into the vernacular. The non-controversial draft on mass communications was quickly approved in principle and sent back for further study.

The schema on the sources of revelation—reportedly a high point of the council from the viewpoint of dramatic debate—was, in effect, rejected by a nearly two-thirds vote. Pope John’s intervention is regarded as a significant turning point. The question has been referred to a special mixed commission which has been enlarged by the addition of a co-chairman and a number of bishops who had been working with the commission for Christian unity. The place of tradition in regard to revelation is at issue.

Despite an apparent slowness of movement, Father Robert A. Graham, Religious News Service special correspondent, considers council developments “positive and encouraging.” He describes the “most important milestone” reached as the “clarification, scope and purpose” of the council. “Debates registered a dominant pastoral orientation of the Council Fathers. This concentration was sanctioned by Pope John in his directive of norms issued in the last days of the first session.”

Graham speaks also of “startling structural changes” witnessed by the church in council. One is the “tacit acceptance of the existence of national hierarchies acting as groups during debates on the liturgy. For instance, many bishops spoke on the need of allowing regional Church leaders to determine for themselves, even if with approval of the Holy See, what applications and modifications need to be made in liturgy conformable to specific needs of their respective peoples and faithful.”

A “most important structural evolution” of which “the record does not speak,” observes Graham further, “is the new relationship between bishops and the Pope. Hitherto, bishops’ contacts with the Holy See have been theoretically with the Pope but actually with the Papal Congregations or the administration of the Roman Curia.… At the Council this has changed, probably for good, as the Fathers now find themselves associated directly with the Pope in great decisions affecting the Church.”

Observers have noted hopefully the ready acceptance of the trans-Alpine prelates and their influence on the council. And the Protestant delegate-observers have been impressed by the fraternal treatment accorded them—as if they were members of sister churches. (No official position, however, has been taken to that effect. It is easier to fail to repeat an action than to revise a dogma.) Roman Catholics have in turn been impressed by the visitors’ “admirable discretion in delicate circ*mstances strange and unprecedented for all concerned.” The pope is said to have taken the side of liberal forces which wish to stress the affirmative side of matters rather than delivering anathemas. Thus the health of Pope John, who in 1962 became the first religious figure to be designated Time’s “Man of the Year,” could have vital bearing on the council’s future. As recess came, he said: “One year is a long time. I may not be here. If I am not, there certainly will be another Pope.”

Some have asked whether historical differences loom larger than theological, due to the current lack of significant interchanges between Romanism and Greek Orthodoxy, the latter being theologically closer to Rome than Protestantism. The situation is obscure, but ecclesiastical tensions are said probably to be due more to Athens than to Istanbul, Moscow, or Rome.

Protestants have their fingers crossed in regard to the whole field of Mariolatry, including the introduction of St. Joseph into the Mass—the council has not yet acted. And permissible marriage of priests and communion under both kinds are regarded as yet several councils away.

Protestant ecumenists are actually not expecting too much. They sense a danger of rising Catholic expectations that Protestants will return to union with Rome because of friendly treatment.

In the area of public relations, Protestants in general have been rather discouraged by the Roman policy of secrecy in matters of council deliberation. But the cloak has not been sufficient to hide the fact of internal Roman controversy. An eminent Protestant theologian has noted that the generous treatment given the Protestant delegate-observers has rendered it tactless for them to tell the world of “the tremendous contrasts and even hostilities they have observed.” But a Catholic bishop returning home told him of his surprise at the wealth of different opinions, and spoke of a prelate who went to the council with very definite orthodox views but had since changed his mind completely. This Protestant theologian comments that the Roman problems are those troubling churches everywhere: Scripture and tradition, Scripture and Church, inspiration and inerrancy. “The fight between Cardinals Ottaviani and Bea is paralleled by that between the fundamentalist and critical—not ‘modernist’ for modernism was ousted by Pius X—interpretations. ‘Critical and Catholic’: this program of Bishop Gore and the people around Lux Mundi would correspond to the Pontifical Biblical Institute. It will be a tremendous job for the newly-appointed commission to prepare statements which in the fall of 1963 will please all bishops, or at least a substantial majority. It is one of the most crucial years of the history of the Roman Church.”

And if the Roman prelates have grave problems in reaching agreement among themselves in this area, the orthodox Protestant who would like to look hopefully upon the council begins to envision the necessity for a few centuries of councils before agreement could possibly be reached on such great evangelical principles as:

(1)The authority of Scripture alone, which leaves no room for the Roman elevation of church tradition and “the living mind of the Church,” nor for the papacy either.

(2)Christ as sole Mediator, which renders superfluous a system of priestcraft, Mariolatry, and hagiolatry.

(3)Justification by faith alone, which means that while good works have a place in one’s salvation, they have nothing to do with his justification.

The anathemas directed by the Council of Trent at Protestant theology have never been withdrawn.

F. F.

The Brink Of Violence

Police moved in swiftly last month when an “anti-proselytizing” outburst in Jerusalem threatened to get out of hand. The incident occurred at a center operated by the Hebrew Evangelical Society, a Protestant group, in the Mushara section of the Israeli city. The area is densely populated by Orthodox Jewish immigrants, mainly from Morocco.

Trouble arose after Yaacov Goren, director of the center, and an official named Elzam, both converted Jews, had invited neighborhood children to a Chanukah celebration, reportedly without the consent of their parents who were attending a local synagogue.

When the parents emerged from the synagogue and began looking for their children, they found them chanting Chanukah and Christmas songs. Stones were thrown, and one of them struck Goren’s wife, Leah, wounding her slightly. Order was restored when police arrived and took two men into custody. During the ensuing weekend, the mission was placed under strong police protection.

Another minor incident occurred when a man said to be drunk tried to interfere with a Christmas celebration to which about 50 Indian-born Jews had been invited.

In an editorial on the earlier incident, Yediot Aharonot, an evening newspaper, called on the government to put an end to “missionary soul-hunting.” This came after the National Religious Party had made special mention of the missionary society in a strong attack against the “unholy alliance” between missionary groups and other elements opposed to religious reform in the Jewish state.

The Hebrew Evangelical Society, founded in 1931 by Arthur Michelson, has its headquarters in Los Angeles. It was registered in Palestine in 1946. It is not affiliated with the United Christian Council in Israel which represents about 20 major Protestant communities and societies. Dr. Maas Boertien, secretary general of the council, has on several occasions criticized “tactless, aggressive” methods used by certain missionary groups.

Since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Hebrew Evangelical Society has been engaged mainly in distributing clothes and food parcels to new immigrants. Allegations that it engaged in blackmarket operations have been made. One official, Ralph Bong, was deprived some time ago of his temporary residence permit.

In an interview, Goren praised the “correct” attitude of the police after the stone-throwing incident. At the same time, he denied reports that the children who came to the Chanukah party had done so without their parents’ consent.

“Indeed,” he said, “some of the parents attended the party.”

Claiming that the mission center’s relations with the people in the neighborhood were “quite good,” Goren said the “trouble-makers” had come from out-the area. He added that the children’s party was in a “strictly Jewish style” and no attempt was made to mingle Christmas and Chanukah observances.

Goren stressed that he did not mix philanthropic activities with his missionary work. He said that he did not have a congregation in the strict sense of the term and that he belongs to a Baptist church.

The Alternate Course

A Jewish-born Catholic monk, whose petition to claim Jewish nationality under Israel’s Law of Return was rejected, applied last month for the status of permanent resident as a non-Jew.

Father Daniel, 40-year-old Carmelite born of Jewish parents in Poland, applied for an Israeli identity card at Haifa as a first step toward possible application for citizenship by naturalization.

Automatic Israeli citizenship is granted Jews under the 1950 Law of Return. The high court, in a 4–1 decision, ruled that the law does not apply to Jews who abandon Judaism for another religion. However, the court said, it does apply to Jews who profess atheism.

A government official indicated that Father Daniel’s application for resident status would be granted. He would be registered as Catholic by religion, but the nationality section in his identity card would be left blank, the official said.

Father Daniel, who was born Oswald Shumel Refeisen and who came to the Haifa Carmelite monastery three years ago from Poland, had petitioned the court to grant him citizenship on the basis of his being Jewish in the national, rather than the religious, sense.

There was widespread press controversy over the court’s rejection of his petition, with some publications siding with Judge Haime Cohen, the lone dissenter in the majority ruling. Judge Cohen had upheld Father Daniel’s claim, stating that Jewish nationality should be defined without regard to religion.

A guiding principle on Jewish identity was given by the Cabinet to the Interior Minister on July 20, 1958. It stated: “One who in good faith declares himself to be a Jew and is not a member of another religion shall be registered as a Jew.”

Cohen, in dissenting, held that the Cabinet had exceeded its authority in including in its definition the phrase “and is not a member of another religion.” He said: “If the Legislature wished to restrict the compass of the law to Jews who are not members of another religion … it could and should explicitly have said so. Since it has not said so, the law must be interpreted and implemented literally, in a manner that does not inform the term Jew with any religious content or attach to it any religious reservations.”

The majority opinion, on the other hand, declared that “a Jew who has gone over to another religion has excluded himself not only from the Jewish religion but also from the Jewish nation and has no place in the community of Israel. In the mind of the Jewish people, a Jew and a Christian cannot dwell within one person.”

The Park At Katerini

In the picturesque Aegean seaport of Katerini, the Greek Evangelical Church is appealing to the courts an order for seizure of a park which has been the basis of a long-standing dispute. To the 600 families which make up the evangelical community in that town of approximately 30,000, the park is an all-important symbol of their religious freedom. The evangelicals have indicated several times that they will fight to protect their claim to ownership. Latest incident last fall saw evangelical women and children swarm into the park to challenge armed police carrying out the seizure order. The women subsequently set up a round-the-clock vigil to thwart any further seizure attempts. Tents were erected to protect them from the rain. Authorities held up the seizure attempt pending a court decision expected March 5.

Meanwhile, a furious attack against the persecution was undertaken by the only two local newspapers, both published by evangelicals. Their opponents, lacking a medium for rebuttal, decided to publish a newspaper of their own at the biblical city of Thessalonica, some 65 miles to the north. Returning to Katerini late one night with a cargo of opposition newspapers, Constantine Papatheodorou, editor-publisher, was burned to death with two companions following a highway accident.

“This misfortune deeply grieved the evangelical people here,” said the Rev. Athanasios Elias, acting pastor of the Greek Evangelical Church. “They have learned to pray for their enemies and have never missed the opportunity to offer help to those who persecute them.”

A leading state official, a Greek Orthodox, was not as kind:

“The Lord looked upon their injustice and burned them alive.”

Relief In Spain

The Spanish Embassy in Washington advised the National Association of Evangelicals last month that steps have been taken to relieve the situation which led to the court martial last year of a Protestant soldier, Jose Cabrera Romero, for failure to kneel during a Roman Catholic mass he was obligated to attend as part of his military duty.

Missionary News Service reported that in reply to an inquiry, Alonzo Alvarez de Toledo, secretary of the embassy, said:

“While pertinent legislation is being studied, the Spanish government, desirous of avoiding further inconveniences to non-Catholic soldiers, has directed that in the future non-Catholic soldiers will be excluded from duty involving ceremonies of the Catholic faith. Furthermore, a new wording of the pledge of allegiance to the flag has been drafted that will not offend the religious beliefs of non-Catholics.”

“Although these measures have not yet been enacted as law,” the secretary added, “they have already been put into practice.”

Meanwhile, a report made public in Madrid by the International Commission of Jurists said that the Roman Catholic Church in Spain enjoys freedom of expression and association, but that other religions have only a limited freedom of worship.

The report declared that while the Catholic Church has a “strong position,” this is exceptional, since any general exercise of the freedom it possesses “has for years been rendered impossible” by legislation under the Franco regime.

Charges in the 153-page report, entitled “Spain and the Rule of Law,” were promptly denied by the Spanish government. A dispatch from Madrid said the government branded it as “another useless bomb in the anti-Spanish campaign,” while Minister of Information Manuel Fraga Iribarne said it was “plagued” with errors.

The International Commission of Jurists is a non-governmental, non-political organization holding consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It is supported by some 40,000 lawyers and judges in about 90 countries.

The Catholicity of the Spanish state and the position it bestows on the Catholic Church “inevitably weaken constitutional guarantees of religious freedom,” the commission’s report declared.

“Something even more open to criticism,” it said, “is that freedom of conscience, meaning that none shall be molested on account of his religious beliefs, is not firmly respected.”

The report said ample evidence of the Catholic Church’s strong position was provided by its criticism of the state’s social policy, and the support given by Catholic organizations to the strike staged by the Asturian miners last April.

“The Church,” it said, “did not even hesitate to postulate the act of striking, under certain circ*mstances, as one of the rights of workers, even though legislation for the protection of the state has equated a strike with a military rebellion.”

“The Church’s intervention in social policy discussions,” the report went on to note, “is based on the encyclical, Mater et Magistra. This encyclical, which met with an enormous response in Spain, enables the Church to claim undisturbed propaganda of Catholic social doctrine as part of its apostolate, the free exercise of which was guaranteed by Article 34 of the concordat (between Spain and the Vatican).”

It comes as a shock to a minister to learn that a pulpit committee has overlooked his dedicated endowments and rejected him, considering him to have a negative personality. Church leaders recognize that an unattractive personality hurts a cause, and they dislike to recommend to any field a man who has neither a balance of good traits nor a graciousness of spirit. They seem to know that the personality and the preacher are not separable identities, that the man rises or falls, emerges to new heights or sinks to levels far beneath his capacity, because of the enhancement or the neglect of his identifying qualities. And it brings one up with a start to realize that his worth to his Lord is measured by the factors in his makeup.

So many aids to pastors fix attention on sermon preparation, administration, or program development that we are tempted to overlook the factor which often makes or breaks a minister—the effective use and enhancement of his personality. Until recently even divinity schools have failed to realize that an unconsidered and undeveloped personality may militate against all that they have sought to develop in their students. Today, in the midst of terrific competition for the minds, bodies, and souls of people, serious attention should be given to the person and the presence of the minister. For the man of God, it may be a time for soul culture—a big, personal landscaping operation.

“You either have it or you don’t!” is far too simple an appraisal of the personality. “Either a preacher’s got it, or he hasn’t” fails to consider that many ministers are not only making the most of what they have, but are zealously building personalities which enrich the trust given to them. Beecher admonished the young man with ministerial aspirations that the vision of “P.C.” which he claimed to have seen in the sky may have meant “Plow corn,” rather than “Preach Christ,” but plowing corn might be the foundation upon which to build a distinguished ministry. Memorable, enduring personalities are made.

Prima donnas exist, those who fulfill every whim of the congregation—that is, for a time—but these have no lasting place in the ministry. We are not pleading that the church raise up a breed of these. But men with marked identifying traits, whose gracious manners match their devotional life, whose bearing and presence bring dignity and honor to any occasion, whose physical appearance and strength of being bring confidence and hope—these are the need of the churches today.

Developing Desirable Traits

The theme of this article, however, is here: this inestimable, important characteristic in a minister—a balanced, attractive personality that appeals to, and impresses others—can be developed. If it is true that “life is a landscaping job,” then a minister’s life is a total of qualities that have been carved out of rugged and often unyielding terrain. The difficulty lies in the fact that no one seems to tell the preacher so. No institution attempts to provide the pastor with a training-school for this important phase of life.

The pastor steps into his field with high hopes, only to stumble upon such distressing appraisals as, “Oh, if he’d only have his clothes pressed,” or “Where was he brought up? His conduct is so crude,” or “People quit coming to hear him; his pulpit manners are atrocious,” or “He expects us to send for him when his bedside presence is obnoxious.” How many have been offended for whom Christ died!

It is dead wrong to conceive that personality traits cannot be improved on the part of those who have been long in the ministry. Perhaps it is a little more difficult to alter those ingrained traits which distress a congregation. Even here, however, one can be made a new creature in Christ Jesus. It is true that some of the brethren come from such crude backgrounds that they have considerably more improving to do, but there are often qualities so precious that the greater effort to uncover them is rewarding.

Members of a congregation often pause before calling attention to a minister’s fault because of his sensitivity. One obvious reason why personality limitations are not brought to the attention of the pastor is the member’s fear that the minister will think the person to be “against the program.” Furthermore, too often the pastor will shut off all channels for personal improvement by little but quite vicious defense mechanisms. These only penalize those who are near to him and who would seek to befriend him by a suggestion. He becomes “conditioned” to his unhappy patterns of action and behavior, and woe be to the one who would help him.

How fortunate is that man of God who comes from a background that is steeped in good manners! Such homes, where gentle ways are expected and practiced, make their basic contribution to the Kingdom of God. But since so many of the brethren, as is expected, come from backgrounds which are unacquainted with the qualities essential to a minister’s effectiveness, the average pastor has a lot of soul-sculpturing to do. And since these unfortunate traits are unrecognized by the man himself, indeed are often held to tenaciously, their uprooting is difficult at the least.

“He’ll always be crude, because he won’t put forth the effort to replace his graceless, tactless ways with manners which mark a gentleman,” was said with such finality that a pulpit committee went to the next name. Pathetically enough, here was a man who might have given to that field a magnificent service. And just as pathetic was the fact that nowhere along the line of the man’s training was he taught the laborious task of substituting gentle virtues for crude ones. It is as though those influences which build men for the ministry had conspired to withhold the disciplines and corrective measures which might have made brilliant a diamond from the rough.

Said one of the most prominent ministers of this generation, “It seems that I make the same grammatical errors my mother made before me, and, believe it or not, down the years of my preparation no one, or no class work, either pointed these out or impressed upon me the importance of their correction. And what pains me is that my entire ministry has been adversely affected.”

Many people—for whom Christ also died—simply do not like and will not tolerate a crude minister. Tragically enough, the minister who gives every evidence of poor breeding can’t interpret his own plight. Moreover, he interprets his rejection as something far remote from anything displeasing in his nature.

If only a fraction of the time that a theological student spent on his Greek or his mathematics could have been given to structuring his personality, so much of what now offends congregations would have been eliminated.

As a result, if a preacher is to learn the more beautiful and attractive qualities which will enhance his ministry, he must do it the hard way: wrest it out by himself. By God’s help, and through ruthless searching, this tool of the spirit may be made more worthy. Where, then, are the areas of the personality which may be in need of landscaping?

A List of Virtues

Pulpit Manners. How often should one be told by his instructors in speech that a minister should keep his feet on the floor! Fidgeting and wiggling are inexcusable. The gestures should be deliberate, measured, and eloquent. In the pulpit—as everywhere—the minister should be a gentleman.

Speech. The minister must deliberately take himself in hand and weed offensiveness from his conversation and public speech. The task is not an easy one.

Appearance. People like to be proud of their pastor. They will not tolerate an inexcusable appearance for long.

Bedside Manner. A gracious, well-mannered call will be a blessing to the sick. The fitting, cheerful word will be in order, and brevity will be the rule.

Conversation. If there is one thing psychology may teach the minister in human relationships, it is to let the other person do the talking. There is enormous skill in drawing the other person out, that he may be at his best in expression.

Emotions. There are some who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Let us learn the beauty to be found in restraint.

Friendliness. If all these personality hallmarks demand discipline, certainly this one does: the art of being friendly. It is a beautiful trait.

Mood. “Be of good cheer!” is the theme of the Gospels. The negative mood, with its attendant attitude, can be a devastating influence upon a whole congregation.

Snobbery. Of all of the personality characteristics attributable to certain ministers, this one is most difficult to whip.

These are some of the negative characteristics which have unbecomingly clung to ministers. They have not only hurt the man but the cause he represents. Unfortunately, their opposites are not learned in the divinity school. They have to be wrought out on the hard anvil of experience. It is, however, a part of soul cultivation and a place where the man of God may set the example for his flock and for his fellows. F. B. MCALLISTER Cincinnati, Ohio (Retired Baptist pastor)

Whether one can correctly speak of development in recent Protestant theology is in our day increasingly debatable. Fresh theories, shifting perspectives, even changing frontiers abound, but neither significant change nor meaningful progress seems demonstrable. Silent redecoration or soft repair of the entrenched theories is more characteristic of the last decade of theological studies than resounding debate on the crucial theological issues. The theology of the Protestant world seems, therefore, to have reached a stalemate.

What factors testify to such a stalemate? In the first place, the clamor for an ecumenical theology (the search for a unifying common denominator), coupled with the reduction of the role of reason and truth in religious experience, has dulled the desire for doctrinal depth. No one has given substance to theological discussions. Even Barth, in his much anticipated Princeton lectures, his critics complain, merely reproduced his system in miniature and supplied no new framework for an ecumenical theology. And without an adequate doctrinal foundation, the ecumenical movement is itself theologically vagrant; it is a rocket going into orbit without a sure sense of direction, gaining a momentum proper only to a guided missile, but wavering in its trajectory.

Those who sense that neither Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Niebuhr, nor Tillich has produced an ecumenically serviceable theology, and who more and more bemoan the fact that no new stars have appeared in the ecumenical sky, are more and more interested in conversations with Rome, a process which is already much further along in Europe than in America. Conversations across ecclesiastical lines are to be encouraged and not deplored if they proceed in a climate of strength and not of weakness. But the extent to which such conversations have sprung from Protestant frustration with the liberal and neoorthodox theologies and from a reactionary refusal to probe anew the evangelical heritage in its historic depth, is a cause for serious alarm. The ecumenical movement itself, then, has hindered the vigorous advancement of theology while it has promoted theological conversations.

But the absence of significant doctrinal debate which characterizes our decade is not evidenced alone in an ecumenical politeness or in a frustration with the liberal and neoorthodox theologies. It is also the product of the problematic rather than a schematic approach to dogmatics which has been adopted by contemporary scholars. Instead of an uneasy conscience in the face of Protestantism’s widespread doctrinal disagreements and a consequent earnest engagement over theological issues, many contemporary religious teachers devote their attention only to the problems of method and tend to dismiss as unworthy of serious concern the doctrinal disagreements which have always been present in Protestant theology.

Barth’s influence has registered constructively in this respect. By insisting that the understanding of the Christian faith must begin with the canonical books—not with subjective religious experience, as in modernism, or with something “behind the Bible,” as urged by Bultmann—Barth made exegesis the main task of the Church. But questions of methodology have so far dominated the theological enterprise that biblical theology suffers still from Bultmann’s displacement of the objective work of Jesus Christ by the subjective work of the Holy Spirit. Even Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth simply shifts Bultmann’s readiness to dispense with the historicity of the supernatural Jesus into low from high gear, without any significant change in directions.

In a recent survey of the past decade of New Testament studies, Professor Otto Piper singles out as significant achievements the preparation of extended bibliographical helps which cover the period 1800–1960, the publication of the Bodmer papyri (which supply no sensational insights), and the discovery of the Nag-Hammadi Coptic texts, particularly the Gospel of Thomas, which is a Gnostic manipulation of the Gospels. But, concedes Dr. Piper, even such a significant event as the publication in English of Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament has not raised theological issues but only methodological questions.

The Old Testament arena has likewise disclosed little theological productivity. Once scholars were sidetracked into the scissors-and-paste sport of propounding sources. Today a preoccupation with the nature of language chokes off the exegetical gains which might otherwise have accrued to the new regard for the Hebrew text. In a recent Princeton address, Dr. James F. Armstrong observed that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the latest Septuagint studies, and the findings of archaeology have tended to confirm the quality and antiquity of the Hebrew text and to discourage the easy emendations so extensively made by Old Testament scholars at the turn of the century. Yet Professor Armstrong also noted that the Old Testament remains poorly situated in respect to commentaries, most of those in use being a half century old.

For the seminary classroom the net result of the academic climate is inevitable: students are becoming more familiar with the addenda of biblical reservation than with the content of biblical revelation. At Princeton Seminary, for instance, only 35 per cent of a recent junior class passed a comprehensive examination on the content and structure of the Bible. Compounded with the theological barrenness which many seminarians inherit from their churches and with the cafeteria diet (dignified as “ecumenical dialogue”) which is now served on some divinity campuses, this promises an ominous future.

Can anything be done about the present state of the theological enterprise? Where must theology turn if it is to escape the stalemate which has accompanied an overly zealous devotion to the ecumenical cause and a scholarly preoccupation with the problems of biblical methodology? Protestant theology must find its way back to both revelation and reason, to a mode of faith and life that finds a friend rather than a foe in propositional truth, and to renewed and vigorous debate on the vital issues of a sound, relevant, and biblically oriented dogmatics. Until it does so, Protestant theology will continue to move on the periphery of biblical revelation and will never successfully or fully counter the philosophical-scientific criticism of our generation.

Is The Peace Corps Compromising On The Religious Issue?

We are glad the Peace Corps has replied to criticisms of its religious involvement. We are disappointed in its comments, however, for while the Peace Corps statement is factual, it ignores important items and borders on being oblique if not misleading.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY noted (Dec. 21 issue) that the Peace Corps approves schools like Notre Dame and Georgetown for training programs, but disapproves colleges like Wheaton and Berea as “too oriented” religiously. The Peace Corps comments that Wheaton has never formally applied, and that it “will probably” reapproach Berea about a feasible project. Actually, established routine calls for an official Peace Corps representative to approach an institution about becoming a training center, and then to invite campus authorities to submit a proposal. Wheaton has had no such invitation. It remains to be seen whether the Peace Corps moderates prejudices within its own staff that schools like Wheaton and Berea are “too oriented” religiously to qualify as training centers, while institutions like Notre Dame and Georgetown are approved despite their strong Roman Catholic orientation.

We noted, further, that despite the Peace Corps’s emphasis that appointees are not to participate in proselyting activity, its workers are being assigned to instructional posts in religious schools. In Borneo, for example, many workers are teaching in religious (for the most part Roman Catholic) enterprises. We have since learned that 14 additional trainees are about to begin training for forthcoming assignments to similar religious schools.

The Peace Corps contends it does not inquire into the religious affiliation of volunteers. Furthermore, appointments to private schools are made in fulfillment of requests by foreign governments, and never are appointees permitted to teach religion. The Peace Corps, it seems to us, is compromising itself. For one thing, it is not obligated to grant all requests from foreign governments, which in some cases are highly susceptible to Romanist pressures. Assigning volunteers to religious schools (whether Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist, or whatever else) runs counter to the Peace Corps’s selection policy which asks for a trainee’s virtual suppression of sectarian identification. Such assignment also contradicts American traditions of church-state separation, in that the federal government underwrites the salaries of such appointees to sectarian schools. Moreover, to expect Peace Corps volunteers wholly to divorce themselves from their sectarian faith in their teaching activities is to ask the impossible. Such a position either puts a premium on agnosticism or objectionably secularizes the Christian concept of vocation. We doubt that Roman Catholic appointees teaching in Roman Catholic schools will succumb to such a delusion, nor should Protestants teaching in similar schools be asked to do so. In fact, we don’t think Peace Corps workers, salaried by the United States government, should be teaching in sectarian institutions at all. We don’t see any reason for this kind of procedure except to establish precedents that yield easily to future exploitation.

Because of the Peace Corps’s requirements the wives of Protestant workers have confined their sectarian activity to Sunday school and church participation on their fields. But Roman Catholics have been less timid. In Borneo, for example, the wife of the associate representative of the Peace Corps is teaching religion in a Roman Catholic college. Recently, moreover, the Peace Corps program in Chile was interpreted on a television film by a priest on Notre Dame’s faculty, despite his church’s proprietary interest in that geographic field. The sooner this sort of thing ends, the better. END

Crisis In Katanga And The Gospel Imperative

Amid the swift-flowing crosscurrents of crisis in Katanga—to which such liberal voices as Albert Schweitzer and Adlai Stevenson find themselves speaking at cross-purposes—the Christian may mourn that crisis in the awakening “Dark Continent” seemingly overtook evangelizing activity there too soon. Congo atrocities underscore this. Ours is not a leisurely age for missions or anything else.

How now to quicken the penetration of that gospel which effects peaceful reconciliation to God? An American student at the Sorbonne points us, perhaps, to one of the most strategic means. In conversation with a student from the new African nation of Mali, he learned that among the thousands of foreign students at the university, a great number were from Mali and other African countries. Shortly afterward, the American student met a fellow American who was preparing for missionary service in Mali but was unaware of the presence of the many young people from Mali who were his fellow students—and this after a year of language study. Here was the future leadership of the country in which he planned to spend his life. Reaching these youth with the Gospel at such a formative period of their lives could have untold consequences for their young nation. Who knows but what a single convert for Christ at this point could mean the difference between a nation open or closed to the Gospel a generation hence?

Opportunities are large for personal witnessing as more Americans are discovering that they can go to school in Europe for less money than required by many private colleges in this country. And the opportunities multiply with the growing influx of foreign students in American universities. There are future Nkrumahs and Balewas in our midst preparing themselves for leadership. If they are to be instruments for the export of freedom, mere exposure to the “American way of life” is tragically deficient. To get to the heart of the matter, they must discover the Gospel’s liberating power. How much we help them toward this discovery?

Did Churches Miss The Boat In The Bay Of Pigs?

Because of its potentially nuclear, Communistic context the Bay of Pigs was a big fiasco. But it was also a military failure big with Christian opportunity for the demonstration of mercy. Here was a golden gate for the Christian church to show the world its concern for human need and destitution, to demonstrate that it takes seriously those words of Christ, “I was hungry and ye gave me meat … in prison and ye came unto me.” Although a number of churches have nobly met the needs of immigrant Cubans in Florida, no church or church organization seized the opportunity to ransom the ill-fated Cuban freedom fighters from Castro’s island prison. To the original failure of the American government was added that of the American Church.

Ransom by the Church of the prisoners of war Fidel Castro had put up for sale would have been such an act as comports with Christian charity. An American Christian looking for a hungry man might well become very hungry himself before he found such a man to feed. Prosperity combined with governmental and community welfare provisions have made the simpler forms of extending Christian mercy difficult to come by. Most Americans eat too much, and the rest turn to secular and civic organizations when lacking life’s physical and material necessities. The area in which the Church can show the mercy and concern of Christ for men in physical need is constantly shrinking; as the State and secular institutions do more and more, the Church’s opportunities to aid the destitute become smaller and smaller.

The Church missed a big opportunity to meet a big need in a big way. It could have shown to the Communist world and to the poor and destitute of every land that the mercy of Christ is bigger than any human need. It could have shown that it still understands the words, “I was in prison and ye visited me not.… Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”

Release of Castro’s prisoners was admittedly a big job calling for big money. No doubt American Christians meant well—so did the United States government in February, 1960. But mere intentions are not enough; they neither forestall failures, nor “release the captives.”

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Diplomatically Correct—Possibly, But Morally Wrong

Our hearts have been stirred by a small group of intrepid Russian Christians who entered the American embassy in Moscow and asked for refuge. “Those who believe in God and Christ, help us!”, they pleaded. A few hours later they were in a bus, escorted away by representatives of the Russian Foreign Office at the request of our Embassy officials.

The niceties of diplomatic usage may have been observed. But there are many Christians who regard this incident with heavy hearts. Surely something might have been done other than a hasty turning of these religious refugees back to those who have been persecuting them.

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Missionary Opportunities For Those With Special Gifts

The time-honored approach to missionary service has been to keep the Christian church aware of the need and to maintain interest through preaching on missions, distribution of missionary literature, and visits of missionaries or Christian nationals. From such a setting God has again and again called young men and women to go to the foreign field.

Some mission boards and individuals are concerned over the world mission of the Church and the lack of qualified and willing candidates for missionary service. They are accordingly exploring the wisdom and rightness of placing calls to specific types and fields of service before those who seem prepared but who have never volunteered for such ministry.

We fervently hope that the need will be met through the thrusting forth of those dedicated ones who respond to an inner compulsion. At the same time we think there is no reason why boards and persons aware of particular needs should not deliberately present those needs to “uncalled” but qualified men and women. How an individual reacts to such a proposal will be one way to determine whether the invitation is directed of God or of man.

Certainly the unmet needs of the mission fields of the world today are staggering. Every effort of enlistment, therefore, and every avenue of recruitment should be explored. Many of those in the ministry today are there because some godly person challenged them with the call in their formative years. Why not consider the same method of call to service abroad?

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A Brief Word To The Pulpit On Knowing When To Quit

Not many years ago sermons in The Netherlands came in two parts, a song being inserted after the first part to keep the man in the pew from falling asleep or, if matters had gone beyond that, to wake him up. This unusual liturgical technique was abetted by a simpler device: a custodian with a long pole was authorized to administer a sharp tap on the head of any dozer (a prerogative which must often have been viewed as a “fringe benefit” of considerable satisfaction). Sharp, biting peppermints were also employed to counter the claims of sleep, and very effectively—if taken in time. All these NoDoz devices were made necessary by hour-and-a-half sermons.

It is difficult to compare the relative spirituality of this man of the pew with that of the more modern man who clamors for ever shorter pulpit efforts in sermon and prayer. The latter can at times appeal to Job who, after hearing out his friends, delivered that pithy sermonic criticism, “Surely you have multiplied words without wisdom,” for not every present-day pulpiteer knows that the ratio between sermonic impact and sermonic length is often an inverse one. And when did we last hear a sermon on that verbosity which Jesus said characterizes the heathen who “think that they shall be heard for their much speaking”?

Nor is the clamor for pulpit brevity necessarily evidence that the man of today has little time and even less spirituality. As far back as the eighteenth century Scotch frugality knew how both to save time and to prevent untimely sleep. J. H. Thomson said of the Scottish Covenanter preacher James Fisher (1741), “Like all the early Seceders, Fisher preached short sermons. Sometimes he would not be longer than a quarter of an hour, and he rarely exceeded 40 minutes. Indeed, brevity was one of the secrets of the popularity of the Fathers of the Secession.” And Brown of Inver-Keithing advised a young man, “Be short, begin well, go on, and when you see the people all eagerly listening, close, and be certain that what you have said will be remembered.”

There is of course neither a biblically nor an ecumenically endorsed standard length for a sermon. There is, however, one (painfully) self-evident truth: the less the preparation, the longer the sermon and the shorter the impact. Preachers do well to remember that in the reaction of the pew, an excellent sermon is always regarded as too short, and a poor one as too long.

Let the words of the pulpit set forth the Word clearly. Once the Christ has been brought to view, let the people reach for exit instead of peppermint.

Only a few years ago the words ecumenical and ecumenism meant nothing to the average laymen. They were just so much Greek, in the real sense of the word.

But now we are confronted with these words in sermons, in literature, and in church courts. It is therefore important to know what they mean, what they imply, and how they are used today.

Ecumenical means worldwide or universal, and, in relation to the Church, implies the oneness of Christians in the faith and all which flows therefrom.

Ecumenicity is not a religion. Rather it is a fruit or manifestation of Christianity. It is a spiritual reality separate and distinct from organizations or the manipulations of men. It is Christian unity which crosses all social, racial, denominational, or national barriers.

All of this being true, why are there those in the Church who have real misgivings about what is now known as the “ecumenical movement”? If true ecumenicity has existed since the beginning of the Christian church, should it not be fostered?

In order to clarify the matter it is necessary to define terms. I believe that the ecumenical movement is something separate from ecumenicity, just as the “fundamentalist movement” is separate from historic evangelical Christianity, or fundamentalism.

The ecumenical movement, as it now exists, is a relatively new phenomenon. With the Reformation there came into being a number of denominations, most of them established by men convinced of the importance of some particular doctrine or teaching of Scripture. The force was centrifugal—away from centralization—often independent, and sometimes divisive in effect.

However, in recent years the pervading force has been centripetal, towards cooperation, union, and unified action.

Unquestionably the pendulum of divisions swung too far, although there is too much evidence of the blessings of God on separate denominational activities for us to deplore the major divisions.

Nevertheless, a movement designed to draw Christians closer together and to present a more united front to the world should be questioned only where there is evidence that it is a movement implying more than appears on the surface.

There are two basic questions; these require clear answers. The first of these is whether the ecumenical movement sacrifices essential Christian doctrines on the altar of expedience, for the sake of organizational unity. The second has to do with the leadership of the movement.

From the standpoint of Christian doctrine the ecumenical movement refuses to make doctrinal deliverances, insisting these are the province of the constituent groups. The approved doctrinal statement of the World Council, interpreted at its highest level, still leaves room for dangerous heresies and has inexcusable omissions. For the sake of an outward facade of unity this movement has shown a lamentable willingness to emphasize organizational structure and a united witness, without a corresponding spiritual unity or a definition of what the content of the Christian faith really is.

Despite their weaknesses, the fact remains that the convictions characteristic of early denominational leadership, and loyalty to those convictions, are not in any impressive measure a characteristic of many who lead the ecumenical movement. A great number of these men are professional churchmen who apparently look with complacency on those who frankly question or reject the clear statements and doctrines taught in the Scriptures.

Considering itself as riding the wave of the future, the ecumenical movement seems oblivious to the fact that doctrinal laxity may dash it on the rocks of God’s judgment.

But there is a true ecumenicity (distinguished from the ecumenical movement, as such, and the spirit of ecumenicity abroad in the world) which began in the early Church, has continued throughout the centuries, and is growing today.

This ecumenicity is spiritual in nature, catholic in faith and practice. It is that unity of the spirit which springs eternal in the hearts of those who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, a faith which unites believers even when they are separated by man-made barriers or secondary considerations.

These ecumenicals are, many of them, working loyally within denominational bounds. Others work in smaller, often interdenominational or non-denominational groups. These look for and accept Christian faith wherever it is found. They rejoice in the truth and are anxious to share in a witness to the saving power and work of Christ.

Strange to say—and possibly it is very revealing—the ecumenical movement often seems to deny its own nature in its attitude toward these true ecumenicals. We know of many instances where some in the ecumenical movement have been very unecumenical in attitude and action to those who for conscience’s sake have remained outside the orbit of the movement’s influence and ecclesiastical power.

Like the “fundamentalist movement,” which is far removed from true fundamentalism, the ecumenical movement is far removed from—and actually often hostile to—true ecumenicals.

The “fundamentalist movement” is distinguished from historic evangelical Christianity by its lack of Christian love. Contending for the faith becomes contentiousness, even to the point of impatience, unkindness, jealousy, boastfulness, arrogance, rudeness, irritability, resentfulness, rejoicing in wrong, tale-bearing, and believing, distorting, and passing on everything evil about a Christian brother. Some seem in danger of pulling up wheat in their zeal to destroy the tares.

The true ecumenical is at the same time a true fundamentalist. Loyal to his church, he believes that her mission is spiritual and her message of vital importance. For that reason he is far more concerned about the content of the Christian faith than about the organizational structure of the Church. So long as organization does not affect the message, he will go along with the organization. But when the content of the message is made secondary, he looks with genuine distrust on those who make it so.

We believe there is a true and straight road which the Christian should walk, one on which he rejects some trends of the ecumenical movement and also of the fundamentalist movement while at the same time bearing a clear testimony to the fact that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has changed his own life and is capable of changing the lives of all who will believe.

This walk must be dominated by a sound faith, clear convictions, and Christian love with humility.

We believe that the future of the great Church Universal rests in the hands of those who so walk.

Today many newly constructed houses of worship are reaching skyward, and many pastors and church officers are realizing the rewards as well as the trials of building programs. That these programs will exert a great influence on American church life goes without saying. The momentum a church generates by successfully completing a new edifice often can be felt for several years, and many pastors look forward to leading a congregation in building new or enlarged facilities.

It is natural for both pastor and people to want a breather after the strain of a building program, and to take their ease in Zion, as it were, by rejoicing and luxuriating in their achievements. Religion, however, is far more than physical facilities. The main task of the Christian church is not to erect impressive structures that bear glorious but mute testimony to the call of Christ to service and sacrifice. Unless a congregation’s qualities and attributes are of more than material significance, its new building will become but an empty shell that once housed a living organism of spiritual strength.

That religion is more than a building is apparent if we realize that without a congregation’s loyalty to God, a church building is but a mockery and a sham. The Old Testament records the story of the Tower of Babel, a structure that was intended to draw men heavenward to God, but which was, in fact, a useless idol. We read, too, of another building that was fashioned according to the commandment and will of God. On its day of dedication by King Solomon, God said concerning the Temple on Mount Zion, “… I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put my name there forever.… And if thou wilt walk before me … in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, … then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever.… But if ye shall at all turn from following me … [and] go and serve other gods, and worship them: then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight …” (1 Kings 9:3 ff.).

Unfortunately, in his old age King Solomon’s heart was “turned away … after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God.” Thus the king’s idolatry became the seed of Israel’s destruction.

Each day the church of Christ faces the same danger. Will its program and mission be centered in undivided allegiance to God, and in confidence of his blessing? Or will the church place its expectation in its own handiwork, thus belying the hopes and glorious vision that first inspired believers to sacrifice for the erection of a beautiful structure? Will the church praise God primarily by the beauty of its buildings, or by the purity and loyalty of its members?

A minister in the Church of England has analyzed the temptation that often confronts churches in Europe whose lavish structures have become a financial burden. Writing for the World Council of Churches, Frank C. Bennett describes the problem as follows: “We remain obsessed with our heritage of apparatus and buildings. Thus the Church now finds itself like some indigent nobleman who must make a show of preserving the family mansion and retainers, lest he should seem to have become less noble. This becomes his life work; it absorbs him. So the Church is under temptation to be absorbed in maintaining itself and to compromise the Gospel in order to entice those who will have none of the Gospel but have the money. Not the preaching of Christ crucified is presented as the objective, but something entitled ‘spiritual reconstruction,’ ‘spiritual values’ or whatever it may be.… For in such circ*mstances the Church has to choose between a measure of prosperity and the life which can only come by death and resurrection. The latter is the choice of faith” (The Church’s Witness to God’s Design, p. 68).

Congregations that anticipate years of usefulness from their new buildings must choose loyalty to Christ as the proper inspiration for their people and for their program.

Further, that a building without purity of life is a lie and a deception is seen in the tragic history of the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the last hectic days before Judah’s captivity. All the signs of the times should have warned the people of impending disaster and judgment. Instead of returning to God, however, and confessing their sins as Jeremiah exhorted them, the people simply responded by pointing to the Temple in their midst. In this context Jeremiah’s words ring out: “Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways, … then will I cause you to dwell in this place.… Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery … and come stand before me in this house …? Is this house which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?… But go ye now unto … Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel” (Jer. 7:4 ff.).

An imposing and beautiful building, a full program of church activities, and a highly organized ecclesiastical machine are no substitute for personal commitment. Even the arduous labor or final satisfaction of completing a new church building is no reason to overlook the basic requirement of Christian discipleship. Do we who call Christ Lord and in his name build beautiful edifices really do what he commands?

As recorded in the book of Acts the first miracle performed by Peter and John took place at the gate of Herod’s temple against a dazzling display of elaborate furnishings and services. There the apostles found a lame man begging for alms, and with Christlike concern turned their attention from the splendor of the surroundings to the needs of a lowly individual.

As a church erects walls, its members ought to know what they are “walling in or walling out,” as Robert Frost would say. Scores of men and women outside the church long to know peace, assurance, and faith. A congregation must choose between making its church building merely a shelter from the storms of life or a base from which to minister to needy and hungry men.

Long ago at a strategic time in British history John Milton reminded his countrymen that “much remains to conquer still.” Similarly even after church construction is completed, “much remains to conquer still”—in allegiance to Christ, in obedience to his commandments, and in service for his name’s sake.—The Rev. KENNETH E. WILLIAMS, Minister, Ashbourne Presbyterian Church, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.