Page 5874 – Christianity Today (2024)

After all is said and done, remarked C. S. Lewis, a very perceptive observer of the human scene, there are only two world-views competing for the souls of men: the Christian and the Indo-Aryan (represented by Hinduism and Buddhism and their derivatives).

To get to the core of the matter, let us examine a key verse from the scriptures of each of these two religious systems. The Christian finds that his New Testament faith binds him inextricably and finally to the authoritative declaration of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

The Hindu takes his stand on what is to him an equally authoritative scripture, the words of Krishna to his beloved disciple in the discourse known as the Gita: “In whatsoever way men approach me, even so do I receive them, for even the paths men take from every side are mine” (Gita IV, 11).

No comment is needed on the antithesis that these two doctrines set up. The knowing Hindu is firm in the conviction that the words of Sri Krishna are more consistent with faith in a merciful, compassionate, divine Author of all than is the Christian doctrine. The reason often given is that a loving God will surely receive a man sincerely seeking him in some remote region, such as Tibet, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ may never reach him at all. This view, of course, makes Christian evangelism indefensible. A typical Hindu attitude was expressed by a recent Indian expositor, Krishnalal Shridharani:

The very notion [of missionary evangelism] implies a superiority complex as well as an impulse of self-righteousness. Now that might be tolerable in other fields, but when it is brought into the realm of religion and the spirit, it looks very strange to the Hindu. To the Hindu philosophers, nothing is more irreligious than a holier-than-thou attitude—an attitude which of necessity provides the driving force of evangelism [My India, My America, Duell, Sloan and Pierce, p. 339].

One way to God or many ways? This is, of course, a vitally important question for the Christian. There are about 500 million Hindus around, plus many members of other religions, who believe in universalism, and the Christian sees these millions of people as souls moving precariously close to the edge of the abyss. Universalism is a direct rejection of the finality of Christ.

Why is Christ the only way? I have been much involved with this question in recent months, through discussion with both hostile and friendly critics. (I left Hinduism and became a Christian only a few years ago.) Experience has shown me that intellectual argument alone, no matter how brilliantly framed and logically sound, cannot win against the powerful combination of an unrepentant heart and a sinful nature.

We must concede that the Hindu’s position has a measure of plausibility and appeal. It appeals to the secular mind of our nuclear, technological age, to the belief in human self-sufficiency with its allied doctrine of man, which lulls the mind into a sort of euphoria by proclaiming human perfectibility. Man is doubtless very prone to error, declares this concept of man; he has, indeed, blood-stained hands. Does not all history testify to this? But take heart, O man, be of good cheer, for man is perfectible; the history that testifies to his proneness to dark deeds also testifies to his advances, to his slow and painful movement toward light.

The Achilles’ heel of this position is its avoidance of the whole fact of sin. This is an area where one has to tread cautiously and very prayerfully, praying that the Spirit will move in hearts long hardened and smug concerning their own condition and slowly open eyes that have lost the power to see. One could invite the opposition to consider the perfectibility doctrine against the background of man’s history and to attempt to evaluate honestly whether deep in his heart man has indeed changed qualitatively in any way commensurate with his intellectual advances.

When we speak of sin, it is vital to make it clear that we mean the basic position of separation from God, that attitude in which man prefers the claim of his separate self, above all other claims, including the paramount claim of the honor and glory of God. The Hindu would agree that imprisonment of the individual within the narrow iron cage of his selfhood is the primary cause of all the harassments and evils that attend the human condition, at the individual and the national levels. In whatever degree, all mankind is guilty on this charge; for the whole range of qualities to which we give such names as self-sensitivity, touchiness, reserve, fretting, worry, self-seeking, self-indulgence, self-defense, and self-justification arise and testify against us. Gentle pressure at this point is a priceless tool, but we need to take great care to avoid any drastic condemnations, and also to explain clearly what we mean when we speak of unregenerate man as a sinner.

However, by far the most efficacious method of dealing with this delicate subject was given by our Lord himself. My own experience confirms that for pouring oil on troubled waters nothing can surpass it. When he was preparing the disciples at the close of his earthly ministry, our Lord uttered a truly amazing prophecy: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32).

Desperation once drove me to adopt this technique, and ever since it has been my principal tactic whenever I encounter opposition. In fact, opposition or no opposition, it is a powerful weapon in the armor of Christian witness. And “lifting up Christ” in this context means simply presenting the claims of the historical Jesus in three indisputable areas.

First, there is that whole aspect of his life where his moral impeccability, his majesty, and his perfection shine out like a beacon light for all to see. There is no room for argument here—the moral grandeur of Christ silences any dissent. Consider him when he was here on the good earth as an incarnate man. Examine him closely—his obedience to God’s commands, his compassion, his instant sensitivity to the needs of others, his approachability. He must have been indeed the most approachable man of all time. Sinners and publicans thronged him even when he sat to eat; they even tore down a roof to get to him, without being reproved. Look at the portrait of him dealing with that tense situation in which a woman taken in adultery was perilously near to being stoned to death, and his gentle deliverance of her. Or look at his reaction to his enemies and all the calumnies and pain they inflicted upon him. On one occasion, against strong pressure, he flung a challenge at the feet of his detractors—“Which of you convicteth me of sin?” (John 8:46)—and no one dared to respond! His moral purity was too patent and glorious for even his enemies to deny.

The second step in this process of “lifting up” Christ is to invite a consideration of his teaching. He himself said that this is one of the key tests of the authenticity of his mission and his claims: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17).

To consider all Christ’s teaching would be inappropriate in an encounter such as this, but a very useful tactic is to focus attention upon the three chapters in Matthew that make up the Sermon on the Mount. Surely the quickest way to take an excursion to the very gates of glory is to read and reread these sublime words! No man can seriously read these indescribable verses with an open heart without finding himself speechless except to say, “Never man spake like this man” (John 7:46). The nearest one can get to the mind and purpose and will of God for the moral destiny of man is the Sermon on the Mount. Even the great Gandhi, whatever else he rejected of what he called institutionalized Christianity, could not dismiss the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, he found the words of Jesus in this text irresistible, and read them daily almost up to the day of his martyrdom.

This sermon is really a sort of highway right to the heart of the Indo-Aryan, whether he be Hindu or Buddhist or Jain or Sikh, for the ideal of a morally and spiritually perfect life is deeply entrenched in his mind. Once interest is kindled, he may be open to the prayerful introduction of other teachings.

Third, and the most delicate of all, one can invite a head-on confrontation with the factuality of Christ’s resurrection from the tomb. Here we must be prepared to encounter much incredulity, if not actual opposition; but this step is crucial. Is it not true that if Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain? We confront downright unbelief with the calm declaration that unbelief in the resurrection creates far more insoluble problems than a simple acceptance of the fact of the resurrection. Without going into too much detail, it would be highly advisable at this stage to point out some of the specific reasons why this unbelief is really untenable. If one rejects the resurrection of Christ from the tomb, then he must find reasonably satisfying answers to such questions as:

1. What brought about the dramatic transformation of Peter and the remaining disciples from a group of frightened men who fled at the Master’s most critical hour to a dynamic company destined to affect the course of history?

2. Is it feasible to believe that men would preach a fraud with such fervent zeal? That they would be prepared to face painful death for witnessing to a lie (we know that most of them were martyred and suffered terrible deaths)?

3. If we leave out God’s hand in the matter, how can we account for the fact that Jesus became the great divide of history, the watershed of time, so that we date even the Roman governor who sent him to the cross by the lifetime of this man he condemned?

If one really keeps one’s focus on Jesus Christ our Lord, success in dislodging an unbeliever from the universalist position becomes possible; the unbeliever may reach a point where the declaration of our Lord, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” flows spontaneously from his lips.

Purushotman M. Krishna is professor of Oriental religions and philosophy in the School of World Mission, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He has the M.Litt. from the University of Durham, England, and the Ph.D. from the New School of Social Research, New York City. He formerly was head of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Durban, Natal, South Africa. He is the author of “Foundations of Hinduism” and “Journey From the East.”

This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY comes three instead of two weeks after the last one, to allow for the first of our staff vacation periods.

We report with regret the death of Olive Cameron Murch, the wife for fifty-six years of our former managing editor, James De Forest Murch. Dr. Murch, a leader in the Christian Churches, has long been a bridge-builder between those sometimes called Campbellites and other evangelicals. We rejoice in his testimony of his sustaining faith in the resurrected Lord.

At a recent CHRISTIANITY TODAY board meeting the directors welcomed three new members: Fred R. Esty, chairman of the United States Banknote Company in New York City; Dr. P. Kenneth Gieser, an opthamologist from Wheaton, Illinois, who was a medical-missionary colleague of our own Dr. L. Nelson Bell (executive editor of the magazine and one of its founding fathers, and currently moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.); and William Mead, president of the Campbell-Taggert Associated Bakeries in Dallas. We expect to publish a list of our board of directors on the masthead soon.

Our Minister’s Workshop column for this and the August 25 issue surveys the vibrant outreach program of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was written by the pastor, James M. Kennedy.

Clichés have a way of acquiring the force of fact in our time. One that has achieved outstanding success today runs like this: each generation must rewrite theology for itself. According to the conventional wisdom, Christian truth constantly eludes verbalized expression; changing forms of speech and communication invalidate previous formulations.

Underlying this way of thinking is the assumption that all phases of culture, including the religious, are shaped largely by linguistic structure. To this has been added the implied claim that the overall attainments of the present era are not only quantitatively greater than those of previous generations but also qualitatively superior. New theological models are being proposed. How continuous these will be with those of the past is not at the moment clear. There is some evidence to support the fear that the architects of today’s theology are largely convinced that the norms of historic Christian thought are irrelevant to today’s world.

There are signs that models drawn from other cultures may be used in the redrafting of theology for our era. This is true, not only within the movement toward a black theology, but with those who have placed themselves at the theological drawing board of mainline religious thought.

Avant-garde theologians no longer feel any special need to justify a radical departure from conventional models. They seem to assume that it is man’s need, rather than God’s mandate, that must determine theological formulation. And they are not noticeably shaken by the fact that our century has witnessed a series of theological debacles: the decline of classical liberalism, the fragmentation of dialectical theologies, and the meteoric rise and demise of the God-is-dead movement(s).

Several characteristics mark the mood that insists on the rewriting of theology for each generation. First, those who advocate a do-it-yourself theology every few years are all but unanimous in their patronizing attitude toward the Christian Scriptures. It is standard procedure among them to assume that the Bible abounds with manifest errors, contradictions, and unhistorical materials. Thus the updating of Christianity is equated with a downgrading of the Word, and with it a dilution of the historic view of the person of our Lord.

A second and parallel tendency is the assumption that the entire traditional definition and conceptualization of God is now outmoded. Some undergird this assumption with a straw-man technique: they portray the historic conception of God in terms that no responsible advocate of traditional theism would recognize, let alone advocate.

Others base their rejection of traditional definitions and conceptions of God upon grounds that, if they may be open to objections, are at least more fair to historic Christian positions. These persons tend to zero in upon what they believe to be the untenable cosmological assumptions of biblical language. Involved here is, of course, the larger form-critical movement, which we cannot consider in detail.

A third characteristic of avant-garde theologians is the tendency toward dispersal of authority. In place of sola scriptura, the regarding of Scripture as the final source of religious truth, there is advocated a sort of a tripod of authority, formed of Scripture, tradition, and contemporary religious consensus. By this logic, historic creeds and confessions can be retained in denominational manuals, alongside contemporary formulations. This procedure forms the basis for the currently “sacred” expression, “theological pluralism.”

Underlying these forms of thought that clamor for periodic complete reformulations of Christian theology are deeper ways of viewing man and things. Modern man has largely ceased to understand himself as a finite being who is part of a cosmos possessing fixed structure and established orders. He insists that “existence is prior to essence” and concludes that he, as an existing being, is the measure of both reality and truth.

He is little disposed to explore the realm of structured reality. Rather, he maximizes his own role as the maker of truth. His predicament, rather than the demands of reality, becomes the measuring rod for what is true. Applied to the understanding of the Christian faith, the existential principle causes him to maintain that revelation demands his response as an essential constitutive element. Thus revelation is always the Bible-plus.

The existential mode of interpretation not only subjectivizes the entire range of truth but also has a profound effect upon the understanding of transcendence. Those who are conditioned by it see the world as an object, and thus become world-transcending. It is, we think, an inescapable consequence that this way of thinking leads to the internalization of the entire range that for lack of a better term we call the transcendent.

Not only is “transcendence” radically redefined as something experienced in man’s inner dimension; God, it is said, can no longer be defined or conceptualized in objective terms. To state the matter bluntly, existential man casts himself in the role of a this-worldly God—that is, of the only God there is.

Theologians who think in these categories feel qualified to assemble a “theology” using concepts that chance to be in vogue to replace the elements that belong to historic Christian faith—occasionally appealing to the Jesus of their construction to validate their non-evangelical construct. Avant-garde theologians seldom have the candor to acknowledge that their products are deviant and non-biblical. Some sense a need to pay lip service to the Scriptures. For example, one far-out thinker reportedly said: “I believe everything that the biblical writers intended to say.” He then proceeded to drain large sections of Scripture of their essential content.

Closely related to this is the tendency of newer theologians, not only to substitute social activism for creedal commitment, but also to sanctify their formulations by an appeal to a redrawn “Jesus.” It is assumed here that our Lord is somehow being reincarnated in contemporary forms of agitation for social change. In keeping with this mood is the assertion that any program that “makes man more human” is by definition Christian. Avant-garde forms of social action thus assume the status of “relevant” theologies.

The basic question may be put thus: Has the Christian faith come to us in throw-away containers? Some will appeal to our Lord’s words about “new wine in old wineskins” as a justification for a “disposable can” type of theological approach. But if Jesus Christ is the way and if the Christian faith has a particularity and finality that derive from the uniqueness of his Person, then Judaism was the old, and Christianity is, in a definitive sense, the new. In this light, the appeal to “new wineskins for each generation” becomes pathetically irrelevant.

Certainly every committed Christian wishes to present his faith in a manner intelligible to his generation. A meaningful approach and vocabulary, yes. A redrafted form of Christianity, no!

HAROLD B. KUHNS

“Have you been born again?” That question, normally associated with revivals and not with political happenings, has been heard over and over again during political rallies this year. And it will be asked many times—and in many ways—at this summer’s two national conventions.

Most of the candidates have already heard that question. Senator Edmund Muskie, campaigning in West Palm Beach, was confronted by Jess C. Moody’s sixteen-year-old daughter Martha (Moody is a well-known Baptist minister). According to Moody, the senator, who is a Catholic, seemed slightly flabbergasted but replied that he was a church member. He commented that throughout New Hampshire young people asked him the same question.

When someone asked George Wallace about his spiritual state, his answer was anything but vague, reports Moody. Wallace testifies that at the age of thirteen he was born again during a little Methodist church revival. In the December issue of the John Birch Society’s American Opinion Wallace was quoted: “I have accepted Christ as my personal Savior.…”

The Wallace campaign has had an evangelistic atmosphere. One observer reported that Wallace rallies combine “old-time rural evangelism, slick country-music salesmanship, and tried-and-true evangelical oratory.” Baptist preacher George Mangum of Selma, Alabama, travels with the campaigns, opening each rally with a “spiritual conversation with our God about some of the political problems in our country.” And, as in a rural revival, ushers pass buckets through the crowd while Mangum appeals for money.

Many Wallace supporters consider him “a good Christian man.” Before he was shot Wallace had planned to attend Billy Graham’s recent Alabama crusade. A report that Graham agreed to coach Wallace on television communication techniques is untrue. Grady Wilson, associate evangelist, nearly denied entrance into the predominantly black West Indian island of Barbados because of Time magazine’s report, wired the editors that the information was incorrect. “Graham has not spoken to Wallace in years,” said Wilson and he reminded the magazine that Graham stays out of politics. A return letter from Time acknowledged the error, reports Graham headquarters.

Other candidates, too, have been questioned on their salvation, Moody reports. A press aide to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey said the senator, a Congregationalist, attends church services as often as possible. In Washington he worships at Chevy Chase Methodist Church and in Waverly, Minnesota, at the Presbyterian Church of Waverly.

Senator George M. McGovern, son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister who graduated from Houghton College, once studied for the ministry. He attended Garrett Seminary and student-pastored for a year at Diamondhead Lake Methodist Church in a small Illinois town. Although McGovern lacks his father’s belief in evangelical Christianity, according to aides, he has a high regard for the Bible. On his office wall hang his favorite Scripture verses.¹Luke 9:24; Micah 6:8; Matthew 25:40; John 8:7, and Luke 6:31.

The climax of campaign witnessing efforts by many Christian young people will begin when Democrats and radical demonstrators roll into Miami.

Demo 72 (the name stands for demonstration, not Democrat), led by Richard Bryant of the Miami Baptist Association and Sammy Tippitt, a Chicago street preacher, has plans to inundate beach and street people—and while they’re at it, the year-round Miami-area residents as well—with gospel literature. Bryant estimates that a thousand kids will be handing out material: a street version of the Gospel of John, a small newspaper called “The Daily For Every News” that is designed for both straights and radicals, and a psychedelic street paper Tippitt prepared.

Members of the Christian World Liberation Front, some Chicago street Christians, and various Miami-area church groups are involved. Demo 72 training sessions will be held on the seventh and eighth of July; on Sunday the ninth, a giant-sized beach prayer meeting will start the effort.

Reports from Miami describe shopkeepers and citizens as “uptight and hysterical”: they fear another Chicago. Jack Cassidy, a United Church of Christ minister and one of the leaders of Religious and Community Leaders Concerned (RCLC), verifies these reports. RCLC has a more structured—and not so evangelistic—approach.

Cassidy explains that RCLC will be working with officials as a neutral third party. Inside the convention hall the group will man a “retreat center,” not really a chapel, says Cassidy. However, chaplains will be on call if needed.

While Christians and radicals confront each other on streets and beaches, Jack Day’s singing group, The New Directions, from Riverside Baptist Church in Miami, will be “soft-selling” the Gospel inside the convention hall. The group was chosen as the official entertainment for the convention by Dick Murphy, Democratic national coordinator. This is a first for a church group—or any religious group.

The group is to sing four times a day and be televised at least once a day. Its 139 young people, ranging from thirteen to twenty-five, have been well trained theologically as well as musically, says the director; when they aren’t performing they will be witnessing.

The opportunities for evangelism are great, report those involved. Never before has so large and intensive a witnessing effort been planned for a political convention. But some expect heavy trouble, contrary to what the demonstrators themselves say will happen. Moody comments that the Church has only “danced around the counterculture people and never really confronted them.” The two conventions this summer will offer a good chance to see if the Church can confront and steal some counterculture advocates—as well as uncommitted delegates—for Christ.

Religion In Transit

Canadian Catholic hospitals will close if provincial governments force them to perform therapeutic abortions, warned hospital association president John Connors.

Moody Institute of Science’s Ultimate Adventure, a movie documenting the first successful motorcycle trip across the Sahara, won the National Evangelical Film Foundation’s “Best Film of the Year” award.

TV evangelist Rex Humbard (he’s on 324 stations weekly) is trying to sell $12.5 million in bonds to finance Mackinac College, purchased last year and set to open this fall.

The Canadian Churchman, an Anglican journal, and the United Methodist New World Outlook, a mission magazine, took top honors in the Associated Church Press awards program.

Personalia

Miss Emily V. Gibbes, a United Presbyterian, will succeed retiring Dr. Gerald K. Knopf as head of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education. She is the first black woman to hold a top NCC position.

The Rev. Max V. Putman, 52, minister of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario, was elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Southern Baptist minister Shirley Carter, 27, the second woman to be ordained by her denomination, and W. Pringle Lee, 52, a Catholic priest until they met in 1970, were wed in Columbia, South Carolina, last month.

World Scene

The 60,000-member Presbyterian Church of England and the 176,000-member Congregational Church in England and Wales voted to proceed with merger this fall, the first union across denominational lines in Britain. Parliament is expected to approve it next month. Dissidents vow to maintain a “continuing Congregational Church.”

For the first time in its 112-year history the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano appeared with a signed editorial (by editor Raimondo Manzini), signaling a major change in policy. The editor will have more freedom in determining political views, while the paper will be the official organ of the Holy See only in release of Vatican news and pontifical documents. Even so, viewpoints can be expected to reflect Vatican thinking.

At its annual meeting the eighty-church Baptist Union of Ireland reported continued growth in membership, a record enrollment at its theological college, and a decision to send missionaries to the continent, commencing with Belgium.

A Vatican art-restoration expert says he is confident Michelangelo’s famous “La Pieta”—badly damaged by a vandal last month—can be restored to near-perfection because of a “perfect” cast made of the masterpiece ten years ago.

That annual family reunion in the South known as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. (PCUS), has all the marks of other family gatherings. Kissin’ cousins embrace if only briefly, gossip is exchanged, meals are eaten, songs are sung, the departed are remembered, prayers are said, deference is paid to the elders, some business is transacted. Around the edges of the crowd are some trying to make deals, others hatching up some kind of mischief, and some expressing unhappiness with the whole program.

This year at Montreat, North Carolina, a favorite uncle was chosen chairman (or moderator, as Presbyterians say). He was the favorite of a majority, at any rate. It took two ballots, and on the second L. Nelson Bell won.

The executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, former medical missionary, is uncle to more than one generation of children of missionaries and Montreat summer visitors. He has lived on the church’s assembly grounds since returning from China in 1941.

He won the denomination’s top post over another medical man, Joseph A. Norton, a Little Rock radiologist who is his junior by twenty-five years. When the voting was all over, Bell had a 221 to 212 victory over Norton. He appealed for the prayers of the assembly. “By God’s help,” he promised, “this time next year we’re going to be closer together than ever before.”

Bell was nominated by Texas lawyer Dale Edwards, who said he was not speaking for any group or faction but simply believed Bell was the man most likely to succeed in reconciling the dissension-torn church. Election of a theological conservative can be construed as direct word from the Assembly that there is a place for conservatives in the denomination.

Bell’s separation from the organized conservative forces in the church last August (see September 24, 1971, issue, page 42) was not mentioned in the nominating speech, but there was scarcely a person in the Assembly who had not heard of his refusal to endorse dissidents planning for a “continuing” Presbyterian church in the event of a PCUS-United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (UPCUSA), merger.

With the election over, the commissioners gave retiring moderator Ben Lacy Rose a standing ovation. He turned out to be more active in “retirement” than many expected. Not only did Bell call on him to preside during some crucial debates, but he was also a leading debater on several issues.

The Assembly followed the lead of Lacy, a professor at Union seminary, Richmond, on the question of staying in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), on calling for an end to the war in Southeast Asia by the end of this year, on reaffirming the legality of union presbyteries with the UPCUSA, on rejecting a proposed commendation of Brazil’s activist Roman Catholic archbishop Dom Helder Camara, and on approving a minimal doctrinal statement about evangelism.

Rose came out of the assembly with more power than Southern Presbyterians have ever given any officer. He will be chairman of a provisional general executive board that during the coming year will supervise agency restructuring. All the denomination’s program and service boards will go out of existence by January 1, 1974, and their functions will be taken over by a single huge body.

William A. Benfield, Jr. (1970 moderator), Rose, Bell, the other candidates for moderator this year, and about sixty other elected members will make up the provisional board. It will have five divisions; Rose will suggest which members will serve on which division. Initial-step appointments are expected to be made before the next Assembly. First steps also will have been taken by then in a new priority-setting process so that the 1973 meeting of the denomination’s governing board can approve the goals.

Proponents of the reorganization argued at Montreat that instead of centralizing power the new plan puts more decision-making authority in the church courts at all levels. Of the seventy-one members on the permanent board, forty-two will be nominated by the seven new regional senates. Assembly commissioners elected by the presbyteries will have a larger role in approving priorities and budgets than before, proponents claimed.

As the new structure is being put together during the coming year, the denomination will also be adjusting to the reduction of senates from fifteen to seven.

Among the constitutional matters on which the presbyteries will be expected to vote is church union. Since the talks with both the UPCUSA and COCU are in the stage of studying draft plans of union, there will be no vote until after the lines are redrawn. The Assembly turned down an attempt to instruct the UPCUSA negotiating committee to present a plan next year.

The United Presbyterian withdrawal from COCU gave Rose an argument for continued PCUS participation. He said the consultation needed the only Reformed voice remaining in the talks. The Assembly voted 264 to 164 to remain.

With much of its time devoted to housekeeping and political matters, the Assembly had little left for theological concerns. At one point the theology of Campus Crusade for Christ came under a speaker’s fire, but the court—at the urging of several students—voted to pray for that organization’s Explo ’72, which was meeting the same week. On the final morning a new interpretation of ordination vows for both laity and clergy was approved, with the court rejecting 264 to 50 a report that would have put the denomination on record as holding to biblical inerrancy.

Zaire: Unwilling Partners

Evangelical missions and churches in Zaire are breathing a bit easier but enjoying it less following the decision of the government to allow them to continue operation—as members of the liberal-oriented Church of Christ of Zaire (CCZ), the only Protestant church now permitted to function. All thirty-three groups of the largely conservative Council of Protestant Churches, axed in a government crackdown on proliferation of religious sects and pseudoreligious groups (see April 14 issue, page 4, and May 12 issue, page 37), were on a recently released list of seventy-two bodies the government will recognize. Also on the list: Mormons and several groups rejected by the other five officially recognized religious groups. Curiously, though lumped together in the CCZ, each group will be allowed to retain its “proper legal status.”

The CCZ, in contradiction to its earlier call for other churches to obey the government, denounced the list and said it would publish its own within ten days. President Mobutu Sese Seko apparently is caught in a behind-the-scenes struggle between opposing forces in his government. CCZ leader Bokambanza Bokeleale was suddenly called to Geneva for consultation with World Council of Churches leaders. (“We are listening to all sides,” commented WCC general secretary Eugene Carson Blake while disclaiming that the WCC is “taking an active role in deciding or influencing this matter.”)

Meanwhile, most of the evangelical groups have adopted a wait-and-see posture. Only a few persons have left over the issue of separatism. But, clearly, the biggest crisis is yet to come.

ROBERT L. NIKLAUS

Rebuke From Fellow Peaceniks

Wrangling within the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference has been further underlined in an open letter from the East German regional committee chiding the CPC’s U. S. supporters. While acknowledging past American diligence in the antiwar cause (pointing out that Daniel Berrigan had participated in the CPC’s 1964 Prague assembly), the letter asks bluntly, “What are the reasons for which your efforts have until now been without result?” Were they concerned only with the lives of GI’s and not with the Asians involved, the letter asked. “How else is it to be explained that the number of Christians participating in anti-war campaigns has diminished since the time that almost only Asians have been killed on the battlefields?” The American methods of legal dissent, suggests the letter, “lead in essence to a stabilization of the system which is waging the war in Southeast Asia.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Sweden’S War On The Family

In 1968 the Swedish government issued a report called “The Status of Women in Sweden.” Stockholm’s Socialist daily Aftonbladet headlined its story, “Women, Don’t Let a Man Support You!” (Sept. 28, 1968, p. 1), and commented (favorably), “The government is making an assault on marriage … The place of woman is in the labor-market, not the home.”

The following year the Swedish minister of justice established a committee to study the abolition of marriage in the old sense. The new laws accomplishing this abolition may be enacted to take effect on July 1, 1973, according to Svenska Dagbladet (June 8, 1972, p. 7). They will mean the end of both religious and civil marriage ceremonies. A simple notification will replace both marriage and—after a three-or six-month “period of reflection”—divorce. Marriage will officially mean little more for a couple than a common address—there are no special duties or rights.

The Swedish tax reforms of 1970 had already abolished all the tax advantages of marriage. In fact, not only do children born out of wedlock now receive larger state subsidies than those born to a married couple, but unmarried parents get a better tax break and the children get a better deal at the state-run day nurseries.

Proposed new laws would pressure all children to attend state day nurseries from age six months. The official Swedish Investigation Commission for Day Nurseries has this to say: “The children need to experience alternative systems of values and norms.…” The compulsory state nursery must come because “it offers more models of imitation and identification than the parents.” Mrs. Alva Myrdal, Sweden’s atheistic minister for church affairs, has publicly declared that the government will pay no attention to “orthodox zealots” who object to this obligatory state program; the state will never permit Christians to split society.”

Another aspect of the Swedish government’s strategy for becoming the only determining factor in the education of children is the obligatory teaching in sex-education courses that sexual relationships are more or less acceptable at any age. There is a campaign against parents who “poison children with Christian morality.”

When Sweden’s present minority prime minister, Olof Palmé, was minister of education, he proclaimed the state’s intention to force the closure of Sweden’s few remaining private schools (then numbering fifty, now about twenty). Compulsory state religious instruction aims, according to Bishop Bo Giertz of Gothenburg, at creating skeptics and atheists. In 1971 thousands of Christians protested this tightening state monopoly to U Thant, then secretary general of the United Nations. A small group of Lutherans has opened a court action against the Swedish government before the Commission on Human Rights of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The Swedish government was one of the prime movers in forcing Greece out of the Council of Europe because of alleged lack of democratic freedoms there.

An action committee led by twenty-eight representatives of religious and political groups has launched an appeal “Rädda Familjen!” (Save the family!) in an attempt to alert Swedes to the implications of what their government is planning. So far the appeal has made little headway. An ideological indifference has characterized most Swedes since the Social Democrats began their unbroken reign forty years ago.

The present Social Democratic government controls 48 per cent of the seats in the Riksdag, and can maintain itself in power only because the Communists (3 per cent) do not vote against it.

TOM G. A. HARDT

Foul Play On The Tiber

“Nothing but fairy tales!” brusquely commented the ex-secretary of Pope Pius XI, Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri. Church-history buffs would swear, however, that they were perusing a document straight out of the Middle Ages, when Machiavellian intrigue enveloped the papal throne with uncanny regularity. According to French and Italian journals, Pope Pius XI was assassinated February 10, 1939, on orders of Benito Mussolini, and Pope Pius XII was the subject of a kidnap plot by Hitler.

Paris Match, a French weekly, published what it claimed to be excerpts from the memoirs of the former deacon of the Sacred College of Cardinals, French Eugène Cardinal Tisserant, who died last February. An intimate friend of the defunct Tisserant, Monsignor Georges Roche, allegedly made the memoirs available to the press, announcing that Tisserant had left in his possession “an explosive document.”

Roche, however, denied that he had given the weekly paper the information that formed the basis of its articles; he called the allegation “utterly without foundation.” There are reports that Roche hired two lawyers in Rome to “defend my honor.”

French and Italians accepted these revelations as normal fare for their neighbor across the Tiber. Living in Italy for the past seventeen years, this writer has observed that European Latins often gossip about “possible” foul play in Vatican circles. In 1962 the congenial barber who regularly cuts my hair predicted that Curia conservatives were so infuriated with Pope John XXIII at the end of Vatican Council II’s first session that John would never live to open the second session the following year. He didn’t—and you’ll never convince my barber that he wasn’t put away.

ROYAL L. PECK

NEWS

Billboards and full-page newspaper ads in Dallas last month announced, “Something historic is going to happen here.” And happen it did. Riding the wave of the Jesus revolution, Campus Crusade for Christ’s International Student Congress on Evangelism—billed as Explo ’72—turned out to be the largest youth training conference in church history. It ended with the biggest Jesus music festival ever (between 120,000 and 180,000 attended, according to police and newspaper estimates). And the venerable Adolphus Hotel packed in 2,500 guests (many five to a room), 1,000 more than its previous record.

But for many, the five-day event was historic in another way, as summed up by Florida governor Reubin Askew, a Southern Presbyterian elder: “Explo has been the greatest experience of my life.” (Askew and his wife originally signed up only as delegates “to find out how to share our faith better,” but he was later drafted to speak to the hundreds of business executives attending Explo. Asked whether he had hit the streets Crusade-style to witness, he replied with a smile, “No, but I’ve been doing my share of witnessing out in the hotel halls.”)

Explo attracted 75,000 registered delegates (including 35,000 high schoolers and 30,000 collegians) and approximately 10,000 visitors. This was short of Crusade’s goal of 100,000, but it was enough to fill the Cotton Bowl four nights and sixty-five conference sites scattered throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area every morning—and to create Excedrin-sized headaches for staffers responsible for daily transportation. In fact, despite the use of 750 buses, the people-moving problem defied solution. Many participants simply hoofed around on their own.

Generally, the conferees spent their mornings in training sessions where they were addressed by Crusade staffers and name evangelical leaders. There were separate conferences for students, ministers, musicians, laymen, internationals, and other categories.

Afternoons were devoted to street witnessing (5,000 professions of faith were recorded in door-to-door visits in addition to hundreds of decisions in street encounters—including a policeman seen kneeling downtown with three youths praying over him) and special seminars. The latter ranged from advice on dating, sex, and marriage to confabs for military personnel, mass-media people, and blacks. (Although Crusade mounted a special drive, backed by more than $50,000 in scholarships, to recruit blacks for Explo, fewer than 3,000 attended. Blacks are not as affluent and thus as free to leave jobs as whites, Crusade head Bill Bright explained. Black staffer Chuck Singleton, 21, added that the percentage of blacks at Explo was “very large compared to other evangelical meetings.” Evangelists Tom Skinner and Bill Pannell were among black leaders on Explo’s program.)

Evenings were spent in giant peprally style meetings in the Cotton Bowl. “Oh, wow, I can just feel the love and joy here!” one youth exclaimed. His comment was typical. The rallies featured musical headliners (gospel groups such as “Love Song” and “Andrae Crouch and the Disciples,” Godspell star Katie Henley singing her hit song “Day by Day,” and many other personalities), testimonies by professional athletes, accounts of witnessing, and speeches by Bright, honorary Explo chairman Billy Graham, and Los Angeles black Baptist minister Edward Hill. Emotion ran high as the thousands of young people clapped hands, flashed the “One Way” sign, sent up great shouts of “Praise the Lord!,” whisper-chanted “Jesus is coming,” and gave Hill and Graham thunderous ovations.

Even a half inch of rain that washed out part of Thursday night’s program didn’t dampen spirits. Kids sloshed through the downpour to the parking lot singing “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

The conferees poured into Dallas from 100 nations, with delegations arriving aboard nearly 700 chartered buses and more than 100 planes. Crusade’s staff handled the crunch of registration lines and accommodation demands with amazingly few snafus in time for everyone to be bedded down the first night. (About 14,000 empty apartment units were made available at the last minute and many high schoolers were shifted there from private homes, irking a few citizens who complained they were not informed in time. These were the only complaints aired by area residents all week.)

Accommodations ranged from plush hotels for top-echelon business executives and their families to “Tent City” outside Dallas, where 2,000 Jesus people, money-short mountain folk, and other campers blended joyfully into a sort of “Godstock” tribe. (The Thursday-night rainstorm blew down many tents and soaked belongings; hundreds of nearby residents opened their homes for the night to washed-out campers.)

Logistics was a monumental problem, but everything worked out remarkably well. Three weeks before Explo, most of the major caterers bowed out, saying the job was too big for them. Leaders finally persuaded a Fort Worth caterer to tackle the task of feeding the 35,000 high schoolers at supper time in a large hall adjacent to the Cotton Bowl.

The budget was something else. Based on the expected registration of 100,000 at $25 each, Crusade had budgeted $2.4 million for Explo. Income was considerably less than that and actual costs closer to $3 million. The amount includes about $200,000 for television production costs (three hours of Explo were to be aired nationwide on 265 stations during the third week of July). Unlike some conventions, Explo received no funds from Dallas, whose economy was fattened by about $9 million because of the event. Explo director Paul Eshleman, 29, and Bright expect the deficit to be erased soon. Two offerings ($150,000 plus pledges at the Cotton Bowl and $4,000 at the downtown music festival) will be used to buy TV time. Bright is counting on televiewers to pick up the bulk of the TV tab.

Bright first got the idea for Explo at the 1966 U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis, and his staff worked steadily the past two years to make it a reality. Among its announced purposes: to train people how to witness; to recruit students and workers for Christian schools and organizations; to help the church in evangelism; to impart an international vision for outreach; to teach Christians that their faith must be applied to social problems; and to create a nationwide momentum—“to show that Christian young people are on the march,” as Graham put it. Delegates were urged to share their Explo training with at least five others back home.

No one seemed to flinch at Bright’s statement that the entire world can be evangelized by 1980 if everybody works together. As living proof that evangelicals can work together both Operation Mobilization and the Navigators meshed training for hundreds of their workers with the Explo program. Free exhibit space was given to more than 200 schools and organizations; many were swamped by thousands of youths wanting giveaways and information. An estimated 10,000 paid $3 each to Interchristo, a Seattle firm that matches applicants by computer to vocational needs of organizations. Crusade’s bookstores also did land office business. The bestseller: The Living New Testament.

Members of the Christian World Liberation Front, a 1969 Berkeley spin-off from Crusade, were given platform time at Tent City to train delegates in street witnessing. Pentecostals, including Assembly of God head Thomas Zimmerman, took leadership roles with the understanding that they would not promote speaking in tongues, but some groups at Tent City held charismatic meetings, and Army General Ralph Haines spoke warmly of the “baptism of the Spirit” in testimonies at the Cotton Bowl and in a military seminar. No one seemed to mind, but Bright and other speakers pointedly stressed that faith must prevail over reason.

Not everybody was plugged into Explo’s togetherness. The Children of God sect (see November 5, 1971, issue, page 38) set up a coffeehouse across the street from Fair Park (location of the Cotton Bowl and other main Explo facilities), and succeeded in siphoning off about a dozen delegates. The Pentecostal Student Fellowship International, a unitarian “Jesus only” sect, sent 500 youths to Dallas with literature that looked like Explo’s to push the tongues experience, but met with little success.

The People’s Christian Coalition, an anti-war group composed mainly of Trinity college and seminary students from Deerfield, Illinois, kept Crusade officials hopping to head off leafleting and pint-sized demonstrations. Two dozen Coalition members and Mennonites one night in the Cotton Bowl held up a large banner reading “Cross or flag, God or Country?” and chanted “Stop the war” but were promptly shushed by the crowd. Coalition spokesmen, including an aide to Senator Mark Hatfield, complained that Explo evidenced a lack of social consciousness in failing to grapple with such issues as war and racism. Asked about their reactions, a number of delegates said they too were against the Indochina war but had come to hear about evangelism instead.

Overall, Explo was apparently a big plus for virtually everyone there. A Korean athlete who gave up a berth in the Olympics to attend said it was worth the cost. Outsiders remarked about the abundance of love, joy, peace, and patience evident among participants. “They look at you like you’re a human being and not a cop,” commented Deputy Police Chief J. M. Souter. “That means a lot to me.” Similarly, the love vibrations got through to three reporters from major dailies and a number of bus drivers who prayed to receive Christ.

Dallas felt the impact too, thanks to both a top-drawer evangelistic campaign in the mass media and personal contacts with delegates. Big D’s citizens sorely miss all those smiles around town, a disc jockey and a newspaper editor lamented separately after the Explo crowd left.

Whether Explo ’72 sparks a global chain reaction remains to be seen, but some Crusade staffers are already at work on another Explo, set for Korea in 1974 with an attendance goal of 300,000.

Cloudy Forecast For The Ncc

Is the ecumenical boat on such stormy waters that it will not survive another General Assembly of the National Council of Churches?

About half the members of the NCC General Board faced that question last month at the last meeting they will hold before their triennial assembly at Dallas in December. They were reminded that the 1969 triennial assembly in Detroit was disrupted by protesting minorities, and its docket was discarded.

Much of their meeting time during the past two and one-half years has been devoted to planning the reorganization that board members hope will strengthen the ship by empowering minorities. Finishing touches were put on the proposal for a new ecumenical organization at the June board meeting, held in New York’s Riverside Church.

It was also at Riverside Church, in the shadow of the NCC’s headquarters building, that the board recommended a new constitution to the 1963 General Assembly. That reorganization was supposed to streamline the council and make it more responsive to the will of member denominations.

Last month, in the same assembly hall where it met in June, 1963, the board put its stamp of approval on another constitution that in some respects is similar to the pre-1963 version. If the Dallas meeting ratifies the document, the governing board of the new council could have as many as 44 of 341 members who are not members of denominational delegations. The additional persons, chosen because of special competence or as representatives of special-interest groups, could be Roman Catholics or communicants of other denominations outside the council.

A proposal made at Detroit in 1969 was to include representatives of secular bodies, opening up the possibility that among those governing the council would be some with no religious affiliation at all. The final compromise reached at last month’s meeting provided that the “additional” members would have to be affiliated with a church eligible for membership in the NCC (because of its agreement with the broad doctrinal statement in the preamble to the constitution). The Roman Catholic Church is one of the many on the NCC’s eligible list.

Each person coming from outside the member denominations would also have to be approved by one of the member denominations after it consulted with the church to which the person belonged.

The preamble itself will be up for revision at Dallas. A committee appointed at the February board meeting recommended a new statement that was adopted with slight amendment. There had been appeals for a more trinitarian and more scriptural basis, akin to that of the World Council of Churches.

The text that will be recommended to the Dallas assembly is:

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U. S. A. is a cooperative agency of Christian communions seeking to fulfill the unity and mission to which God calls them. The member communions, responding to the gospel revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, as Saviour and Lord. Relying on the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the council works to bring churches into a life-giving fellowship and into common witness, study and action to the glory of God and in service to all creation.

The doctrinal section in the current preample refers to “communions which confess Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Saviour.”

The World Council describes itself as “a fellowship of churches which confesses the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seeks to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” One board member criticized the new statement as not being trinitarian since there was no explicit reference to the Father, but a last minute attempt to add “Father” failed.

While organizational and doctrinal discussions took up the board’s time, the main cloud on the horizon seemed to be financial. A provision of the new plan calls for member communions to lose their voting power in the governing board if they fail to pay a fair share of administrative costs.

Several denominations, including the largest member, the United Methodist Church, indicated they would have difficulty assuming the new financial load. The committee proposing the restructure had recommended a three-year period in which denominations could raise their level of giving without reduction of voting strength. The board adopted a five-year period on recommendation of its finance committee.

Instead of increasing, NCC income is continuing to decrease. This year’s approved budget is $14 million, while the comparable figure for 1969 was nearly $19 million. There were 168 executives on the staff in the year of that assembly. Now, a triennium later, the number is 116.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

‘That There May Be Equality’

Jesus and the Poor, by Richard Batey (Harper & Row, 1972, 114 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Ronald J. Sider, assistant professor of history, Messiah College Campus at Temple University, Philadelphia.

How central was concern for the poor in the theology and ministry of Jesus, the Jerusalem church, and Paul? Chapters two, three, and four of Jesus and the Poor contain a concise discussion of the relevant New Testament texts.

Both by birth and by profession as a rabbi, Jesus was poor. Although Richard Batey does not argue that Jesus led a lower-class movement of economic revolution, he does insist that Jesus’ message envisaged a new economic order. Repeatedly, Jesus taught that the existing relation between rich and poor would be reversed in the kingdom, which would be filled with the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In his teaching on alms, wealth, and possessions, Jesus pointed toward a new economic order symbolized by the common purse that he and the twelve shared.

In chapter three, “The Poverty Programs in the Early Church,” Batey shows how the first believers in Jerusalem continued the material sharing practiced by Jesus and his disciples. Both the spontaneous table fellowship and the voluntary community of goods at Jerusalem show that Christian fellowship (koinonia) included sharing possessions. Private ownership was far less significant than the brother’s need. This new life-style of economic sharing was itself a proclamation of the new life made possible by faith in Christ.

However, the new Christian community’s attractiveness to the large numbers of poverty-stricken Jews who normally flocked to the Holy City led to a crisis. Batey thinks it is very important to remember that the first crisis in church history was not the problem of the relation between Jewish and Gentile Christianity but rather the crisis over how to care for all the poor Christians in Jerusalem.

In a fascinating chapter on “Paul and the Collection,” Batey shows how the desperate poverty of the Jerusalem church offered Paul the opportunity to vindicate his mission to the Gentiles and unify the Gentile and Jewish churches. The money he diligently collected in Corinth, Macedonia, and elsewhere became a symbol of the unity of the entire body of Christ.

In discussing Paul’s theological basis for this collection, however, Batey tends to weaken the radical principle offered in Second Corinthians 8:8–15. While it is true that “no certain amount or percentage is suggested by Paul,” it is extremely important that contemporary middle-class evangelicals feel the full force of Paul’s radical principle: “As a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want so that [later] their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality.”

Batey has written a useful book. There is not a great deal that is new here, but it is helpful to have a comprehensive summary of what the New Testament says about the poor. (Short chapters on “A Theology of Poverty” and “The Poor in Israel” round out the book.) I wish, however, that he had offered more suggestions on how contemporary Christians can faithfully exhibit the economic life-style of Jesus and the early Church. Many American Christians easily forget that fellow Christians in such places as Appalachia, the inner cities, and the Third World are starving while we anguish over how we can possibly get along on an eight, ten, or fifteen thousand annual income. Thanks to clever and incessant advertising, vast numbers of people in our evangelical churches have been brainwashed into believing the prevailing culture’s lie that bigger houses, larger businesses, and more luxurious gadgets are worthy goals in life. Wealth is our most common idol. Having convinced ourselves that we must keep up with our neighbors or even go them one better (so that we can witness to them better?!), we buy another dress, suit, or car and thus improve our “standard of living.” The standard of living is the god of twentieth-century America and Europe and the adman is its prophet.

We Western Christians would astound the world if even one-tenth of us had the faith and obedience to share more than a mere token of our relative wealth with needy fellow Christians here and abroad—“that there may be equality”! Our life-style would then be a proclamation that the risen Jesus truly regenerates and transforms egocentric sinners. Dare we follow St. Paul?

Perhaps the only way we can break free from the materialistic stranglehold that is slowly suffocating us is for Christians to adopt some specific plan of vastly increased giving. A graduated increase above the basic tithe would be one answer. Communal groups within the Jesus movement and elsewhere are exploring another approach. We need widespread theoretical and practical exploration of different patterns of economic sharing within the body of Christ. We who accept most firmly the authority of the biblical revelation must find specific ways to return to the life-style of Jesus and the apostles, for whom fellowship included economic sharing “that there may be equality.”

The Unique Disclosure

The Old Testament: Its Claims and Its Critics, by Oswald T. Allis (Baker, and Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972, 509 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Ludwig R. Dewitz, professor of Old Testament, Columbia Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

Many of the themes that have flowed forth from this nonagenarian’s pen over the years are gathered up in his most recent book. The title is somewhat ambiguous in that the word “claims” might be understood from the point of view of theological content, but Dr. Allis focuses on the historical data, which, he asserts, must not be tampered with and can only be properly evaluated from an “inside” point of view. Since “the biblical history is consistently and sanely supernatural from beginning to end,” Allis maintains that “the history recorded in the Old Testament is a unique history and is to be studied as such. It is not to be measured and tested as to its correctness and accuracy by the course of history among the neighboring nations.”

For one who, like Allis, acknowledges the unique disclosure of God in the Old Testament and realizes his way of action, nearly everything falls into place. There are hardly any problems left. A few chronological items may defy final solution, the date of the Exodus may remain open-ended, but since “supernatural” happenings are to be expected when the transcendant God intervenes in history, the miracles of the Old Testament pose no problem. Thus the, 600,000 men involved in the Exodus should raise no question, for “it is only when full justice is done to the supernatural in the record that [the numbers] become credible and we can accept and rejoice in them as the biblical writer would have us do.”

Although many present-day Old Testament scholars have abandoned Wellhausen’s basic suppositions, Allis still thinks they do not honor the claims of the Old Testament; he is highly critical of Eichrodt, von Rad, and Barth, not to mention Eissfeldt, Mowinckel, and Noth. One wonders what positive content Allis’s historical and theological research would have, apart from a rich devotional attitude and repetition of biblical statements, if his attacks were not so fully launched against all proponents of “non-conservative” views.

However, Allis knows his subject, and his book is an excellent balancing factor against scholars who are apt to react over-critically against biblical statements and are over-confident when it comes to extra-biblical sources. Archaeological data and literary discoveries have often been misused in that a house has been constructed on what really is not more than a pebble. Allis presents some good examples of such aberrations.

A short chapter deals with “Israel and the Land of Promise.” Here one wonders if an Augustinian or Lutheran view has overextended itself when Allis writes in regard to Hitler’s attempted genocide of the Jews: “We think with horror of this terrible scourge and of Hitler as a devil and a mad man. But, in the light of the Scriptures, can we deny that this, like the other visitations through which Israel passed, was a punishment for sin?” Referring to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, the exile, the destruction of Jerusalem, Allis continues “can it be denied that the recent genocide attempt of Hitler with its insufferable horrors was a further punishment for the age-long refusal of the Jews to recognize and receive their King?” Although the author seems to know something of Christian-Jewish relations through the centuries, his judgment appears unwarranted and rather biased, to put it mildly.

The book, which is an outgrowth of special lectures at Fuller Seminary delivered two decades ago, is long and somewhat repetitive. The concluding chapter on chronology is worth studying, as is indeed the whole book, since it presents a point of view rarely articulated in these days.

Newly Published

Demons, Demons, Demons: A Christian Guide Through the Murkey Maze of the Occult, by John Newport (Broadman, 159 pp., $4.95). Magic, witchcraft, astrology, Tarot, and spiritualism are among the topics treated by a philosophy of religion professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. One of the better treatments of these rival religions from an evangelical viewpoint.

God Help Me, I’m a Parent!, by Gordon McLean (Creation House, 109 pp., $3.95). A book to impress parents—and would-be parents—with the deep responsibility of raising children.

The Book of Isaiah: Volume III, by Edward J. Young (Eerdmans, 579 pp., $9.95). The late Westminster professor’s monumental commentary is now complete with this volume covering chapters 40–66.

Ethics: Real or Relative?, by William H. Bartlette (Vantage, 135 pp., $4.50). A popularly written, straightforward discussion of the shift from absolute to relativistic ethics with the author’s proposals for a return to biblical standards.

The Broadman Bible Commentary: Volumes 7 and 12, edited by Clifton Allen (Broadman, 394 and 392 pp., $7.50 each). With the appearance of Hosea through Malachi and Hebrews through Revelation, this set, which can be helpful if used with discretion, is complete (except for the revision being done on the first volume).

Introduction to Indian Religious Thought, by Paul Younger (Westminster, 142 pp., $2.45 pb). A helpful and informative introduction by one who has apparently bought the package.

Shout It From the Housetops, by Pat Robertson (Logos, 238 pp., $4.95). Autobiography of a U. S. Senator’s son who has built a Christian television station and broadcast network.

Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation, by W. Nijenhuis (E. J. Brill, [Leiden, Netherlands], 220 pp., 56 guilders). Nine first-rate essays, newly published or translated, on such topics as Cranmer on the eucharist, Bucer on the Jews, Calvin on the Augsburg Confession, and Presbyterians versus Episcopalians at Dordt.

Christ and the Modern Mind, edited by Robert W. Smith (Inter-Varsity, 312 pp., $3.50 pb). A helpful introduction to the various academic disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. For the Christian about to enter college or choose a major.

Afro-American Religious Studies, by Ethel Williams and Clifton Brown (Scarecrow [Box 656, Metuchen, N.J. 08840], 454 pp., $12.50). Comprehensive classified bibliography of the literature, together with where copies may be found. Belongs in every institutional theological library.

The Church in God’s Program, by Robert L. Saucy (Moody, 254 pp., $5.95). A major work on the nature and role of the Church from a generally Calvinist/Baptist perspective; clear, concise, and thorough, with a fair presentation of other points of view.

They Found a Common Language, by W. Cameron Townsend (Harper & Row, 124 pp., $5.95). The founder of Wycliffe reports on his trip to the Soviet Union (which is only half Russian), in which he observed many of its language groups. He suggests workable ways for increasing communication in other multilingual lands, including America.

Old Testament Covenant, by D. J. McCarthy (John Knox, 112 pp., $3.95 pb). A Catholic scholar’s brief but highly detailed study of the Old Testament concept of covenant. A masterly summary of the detailed work of many recent scholars. Unfortunately, the authoritative continuing value of the Old Testament documents disappears in a welter of citations and footnotes.

Reflections on the Manson Trial, by Rosemary Baer (Word, 175 pp., $4.95). An interesting look at the juror’s responsibilities, and those of his family. Written journal-fashion by the wife of one of the Manson jurors; both she and he are committed Christians.

God Is Great, God Is Good, by Rolf Aaseng (Augsburg, 125 pp., $3.95). An excellent collection of fifty-six messages from the Bible suitable for reading and discussing at devotions of families with young children.

Neo-Pentecostal Doctrine

Holy Spirit Baptism, by Anthony A. Hoekema (Eerdmans, 1972, 101 pp., $1.95 pb), is reviewed by Watson Mills, associate professor of philosophy and religion, Averett College, Danville, Virginia.

In his earlier volume, What About Tongue-Speaking? Eerdmans, 1966), Calvin Seminary professor Anthony Hoekema dealt with the psychological aspects of this phenomenon, giving attention to the history of Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism. Now, limiting himself to a consideration of neo-Pentecostalism, he sets out to discover whether the biblical record offers support for the concept of “Spirit-baptism.” He clearly states that he in no way rejects neo-Pentecostals as brothers but steadfastly maintains that the teaching of “Scripture must always be normative for our Christian experience.”

Chapter one is given to a brief statement of “the” neo-Pentecostal teaching on the baptism in the Spirit. In presenting the neo-Pentecostal view Hoekema quotes Laurence Christenson, John Sherrill, Robert C. Frost, and Frederick Dale Bruner. But these are hardly adequate for demonstrating the variety found in neo-Pentecostalism.

Curiously, although Hoekema says in his preface that he will not focus upon “tongue-speaking as such,” he devotes more pages to it than to Holy Spirit baptism itself.

The main thrust of the book is the examination in chapter two of the pertinent biblical passages. Actually, the New Testament does not contain the expression “baptism in the Spirit” but rather a number of instances in which the verb “to be baptized” is used in connection with the Holy Spirit. Of the seven instances, five (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5) refer to the event of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Likewise, Hoekema regards Acts 11:16 as a reference to a Spirit baptism that was simultaneous with an integral part of conversion. He gives a similar interpretation to the seventh reference, First Corinthians 12:13.

Hoekema’s conclusion is clear: “Never in the New Testament is the expression ‘to be baptized in the Spirit’ used to describe a post-conversion reception of the totality of fullness of the Spirit.”

IF I WERE EDITOR …

“You know what I’d do if I were editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY?”

My dinner companion, one of the editors of this fortnightly, nearly choked on his truffled frog’s legs.

After slapping him on the back and restoring him to his former state of hyperconsciousness, I awaited his “What?” Instead he replied, “Preposterous!” “Can’t you use your imagination?” I asked.

“There isn’t that much imagination in the whole world.”

“Nevertheless, if I were …”

“How can you nevertheless your way around such a palpable absurdity?” “Who’s palpable?”

“Absurdity. Palpable is an adjective modifying absurdity.”

“That’s the trouble with you editors—you’re always changing the subject. Why can’t you think of me as an editor at CHRISTIANITY TODAY?”

“Well, the evidence is so overwhelming I hardly know where to begin. For one thing, you don’t have a Ph.D.” “How do you know I don’t have a Ph.D.?”

“It’s obvious.”

“Well, you have a Ph.D. and it’s not so obvious, so what diff …”

“I beg your pardon …”

“Look,” I said hurriedly, “let’s not get sidetracked. I’m trying to offer some helpful suggestions. Just think of me as the typical reader of the magazine.”

He closed one eye, squinted with the other, co*cked his head to one side, and paused for a moment with his fork in mid air. “Nope—that won’t work either. You’re not my idea of the typical reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. AS a matter of fact, you’re not my idea of the typical anything.”

“Besides,” he continued, “to take you as the typical reader would predicate an acceptance of you as a spokesman for our other readers. We have no assurance that you’re qualified to voice the concerns of our constituency.” (That’s editorese for: “Who are you to speak for the masses?”)

So there you have it, friends. I need your help. Why don’t you sit down right now and complete this paragraph in 100 words or fewer: “If I were editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I would …” (All of you who were about to reach for your pens to write “… fire Eutychus V” just cut it out. Try to be serious for once in your lives.)

Send your suggestions to me at CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I’ll read them all and pass them on to the editors. What they’ll do with them is beyond the control of mere mortals like you and me.

FREEDOM OF SURRENDER

Thank you for your May 12 article, “An Inside View of Alcoholism.” Like Paul, the author, I too am a Christian alcoholic and have long hoped to see evangelical media taking educational responsibility in this most misunderstood area.

In his article Paul discusses the ravages of autonomy on the alcoholic. This is precisely why the third step (of AA’s twelve steps of recovery)—turning our wills and lives over to God—is so essential. All my life I resisted God’s control because I didn’t want to lose my rights or freedom, not realizing that only in total abandonment to God could I ever experience genuine freedom and lose nothing more than my right to destroy myself. I’m also glad the article pointed out the fact that we all, alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike, need to reach this point before we can truly partake of the marvelous liberty and abundant life which Christ offers. As Isaiah 30:18 says, “… he will conquer you to bless you …” (Living version) … I, too, have found a haven in AA. Together we learn to take individual responsibility for our own attitudes and actions and to bear one another’s burdens—two basic Christian principles. This does not take the place of my church fellowship but rather supplements it. Unfortunately, much of our society still places a stigma on alcoholism—and this is particularly true in evangelical circles—which often deters the suffering alcoholic from seeking help. I feel God uses AA to treat my disease just as he uses insulin to treat diabetes, and we would certainly not refuse the diabetic his insulin nor deny him Christian fellowship. Thank you, Paul, for sharing your experience, strength, and hope with this fellow Christian and recovering alcoholic, and thank you, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, for continually publishing articles of enlightenment in this increasingly complex age.

RATIONAL REASSURANCE

Thank you profoundly for “The Fortunes of Theology” (Footnotes, April 14, May 12, and June 9)—the series being written by Dr. Carl F. H. Henry. And send us more of this.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is making a crucial and much needed contribution to our theological reorientation. The series is very significant in view of the latest rush in the direction of a cultural theology. We have been subjected to all kinds of theological aberration in this era of “irrational man.” It is reassuring to hear someone speaking about the validity of reason and the rational in the establishing of theological positions.

Dr. Henry is right. Most of what we have been seeing are the “broken fragments of the biblical revelation.” Current are many, many “isms” but not much “theism.”

West Side Baptist Church

Wichita, Kans.

REVEALING RESENTMENT

In regard to the editorial “Don’t Throw Bouquets at Mom” (May 12 issue): I am delighted to see in print what I have harbored secretly for years for fear of being labeled un-American, or more recently, a “Libber.”

I resent being plied with gifts, cards, and other sentimentalities on one day a year. God chose me to be a mother, and I am thankful for that. Also, I resent having to be especially kind and attentive to my own mother on one special day when she receives our love, consideration, and attention all year long. I am so grateful to God for the love, devotion, and help from our own children day in and day out. That is compensation enough for me! Personally, I feel sorry for Miss Ann Jarvis, founder of “Mother’s Day,” if she felt obligated to honor her mother one day out of the year. Or perhaps, as you intimated, her original intentions have been obliterated by the commercialism emphasized now by Mother’s Day.

Lincoln, Nebr.

A HESITANT CRITIQUE

I am hesitant about writing a letter of disagreement to you. The last time I did it did not appear, and somehow I didn’t receive the next three issues. I am a fan and a three-year subscriber to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, so I feel I have enough “stock” in this periodical to make constructive critiques.…

The editorial “Viet Nam: A Presidential Dilemma” (May 12) states many inconsistencies which show either an ignorance or voluntary blindness of the historic American involvement in Viet Nam … Documents from the Pentagon show that South Viet Nam was a creation of the United States trying to prevent any Communist government from being established. This prevented the Vietnamese from “self-determining” his own future. In 1956 according to the Geneva accords, the people of Viet Nam were to choose a leader to rule all of Viet Nam. When the United States found out that Ho Chi Minh would be elected overwhelmingly by North and South Vietnamese, the United States conspired to prevent these elections. Conclusion: there never was a reason for us to be in Viet Nam unless we have the right to impose our will on other countries. The editorial also stated that President Nixon has kept his word at every point. The President’s campaign promise was to end the war, period. The President has withdrawn American soldiers but has increased the war by dropping more bombs on Viet Nam than have been dropped in the previous administrations or in World War II. The President has not wound down the war. He has replaced soldiers with airplanes and ships and has increased civilian casualties. In the past six years, American troops have killed sixteen times more civilians than the North Vietnamese. The editorial also stated that we should support the President as along as he is in office. This is contrary to the right of peaceful protest, freedom of speech, and the citizen’s responsibility in our checks-and-balances form of government.

Greensboro, N. C.

Mr. Nixon … has proposed only two conditions for total American withdrawal: a four-month ceasefire must be established in Viet Nam and the release of American POW’s. If you are aware of these new concessions, then you are also aware that in effect Mr. Nixon has forsaken the security of “a stable and viable South Viet Nam.” This effect unmasks the blatant immorality of U. S. bombs over Indochina resulting in a daily death toll of approximately 300 Vietnamese according to Pentagon reports. If the bombing is an attempt to “save” the people of South Viet Nam, along with the corrupt dictatorship of President Thieu, then why has this administration abandoned them at the peace table?

Waukegan, Ill.

CONVENTION PROBES

Thank you for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, especially the May 12 issue. You did a very good job on both NAE and Probe 72 conventions (“NAE: Key 73 a Key Issue” and “Turned-On Mennonites Probe Evangelism”). It is always good to read factual and unbiased reports.

Newton, Kans.

DRUMMING UP UNITY

Here I am looking forward to Key 73 with eagerness, anticipation, and excitement. I tell everyone that I witness to, or have a chance to talk to about the Lord, that there will be a unified, continent-wide witness to Him next year!

And what do I learn from Edward Plowman’s news report (“NAE: Key 73 a Key Issue”) in CHRISTIANITY TODAY for May 12? That that NAE bunch are squabbling, and fussing, and fuming among themselves again over this vitally important issue! I had already told the Lord that I did not think that Key 73 would be very effective if our “separated brethren” were not participating, hand in hand, with us “protestants” so called. A “united witness” with only half of the Christian community on this continent doing the witnessing is a farce, to say the very least, and out of the will of God, to say the very most! Both halves of the North American Christian community have got to cease the tooting of their sectarian horns and the beating of their sectarian drums and rally around Him!

Jamaica, N. Y.

NEEDED IMPLEMENTATION

I read the article “Evangelical Living and Learning Centers: A Proposal” (May 26) by Frank C. Nelsen. As a professor at a state university who is concerned about reaching students for Christ, I would like to commend Dr. Nelsen. His plan with some modification ought to be followed, since the lack of Christian community seems to be one of the great failings on the secular campus. I sincerely hope and pray that someone will try to act on his suggestion soon.

Professor of History

Indiana State University

Terre Haute

SANDY CRITICISM

Though I am generally on the conservative side of biblical and theological questions, I was appalled by the article “Christian Faith and Biblical Criticism,” by W. Stanford Reid (May 26), and particularly by the sentence, “The rejection of the Bible as the Word of God has produced such phenomena as the documentary hypothesis.” Nonsense! The documentary hypothesis is a serious effort to deal with the origin of a part of the Old Testament. It cannot be labeled “proved,” to be sure; but to say it springs from unbelief is a form of theological McCarthyism (that some of its early proponents may have had such motivation is irrelevant). To me this hypothesis makes the early books of the Bible far more solid historically than the view that one man (Moses) wrote them all in some kind of semi-magical trance.

As a conservative I never thought I would find myself publicly defending the documentary hypothesis (actually, I am not defending the hypothesis itself, but only its right to a fair hearing). But I simply cannot let such an article stand unchallenged. Professor Reid should stick to history; in biblical criticism his head is in the sand.

Professor of Religion and Philosophy

Whitworth College

Spokane, Wash.

“The Roman empire was declining in the days of Saul of Tarshish,” writes Taylor Caldwell, “as the American Republic is declining today—and for the very same reasons: Permissiveness in society, immorality, the Welfare State, endless wars, confiscatory taxation, the brutal destruction of the middle class, cynical disregard of the established human virtues and principles and ethics, the pursuit of materialistic wealth, the abandonment of religion, venal politicians who cater to the masses for votes, inflation, deterioration of the monetary system, bribes, criminality, riots, incendiarisms, street demonstrations, the release of criminals on the public in order to create chaos and terror, leading to a dictatorship ‘in the name of emergency’” (Great Lion of God, p. 6). Long before Edward Gibbon wrote his famous and partisan book on the subject, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire had become a subject of tremendous fascination for Christians and non-Christians alike. In many respects, Rome represented a summit of human organization, accomplishment, and self-glorification never again approached until modern times, when the industrial and scientific revolutions provided man with a range of entirely new possibilities. Oswald Spengler, in his book The Decline of the West, philosophized about the life cycle of nations and civilizations. His successor, Arnold Toynbee, however, recognizing that a civilization is not a living organism, refused to say that Western Christian civilization is doomed, like its predecessors, to degeneration and death.

Wherever corruption and venality in high places and the decay of private morals have been denounced from the pulpit, the decline and fall of Rome has furnished many a graphic illustration and frightening prediction. History never repeats itself—exactly—and the situation of late twentieth-century America differs in innumerable ways from that of pagan Rome. Nevertheless, despite all man’s real and imagined advances in twenty centuries, human character remains essentially what it was in the days of Paul the Apostle and Seneca the philosopher—both of whom met their death at the command of the young and uninhibited Emperor Nero. The same factors ennoble it, and the same influences debase it. Medicine has found cures or immunizations for many diseases of the body, but none for those of the spirit, such as pride, selfishness, envy, greed, lust, sloth, and despair. Thus, while Miss Caldwell’s parallel should certainly not be pushed to the point of identifying modern counterparts to Augustus and Nero, Paul and Seneca, she is clearly on solid ground when, observing similar trends in ancient Roman and modern American life, she predicts for America a fate like that which befell Rome.

In purely human terms, the decadence and decline of a society are not irreversible. The most celebrated example of averting what seemed an inevitable approaching collapse is offered by the Byzantine or East Roman Empire. After being brought to the brink of disaster by the Muslim conquests in the seventh century, that empire rose again to eminence and power, if not to its former might, and enjoyed 350 more years of power, prosperity, and high culture before starting its second and final decline. More recent national revivals, such as that of Germany after World War I, may have ended disastrously, and it is too early to know the ultimate outcome of Japan’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of World War II; but human history evidently does offer grounds for hope. It is sobering to note, however, that in each case recovery came only when the nation had been almost or completely crushed.

By some subtle logic best understood by himself, President Nixon, concluding a treaty limiting American strategic missile forces to two-thirds of those of one of our two major—and allied—rivals, has announced that we are and shall remain the most powerful nation in the history of the world. It may be possible to reverse the decline without experiencing total disaster, but wishful thinking and self-deception hardly seem to be the way.

For our part, we will content ourselves with the following observation: Paul the Christian and Seneca the Stoic philosopher both were capable of diagnosing the sickness of Roman society, but only Paul had a cure. Seneca, we are told, died as the late Lord Bertrand Russell would have all men die: conscious of the total defeat of all that he held dear, but with dignity. Paul, by contrast, died in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection, confident that the Lord who had conquered death in his own person would repeat the victory in Paul’s. Seneca’s ideals could not arrest the decline of imperial Rome, even when they were espoused and propagated by the noble emperor Marcus Aurelius. Paul’s Gospel did not suffice, either, for building and preserving the empire. The conversion of Constantine to Christianity seems hardly to have postponed the empire’s collapse. But Paul’s Gospel did call into being a world-wide fellowship far more enduring than any terrestrial empire.

At a time when the foundations of the civic order are trembling, we would rather follow Toynbee in seeking to restore them than Spengler in mournfully presaging total disaster. Yet first and foremost we must accept, by faith in Jesus Christ, citizenship in the one city “that has foundations,” and by proclamation of the Gospel seek to persuade others too to obtain the one hope that will not ultimately deceive.

The Immoral Antidote

How to counteract infringements upon religious freedom is not an easy decision.

The Lutheran clergyman Richard Wurmbrand and the Orthodox abbot Roman Braga tell how Communists have made Christians eat their excrement. Wurmbrand says people have fainted in his meetings when he related such facts. Braga writes that the Communists urinated in his mouth.

Jews are also getting more intense in denouncing their oppressors. One Jewish leader, concerned that Jewish young people are not developing enough of a sense of ethnic and religious identity, recently urged establishment of a “Holocaust Room.” Here, he said, “pictures and films concerning the slaughter of the six million Jews should be seared upon the minds of these youngsters.”

The world should be kept aware of atrocities, but excessive repetition instills hatred. This is an immoral antidote that perpetuates the original evil by extending it to innocent people.

Explo ’72

Expo ’72 was undoubtedly the largest week-long evangelistic gathering of the twentieth century. It was both thrilling and chilling: thrilling in that more than eighty thousand people gathered each night at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ at a time when Christianity is in retreat in the Western world; chilling in that there was present the unharnessed power and enthusiasm of dedicated young believers with the potential for turning the world upside down.

Now comes the great question: Has Explo left behind a solid base for a new spiritual offensive? Kenneth Scott Latourette, the noted church historian, observed that each waxing of the Christian faith has been preceded by a wane. The spiritual offensive that began in the nineteenth century and ran into the twentieth has been blunted, and the faith has been on the defensive for the greater part of this century. Has the turning point been reached?

There are signs that it has. The worldwide ministry of Billy Graham has had a tremendous impact. The obvious decline of the ecumenical movement with its emphasis on a social gospel without biblical personal evangelism has shown the flimsiness of any movement that is not firmly based on a trustworthy Scripture. The various congresses on evangelism—starting with Berlin in 1966—that have drawn together evangelicals all around the world and the International Congress on World Evangelization projected for 1974 in Europe tell the glad story of renewed commitment to the Great Commission. The Jesus movement, which has now overflowed from this country to others, is still another promising sign. And the transdenominational evangelistic effort called Key 73 has already captured the energies of thousands and could generate a mass movement to Jesus Christ.

Cheering as these signs are, it would be imprudent to forget that there is also a rising tide of unbelief accompanied by a grave decline of ethics and moral standards. Where God is at work, so is Satan. (Time’s cover story during Explo week was “The Occult Revival.”) Scripture seems to indicate that in the last days before Christ returns, there will be a vast and unparalleled increase of both true and false religion. These gathering forces will lead to Armageddon, when God and truth will finally prevail.

Explo ’72 may have been a turning point. But the work has only begun. Explo power must be harnessed. The spiritual Explosion that shook Dallas for five days in June can set off chain reactions to the ends of the earth—unless we’re content to sit back and wait for it to happen.

On Salvaging The Earth

In Stockholm last month, a group who identified themselves as “concerned Christian people, primarily from the United States,” made public a message of support for an anti-American outburst by Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. “Immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombings, large-scale bulldozing, and use of herbicides” were singled out. Such havoc is lamentable, to be sure, but it has little effect on the world-wide situation. Its introduction at this level simply served to complicate matters for those conscientiously trying to deal with the broad ecological crisis.

Racism And Rhetoric

What should be done when someone has “provoked discrimination, hatred or violence towards an individual or a group … by speeches, writings, threats, or drawings”? In a recent and highly unusual unanimous vote, the French Assemblée Nationale decided that anyone who does it in France is to be punished with imprisonment of up to a year and a fine of 2,000–300,000 francs ($400–75,000). Anti-Negro and anti-Semitic rhetoric are old if no longer popular commodities in American life. Their current decline is more than made up by a new wave of appeals to different varieties of racism: antiwhite, anti-WASP, anti-Japanese and German (on trade issues), anti-Zionist, anti-Protestant (on the school prayer and p*rnography issues), and anti-Catholic (on abortion), to name some of the most evident.

We don’t seriously propose that the United States copy the French law. As the influential French newsweekly l’Express commented, “The intention is a good one, even if it does not suffice to extirpate hatred from the heart.” But practical or not, such a law might bring to our attention something we seem in danger of forgetting, the evil of rhetorically provoking discrimination, hatred, and violence. Probably none of us is completely innocent. Aside from the law, each of us can profit from an examination of his own conscience on this issue. James writes, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so” (James 3:10).

‘The Sorrow And The Pity’

A whole generation of Germans sacrificed itself to the dream that turned into a nightmare, Hitler’s New Order. Now everyone knows it was a nightmare. But for millions of Frenchmen after their defeat by the Nazis in 1940, it wasn’t so obvious where truth and justice lay. A four-hour-long documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, dramatizes that history well.

Many—undoubtedly the vast majority at the beginning—were loyal to Marshal Philippe Pétain, the old general who negotiated the armistice with Hitler. Their logic has a familiar ring: “We support anyone who can bring peace.” Pétain’s ideological supporters went further, appealing to Frenchmen to back Hitler in the “world-wide struggle against the money capitalism and commercial exploitation which have their last bastion in the United States.”

We now know that Pétain didn’t bring peace, and that Hitler’s New Order was worse than that of money capitalism. But The Sorrow and the Pity shows it wasn’t so easy for all Frenchmen to see this in 1940. And perhaps it isn’t so easy for all Americans in 1972 to separate the heroes from the monsters.

The Sorrow and the Pity does not free us from the necessity of making social and political choices and decisions here and now. But it does remind us that in a few years’ time the wisdom of our choices, and our own motives for making them, may look very different from the way they appear to us today. This is a humbling and a sobering thought, and it offers us all the more reason, if we belong to Jesus Christ, to rejoice in the Lord, because thanks to him “our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20).

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

“Who will have custody of those custodians?” The old Roman proverb seems a fitting response to the Department of Labor’s proposed “guidelines” to eliminate discrimination in business based on religion or national origin (published in the Federal Register, Vol. 36, No. 250, dated Dec. 29, 1971). The abuse these “guidelines” are intended to eliminate involves “members of various religious groups, primarily Jews and Catholics, and members of certain ethnic groups, primarily of Eastern, Middle, and Southern European ancestry, such as Italians, Greeks, and Slavic groups,” who “continue to be excluded from executive, middle-management, and other job levels because of discrimination based on their religion and/or national origin.”

Businesses suspected of this discrimination can be subjected to a “compliance review,” and obliged to “undertake a significant number of activities,” including the establishment of “meaningful contacts with the appropriate religious and/or national origin-oriented organizations for purposes of referral of potential employees, advice, education, and technical assistance.” There is no cut-off point specifying the minimum size of businesses to be subjected to this kind of control, nor is any exception to be made for organizations with a distinctively religious purpose.

We wonder at the fact that the proposed addition to Executive Order 11246, directed against “unfair treatment,” unfairly and preferentially singles out Jews and Catholics as minorities who can appeal for activities to remedy their “underutilization.” What about underemployment of Protestants in Boston? Of evangelicals at the State University of New York? Of black Protestants in the garment industry? Of Mormons with the Pullman Company? Of course, the addition notes that “underutilization of Spanish-surnamed Americans, Orientals, and American Indians is treated separately.”

And why does “underutilization” exist? Clearly because people in positions of authority in business and industry have frequently shown favoritism toward people of their own background ties, beginning with family members and extending to various degrees of religious, ethnic, political, lodge, and other affiliation. But what about the custodians? Who is to guarantee that the Labor Department will not show favoritism?

Traditionally—and as defined by Paul in Romans 13:3—the civil law has been largely concerned with punishing wrongdoing. The establishment of socially viable patterns of life was left to the family, church, and school, responsible for teaching values and building moral character. In the United States we are opting for “value-free” education, society is becoming more and more secular and anti-church, and the family is in disarray. The traditional function of civil law to restrain and punish evil actions is in disfavor. Faced with these charges and breakdowns, do we really think we can create a model society by bureaucratic regulations and “compliance reviews”? We cannot even end drug pushing and drunken driving! There is no way to eliminate the ingrained human habits of nepotism and favoritism short of an individual change of heart, but there is a sure way to stifle much of what remains of economic efficiency and of personal freedom and responsibility in American business and industry.

Bicentennial Of A Liberation

Two hundred years ago, on June 22, 1772, Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the King’s Bench, handed down his famous decision that effectively eliminated slavery on the soil of the British Isles. Although slavery had gradually died out in Europe after the introduction of Christianity, it was not officially prohibited, and occasionally a slave-owner from overseas would bring slaves with him to Britain. In his celebrated decision, Mansfield held that a slave automatically became a free man by setting foot in Britain. But this decision did not have the slightest effect on slavery in the overseas colonies.

Not until 1811 did William Wilberforce—who had been deeply influenced by John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”—succeed in getting Parliament to ban the slave trade; in 1833 the decision was reached to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire over a six-year period. Abolition in the United States came about only through the Civil War (although slavery was not the only issue in that war).

Limited though it was, Lord Mansfield’s 1772 decision was a major step in recognition of the principle that one human being should not hold another in bondage. It is a sad commentary on the way in which material interests often outweigh moral ones that emancipation came in England—where slaves were a rare curiosity—half a century earlier than elsewhere in the British Empire, where they constituted valuable property. But when it did come throughout the empire as well, it was through the determination and dedication of Christians such as Wilberforce.

We may ponder the fact that, after Christianity had become the generally accepted creed of Europe, it took many centuries to abolish human slavery. But we ought also to reflect on this: where Christianity has been rejected as the guiding principle of society, it has taken no time at all to reintroduce slavery. The infamous institution of the slave-labor camp in modern totalitarian states, with its millions of victims past and present, comes naturally enough to political rulers who think they will never have to give an accounting of themselves to God.

Not Ashamed

In that most massively theological of his writings, the Epistle to the Romans, Paul proclaims that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel” (1:16). This is an attitude that many of us emulate but often fail to achieve. Confronted with the wisdom, power, and glory of this world, as exemplified in the brilliance of science, government, finance, or the entertainment world, many of us timidly retreat. Instead of challenging the “pride of life,” we confine ourselves to our little circle, consoling ourselves in our withdrawal with the thought that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4). Despite the Apostle’s admonition and example—as he confronted both the wise and the mighty of his day, even when in chains—we often act as though we really are ashamed of the Gospel. How can we muster the courage not to be?

Unlike most of the epistles, the rich but mysterious epistle to the Hebrews does not inform us of its author’s identity. Therefore, of course, it would serve little purpose for him too to proclaim himself, unknown, “unashamed,” as Paul does. But Hebrews deals with shame or embarrassment in a different way. It lays before us the wonderful mystery that Jesus Christ and God himself are not ashamed of us. Jesus, we read, has one origin with us. This is, of course, the teaching known as the doctrine of the Incarnation, and expressed thus in the Creed of the Council of Chalcedon (451): “Of one substance with us in his humanity.” Of this Jesus it is written, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them [that is, us] brethren” (Hebrews 2:11). Having identified himself with us in assuming our human nature, having suffered and been tempted like us (though without sin, Heb. 4:15), he presents us to the Father not shamefacedly, as though his mission had produced “a sorry catch,” but with confidence: “Here am I, and the children God has given me” (Heb. 2:13).

In a different context in the same epistle, we learn that “God is not ashamed to be called their God” (11:16). This declaration refers specifically to Old Testament figures often called “heroes of the faith.” In the context it is not the faith and life even of those “heroes” that explains the mysterious statement, “God is not ashamed,” as though their conduct justified him; it is something God himself has done—“he has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:16). The implication seems to be that God will not be confounded or embarrassed by the trust of those who have believed in him.

Chapter two makes it clear that Jesus is not to be ashamed of what we might call the shabby quality of those he leads to glory, because he knew from the start what we are like. God the Father is not ashamed, because before trust was placed in him, he had already decreed that it would not be misplaced. If (or should we say when) we act ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, let us draw renewed confidence and fresh courage from the fact that Jesus Christ is not ashamed of us and that God the Father is not put on the spot by the trust and hope we place in him.

Fourth in a Series

We have already noted that the present American scene shows pockmarks of moral decline and spiritual unrest. Our frontier society finds contraceptive devices a gateway to sexual licentiousness and abortion the happy solution for overpopulation; the marriage concept it scorns as a deterrent to the good life. Numbers of people reject the prevalent view of work as a means to affluence and prestige, not because they have the higher motivation of work as service, but because they expect the redistribution of wealth, more and more government welfare programs, and larger opportunities of leisure. The confused political situation among those who rely on law and order meanwhile encourages the discontent to foment disorder.

The spiritual sky is ominously beclouded. Jesus-freaks and Satan-worshipers have both come to the fore, organized ecumenism is struggling to retain power, fragmented evangelical forces are parrying a more cooperative way into the future. A vast array of cults, the big-city Graham crusades, the charismatic movement, thousands of student conversions to Christ, a widening use of television by Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and others, the growth of Pentecostal Catholics, and the emergence of a noteworthy Christian Jewry all crowd the religious scene today.

How are we to assess the evangelical prospect amid these forces? Some thinkers envision a new age of religious syncretism that will aim to span the differences between Christ and Confucius, or even between Matthew’s gospel and Mao’s. Others credit the Jesus people with launching a spiritual revolution in America. Still others think that American and European Christianity has now largely had its day, and that the evangelical future will move through Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

Many lamps of evangelical promise are agleam in the present dark hour, and some remarkable developments of new life are easy to discern.

Amid intellectual fatigue and moral chaos on the campuses, a nucleus of Christian students and teachers openly declare their personal faith in Christ. Differing local situations may determine how this phenomenon becomes organizationally absorbed—Campus Crusade, Inter-Varsity, Navigators, or some exceptionally virile denominational work. Often the new surge moves simply under the broad umbrella of the Jesus movement. At Marshall University about 300 students declared for Christ in the span of just a few months. Inter-Varsity’s triennial Urbana conference has become a well-known and respected missionary-recruiting grounds for hard-pressed denominations. In June some 85,000 gathered in Dallas for Explo ’72, a nationwide student Christian conference organized by Campus Crusade.

Young Jesus-followers seem uninterested in the professional ministry as a vocation; they seek evangelistic and missionary patterns outside the pulpit. At the same time converts on non-evangelical campuses, deluged by intellectual pressures on faith and confronted by issues of social justice, are burdened about stating Christian claims in a coherent and compelling way; they do not wish to separate a Christian world-life view and socio-cultural sensitivity and evangelistic engagement. Although in somewhat smaller numbers, recent alumni of Christian colleges also show these same larger concerns, and are earmarking their graduate studies in philosophy, law, and political science for larger involvement in the cultural debate. The publication Universitas that has been projected by evangelical campuses aligned in the Consortium of Christian Colleges may reinforce these interests. The Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, a mobile fellowship of evangelical professors, many serving on prestigious campuses, seeks to advance Christian perspectives by sponsoring invitational scholars’ conferences and research grants to mature writers engaged in frontier issues. To become more than a salvific cult that from the sidelines of culture conducts periodic forays to rescue prisoners in an alien milieu, evangelical Christianity must engage energetically in the conflict of ideas and in the struggle for public justice.

During the past century evangelicals have developed their affinity through cooperative evangelistic and missionary momentum, and evangelism, indeed, still offers the most inviting doorway to transdenominational engagement. Key 73 offers Christian believers across America an unprecedented opportunity to reach their fellow countrymen from the Atlantic to the Pacific. If Key 73, already endorsed by almost 150 American denominations and evangelical agencies, becomes merely an occasion for each participating group to do its own thing while others do theirs, it will make about as much permanent impact as a Fourth of July celebration. But if, across the nation, in block after block and precinct after precinct, believers of all races and stations come to know one another as God’s concerned people, a powerful river of spiritual life could pour through our sick cities and weary land. A transcultural concentration of committed Christians, an interracial vanguard of the spiritually concerned, could become a tide of healing in our great cities, where schools and mass media are now vulnerably exposed to radical and destructive pressures that threaten to inundate the nation.

One hopes that an open Bible will be the central core from which the diverse groups will hear what the Spirit says to the churches. No evangelical movement today wholly enfleshes the Kingdom of God, and each needs to be brought from merely confirming its peculiar tenets to obediently serving the Lord of Glory. The charismatic movement today weaves through almost all strands of the religious spectrum; some devotees are oriented toward tongues-speaking, others toward healing, some toward simply a deeper work of the Spirit. Who would have dreamed, when the question was wrestled whether to invite Roman Catholic observers to the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism, that only half a decade later 50,000 Pentecostal Catholics in the United States would identify with apostolic rather than medieval loyalties? Today thousands of Catholics are meeting with their neighbors in interdenominational home Bible-study groups. Many resent not having been taught the Scriptures by their priests, at the same time these Catholics find little appeal in local Protestant churches where the Bible is also largely ignored. Throughout America, while the adult Sunday school suffers severe decline, more and more weeknight neighborhood groups are meeting for Bible study. This fact reflects, in part, dissatisfaction with theological compromise in much denominational church-school literature, and with preaching devoid of, or antagonistic to, scriptural authority. In present-day Jewry, a vanguard of Christians, including young intellectuals who insist in their synagogues that Jesus is the Christ, is restoring the Book of Acts to contemporary reading, and spurring the recent interest in New Testament charisma to an even deeper probing of New Testament Christology.

CARL F. H. HENRY