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The Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen. Scotland, gave up his office this month to keep his housekeeper. The Most Rev. Francis Walsh, 62, had been ordered by the Vatican to fire Mrs. Ruby MacKenzie, 42, divorced wife of a Presbyterian minister. Townspeople complained she had “traveled about” with him. The prelate blamed a jealous woman and five priests for the campaign against him. Walsh was permitted to retain his rank as titular Bishop of Birta, but without a diocese.

J.D.D.

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“My greatest enemy is still that old Presbyterian, John Knox,” complained Lord Harewood, artistic director of the Edinburgh Festival and cousin of Queen Elizabeth. A former sovereign, Charles II, had found the same thing in Scotland—a land in which “there was not a woman fit to be seen and where it was a sin to play the fiddle.” Even that merry monarch might have changed his mind had he attended the festival which closed earlier this month. A nineteen-year-old nude model was wheeled across the organ gallery for thirty seconds as part of an “action theatre” display. The avowed purpose of the display, staged by Kenneth Dewey, young avant-garde director from Los Angeles, was “to get the audience involved in the conference.”

One man who did get involved was Lord Provost Duncan Weatherstone, whose city council contributes $140,000 toward festival expenses. “It is quite a tragedy,” commented the civic chief, “that three weeks of glorious festival should have been smeared by a piece of pointless vulgarity.… It has been suggested that the Edinburgh International Festival is handicapped by a Presbyterian outlook. This is offensive, and the sooner everybody realizes it the better. I am quite certain that the majority of our people will continue to be enthusiastic about the value of the arts, but they have not the slightest intention of surrendering their standards in the process.”

Refusing to be drawn when asked if he thought Edinburgh was “too Presbyterian” for this kind of incident, Dewey said he had staged a similar scene in Helsinki. Meanwhile the festival had been under fire at the London Moral Re-armament Conference—it seemed to be producing dirt, debts, and decadence, said Mr. Michael Barrett of Edinburgh, who continued: “Some people think the once fair name of Edinburgh, the Athens of the North, is being besmirched by the soot of Sodom and the godlessness of Gomorrah.”

Temporarily superseded by the greatest train robbery in history, the Christine Keeler story regained the front page earlier this month when the 21-year-old ex-waitress was arrested on charges of perjury and obstructing justice. The London girl who ruined a ministerial career and nearly toppled a government has found the wages of sin so high that even the $8,400 bail set by the judge constituted only a fraction of what one Sunday newspaper paid for the privilege of serializing her love-life.

This development comes at a time when the principal medical officer of Britain’s Ministry of Education, Dr. Peter Henderson, has gone on record as saying that a young couple intending marriage are not wrong in having pre-marital intercourse. Commented Lord Fisher of Lambeth, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury: “If you need not wait until marriage, why wait until you are in love and meaning to be married? Why wait, indeed, until you are in love? In fact, why wait at all?”

Sir Edward Boyle, minister of education, said his ministry does not dictate what teachers should teach on morality. The Archbishop of York replied that it is the duty of political, religious, and educational leaders to give a clear lead in moral matters. He condemned the view that premarital intercourse is not unchaste.

Even responsible statesmen have accused the school of theologians associated with Cambridge of contributing to a situation in Britain in which “popular morality is now a wasteland, littered with the debris of broken convictions.” George Goyder, an influential lay member of the Church Assembly, writing to the Church Times, says: “I believe the present moral climate of this country, and the tragedy of Mr. Profumo, both rise up in judgment against the blind guides of Cambridge, who reject the law of God, and with it the morality of society, in favour of a morality of self-development and social selfishness.”

Meanwhile a governmental commission of inquiry into security, with special reference to the Vassall spy case, has recommended that no more bachelors in the foreign service should be posted behind the Iron Curtain. In view of this, there is a certain piquancy in recalling an ironical comment made some months ago by a correspondent in The Observer: “At least the Profumo affair has given due warning of one thing—the necessity of purging all heterosexuals holding high Government posts as potential security risks.”

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F.F.

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The good ship Oikumene, its sails somewhat tattered, pulled slowly out of Montreal harbor, navigated the St. Lawrence Seaway, crossed Lake Ontario with little difficulty—cargo having been lightened by unloading of Faith and Order in Montreal—and came to port in Rochester, New York, where the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches disembarked. The natives there showed them no little kindness, but the voyage was marred by Orthodox soldiers’ shooting neoorthodox seamen in the legs to prevent their escaping overboard with definitive blueprints of the ship. For the problem of defining the ecumenical movement and the World Council had not been jettisoned in Canada but had been reloaded and marked as Rochester cargo as well.

On a quiet hilltop where Colgate Rochester Divinity School had been enjoying summer somnolence, the 100-member policy-making committee listened, in late August, as Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, able general secretary of the WCC, addressed them on “The Meaning of Membership” in the WCC. Their responses underscored the tentative nature of the address, which noted the conviction of several theologians that the experience of fellowship in the WCC has forced admission, beyond official definitions, that “the nature of the Council should be described in ecclesiological categories.” But strong objections to this conception were noted at the Montreal Faith and Order Conference on the part of Eastern Orthodox delegates especially. It was not different in Rochester.

Dr. Visser ’t Hooft cautioned against confusion of WCC’s “provisional unity” with “the unity which belongs to the Church Universal.” He disclaimed any WCC identity with Church or Super-Church, but spoke of “a deeper understanding” of the Church’s nature and “new opportunities to manifest its true meaning,” which accrue through “common life in the Council.” For the immediate present, the churches would have to “live with a reality which transcends definition.”

In ensuing discussion a German Lutheran bishop enthused: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the World Council became a church?” But the majority of other spokesmen were opposed to this. Metropolitan Nikodim, head of the delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserted that Orthodox churches always react to any attempt to give an ecclesiological element to the WCC, but “in all justice” he did not believe that the council regarded itself as “having ecclesiological significance.”

A Swiss Protestant maintained that a probing operation was useful toward an attempt to “say what stage we’re at,” but a Coptic Orthodox bishop said that “mere mention of this subject makes the work of Orthodox churches difficult.” Father Paul Verghese, Syrian Orthodox priest who heads the WCC’s Division of Ecumenical Action, described the ecumenical experience as being “not only one of enrichment but of loss of the wholeness we, of the Eastern churches, especially find in our own churches.” During recess, Central Committee Chairman Franklin Clark Fry remarked, “It’s quite clear we should attempt no further definition for some years.”

In response to floor discussion Dr. Visser ’t Hooft stated, “The World Council must decrease in order that the Church may increase. It is our hope that one day we can scrap the World Council as not necessary—because the Church is in its unity.” The committee voted to send his paper and a resume of the discussion to member churches for their responses.

When black-bearded Orthodox spokesmen would sweep to the microphones in flowing black robes, their steps were accompanied by the clatter of earphones as delegates prepared to hear them via translation to English, German, or French. Underlying East-West political differences came to the surface in one debate in which Dr. Klaus von Bismarck, head of the West German broadcasting network, indicated that some Eastern churchmen are used as “Trojan horses” for Communist ideology. Russian Orthodox response was denial and reminder of the need for Christian repentance that the Church had not done some things in the area of social justice that the Communists have done.

Variations in the concept of freedom in relation to Orthodoxy of the non-Russian sort were footnoted as the committee commended a Bible-distribution project of the United Bible Societies. A metropolitan of the Ecumenical Patriarchate supported the measure but said that such activities had in the past been related to proselytism. He indicated that the church authorities in a given area should always be contacted prior to distribution of Bibles.

Debate on a statement on racial tension which centered on the United States and the Union of South Africa afforded a Russian Orthodox churchman the opportunity to strike at a point of U. S. vulnerability. Alexander Shishkin spoke of the supreme “crying injustice” of racial discrimination and asserted that countries guilty of the disgraceful practice “should be condemned without mercy.” After all, he said, “this is the twentieth century.” An African committee member felt that the penalty for discrimination should be exclusion from the WCC, but others warned against trying to exercise the power of excommunication. The committee finally settled for describing Christians who favor segregation as betrayers of Christ and “the fellowship which bears His name.” Dr. Martin Niemoller, one of six WCC presidents, felt the statement should show how Christ was thus betrayed, but such was not done. Some observers felt the theological implications were left somewhat obscure. Another president, India’s Dr. David G. Moses, had noted the common association of betrayal with Judas, while defending the strength of the language.

East-West agreements and differences in the area of social ethics will doubtless be explored at a 1966 WCC conference on church and society. The committee commended plans for dealing with subjects such as “responsible government in a revolutionary age” and “economic growth and technology.”

With virtually no basic debate, the committee approved a statement urging worldwide support for the limited nuclear test ban treaty as a “first step” on the road to peace. Copies were sent to heads of state of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. President Kennedy had sent word of the importance of the treaty through Averell Harriman.

But vigorous debate did come on the question of church-state separation as related to a WCC division committee’s proposal that church social service projects for helping developing nations should accept money—amounting to many millions of dollars—from the West German government. The proposal was referred back for further study.

Central Committee Chairman Dr. Fry, scintillating master of parliamentary procedure, reported WCC’s extensive aid to earthquake victims in Iran and Yugoslavia, and to nation-builders in Algeria, health and social services being provided in the latter country. More than $1,600,000 was subscribed in 1963 by WCC churches to meet various emergencies arising from disasters.

With regard to WCC relations with the Roman Catholic Church in light of the Vatican Council, the committee expressed a longing for dialogue as between churches which recognize one another as confessing the same Lord, sharing the same baptism, and participating in a common calling.

The committee provisionally admitted nine churches to WCC membership, and one to associate membership. Most were young churches, the fruit of missions. Report came of the withdrawal in the past year of one body, the Union of Baptist Congregations in the Netherlands. With finalizing of these actions, the WCC will embrace 209 full member bodies and three associate churches.

The Lay Approach

Hopes are rising in the Philippines for a more tangible manifestation of the ecumenical spirit generated by local church dignitaries who attended the first session of the Vatican Council and World Council of Churches functions.

The movement took on a fresh, new vigor a few weeks ago when lay leaders of the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches met with their lay counterparts of the Knights of Columbus societies. The PFCC is a large national council of churches from different communions, and the K of C is the most prominent propagation-of-the-faith arm of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines.

Squarely in the center of this grass roots ecumenical movement is Dr. Gumersindo Garcia, Sr., PFCC president who initiated exploratory talks at a meeting with K of C officials. Garcia expressed confidence that the ecumenical spirit would achieve considerable success if pursued by laymen. He said Protestant and Catholic lay people have little to talk about in theological matters anyway. Church leaders, on the other hand, know too much about theological differences and are more keenly aware of deeply rooted religious bickerings, he added.

The PFCC president is a layman whose services and prestige as a well-known physician and civic leader have earned for him the leadership and patronage of many social, civic, cultural, and religious organizations of different religious persuasions. Because of his stature as an “ecumenical figure,” many believe that the current dialogue might eventually lead to a more intimate understanding of ecumenicity.

Amidst this seemingly favorable wind are strong undercurrents of objections and doubts from other church officials and denominational lay leaders. Spokesmen of conservative evangelical groups view the movement as without scriptural warrant and are having nothing to do with it. Other evangelical lay leaders strongly doubt the sincerity of the K of C officials. They base their doubts upon the long controversy between evangelicals and Catholics in the Philippines which has produced so many undesirable manifestations. The conflict took a sharp turn recently when an archbishop of the hierarchy issued pastoral letters warning Catholic parents not to send their children to Protestant schools.

VATICAN II, ACT II

About this time last year, reports were rife that the forthcoming Vatican Council was geared for rapprochement with the Eastern Orthodox. It turned out, however, that most of the major Orthodox communions refused even to send observers.

On the eve of the council’s second session, due to begin September 29, the Orthodox seemed more aloof than ever. The Synod of the Orthodox Church in Greece announced it would do all it could to prevent a proposed Pan-Orthodox conference from taking place on the Greek island of Rhodes. The Panhellenic Orthodox Union warned that the meetings could lead “to a split in Orthodoxy and bring us into contact with the Papists, who are treacherously working for the enslavement of the Orthodox Church.”

The Rhodes conference reportedly had been called to decide whether the Orthodox churches should be represented at the Vatican Council and whether possible unity talks should be explored.

The council under Pope Paul VI will have plenty to worry about even without the Orthodox. The strife between Roman Catholics and Buddhists in Viet Nam will tend to focus attention on the issue of religious liberty. Serving to complicate the problem is the fact that tensions in Viet Nam are political as well as religious. And some say that Communists are helping to foment unrest.

Tightening The Bonds

The Reformed Ecumenical Synod, hitherto a rather loose federation of twenty-two churches (embracing 2,500,000 members in twelve countries), tightened its bonds of fellowship last month.

At a ten-day meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, delegates decided to establish a permanent secretariat and to coordinate missionary efforts of member churches. A central missionary agency will be set up.

Moreover, delegates “looked with favor” on the formation of an International Reformed Agency for Migration and adopted a set of resolutions encouraging the formation of separate Christian organizations in the social and political field.

The synod was organized in 1946 and has met every five years since 1949. Its churches are intimately related by historical ties. Among the larger of the churches are the two Reformed churches of South Africa, two independent Reformed churches of The Netherlands, the Christian Reformed and Orthodox Presbyterian churches in North America, and the Free Church of Scotland. Most of the others are either young churches born of the missionary activity of the larger groups or churches sustaining close ties to them.

The synod is ecumenical in that it embraces Reformed churches from many lands, but it is not in essence an exclusive ecumenical grouping which regards itself as standing in opposition to larger affiliations. Reports on ecumenicity have been considered at previous synods, and at this one—the fifth—a committee was appointed to analyze opportunities which can help member churches determine their total ecumenical obligations.

The synod also prepared a statement on the race problem which enjoyed the endorsement of both the Nigerian and South African delegations. The statement declared that “where members of one ethnic group or nation permanently live together with other ethnic groups or nations within the same country, all individuals, groups, and nations shall be equally accorded God-given rights under the law.”

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The turnstiles counted 134,254. Police estimates placed the figure at about 150,000, some 34,000 of them sitting on the grass. Another 20,000 or more stood outside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or were waved on by traffic officers. It was by far the largest crowd ever to turn out to hear Billy Graham in the United States.

It was the closing meeting of the evangelist’s three-week crusade in Southern California. Said he:

“There are almost enough people here tonight to have a march on Washington. And if they keep throwing the Bible out of the schools, we might do just that.” The size of the crowd prevented Graham from extending his usual type of invitation to receive Christ. Instead of asking inquirers to come forward he merely suggested that they stand in front of their seats and indicate commitment by signing the printed cards used to supply inquirers with counseling literature and to refer them to a church. Crusade officials said 3,856 cards were turned in, and 64 per cent were said to be first-time commitments.

Largest previous crowd to hear Graham in America was the estimated 116,000 at Soldier Field, Chicago, at the close of Graham’s 1962 crusade there. In 1959, in the final service of his campaign in Melbourne, Australia, a crowd estimated at between 135,000 and 150,000 was on hand.

In 1960, Graham spoke at a rally of the Baptist World Congress in Rio de Janeiro which drew a crowd estimated at over 180,000.

At the closing Los Angeles service Graham preached from one of his favorite Bible themes—the story of Belshazzar, the king who was “weighed in the balances and found wanting,” and whose kingdom was taken away and given to another. Warned Graham:

“There comes a day when God says, ‘It is enough.’ It is true that God is a God of love, grace, and mercy, but he is also a God of judgment. The Bible teaches that God hates sin. He has the capacity to hate. He will judge sin with the fierceness of his wrath.”

The vast crowd brought to 930,340 the number of persons who passed through the turnstiles to hear Graham at the coliseum during the three weeks. That represented an average of more than 44,000 per service.

Graham, sidelined because of illness earlier this year, was reported in good physical condition. The only threat to his health in Los Angeles came from a nattily dressed spectator who sidled up to the evangelist at the coliseum and said, “I am going to kill you before this crusade is over.” The stranger then disappeared in the crowd.

Graham was officially welcomed to the city by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. The supervisors introduced him at a press conference.

The record-breaking response of Southern Californians to Graham and his message was remarkable in its own right, particularly considering the total number of inquirers: nearly 40,000.

What added even more significance was its setting, in the eyes of some, “out where materialism begins.” Evangelicals further east tend to regard the Pacific Coast as breeding ground for carnality, and often look west with an air of religious condescension. They think “an ostentatious California culture” shows up in many professing Christians too conspicuously.

In the last few weeks the Christians of Southern California have shown that they are not a spiritual notch below their eastern brethren. They have proven not only that they can mobilize and act, but that they are concerned for spiritual priorities.

Graham reminded Los Angeles of its special responsibility to the nation:

“No city influences the nation more than Los Angeles. If Los Angeles would lead the way in a spiritual awakening, the whole nation would be affected.”

As in many other cities, the “youth nights” of the crusade drew the largest response—both in attendance and in number of inquirers.

Perhaps the person who had come the longest distance to the crusade was Graham’s son-in-law, Stephan Tchividjian of Switzerland, who read the Scripture during one of the youth night services. The Tchividjians are expecting their first child in the spring.

Graham challenged the notion that juvenile delinquency stems from underprivilege. He quoted the local police chief as saying, “It is the overprivileged child who is causing us the most trouble in Los Angeles. He is being given so much in the way of material things that he has gone haywire looking for new satisfactions.”

For the most part, as is his custom, Graham preached the simple Gospel: man’s sin, the need for repentance, and the forgiveness that comes through faith in Christ. Some of the evangelist’s secondary remarks, however, were publicly challenged.

Graham, who had insisted on integrated seating at his crusades long before the American race issue flared up, said he was convinced that “forced integration will never work” and that “some extremists are going too far, too fast.”

“The racial problem in America is getting worse and dangerous,” he declared, “and it will not be settled in the streets.”

Graham also expressed concern “about some clergymen of both races who have made the race issue their gospel. This is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that he rose from the dead and that God is willing to forgive our sins and to give us new life and peace and joy.”

The evangelist’s stand provoked some criticism. Marvin L. Prentis, president of the National Association of Negro Evangelicals, said that “Dr. Graham consistently fails to appreciate the intensity of this great social dilemma which cries out to be met.” NANE was organized in Los Angeles last April with the help of the Rev. Howard O. Jones, one of two Negroes employed by Graham as associate evangelists (the other is the Rev. Bob Harrison).

The organization subsequently announced that it had adopted a resolution expressing its appreciation for Graham’s crusade and ministry in the Los Angeles area. Negroes often are major participants in his evangelistic campaigns. Well-known for her appearances at Graham rallies and in one of his dramatic films is Miss Ethel Waters. She sang at the Los Angeles meetings several times, as did a trio composed of Jones’s teen-aged daughters.

Graham also had some terse comments about the Peace Corps. “I have supported Mr. Kennedy’s Peace Corps because it offers a challenge to American youth,” he said, “but I am disturbed that the Peace Corps does not have a spiritual philosophy and framework within which to move.” He said that so far “it is almost completely materialistic in its aims.”

Director R. Sargent Shriver denied that the Peace Corps is “godless.” He said the evangelist did not have the experience to substantiate his claim. He added that “there are a large number of Baptists in the corps.”

In another observation on federal government policies, Graham said:

“If I were Mr. Kennedy, I would spend the $20 billion allocated for the moon project to clean up every ghetto in the United States.”

The evangelist’s pointed remarks on social issues underscored his contention that the Gospel is indeed relevant to all of culture. But it is a matter of priorities, Graham says, and it is far more important to preach the need for personal regeneration. This he does, and he does it so effectively that 33 million people have heard him preach the world over since his first tent crusade in Los Angeles in 1949. Uncounted millions more have listened to him via radio and television. He has addressed more people than any other person in all of history.

The phenomenon of Graham as a man inspires action in laymen and clergy alike wherever he goes. In Southern California, for instance, 750 churches scheduled a follow-up program of visitation evangelism.

But for all his success, Graham is still implicitly snubbed by some denominational and ecumenical leaders.1Occasionally, religionists will go so far as to use Graham for their own purposes while avoiding involvement in his. In Washington, D.C., the local chapter of the Religious Public Relations Council once tried to win public attention for the local council of churches by having Graham sign an anniversary statement praising its accomplishments. But the evangelist’s subsequent crusade in Washington drew official support from neither council. He rarely speaks at denominational conventions. His crusades go virtually unnoticed in the publications of mainstream Protestantism. Even the press service of his own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, practically ignores him.

Organized ecumenism likewise pretends that Graham does not exist. His name is seldom publicly mentioned and sometimes privately sniped at in ecumenical conferences. Such an attitude toward him is perplexing in view of the fact that Graham’s crusades currently represent the most dramatic manifestation of grass-roots ecumenicity—the linking of clergy and laity across denominational lines for the purpose of winning people to Christ.

In Mormon Territory

An eight-day evangelistic series, said to be the first united Protestant crusade for Christ in the Salt Lake City area, drew an estimated 10,000 persons to the Utah Capitol grounds. Some 150 persons responded to the invitation to accept Christ extended by evangelist Myron Augsburger of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Local churchmen who sponsored the crusade adjudged it a significant success, considering the fact that Salt Lake City’s population is about 50 per cent Mormon.

The opening meeting, forced inside the Capitol building by rain, featured a welcome by Utah Governor George D. Clyde and an address by Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield. Hatfield, calling himself a Calvinist and a believer in Christ as God incarnate, said: “We must have Christians dedicated in power, in purpose, and in influence to the person of Jesus Christ.”

Christian Coordination

All-out, nation-wide evangelistic efforts which will mobilize in Christian witness the entire evangelical communities of five Latin American countries are scheduled for 1964 and 1965 as a result of an intensive two-week workshop of evangelism in San Jose, Costa Rica. Delegates from Honduras, Venezuela, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Peru returned to their places of responsibility in these efforts with new enthusiasm and zeal.

“The dedication and vision of these men is tremendously inspiring,” one observer remarked. “Never have I seen such a level-headed and Spirit-directed approach to the challenge of continental evangelism.”

Hosted by the Latin American Biblical Seminary and the Latin America Mission’s Division of Evangelism, the conference attracted leaders from virtually every Spanish-speaking nation in the hemisphere, with eighty-seven delegates from fifteen countries registered. A concentrated schedule of lectures, panels, and discussions covered practical as well as inspirational themes. Special features included a “clinic” on evangelistic communication and a series of lectures on the theological problems inherent in evangelism.

Evangelism-in-depth, which emphasizes the evangelistic witness of each believer in the context of his local church, although not to the exclusion of professional or mass evangelism, seems to have gained universal acceptance as providing the best answer to date to the challenge of what evangelist Fernando Vangioni of Argentina called the “period of integral revolution” through which the Latin American world is passing.

Already successfully proven in three Central American countries, evangelism-in-depth programs of cooperative, year-long, nation-wide outreach are in various stages of development in Honduras, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Objectives of the effort are to (1) mobilize every believer in Christian witness, (2) strengthen the evangelistic ministry of the local church, (3) take advantage of every evangelistic resource and activity available to the evangelical community, and (4) reach every section of the country, geographical as well as sociological, with the Gospel of Christ. Usually these efforts have been climaxed by mass campaigns with radio and television coverage which have made a strong impact on the non-evangelical public.

Participating in the San Jose conference sessions were members of the evangelism-in-depth team who had served as coordinators for the 1962 movement in Guatemala, where the year’s program of advance netted between ten and fifteen thousand new church attendants. Typical of the philosophy of evangelism-in-depth is the fact that these team members have become specialists in mobilizing Christians more than in ministering to them. They serve thus as coordinators rather than primarily as evangelists. This “in-depth” aspect of last year’s Guatemalan effort was particularly successful in the secondary cities and rural areas, they reported. The impact on the more sophisticated capital city was definite but less notable, and it is felt that future campaigns must devote more attention to this problem.

EVANGELIST MEETS COMEDIAN

Evangelist Billy Graham is scheduled to appear as a “guest star” on Jack Benny’s first program of the new television season.

The program was to be televised over CBS on Tuesday, September 24.

Graham said he was reluctant to accept the offer to appear on a comedy show.

“I almost said no. But then I agreed because Jack Benny has a clean show.”

The evangelist observed that “laughter is a part of our nature. It’s a gift of God. Especially at this time of our history, with so much tension, it’s good to laugh.”

“I think some persons who watch Jack’s show might not have seen me. Maybe after seeing me on the show they will come and hear me. And Jack is going to let me say a serious word.”

Graham will receive no fee for his guest appearance, but Benny will make a contribution to the Billy Graham evangelistic Association.

Benny normally tapes his show on a Sunday, but in deference to Graham’s wishes it was to have been recorded on a weekday.

Between conference sessions, the delegations from the different countries represented in San Jose last month were hard at work ironing out details and plans for the movements already underway or soon to be launched in their homelands. These planning sessions were able to take advantage of the experience acquired in other countries and strove to correct the errors and strengthen the weak spots which have shown up in earlier efforts.

Meeting concurrently were members of an executive committee set up last year at the Huampani (Peru) Consultation on Evangelism, known as CLASE (Comite Latinoamericana al Servicio de la Evangelizacion). Presided over by Vangioni, this nine-man commission decided to form a permanent organization for the promotion and coordination of evangelistic activities throughout the continent. It is expected that the structure will follow the lines already established by sister organizations in the fields of literature and radio. A constituent assembly will be called in 1964.

Cooperating with the CLASE committee are several missionary service agencies whose Latin American representatives are desirous of working together under CLASE’s aegis. They include the Latin American departments of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Youth for Christ, the United Bible Societies, Overseas Crusades, the Navigators, and the Latin America Mission’s Division of Evangelism. Representatives of these and possibly other groups will seek authorization to meet again with CLASE in January for more definite planning.

“One of the most encouraging aspects of the present situation is the enthusiasm and practical commitment to the evangelistic task of so many different men and organizations,” stated one of the conference planners. “It seems to be the unanimous conviction that now is the time for an all-out effort to reach Latin America for Christ—and that this effort must be directed by the Latin Americans themselves. The delegates here manifested a solid harmony of purpose. And with negligible exceptions this same spirit of cooperation holds on the local level. Fortunately our common love for our one Lord transcends our secondary differences. The prospects for an all-out evangelistic advance in Latin America are bright.”

W.D.R.

Ideas

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Reemphasis on the ministry of the whole Church is one of the gratifying turns in contemporary theology. Until the recent Montreal study conference this subject had not appeared on an ecumenical faith-and-order agenda for twenty-five years. While Montreal settled none of the central problems, aspects of the recent dialogue mirror some of the main issues under debate.

A new framework in biblical and dogmatic studies is expanding the discussion of apostle and apostolicity far beyond the unique role of the Twelve, even beyond the task of the ordained ministry, to emphasize that the apostles serve also as prototypes of all who follow Christ. Is Christian ministry, it is asked, really the exclusive prerogative and duty of the clergy-man? Much is being said about a rediscovered ministry of the laity. Are churches to slam the door on laymen who think they have a genuine “ministerial” call outside the pastoral office? Such concerns are shaping a self-conscious study of the larger implications of ministry, and particularly of the relationship between all ministries and the special (often called the “ordained”) ministry.

The “general” ministry is increasingly discussed not simply in the specific context of Christ’s pastoral ministry to the Church, but also in the broader context of Christ’s evangelistic ministry to the world, and even in the context of the doctrine of creation. New emphasis is thus given to ministry as service to and for the world, and not merely as service in and for the Church. In many circles the formula minister-church-world views the minister in relation to the world (as contrasted with the missionary) like the queen bee who stays in the hive while the others penetrate the world. Is the missionary then the exception, or is he really the norm, in depicting an ideal strategy of penetration? If the norm, why are almost 1,000 seminary-trained graduates reportedly “biding their time” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area “waiting for pulpits”?

Doubtless this new emphasis has its perils, such as a growing disposition to regard the slogan “Christ and the world” as an acceptable substitute for “Christ and the Church.” A statement in one of the Montreal reports that “the Church recognizes joyously that God does not spend all of his time in the Church” was deplored by one of the delegates as “little short of blasphemous.” There is much confusion abroad today about the relation of Christ to the world (a term of many meanings). Christ and world are indeed not in every sense alternatives, since the Church is made up of that segment of the world that has heard and received the Gospel.

But to say that Jesus was first and foremost “a man of the world” and not “an ecclesiastical leader” can lead to all sorts of absurdity. From our Lord’s obvious concern for the world some religious theorists derive an open-end theology which unlocks the gates of hell and assures everybody an ultimate place in the kingdom of God. The teaching is also ridiculed that Christians are in any sense to be “not of this world.” Others minimize the Church in expounding God’s concern for mankind. In New Delhi it was sometimes implied that the Church is in all respects an obstacle to Christian witness in the world; the plea is widely sounded for “a new doctrine” of “an open church in time and space devoted to healing all men, non-Christian as well as Christian.” The relation between congregation and world becomes an increasingly bewildering concern for those who are prone to transmute Christ’s ministry of reconciliation into other efforts at reconciliation and peace (based on broad ethical tenets) and whose bold emphasis is that the Church has “God’s plan of order for the nations.”

Insofar as these emphases remind Christians that they are “called out” to be sent, and are summoned to obedience in the midst of community life, they are instructive and helpful. It is tragic indeed if Christian vision is confined strictly to “tasks in the Church” and lacks feeling for the outside world where many of the cultural patterns are being shaped. Yet we dare not forget that the Church is the basic fabric to which the various Christian ministries to the world must be appliquéd. As the regenerate body of believers, the Church stands not in an optional but in an indispensable relationship between Christ and the world, unless the redemptive work of Christ is to be obscured as the central theme of the Christian message.

At its best, the new emphasis tries to recover the lost missionary character of the ministry and of the Church. It begets a widening uneasiness over locating churches only where the community can support them in their established character, rather than where they can contribute the fullest missionary service. And it has raised mounting discussion over the relationship between the “set-apart” ministry and the service of the entire Church.

Some conversations about the “general” ministry, in fact, show a definitely anti-clerical mood. Is not the Church’s distinction between laity and ministry quite an arbitrary one? it is asked. Since the term laos includes ministers, too, ought ministry and laity to be contrasted? Some say that to perpetuate two permanently classified corporate groups in the Church merely promotes an arbitrary “Constantinian” cast of thought, and thereby minimizes the New Testament emphasis on one Body with many members, each with a personal and particular calling. The dichotomy of ordained ministers and non-ordained members, it is suggested, creates the impression that the clergy are somehow outside and above the Church.

The revolt against ministry as conceived only in clerical terms is especially pronounced in student circles. A university student in New Zealand recently argued openly that “the whole business of the Church should be flushed down the john.” In European work camps many young people laugh at the special phrasing of Christian vocation in clerical terms. In some seminaries only 25 per cent of the students are preparing for the pastoral ministry, while 75 per cent aspire toward other types of Christian work. There is growing impatience with the usual discussions of “apostolic succession” while “the apostolic succession of the whole Church” is in danger of dying.

Often stated as a biblical basis for general ministry is the Petrine emphasis on the “royal priesthood” of the believer (1 Pet. 2:9). Since the term “priest” in New Testament teaching does not imply a distinction within the Church, there is a fresh plea for recognizing the lay apostolate which makes each church member a shepherd of his neighbor. In lands like Czechoslovakia wholly new forms of lay ministry have arisen. In some places growing interest in a “tent-making ministry” could topple the usual requirements of seminary training and ordination and related standards of financial compensation. Observers on various frontiers are asking what new “forms” of ministry are necessary to reach those outside the churches and indifferent to them. On many mission fields today part-time non-professional ministries are the only way whereby Christian work may be carried on. Are such efforts to be considered as merely auxiliary exceptions, and the “Constantinian pattern” of the ministry alone assumed to be the norm? Or is there a danger that ecclesiastical over-precision might rule out authentic calls of God? Does the obligation of Christian witness and ministry exist at all Christian levels and in all Christian relationships?

The term diakonia has been suggested as an appropriate covering designation of the ministry of the whole Church, that of the special ministry included, with increased emphasis on the concept of a servant-ministry. Since monarchial views of ministry which rule out the ministry of the whole community of the faithful are especially under fire, there is growing disposition to speak of special diakonia and more general diakonia. Over against the exaltation and magnification of ministers and a professional spirit of domination, stress is mounting on the servanthood and responsibility of ministry that proceeds from a minister’s true relationship to Jesus Christ. The ordained ministry, it is urged, is to be justified on the basis of service that contributes to the effective performance of the whole body of Christ. No categorical distinction is to be made between minister and members, however, or between the special minister and one who fulfills his general ministry. Where such a distinction remains, it is argued, the whole congregation no longer participates decisively in the ministry of the Church.

In some discussions of the ministry of all God’s people ordained ministers have sometimes sensed a disposition to minimize the special ministry. They see the danger that those who favor only a non-sacerdotal ministry will speak so negatively and critically of other ecclesiastical patterns that they will abet an excessive reaction against the whole tradition of special ministry. Some who insist that we must not belittle the ministry of the whole Church seem to imply the question whether there ought to be any special ministry at all. The Protestant Reformed tradition, while insisting on an ordained ministry, rejects sacerdotal views of ministry common to the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic communions. The latter assert a necessary connection between apostolic succession and ordination as a sacrament, and see this “unbroken succession” as an essential constituent of the Church itself. Some of the reaction against sacerdotal misunderstanding of how God’s grace comes to his people reinforces views like those of the Society of Friends, which wholly dismisses the notion of ordination. If justification, the New Birth, and the work of the Spirit are central, says the evangelical Quaker, what does he lack that other believers are assured through sacramental views of the Church?

Many clerymen would reply that the lay ministry must not be exalted at the expense of the special ministry, and that this special ministry, for all its risks of professionalism, pomposity, and pride, is indispensable in the Church. Avoid both extremes, they would say—that of clericalism and that of “laicism.”

Although the Montreal Faith and Order Conference asserted the validity of both the special and general ministries, it wavered on several issues. Ought the special ministry to be discussed in the larger context of the general ministry, or is the general ministry to be comprehended in and through the apostolic and special ministries? Montreal implied but did not insist on the latter. While its concern was to validate both the ministry of the whole body and the special ministry, it confined the term “minister” to the special ministry. Some delegates emphasized that the special ministry must be honored and that the image of the “set-apart” minister must not be used of others engaged in the ministry of the whole Church. They sought to avoid promoting an untenable dichotomy that suggests the inferiority of the general ministry by shunning such vocabulary as ordination to “the holy ministry,” on the ground that the evangelistic imperative devolves upon all believers and that there is but one New Testament standard of holiness.

What is it then that distinguishes special from general ministry? Not all denominations (Disciples of Christ, for example) contend that ordination is necessary to ministerial calling. But most communions insist upon the link between ordination and ministry. Some ask if there is a way to ordain the congregation, too, making it responsible to the minister. (Some in order to validate the ministry of the laity urge that ordination to the general ministry inheres in every member’s baptism as it involves God’s call to fill one’s part in the apostolic ministry. If baptism is, indeed, ordination to ministry in which the whole church shares, then questions are inevitable concerning much of the present practice of baptism.) Then, too, what does special ordination itself accomplish, and how? If every believer who witnesses to Christ does so with the same authority as the minister—except in another place and station—does ordination lose any of its special significance? How is the gift of the Holy Spirit to the ordained minister to be distinguished from the spiritual gifts in which all Christians were expected to share? Does not what is often ascribed to the minister belong really to the Holy Spirit? Is the Spirit to be cited only in respect to calling and authorization, or also in respect to the minister’s work? And does not the Spirit endow all believers to perform their particular ministries? If the special function of ordained ministers is to keep the Body in closer fellowship with the Head, is not Christ himself the guarantee of the Church, clergy included, rather than vice versa? Or is it true, as some argue, that Christ is available to us only through what he imparts by the clergy—Word, sacraments, and so forth? In other words, must all Christian realities be mediated through the office of ordained ministers? If the ordained ministry guarantees the Word, or its truth, one can only observe that historically they have not been impressively successful. An educated ministry and the laying on of hands seem to assure true proclamation of the Gospel no more than does an uneducated ministry untouched by hierarchical hands.

Does the special ordination of candidates for the pulpit then lead to ministry as a lifelong profession? Today, when clerical “professionalism” is under increasing criticism, and when the ministry of the Church is understood as service, all notions of special privilege or hiring for a job, it is emphasized, must vanish into the sense of calling, in which all divine vocations have equal status. While the ordained minister may have a higher function, it is noted, to which he is separated at ordination, he nevertheless represents no higher class. Yet the concept of life service doubtless has roots both in the Old Testament priesthood and in the New Testament apostolate. And even if the inference to an ordained ministry is invalid, some say, what is unbiblical about offices for ministers if local churches feel this makes them more available to their congregations?

But those who view ordination as a sacrament, and as the maintenance of apostolic continuity through the imposition of hands, think this undervalues succession. Relying heavily on the sub-apostolic church, the Orthodox insist on the preservation both of apostolic succession and of apostolic faith, and they protest that the Reformation almost discarded the former. They stress that it was apostolic succession in the Orthodox church which preserved the apostolic faith from the perverse “secret wisdom” of the Gnostics.

But the clergy are increasingly under pressure to articulate the similarities and differences between the specific and the general ministries. They are asked to demonstrate their preservation of the apostolic faith and to exemplify in life the teaching that “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”

The fact is being stressed anew that the ministry of the Church as a whole is inseparable from the ministry of Jesus Christ taken both as a historical and as a continuing reality. The Church’s Basic Minister is Jesus Christ, whose ministry is such that no one—not even the apostles—can participate in its completed work. He is the Apostle, according to the New Testament. On the basis of his final and unique ministry, moreover, it is not the ordained ministry as such, but the apostolic ministry which provides the foundation stone of Christianity. Yet all Christian ministries share somehow in the apostolic task, and the ministry of all members of the Body is a proclamation and illumination of Christ’s ministry for and to the world.

But one need not rest the case for a special or ordained ministry simply on a specialized doctrine of the general ministry. Some foundation for a distinction between a special and a general ministry may be found in Christ’s selection of the Twelve. Moreover, in Ephesians 4:11 f., the Apostle Paul writes of Christ’s gifts to the Church: “He gave some, apostles; some, prophets; some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” He gave them, we read, “for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering.” Obviously, then, the work of ministering is not to be confined to a few church officers; every member has a divinely ordained ministry. The Protestant Reformers located the basis of the special ministry not in hierarchical or ecclesiastical succession, but rather in doctrinal and pastoral succession. So, too, the Puritans stressed that the authority of the clergy is ministerial rather than magisterial, pastoral rather than coercive. In Montreal, no precise justification of special ministers was articulated. The problem of the relationship between special and general ministries was referred for study to the churches, and to the WCC’s theological commission. While the clergy inquire afresh into the nature of their special ministry, the rest of God’s people need just as earnestly to probe the obligations of the general ministry.

To one who had twice enjoyed the rather sedate Edinburgh Festival of music and arts, it came as a distinct shock to read in American newspapers that the festival was this year enlivened by a blond model doing a strip tease. There was some relief in reading on to find that the performance was not part of the planned program. To the accompaniment of some cheers and some shocked gaping, a nude young art-college model was wheeled across the organ gallery. She explained in buck-passing fashion: “My friends thought the whole thing should be jazzed up.” But dismay on our part followed upon our reading both of the American source of the action and of the reaction of the stellar observer, the Earl of Harewood, cousin to Queen Elizabeth. He had barely concluded a sober conference on “the theater of the future” when the spontaneous strip performance got underway. The earl’s reaction—“I wasn’t in the least annoyed”—was not reassuring, particularly in view of the prominent place of British royalty in setting an ethical tone for their nation. Only the week before, he had complained that Edinburgh’s tradition of stern Calvinism was hurting festival finances. (See also News, page 41.)

“Success at any price” is a popular concept these days so long as the price is not financial loss. High cost in morals can be abided. Disintegration of the personality is to be preferred to deterioration at the box office.

In a day when inconvenient inhibitions are banished and costly standards are hurried into exile, it is common to look back smilingly, even indulgently, on the Edinburgh of John Knox. “Calvinism,” “Puritanism”—these have become signals for scorn, to be dismissed with the easy charge of patent self-righteousness. The latter is indeed a universal malady which the student of Calvinists and Puritans finds they readily confessed. In contrast, those who today point the finger at the Calvinists seem to feel they are absolved from self-righteousness, having so little righteousness anyway. Alas, it does not follow. They have not plumbed the mystery of iniquity which finds it possible to be self-righteous over lack of righteousness. Legalism can bounce from Puritan to stripper simply by lowering its standards. It is more relentless than a camel’s nose.

A single incident like the above may serve as a portent for our day, for we read of far too many like it. Another news story of a different sort, which came out of New York City two days later, related how defeat was averted at the polls for reform Democratic candidate Edward I. Koch, in a district leadership race against ex-boss Carmine De Sapio. Mild panic pervaded Koch’s headquarters about an hour before polls closed at 10 P.M. They discovered that voting had been relatively light in areas favoring the reform group and heavy in pro-De Sapio sectors. So in a last minute do-or-die effort, Mr. Koch and his supporters manned telephones and rang doorbells in Greenwich Village. Voters were rushed to the polls in nightgowns, pajamas, and topcoats. Koch personally persuaded three would-be sleepers to forswear their beds temporarily for a trip to the polls. He won the election by forty-one votes.

If this sort of effort can be expended for temporal goals, one wonders about the possibility of parallel effort for eternal purposes, particularly in view of the drift in morals since the Second World War and accommodation to the drift by political “leaders.” Election, fire, flood … these call forth the voices of warning. But where are the compelling external cries to match the inner voices of the soul which at times murmur darkly and other times shout clamorously that all is not well, that wayward feet are treading the way of wrath, the path of judgment?

The answer is not simply in passing more laws. These can tower formidably over the “natural man” so as to provoke mockery or hasten despair. Society’s solution cannot be found outside Jesus Christ. It is to be found in regeneration by his Spirit, who alone can set men’s souls on fire with a divinely sent thirst for greater purity, both for the individual and for the body politic.

Apart from such spiritual burning and purging, men sink beneath the weight and corruption of their own sin. This often takes the form of their seeking to free themselves from the vestigial conscience of Christian forebears. But the moment of such a triumph for humanity is the moment in which mankind is seen to be smitten with paralysis and the hand of death.

And after this the judgment.

War And Peace At Winona

Should a Christian support and even take part in a war, no matter how just he may believe it to be? This question was given serious consideration for two days, at Winona Lake, Indiana, by some thirty evangelical scholars. They devoted one day to a discussion of “biblical perspectives” in papers by Professor George S. Ladd of Fuller Seminary, Professor Glen Barker of Gordon Theological School, and Professor William Klassen of Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The following day they considered “theological perspectives” under the guidance of Professor Henry Stob of Calvin College, and Professor John H. Yoder of Goshen College. Dr. Paul Peachey also presented a paper on “War and the Christian Witness,” with particular reference to missions.

Before the conference had gone very far, it became clear that the division over the lawfulness of Christian participation in war included a more basic question: the Christian’s relation to the world. Should the Christian regard the world around him as basically evil and therefore something from which he should separate himself as completely as possible? Or should he, while acknowledging the impact of sin upon the world, also recognize that God in His grace restrained sin by means of various institutions, such as the family and the state, to which the Christian has some responsibilities?

Klassen and Yoder as well as a number of other participants made very clear their feeling that Christians, set apart from the world, must not participate in warfare on the ground that it contravenes Christ’s law of love. The state, knowing nothing of Christ’s redemptive work, follows a pagan course with pagan means, so that all the Christian can do is refuse to support the war and suffer the consequences.

To others such as Ladd, Reid, and Stob, the Christian has to recognize on the basis of Romans 13:1–5 that the state was ordained of God to maintain peace and justice. Therefore, as long as the state fulfills its God-given duty, the Christian has the responsibility of participating in its actions, even being willing to bear arms in a just cause. At the same time they insisted that the Church must continually call the state to a recognition of the ultimate kingship of Jesus Christ.

On the matter of atomic warfare, while the non-resistance group opposed any Christian participation, Stob held that since war always takes place to remedy a situation, if we believe that the total destruction of all men would possibly result, then men should refuse to fight. War would destroy all society and would thus frustrate its own purpose.

Although discussion waxed long and sometimes loud, the conference reached no unanimous conclusion. The Anabaptist and the Reformed traditions remained as far apart as they were four centuries ago. On the other hand, both groups felt that they had obtained a new understanding of each other’s position and a new appreciation of each other as Christian brethren.

Ordination And Special Ministry

One facet of the problem of ministry which is being discussed in many church circles is the flexibility and scope of the term “ordained ministry.” Since World War II a new breed of ministers has emerged, a floating ecumenical staff—ecumenical bureaucrats among them—who shepherd no flocks. Are they special ministers, or are they to be considered within the diversity of general ministry? Ought only the “ministers of Word and sacrament” to be ordained? If a Christian is ordained to the pastoral ministry, does this ordination apply also to non-pastoral ministries? Theological professors and editors of religious magazines are often former pastors who see no reason for becoming “unordained” in their new tasks. Ought the Church to ordain a minister to factories? to artists? If this seems ludicrous, some observers would reply: why relate the pastorate only to the private residential life of church members and not to their vocational life? What are the limits of ordination? Does it ideally include women? deacons? all dedicated laymen?

Among Baptists in England and Ireland, the local church (together with representatives of other churches) performs ordination; such ordination, however—in contrast with the sacramental ordination of “apostolic succession”—does not confer a lifelong status, but ends when an ordinant no longer fulfills the functions for which he was ordained. If ordination, some say, is simply a matter of local church order, then not only pastors but also any member with a specific church responsibility (nurses and wardens too) could be ordained. But is an installation ceremony then preferable to ordination for non-pastoral special ministries and for general ministries as well? In a study group of Swiss Reformed ministers, moreover, half the conferees considered ordination for lifelong ministry to be wrong because it divides the Church into two classes; only the apostles were ordained, they argued, and ministers ought rather to be installed. It is curious to find some Presbyterian bodies in America venturing to ordain women to the ministry while Reformed ministers in Switzerland are asking whether ministers ought to be ordained at all.

Trends In ‘Inner City’ Church Effort

Announcement of the sale of the National Presbyterian Church properties in Washington, D. C., was happily linked to word that the imposing denominational church and national center under discussion for a decade would thereby become a reality on a sixteen-acre site at 4300 Massachusetts Avenue N.W.

The sale to commercial interests of the present church properties on Connecticut Avenue (Washington’s “Fifth Avenue”), where John Witherspoon’s monument has long beckoned worshippers inside, nonetheless dramatizes the pressing problem of many downtown churches to which serious attention is being given by the so-called “inner city” movement. Commercial building booms, residential transiency and flight to the suburbs, and shifting population complexions and tides have given short-term survival notice to many city churches of past greatness, Chicago’s Moody Memorial Church among them. Some big downtown churches have long been kept alive not so much by a virile local membership as by a pulpit ministry attractive to a “floating attendance” generously sprinkled with discontented members of other churches.

If relocating churches are not wholly to forsake our giant metropolises, fresh emphasis is needed on a theology of Christ’s identification with sinners everywhere-indicating its implications for the large city church no less than for the storefront mission—and on the importance as well of registering the Christian witness upon the social needs and public problems of the inner city. When Pacific Garden Mission had to relocate back in 1922, one of its trustees moved about Chicago’s street corners with an adding machine to learn “just where the fish are.” His evangelistic instinct was much sounder than the current ecclesiastical tendency to follow (or even to anticipate) the exodus of the current membership to suburbia.

Perhaps to relieve its guilt complex somewhat, the suburban church tends now to “identify” itself with the socio-political aspirations of big-city minorities and masses, while it remains as aloof as ever to their prime spiritual needs. And much of the “inner city” movement, of which we are now hearing a great deal, compounds this same error. What the man in the street most needs from the Christian religion is not a political advisor but prophets and apostles, and above all else, the forgiveness of sins and new birth. Instead of relying upon political dynamisms for achievement of spiritual objectives, the Church ought to be confronting and challenging the political strategies with spiritual power and redemption. Better laws, to be sure, are always necessary. But new laws without new life will produce only a mummy society aware of the form of godliness but lacking its power in conscience and life.

It is distressing when some champions of the inner city effort—particularly those who manage to get the ear of the press—feel they must debunk individual piety and mass evangelism while stressing social relevance. That is like trying to fly a string without the kite. The Church can stand more personal piety—a great deal more—and the disparagers need the same double dose as the rest of us. Evangelism is Christianity’s very lifeline from generation to generation. Mass evangelism, indeed, may be but a methodical compensation for the lack of individual evangelism; when churchmembers fully recover a passion for lost souls the former may well dissolve into the latter. But snide criticism of mass evangelism today often slides into a veiled rejection of the evangelistic thrust as such and a ready disposition to exchange spiritual rebirth for socio-political alertness.

We are not saying that Christians have no stake in socio-political outcomes. But getting people politically active does not also make them spiritually alive, despite the fact that some churchmen today prefer being identified by a placard in a picket line to reading a Bible in the crowd. Corporate activity in political affairs is no sure mark of a living church; more and more, it becomes a sign that a church is confused about its authentic corporate mission. It is remarkable that our political institutions sometimes recognize religious principles more soundly than our churches themselves preserve them. At any rate, the churches are granted tax exemption because they presumably engage in a spiritual ministry, and not in direct corporate political activity.

What are the marks of a virile church, whether inner city or suburbia? The Scriptures are studied, treasured, and practiced. The Gospel is truly proclaimed. Men are reminded individually that they are lost and doomed without the forgiveness of sins, and they are invited to a personal experience of salvation in Christ. The multitudes are told that God desires everyman’s restoration to a life of holiness and justice—and that He has gone the vast distance to Calvary to open the way of fellowship with himself. People are confronted with the news that Christ is Lord of all—and the whole of learning and life is called anew to reflect the light of the Lamb slain for sinners.

If these are among the marks of a virile Church—and surely one must say this of the apostolic Church in the Roman Empire—the primary issue facing our inner-city churches and suburban churches alike is not methodical change but theological and missionary renewal. The death or life of a church is more than location and strategy. Some churches in the remote African jungle have more spiritual virility than others in our proud metropolitan centers. The Church’s true life is supernatural. Where a church is regarded mainly as a matter of buildings, of location, of a socio-political esprit de corps, one looks in vain for that regenerate body of devout believers whom the crucified and risen Christ heads and whom the Holy Spirit indwells. The hope of our big cities remains Christ walking among the candlesticks, not churchmen circulating among the picket lines. Where sinners are twice born, where Christian virtue flows freely from men’s lives, where church members eagerly lead their lost neighbors to Christ—there neither the gates of hell, nor suburban vices, nor downtown decline, will prevail against the Church.

Protestants And The President’S Library

When the first definitive list of book titles for the White House library was made public last month it was evident to many observers that the future library would furnish presidents with an adequate impression of the influence of grass-roots Protestantism upon the life and culture of our nation only by religious histories or by selections from early American literature. Perhaps it would not succeed at all. Missing from the list of fifty-six religious works are many Puritan classics, all of Protestantism’s great dogmatic theologies (Hodge, Strong, Warfield), and all productions of the Protestant pulpit. Well represented are the social-gospel movement, the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, and some of America’s older religious sects. Five versions of the Bible will occupy the White House shelves.

Evangelicals my be encouraged by titles in American literature which represent the historic religious faith of the American colonists. Included are The Works of Jonathan Edwards, William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, and Cotton Mather’s Ecclesiastical History of New England. Perry Miller’s definitive study of The Puritans finds a place under literary history and criticism. The conservative tradition thus represented is not recent, but the selection may inspire evangelicals to increase their efforts in proclaiming the historic Protestant faith and to recapture the modern mind and the American culture for Christ.

L. Nelson Bell

Page 6229 – Christianity Today (11)

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A thirsty woman came to the well at Sychar to draw water not only for herself but also for her household. There she found the spiritual water which became for her a spring, welling up to life eternal.

Had this woman found the water of Jacob’s well only she would have continued to go back from day to day. But on that memorable occasion she met Jesus Christ, who revealed himself to her as the Messiah, the one for whom all Jewry longed. That it was to this stranger and despised person that Christ witnessed makes the story all the more thrilling.

Countless sermons have been preached about this well-side encounter, and in them are to be found multiplied lessons for our own eternal good.

There is one lesson we need to learn in each generation—that there is a difference between the temporal and the eternal which transcends all else. The things which are seen are temporal and temporary. It is the things which are not seen which are eternal.

Never has the Church needed to recognize this difference more than today. So many things are spoken of as “Christian” which are not Christian but humanitarian. As a matter of fact, much of theological controversy hinges on this basic problem, while the effective witness of the Church stands or falls at precisely this point.

Exploding populations, emerging nations, and accelerated communications have made good men more conscious than ever of the plight and needs of men around the world. Attempts to alleviate suffering, raise standards of living, and offer something of the “good life” to all men everywhere strike a responsive chord in many hearts.

All of this is as it should be, but the task, message, and emphasis of the Church goes infinitely further than this, and we are in grave danger of losing sight of this priority.

To the Church is committed the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. This in no way minimizes the obligation to carry the cup of cold water as we proclaim the Gospel; but if humanitarianism is the dominating work and message of the Church, she is not fulfilling her obligation to a lost and dying world.

As one studies the emphasis of many church programs (an emphasis reflected in the pronouncements of major denominations in their annual meetings), one is forced to the conclusion that for many the primary concern of the Church has to do with people as they live in this present world.

Who then is to preach the Gospel of redemption—of salvation from sin? Where then can men go to learn the way of eternal life? Who will preach to men of sin, and of self-control, and of future judgment? In other words, if the Church is to center her emphasis on the temporal needs of mankind, who will enter the spiritual vacuum thereby created?

We recently heard a consecrated layman tell of evening prayers with his wife. He was praying for the sick and the needy when suddenly he felt God speaking to him: “I have given you the means to help the needy; why pray about something you can and should be doing already!”

There is no use in hiding our unwillingness to become involved in the relief of human need and suffering with pious platitudes about the next world. At the same time, if our concerns have solely to do with the material and secular welfare of mankind we are not being Christian either in attitude or in activity.

We frequently hear persons spoken of as “great Christians.” As a rule this phrase is used as a tribute to their humanitarian concern and efforts. Concern for peace, philanthropic activities, the relief of human suffering, crusades for social justice—all have their place in the activities of Christians. But none of these things, singly or in the composite, constitute Christianity as such. To be a Christian one must have entered into a new relationship with God through faith in his Son. This relationship involves a spiritual change, a rebirth into the family of God whereby one has eternal life.

In many places and ways there is grave danger of the Church’s forgetting her twofold responsibility and settling for water after the drinking of which men will thirst again.

The writer yields to no man in his concern for the alleviating of human suffering. For twenty-five years he shared in the work of a large mission hospital in China. During those years several hundred thousand patients went through the clinic and hospital. A great many of them had their diseases cured. Where are these people today—after a quarter of a century? We are constrained to believe that most of them are now dead.

The question then arises. Where are they now? During the time these people were under medical care there was a carefully worked-out and executed plan of evangelistic effort. By word of mouth, the printed page, and example, there was a prayerful and careful determination to lead these people to Christ. We know that many of them accepted Him as Saviour and Lord either while hospital patients or later.

Suppose all efforts had been centered on physically rehabilitating these patients without at the same time preaching to them Christ as their Saviour and their hope of eternity? Had this been the case, one would look back today on twenty-five years of futility, as far as eternal verities are concerned.

Even true Christians can be led to spend their time and energies—yes, for a whole lifetime—only to find that they have lived in vain in the light of the final testing.

The Apostle Paul speaks of men who have established their lives on Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation but who have built with perishable materials of wood, hay, and stubble, all of which are destroyed when tested by the fire of God’s judgment even though the individual is himself saved.

Emphasis on the temporal is a grave temptation, for it is this which we see and experience. Furthermore, if our Christianity is valid we must show forth love and compassion in terms which really help men in their social and physical misery.

But as far as the Christian and the Church are concerned, love and compassion are fruits of the Spirit and are never complete unless they look down the corridors of time into that eternity for which all men are destined.

Hungry men—thirsty men—needy men constantly enter the doors of the church only to hear economic, political, and social platitudes and panaceas. They are not fed with the bread of life, nor have they been able to drink from the fountain of living water. They have sought and received only that which lasts for the moment.

Our Lord says: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Shall those who need God’s greatest gift be offered nothing more than that which perishes with time?

It’s being done.

    • More fromL. Nelson Bell

D. J. Brake

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Irrelevant And Immaterial

While I was jotting down notes from all over there was this article in the Christian Century called “Notes from an Irrelevant Clergyman.” It was written by Warren Carr, who is said to have “a Baptist church in the South.” What gets Mr. Carr is that in the midst of a big and very sensitive race situation, after Mr. Carr has spoken strongly and clearly on the subject, the committees for his city are all set up and they don’t know how to use him. The current attitude of the layman is seemingly: “Stand aside now. We have a real job to do.”

About two months ago friends of mine were entertaining me in their lovely home and fell to talking about the PTA; from that they launched out on the school board, and there it seemed that someone had concocted a program on the problem of pornography. The word was now moving around town that this program was underwritten by some “shadow” organization, and all kinds of people were getting agitated. The wife of my friend was getting a list of people to telephone for protest, and when she suggested calling the outstanding preacher of the community her husband said, and I quote exactly, “Don’t get the preachers in. They will just confuse things.”

At long last I am working my way through Will Herberg’s Four Existentialist Theologians; the four theologians whom he describes and quotes are Maritain, Berdyaev, Buber, and Tillich. Herberg points out that three of these four men are not clergymen but laymen. Only Tillich is a clergyman, and he is primarily a professional philosopher.

All this sounds a little hard on the clergy. Maybe we have been looking at ourselves in the wrong light or expecting our successes in the wrong direction. We are supposed to sow seeds, not reap crops; if there be any guidance of the Spirit, then we should be operating on the front and the new and the living end. After us and not by us are things to be done.

EUTYCHUS II

The New Format: Yes And No

Congratulations on the fine issue (Aug. 2) with which you began your new format.

Looney Valley and Cedar Valley Lutheran Churches

Houston and La Moille, Minn.

In my opinion the “delightful new format” applies to the cover only!

White Plains, N. Y.

Your new format is an exceptionally hand-some publication.

Bergenfield, N. J.

Please. If necessary sacrifice some of that lonely white space, but give us bigger print. This is awful.

Yucaipa, Calif.

May I commend you on the new cover and format?… I think that you have used your type and white space to great advantage.

Executive Director

Division of Christian Publications

Board of Education and Publication

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

I do not not like your new format. The type, beginning on page 29 of your August 2 issue, is difficult to read.… I feel that throughout the magazine you are putting too much on a page.…

Chester, Pa.

I want to congratulate you on the new format. It is a very fine one and most inviting in its setup.

Stevenson, Md.

Congratulations on your new format! This is easily the greatest improvement since the addition of those monthly sermons.

Highland Baptist

Huntington, W. Va.

Congratulations to you (and to ourselves) on the new dress in which C. T. appears!

My copy came yesterday. I like it (with a minor reservation here or there).

Vice-Pres.-At-Large

World Vision

Pasadena, Calif.

I sincerely hope the new form is just a temporary lapse. It is impossible to read it easily and comfortably.

Morgans Baptist Church

Moneta, Va.

Your new format is excellent. While redesigning is a catastrophe for some periodicals, it was a distinct gain for you.

Art Director

Board of Education and Publication

General Conference Mennonite Church

Newton, Kan.

Do not like your new format. The old one was far superior and cannot understand what you ever thought was wrong with it.

Warrenville, Ill.

I withdraw criticism of the format.… This number 23 issue looks good and I do not have an old one so I don’t know what I was fussing about in the first place. At any rate, this looks good but not better than what you have had for years.

Warrenville, Ill.

We are gratified over the concern ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYreaders for the magazine’s typographical well-being. To those few readers who have objected to the type’s being “smaller” we merely say this: The Baskerville type we now employ has as wide a character as did our old Fairfield. The height of the character matches that used in The New York Times. Baskerville is authoritatively regarded for superior legibility, and its legibility inCHRISTIANITY TODAYis enhanced by additional leading (space between lines).—ED.

Texas And The Angels

Your August 2 editorial “Christian Vocational Calling” reminded me of the time I applied for a summer job with a paper company which had the policy of subjecting every applicant to a psychological examination. Halfway through my inkblot test I could tell I was upsetting my examiner because I was seeing cherubim, the tables of the Law, and other religious symbols where I probably should have alleged to see more earthily Freudian objects. But I did not realize how far apart our worlds were until he delved into my employment history. I had been on the staff of a Colorado church before being invited to another position in Texas—all of which was before going back to school, as I would again that fall.

The psychologist asked me, “Why did you leave the church in Colorado?”

I made the mistake of saying, “Because I was called down to Texas.”

At this point he leaned over the table and said in that stage whisper used to distract lunatics while the net is encircling them, “Called? Called? Like angel voices perhaps?”

“No,” I replied. “Called—like by long-distance telephone call from a preacher I knew.”

That ended the interview. I never went back to see if I got the job.

Silver Spring, Md.

The dissatisfaction with psychological tests in predictive screening of religious candidates must not be seen as a unique problem. All psychological evaluations are limited in their efficacy and particularly so in predicting success or failure in such a complicated decision as vocational outcome. As with all new procedures, we often hope for more than they can realistically produce. This leaves us open to frustration and denial of the realistic validity of the procedure.…

You quote ironic statements which regard religious personalities as “deviant.” Experience reveals that one will receive help from your consultant in proportion to his understanding of your need. Dr. M. K. Bowers suggests that such collaborative evaluations can only be profitable if the psychotherapist understands and is sympathetic to the religious values of the person and the specific evaluative needs of the institution (Psychotherapy of Religious Personnel in Research Plans in Religion etc.; Rel. Educ. Assn., 1962).…

You note that no one should stand between the called and the Caller. We heartily agree. Nonetheless, my own professional experience and that of my Christian colleagues who also see religious candidates and personnel underscore the difficulty we mortals often have in perceiving the Divine Call. Personal needs and misconceptions

can frequently be attributed to God. If we can help in discovering such spurious calls we may not only obviate misplaced effort but oftentimes turn one toward an actual spiritual fulfillment in an appropriate area.

The selection of Christian vocation deserves our highest attention. But the use of our best human skills should be seen as augmenting rather than interfering with our human decisions. The role of the psychotherapist/evaluator should be one of consultant to individuals and institutions. The ultimate decision must be with the spiritual agencies who must use our contributions as part of the total picture.

Department of Psychiatry

University of Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio

Taxation And The Church

Thank you for an excellent editorial, “What of Religious Tax Exemptions?” (Aug. 2 issue). You have presented the problem of tax exemption for religious organizations in a very fair and comprehensible way.

I can see no difference between a direct form of support for churches through subsidies and an indirect form through tax deductions, either institutional or personal. I submit that many if not most churches draw their lives from the state through these “subsidies” in the form of tax deductions.

As a church member (American Baptist), I value my membership. At the same time, I view dependence upon “outside” support, which includes tax exemptions in my interpretation, as a weakening factor in the life of the church. If the Church is to have strength and respect, it must be completely self-supporting.

Seattle, Wash.

What of the government that engages in tax-exempt enterprises of every description, in unfair competition with private enterprise, forcing its citizens not only to face such unequal competition, but to make up the deficit incurred by government when those business enterprises operate in the red? It seems to me that the government should abide by the same rules that apply to the churches, in so far as moral and legal conduct is concerned.… Furthermore, if only such funds of the church as are spent upon worship and strictly religious education facilities are to be tax-exempt, then the millions spent every year by the World Council and the National Council of Churches in lobbying in Washington in attempting to influence government policies, both foreign and domestic, activities entirely beyond and unrelated to the real mission of the Church, should be taxed to the hilt.

Harlington, Tex.

My Sunday school teacher was a Philadelphia lawyer. He told us that churches were not taxed because it cost less to police a city of churches.… Today crime is on the increase and church attendance is on the decrease. Many churches are closed Sunday evening. In one city a righteous family is driving thirteen miles past churches that are closed to one that is putting on a good evening service. I believe the names of these closed churches should be given to the tax collector. They are not earning an exemption.

Newfield, N. J.

Peter, Caesar, And The Sword

The Rev. William C. Lowe (Eutychus, Aug. 2 issue) raises the question: “But can anyone imagine Jesus Christ taking a gun to defend himself or his disciples?” I find that liberal as well as conservative Bible teachers often fail to exegete the words of our Lord correctly when he said: “Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” These words were uttered to Peter the Elder of the Church, but never to Caesar the head of the Roman government. God has never sanctioned nor blessed the defense of the Church by the sword whether by the Muenster Anabaptists in 1535, or, by General Thomas Harrison of the “Fifth Monarchy Party” in England in 1661. During the Second World War and the Korean War millions of Christians were praying for the success of our fighting men, including General Harrison.

Faith Community Church

Palmdale, Calif.

Strategy

Though I found Colin C. Campbell’s “Christian Responsibility to Contemporary Literature” (Aug. 2 issue) stimulating … I question certain presuppositions.… Christian responsibility, he asserts, compels us to approach contemporary, secular literary works with an attitude of what we can give to them by “confronting serious works of literary art—reading them, pondering them, debating them with friends, writing about them.” By these methods could a new channel form to carry the leaven of “Christian concepts” into modern literature. One crucial presupposition appears to be operative here. It is the seeming inevitability that current literature “must come under the leavening touch of Christianity,” that “every sort of human activity must feel the impact of Christian concepts” in the future, and that a literature “may well” emerge “fully responsive to the leaven” of Christian ideas. By what authority can we say that Christian concepts will make such an impact.… How consistent is Mr. Campbell’s optimism with orthodoxy’s view of man? Also, by advocating the steady, gradual penetration of elements of “primitive Christianity” as an important vital task, is he being consistent with orthodoxy’s view of salvation? For it is not a gradual process by which man comes to understand his relationship to God, but rather through a more decisive experience.… Thus, such a gradual leavening of secular literature, unless conceived as an improvement of the overall environment, would be less crucial than the improvement of contemporary creative Christian literature. And our responsibility to secular literature would be significantly lessened; not so our responsibility to its writers and avid readers.

Kalamazoo, Mich.

Right Man, Wrong Council

Re “The Receiving End” (News, July 19 issue): The Rev. Daniel Corrigan you identify with the Home Department of the National Council of Churches is, in fact, … the Director of the Home Department of the National Council of the Episcopal Church.

Saint John’s

Cohoes, N. Y.

Nicodemus Today

Re the number of born-again Christians in churches (Editorial, July 19 issue): I made a private survey recently on this very point and thought you might be interested in it. I have been pastor here twenty-one years and so know the congregation well. Here are the results:

Consecrated, active, spiritual13%

Good interest27%

Casual interest31%

Complete backsliders29%

My observation would lead me to believe that this is about what the situation is in the old-line Protestant churches in this area.

New York State

Your informant, whoever he was, was either irresponsible, not knowing whereof he spoke, or prejudiced against our fellowship.… One of our basic doctrines of our conference churches is that a person must be born again, or “twice-born” as your editorial puts it, before becoming a member of the church. To have indicated that our local churches have but 66 per cent twice-born members has done us grievous harm to our ministry. Letters have come to me since your editorial which question our status.

Gen. Secy.

Baptist General Conference

Chicago, Ill.

Your summary on the number of born-again people in the churches seemed super-abounding in exaggerated optimism.

Skyway Bible Church

Seattle, Wash.

Education: Religion Issue

Thank you very much for your July 5 issue.… It has been helpful in giving to me new insights into the U. S. Supreme Court members’ decision.

I do not agree with their decision entirely for the following reasons …: Protestants in America have now lost some of their religious freedom and liberty because of this prohibition on the free exercise of religion.… This decision goes far beyond the spirit and the intention of the founding fathers … and the framers of the U. S. Constitution.

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Charleston, W. Va.

While reading the June issue of The Atlantic, I was impressed with the implications for Christian education in the article “Higher Education in the 21st Century.”

Could the use of television and programmed learning possibly be the answer to the parochial school problem? Could it possibly point a way for survival for the Christian college?

If a state university could provide quality courses in the sciences and in all forms of laboratory demonstrations and in foreign languages via television, the parochial school could concentrate on the social sciences, humanities, and religious studies.

The same type of service provided to Christian colleges in certain academic areas would narrow the load of the church-related school. A Christian university could take the lead in providing the quality material for television tapes in areas of special Christian concern which are too costly and specialized to warrant unnecessary duplication by smaller schools.

Certainly this idea is not new, but I am unaware of any popular statement of it. Has any foundation been alerted to this potential need? Would not a serious study of this approach possibly pay immeasurable dividends in the next generation?

Immanuel Lutheran

Eugene, Ore.

Living Waters

A prime source of Christian failure today is the lack of Bible reading. Perhaps never before have so many books been in circulation about the Bible and religious aspects of life. But Jesus said, “They have forsaken me”—the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns—broken cisterns that just can’t hold water at all.

How can our schools of theology be influenced once again by German thinkers and their cry for “demythologizing” when we have seen what the same sort of thing did for German civilization in 1915 under the title of “Higher Criticism”?

Christianity cannot survive where the Bible itself is not read, for here is where we find the deepest Truth, the surest Way, and the most victorious Life. The strange thing about the Bible is that, unlike other books, the more one reads it the more exciting it gets and the newer it seems. Faith is born or reborn or deepened, tears come to the eyes as the Father speaks—oh! so personally—to his listening son or daughter, and the heart expands to bursting with the entrance of the Holy Spirit as he bears witness to the most heroic, magnetic figure of history—our closest friend and divine Saviour. No amount of books about the Bible (much less those far removed from it) works such miracles in and for the reader. It’s not a few unrelated verses a day that pay such dividends. There’s not a book in the world meant to be read that way, though, of course, the Bible survives better than most under the treatment. Excitement comes when a chapter or more is read in each of the many sections, with continuous reading in each, day by day; then it is the threads begin to shimmer and life takes on another dimension.

So where do we start putting the pieces of our crumbling Christian world together? Perhaps by dusting off the Rock it has to stand on and choosing the foundation stones very carefully, holding them up to the light of truth. We see immediately that American civilization obviously can not be one of these, nor any other national or ethnic society extant. America is not 100 per cent Christian nor is the church—all or any of them. We have become too tainted by the world, and the world has been barely tinged by us. Is it not time for the redeemed of the Lord to say so? Not those who think they’re perfect but those who know they’re nothing, or worse, except as they are saved by the grace of the Lord.

Rye, N.Y.

Not As A Preacher

I want to thank you and your staff personally for an outstanding performance. It is impossible for me to speak as a “preacher,” but for years I have been studying all these various mixed-up confusions of philosophy and theology—only to find myself torn between my personal experience and what “men were saying.”

At long last, a saintly minister-friend of mine directed me to you, and what a Godsend. I cannot thank you enough for the help that I am constantly receiving from [your] pages. For the life of me, I do not understand how you could be any more fair and honest in your appraisals. Accustomed to the validation theory and practice, I, for one, find your “treatment” intelligent, comprehensive, penetrating, and conducive to the real, living, and whole Christianity, which the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ seeks to reveal.

Cheers! to the Editor and his staff. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is “must reading” for any university student—secular or sacred—who purports to be “transformed by the renewing of his mind.” Its scholarship is exciting as it proceeds to hit those nails right on their heads.

South Pasadena, Calif.

    • More fromD. J. Brake

Page 6229 – Christianity Today (15)

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Defenders of the cultural and spiritual superiority of the American over the Communist way of life are sometimes hard put. Moscow, world capital of Communism, has as many corner bookstores as there are bars per block in New York City. And they’re crowded. One of the joys of the American booklover abroad is the countless bookstores, little and big. found in almost every European city. If cultural-spiritual superiority is gauged by what enters the mind rather than what enters the mouth, the defenders of American superiority had better look elsewhere for evidence.

The fault surely does not lie with the writers and publishers. Even in the restricted religious area, there is again promise of a lush, rich harvest of books. As do all harvests, the book harvest will bring both wheat and tares, and as always there is danger in attempting to separate them in advance. Despite the hazard, CHRISTIANITY TODAY again presents its selection of what it seems from here will be the best to come from the religious press this fall. We thank the publishers for their cooperation, without which no forecast could be made; and we hope our serious readers—ministers, librarians, college and seminary professors, and lay subscribers—will find this a helpful and selective prediction of new books to come.

The paperback revolution continues. Gone are the days when books were hard to come by, or too expensive. No longer need the poor city lad or the boy down on the farm read and reread the same books from the little family bookcase. The flood of classic texts, out-of-print standard religious and theological works, and even first printings in inexpensive paperbacks continues to come full tide. Readers may watch for them in the listings which appear in our Book Review section throughout the year.

NEW TESTAMENT: Westminster Press will publish Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew by G. Bornkamm, G. Barth, and H. J. Held; The All-Sufficient Christ, a study in Paul’s letter to the Colossians by W. Barclay; Teaching and Preaching the New Testament by A. M. Hunter; and The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus by N. Perrin. John Knox Press will also publish a book titled The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, this one by G. Lundstrom. From Holt, Rinehart and Winston will come Palestinian Judaism in the Time of Jesus Christ by J. Bonsirven; Baptism: Conscience and Clue for the Church by W. Carr; and Acquittal by Resurrection by M. Barth and V. Fletcher. Judson Press promises Theology in the New Testament by R. E. Knudsen; Sheed & Ward, The Harmony of the Gospels by R. Knox; Harper & Row, The Humor of Christ by E. Trueblood; Warner Press, Jesus Christ, A Study in the Gospels by A. Eikamp; Fortress Press, The Day of His Coming: Our Time in the New Testament by G. Gloege; University Books. The Lost Years of Jesus by C. F. Potter; Abingdon Press, The Circle and the Cross by G. W. C. Thomas. Wm. B. Eerdmans promises An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism by J. H. Greenlee and An Introduction to the New Testament by E. Harrison.

OLD TESTAMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY: From Eerdmans. Israel and the Nations by F. F. Bruce and The Book of Isaiah (Vol. I) by E. J. Young; from Harper & Row, Concise History of Israel by M. A. Beek and The Old Testament and Christian Faith edited by B. W. Anderson; from Doubleday, The Background of the Old Testament by E. Kellner and Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by R. Graves and R. Patai; from McGraw-Hill. Collected Old Testament Studies by G. Von Rad; from Zondervan, The Marked Chain-Reference Bible by J. G. Lawson; from Cambridge University Press, Thirty-Six Psalms by the late F. Kendon and Olduvai Gorge 1951–1961 (Vol. 1) by L. S. B. Leakey; from Coward-McCann, Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs by B. Mertz; from G. P. Putnam’s. In the Beginnings: Ancient and Contemporary Primitive Religions and Civilizations Around the World by H. R. Hays; from Thomas Nelson & Sons, The Prophets (Vol. IV) by E. Kraeling; and from Abingdon. Secrets from the Caves by T. L. Coss.

BIBLICAL STUDIES: Prophets in Perspective by B. D. Napier, Abingdon; Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day by S. L. Greenslade, Cambridge; Three Crucial Decades: Studies in the Book of Acts by F.V. Filson, Knox; The Voice of the Prophets by R. Norden, Concordia; Christmas As It Really Was by H. W. van der Vaart Smit and Gospel Truth by P. Benoit, Helicon Press; The Biblical Doctrine of Virginity by L. Legrand, Sliced & Ward; Christian Priesthood by H. Balmforth, Seabury Press; The New Bible Survey by L. L. Eason, Zondervan; Count It All Joy: Themes from the Book of James by W. Stringfellow, Them He Glorified: A Systematic Study of the Doctrine of Glorification by B. Ramm, Origins of the Synoptic Gospels by the late N. B. Stonehouse, and Interpreting the Bible by A. B. Mickelsen, all from Eerdmans; Mary, the Mother of Jesus by A. T. Robertson and Satan: His Personality, Power and Overthrow by E. M. Bounds, Baker Book House.

LITURGY: Again the offerings are few: Worship in Scripture and Tradition edited by M. H. Shepherd, Jr., Oxford University Press; Liturgy Is Mission edited by F. Cellier and English Spirituality by M. Thornton, both from Seabury; and The Eucharist and You by A. Pardue, Morehouse-Barlow.

MISSIONS: Two books from Abingdon: Criterion for the Church by J. R. Nelson and The Renewal of the Ministry by T. J. Mullen; two from Zondervan: Soul-Winning Evangelism by J. E. Conant and Evangelism of the Early Church by C. E. Autrey; two from Harper & Row: Reshaping the Christian Life by R. Raines and Young Life by E. Cailliet; The Four Major Cults by A. Hoekema, from Eerdmans; Missionary Opportunity Today edited by L. T. Lyall, from Inter-Varsity Press; and That Hearing They Shall Perceive by C. D. Kean, from Seabury.

THEOLOGY: Nelson will publish Hans Kung’s Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth with a Catholic Reflection; Eerdmans will print G. C. Berkouwer’s The Work of Jesus Christ; the University of Chicago Press, P. Tillich’s Systematic Theology (Vol. Ill); Zondervan. J. O. Buswell’s Systematic Theology (Vol. II, Soteriology and Eschatology); and Sheed & Ward, A Theology of History by Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian Commitment by K. Rahner, and Christ: Sacrament of the Encounter with God by E. Schillebeeckx. Fortress will press Word and Faith by G. Ebeling; Macmillan, A. C. Pegis’ At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man; Henry Regnery Company, An Opportunity for Faith by W. Busenbender; and the Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, The Five Points of Calvinism, Defined, Defended, Documented by D. N. Steele and C. C. Thomas. From McGraw-Hill will come Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (Vols. I, II, XIII); and from Channel Press, K. Barth’s God In Action.

ECUMENICS: Swiss Roman Catholic and active ecumenist H. Kung has sent two books to the press, The Council in Action: Theological Reflection on the Second Vatican Council, Sheed & Ward, and Structures of the Church, Nelson. Eerdmans will publish M. E. Marty’s Church Unity and Church Mission; Zondervan, The Dynamics of Christian Unity edited and compiled by W. S. Mooneyham; Seabury, Ministers of Christ by W. Lowrie; Macmillan, Twelve Council Fathers by W. M. Abbott. Helicon Press will publish The Rise of Protestant Monasticism by F. Biot (this should be interesting), Unity: A History and Some Reflections by M. Villain, and The Unity of the Churches of God by P. Sherwood. From Oxford will come Councils and Synods (Part 2, Vols. I and II) by F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY: That One Good Sermon by A. N. Sayres, United Church Press; The Pastor and His Work by H. C. Kent, Sr., Moody Press; Servant of God’s Servants: The Work of the Christian Minister by P. Miller, Herald Press; Constructive Aspects of Anxiety by S. Hiltner and K. Menninger and Filing Your Sermon Ideas by P. L. Clem, Abingdon; The Pastoral Care of the Mentally Ill by N. Autton, Apostle and Bishop by A. G. Hebert, and John Wesley and the Christian Ministry by A. B. Lawson, all from Seabury; Preaching Values from the Papyri by H. H. Hobbs, Baker; The Layman’s Role Today by F. K. Wentz, Doubleday; The Anarchy of Feeling: Man’s Struggle for Freedom and Maturity by A. Schneiders, Sheed & Ward; and a reprint of that old classic The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by W. James, University Books. From Knox will come a study of the biblical view of the ministry, The Minister in the Reformed Tradition by H. G. Goodykoontz.

BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES: Eight productions from Eerdmans: The Wesleyan Bible Commentary (6 vols.), The Epistle of Paul to the Romans by F. F. Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians by F. Foulkes, God’s Covenants by D. G. Barnhouse, Calvin’s Hebrews and I and II Peter translated by W. B. Johnston, Christ and the Church: An Exposition of Ephesians by Dale Moody, Commentary on the Gospel of John by J. R. Mantey and G. A. Turner, and the first volume of a very significant publishmg venture, Gerhard Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament translated from the German by G. W. Bromiley. Cambridge will publish The Gospel According to Matthew (Vol. I of the “Cambridge Bible Commentary”) by A. W. Argyle, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount by W. D. Davies, and The Historical Tradition of the Fourth Gospel by C. H. Dodd. From Presbyterian & Reformed will come An Interpretive Outline of Romans by D. N. Steele and C. C. Thomas; from Nelson, Nelson’s Bible Commentary (based on RSV); and from Knox, Exodus by A. D. Napier, Leviticus, Numbers by J. L. Mays, John by F. V. Filson, I Thessalonians Through Philemon by H. Rolston (all part of the “Layman’s Bible Commentary”). Harper & Row will publish The Pastoral Epistles by J. N. D. Kelly (part of Harper’s “New Testament Commentary”).

ETHICS AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS: The offerings in this field clearly reflect the concerns and problems of our times: The Wall Between Church and State edited by D. H. Oaks, University of Chicago; Religion and the Schools: The Great Controversy by P. Blanshard, Beacon Press; Justice and the Supreme Court by R. J. Tresolini, J. B. Lippincott; Church and State by J. M. Kik, Thomas Nelson; Christian Social Ethics by C. F. H. Henry, The Vocabulary of Communism by L. DeKoster, and Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture by J. O. Buswell, all from Eerdmans; New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States by A. Coale and M. Zelnik, Princeton University Press; The Christian and Capital Punishment by J. H. Yoder, Faith and Life Press; The Popes and World Government by E. Guerry, Helicon; The Church Reclaims the City by P. Moore, Jr., Seabury; and Ethics in a Christian Context by P. L. Lehmann, Harper & Row.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: Putnam’s will publish Larousse Encyclopedia of Byzantine and Medieval Art edited by R. Huyghe and Great Drawings of the Masters by J. E. Schuler and R. Hansler. From Doubleday will come The Coming of Christ by the editors of Look magazine; from Harper & Row, Landscapes of the Bible by G. Eichholz and 6,000 Years of the Bible by G. S. Wegener. Christ and Architecture for Reformation Churches by D. J. Bruggink and C. H. Droppers will be issued by Eerdmans; Meetinghouse and Church in Early New England by E. W. Sinnott, McGraw-Hill; Drama and Imagery in British Churches by M. D. Anderson and Monastic Architecture in France by J. Evans, Cambridge.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Churches and the Campus by J. G. Chamberlin and Christian Education and Evangelism by D. G. Stewart, Westminster; Lutheran Elementary Schools in Action by V. Krause, Concordia; American Education—A National Failure: The Problem of Our Schools and What We Can Learn from England by H. F. Rickover, E. P. Dutton & Company; and Christian Education in the Home by A. M. Erb, Herald Press.

CHURCH HISTORY: Westminster will publish The Layman in Christian History (the first history of its kind) by S. C. Neill. From Knox will come Presbyterians in the South, Vol. I: 1607–1861 by E. T. Thompson; and from the Johns Hopkins Press, Amish Society by J. A. Hostetler.

SERMONS: Great Sermons on the Birth of Christ compiled by W. M. Smith, W. A. Wilde Company; The Miracles of Golgotha by H. Boese, Preaching from Hosea by E. F. Vallowe, Preaching and Teaching from Ephesians by F. Howard, Sermons on Christian Commitments by M. W. Downey, all from Baker. Zondervan will issue The Voice of the Cross by M. L. Loane and Expository Sermons on Revelation (Vol. II) by W. A. Criswell; and Eerdmans, A Relevant Salvation by R. E. O. White and Mastering Life With the Master by W. H. Hager. Life Can Begin Again: Sermons on the Sermon on the Mount by H. Thielicke will come from Fortress, and Concordia Pulpit 1964 (various authors), from Concordia.

DEVOTIONAL: At Wit’s End by J. Finegan and The Meaning of Gifts by P. Tournier, Knox; John Doe, Disciple edited by C. Marshall, McGraw-Hill; Wings of the Spirit by W. Fridy, Abingdon; When Jesus Came by H. H. Brown, Eerdmans; Daily Gospel by P. B. Smith, Zondervan; The Night and Nothing by G. Webbe, Seabury; and Dimensions of Prayer by D. V. Steere, Harper & Row.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENCE: Towards a Theological Understanding of History by E. C. Rust, Oxford; The Failure of Theology in Modern Literature by J. Killinger, Abingdon; Faith and Philosophy: Philosophical Studies in Religion and Ethics edited by A. Plantinga, Eerdmans; The New Evangelicalism by R. H. Nash, Zondervan; The Middle Ages and Philosophy by A. Pegis, Regnery; Reason in Religion by N. F. S. Ferre, Nelson; The System and the Gospel by K. Hamilton, Macmillan; Science, God and You by E. Wolthuis, Baker; The Case For Calvinism by C. Van Til and What is Religion? By D. H. Freeman, Presbyterian & Reformed; Christendom Revisited: A Kierkegaardian View of the Church Today by J. A. Gates and Language and Faith: Studies in Sign, Symbol, and Meaning by J. Hutchison, Westminster; The Meaning of History by H. Marrou, Helicon; Faust Revisited by M. Fishwick, Seabury; and Jacques Maritain: The Man and His Achievement edited by J. W. Evans, Sheed & Ward. JAMES DAANE

Page 6229 – Christianity Today (17)

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A sermon I heard over ten years ago has meant more to me than any other during the twenty-three years since I was a teen-ager.

As I recall it began with a story about a man who was so weighed down with problems that he was completely beside himself. One day while reading in the Psalms the burdened man came across these words: “By my God I have leaped over a wall.…” Comforted in heart, he got on his feet and “with God’s help” found his way over his own particular mountain of difficulty.

I myself was at that time deeply concerned over numerous problems. In quiet prayer after that sermon, “By God’s Help,” immense burdens in my life were rolled away; I experienced a new confidence which even now is renewed regularly just by the reminder of this text.

This particular sermon impressed me so much that I urged the minister to develop it as a magazine article so that it could reach thousands of other people, too. As far as I know, he has never done this. The same is true of other ministers whom I encouraged to prepare their messages for wider distribution in print.

There were some who listened, however, like the man whom I also helped a bit to put his experiences and sermons into articles. For three or four years I lost track of him. Then one day as he was passing through our town he gave me a call. Imagine my amazement to hear that he was writing regularly and that year had supplemented his income with $1,500 from articles!

A few others to whom I spoke have also come through.

One has authored three books; another has written for various Sunday school publishers. But these cases are the exception and, it seems to me, far too few.

I am a layman and for seventeen years have been in the advertising and public relations business in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. During this time I have attended a number of churches regularly, have heard a hundred or more ministers, and have listened to probably two thousand sermons. Some have been excellent, some good, some might have been better. But together these sermons add up to a powerful communication for good, as the world would view it, and for Christ and eternity, as the Christian would describe it, that is seldom matched by the work of any other profession.

But why—why have so few of these sermons gone into print? In my opinion there is something terribly wrong about this. These wonderful messages, over which a hundred ministers have toiled and prayed and wept, have been shared with small groups of people and no doubt have accomplished great good. But why have these sermons not been turned into articles to extend their usefulness even further?

Why Hide The Light?

A minister has the world’s most important message. Why, then, should he hide it under a bushel, or why should he be satisfied with giving this unique message only to the faithful parishioners and a few of their friends?

Lawyers, doctors, advertising men, and teachers who feel they have something to say publish in national magazines all the time. Why don’t ministers of the Gospel do so more often? Why have ministers today limited their service so one-sidedly to the “spoken word”? Whatever happened to the “written word”?

God spoke to men in days of old, and later to men through his Son. Was he satisfied to let it go at that? Suppose we did not have the written Word of God. Look back over the march of church history. Alongside the “spoken words” proclaimed from fiery pulpits are the songs of hymnwriters and the “written words” of theologians, evangelists, and pastors. Check them off yourself—John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Dwight L. Moody—to name but a few. Pulpit masters of a former day, they yet are known even to us because of their printed material. Centuries after their voices sounded from the pulpit their work continues to bear fruit, largely because of “written words.”

Some Helpful Suggestions

In the early days of America, the Christian minister was often a scholar and writer of distinction as well as a pulpit master; today such examples are far too few. Likewise were men of God among the giants of early American literature. How many are there today? I suggest we could do something about this situation if we wanted to. It would not be easy; it would require, in fact, rigid discipline of mind and time. But if a few ministers would accept the challenge, the viewpoints of evangelical Christianity might be more frequently and fairly represented in the nation’s press over the next decade. How can this be accomplished? One major forward step would be to convert ministers’ sermon materials into articles.

From my own extensive experience as a free-lance writer I have learned a great deal about editorial requirements. What I suggest, therefore, grows from this experience.

We ought to remember that creative writing involves at least five steps. After (1) gathering, (2) assimilating, and (3) formulating the material for an article comes the actual (4) writing and (5) revising.

Suppose, then, you as a minister decide to turn your sermon notes or manuscript into an article of 1,500 or 1,800 words. What would you do? First of all, you definitely would not type out your thirty-minute sermon from text to benediction, for this would produce 3,000 to 4,000 words. Very few publications today use such complete sermons; in fact, not many use even condensed sermons. So it is obvious that this is not the answer.

Look again at the five steps mentioned above. Then consider the first one: gathering of material. Books, magazines, interviews, and personal experience are just some of a writer’s sources of information. And the time spent in research and gathering material can easily be two or three times the amount used in actually writing an article. As a minister you are at a real advantage here; with perhaps 500 or more sets of sermon notes or manuscripts already in hand, you have most of your research behind you, stored in easily accessible form.

The next step then is assimilating. This means to absorb, to meditate upon, to think about these materials until you are able to construct mentally, or in a brief written outline, exactly what your article will say. This phase which takes place before you write is the creative aspect, in contrast to what follows later. Let your projected article percolate. Sleep on it. Mull it over in your mind. When it begins to take shape and your materials fall into place with a definite article in mind, you have moved through to the third stage.

This third stage, formulating, embraces a premise or theme; the right opening (it’s hard to beat an anecdote here); points 1, 2, and 3 to establish your premise or theme; and the conclusion. This final thrust must be fast, strong—perhaps a clincher type of idea that aptly summarizes what you have said.

Not until now are you ready for the functional aspect of your project, the actual writing. Beginners often start by sitting down at a desk with pencil and paper; they try to write an article without first going through the preparatory steps of gathering, assimilating, and formulating. Trying to do this is as ridiculous as a woman’s hoping to be delivered of a baby without going through the required period of pregnancy.

The last step, revising, is just as important as the others. Some journalism teachers say that good writing is not written but rewritten. And indeed, most manuscripts need to be revised at least two or three times.

These suggestions are merely skeleton guidelines. I hope they challenge you, however, to pursue the subject further. Read up on this business of writing. Books on such topics as news and feature writings, interviewing, and story telling all contain helpful ideas for developing your sermon materials into marketable articles. Why shouldn’t you sell to national Christian publications, church-related magazines, and some day, perhaps, even to some of the leading secular periodicals? It has been done before, but not often enough. With work and persistence you can do something about it.

PREACHER IN THE RED1For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, Christianity Today will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of Christianity Today. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, Christianity Today, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

DURABLE TROUSERS

Several of us, members of the Methodist Home for the Aged in Charlotte, N. C., were awaiting the call for breakfast, with the usual comparison of timepieces. Brother Keever, a retired Methodist preacher, pulled out his watch and remarked: “There’s a watch I bought fifty-two years ago”; slapping his watch pocket in his trousers he added, “I’ve carried it in that pocket ever since.” Whereupon another brother remarked. “That’s a wonderful pair of pants you have, Brother Keever.”—The Rev. PARK W. FISHER, Methodist Home, Charlotte, N. C.

Page 6229 – Christianity Today (19)

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A member of the clergy in one of the leading denominations commented that his church does not need publicity. If he considers it his church rather than that of the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps the remark was appropriate.

But one could not sell that bill of fare to an automobile manufacturer or a dealer in electrical appliances. Such men know the value of publicity and good public relations.

Another clergyman was making a call on a local automobile dealer. “How’s business?” the good pastor asked. “Oh, fine,” the dealer replied. “How’s your business?” “Wonderful,” said the pastor. “I’m sold on my product.”

That’s the kind of conviction on the part of all Christians, whether clergymen or laymen, that it takes to communicate the Gospel of Christ.

The fact that a newspaper is considered the “secular press” makes little difference other than the standards of journalism for which it stands.

What Interests The News Desk

For lack of space I cannot begin to print all the religious news that comes to my desk. The newspaper which I serve as church editor is a secular one. But those who claim that the press is interested only in controversy are not entirely right.

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. On the same premise, a good “walking sermon” communicates more of Christianity than some vague, rambling dissertation on a topic that one can read about in a periodical.

In other words, it is the preacher’s duty to preach Christ crucified, and the layman’s duty to do likewise. Both must then live up to their calling.

After I wrote up an interview with Smoky Burgess, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ heavy-hitting catcher and a born-again Christian, the mail brought replies. Among them was one from a reader who had backslidden and drifted away from church. He resolved to return to church.

Another story I did involved a jury foreman I met at a dinner meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals. While serving as foreman for a jury deciding a morals case, he had gotten permission from the jurors to read the Bible and pray for the couple involved. After the case was over, bitterness between the families was replaced by the love of Jesus Christ. The couple was soon married and was given a shower by members of the jury, who followed up and kept in touch with them. Not only did the veteran judge commend the foreman for work he had never before seen from the bench, but after the story appeared, the foreman within a few weeks had the opportunity to testify for his Lord on several hundred occasions.

The Use Of Mass Media

There are many such instances of real, newsworthy personalities and Christianity in action. But the church editor must be informed of them.

Both the Holy Spirit and the work of Christians are indispensable in helping the communications media to be informed of such news.

It would not hurt ministers one bit if they majored in journalism in undergraduate school, or at least worked on their college papers. Many laymen in churches do a better communications job than do professional public relations firms.

Church-related colleges are woefully lacking in turning out journalism graduates whose principal training has been the broad background of the liberal arts college coupled with some fundamental but realistic courses in newspapering.

If the Apostle Paul had had the communications facilities available to Billy Graham today, he would have utilized them. Newspapers are one of these.

As the Church today sends out its product into the firing line, it should be sending both newspapermen and people about whom newspapermen can write with a witness of the Gospel.

Page 6229 – Christianity Today (2024)
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