Page 6201 – Christianity Today (2024)

Send us your best men. They will barely be good enough.” This slogan, used by one of the stock-car racing organizations, is far more pertinent to the Christian ministry than to car racing. And since many seminaries are now recruiting students, tire slogan provokes the observation that appeals for students to consider the parish ministry must keep talent and mental honesty in clear view.

The complete candor of Christ as he spoke to those who professed they wanted to follow him still startles us. It should compel us to see that romanticizing our profession eventually leads to disillusionment. Christ never made an appeal to luxurious security. “ ‘If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, … he must take up his cross and come with me’ ” (Matt. 16:21, NEB).

The young person contemplating the Christian ministry must carefully examine his mind and heart as to what will be demanded of him. Among the questions he must ask himself are these: “Can I face misunderstanding and opposition? Do I have the strength of commitment and purpose to stand against the society to which I belong when that society is wrong?”

Again and again the young clergyman will be forced to face the question: “Can I take it?” Indeed, the more talented he is and the clearer his understanding of the injustices and needs of our day, the more searching the interrogation will be. Tragic racial con diets in the United States emphasize this. But these are only symbols of a larger situation. Anyone who dares to cultivate insight into contemporary conditions in America or in the rest of the world can, at least to some degree, appreciate what is at stake.

There are, for example, too many facets of the challenge of Communism for us to ignore its sweeping character. Its fierce competition and the varied reactions of churchmen to it vividly exemplify conditions with which the young minister must deal. It is staggering to consider the virility of this idealistic, atheistic religion. In less than fifty years, Communism has gained one-fourth of the land surface of the world, and it now controls one-third of the world’s more than three billion people. Yet all Christian churches—Roman Catholic and Protestant—can claim only 900 million members. This immediately suggests perplexing problems the parish minister cannot escape.

Relationships of clergy and laity, which have already become severely painful, also confront the young man contemplating the ministry. Widespread secularism and Epicureanism in the churches, unashamedly accepted by thousands of members, will plague the young clergyman day after day. The parish minister who is trying to be honest with himself and with life will discover conditions so harassing that we can at least understand why hosts of preachers find it easier to try to bypass rather than face them.

This depressing situation weighs more heavily than the numerous duties expected of all parish ministers. Yet so time-consuming can these demands become that almost unconsciously ministers may minimize the all-important privilege of communicating the Gospel.

The Laymen’s Involvement

We ministers are under obligation to show laymen how all of us can and must work together if the Church is to be effective. Until our members become stronger spiritually, more involved in human needs, and more Christian in suffering with the oppressed, we have no right to anticipate effective Christian leadership. The laymen must understand their own involvement in the failures they too often try to transfer to their ministers.

Any leader must, of course, stay “ahead” of those he leads. But when church members stubbornly remain so far behind that they are not even aware of the preacher’s message or, if they do hear it, are antagonistic, there is serious trouble for minister and laymen.

Church members who are thoroughly Christian will pray for their minister. All too often, however, members of the congregation prey upon him. Frequently, they gloat over the mistakes of young ministers, instead of accepting divine aid for correcting their own. Many clergymen who are earnestly trying to interpret and apply the prayer, “Thy will be done,” are considered “dangerous.” Thus, because so many church members resent being asked to ponder prayerfully the problems of class and caste churches, the minister is frequently compelled to deal with perplexing issues alone, without the aid of intelligent and dedicated lay leaders.

Even more serious, a young clergyman will often be sickened by the discovery of how completely his congregation has been conditioned by secularism and the love of luxury. All too frequently their religion is essentially a cult of comfort and peace of mind. As a result, the minister cannot speak prophetically on human dignity and social responsibilities without being misunderstood, criticized, even denounced.

Denominational Demands

Within the confines of his own denomination, the clergyman’s question, “Can I take it?,” is never rhetorical. It is rather a probing experience.

At times the earnest preacher may be depressed by the number of hours he is expected to spend on wholly sectarian matters. He finds himself bound by demands for “denominational progress” while many of his members are struggling with spiritual doubts. He realizes that the religious problems of most people do not essentially concern what church to join. They are rather related to doubts whether there is any need for a church; indeed, whether there is a God, and if there is, what he is like.

Sometimes the whole issue is exaggerated and aggravated by ecclesiastical officials who, having never held pastorates or having had little interest in “the practical program” of the Church, have never participated in the struggles of the parish church. Some of these refuse to believe in and act upon the second-mile character of Christianity. Fortunately, the keen-minded ministers in the front-line trenches are not blind to the incapacity of such leaders to enter vicariously into the experiences current conditions demand—sometimes at great cost.

Regrettably, some young people who once thought that devotion to God’s word, eagerness to learn skills of communicating the Gospel, and ardent dedication to the Christian evangel were adequate, are quickly disillusioned. They are often made to feel that they will never really succeed unless they are rewarded with some ecclesiastical office. It ought to be easy to see that pride of achievement, fed by an avid desire for power, is thoroughly unfitting for the Christian minister or layman—yet it is painfully clear that this realization is not always easily gained.

The demands of Christ are, of course, the only ones we dare consider, and his requirements include attainments far beyond our human ability. Recall how Jesus emphasizes the divine requisite: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). We are wise to the degree that we refuse to accept any lower criterion—even of ecclesiastical success. When we intelligently and eagerly respond to the ardent appeals of Christ, the “honors” coveted by status-seekers become insignificant.

Stooping To The Practical

The young person who seeks to equip himself in the most satisfactory way for the ministry may also be surprised and disappointed to discover that some instructors in the religious field condescendingly look down upon what they call the more “practical” areas of the ministry. This is difficult to understand, since in the parish church the dedicated clergyman is expected to help carry the burdens of others. Constantly he must deal with issues of church administration and program-planning, give careful advice to his workers in all areas of the Church, and counsel with others about their problems of home, business, and society. At the same time lie should be continuing his studies in order to communicate the Gospel effectively.

Because some seminary instructors are neither involved nor genuinely concerned with the heavy obligations of the parish minister, they cannot grasp the tragedy inherent in their attitudes. They seem to overlook the evident fact that there would be no need of instructors or of seminaries were there no churches that required trained ministers. Their lack of pastoral experience, however, explains why some of them find it difficult to discuss curriculum and other aspects of academic discipline in order to aid professional students in practical preparation for the parish ministry.

Many forget that directing men in research is not necessarily training them for the parish ministry. “Research,” unless skillfully handled, may make it more difficult for the young clergyman to develop rapport with his congregation. Substituting knowledge of facts for depth of personal understanding feeds the tendency to downgrade “practical disciplines.” On the other hand, when laymen suspect that their ministers are inferior in scholarship and incapable of understanding the total program of their profession, there is a breakdown in morale, and effective service may become impossible.

For these reasons the student preparing for the Christian ministry must be able to watch some people bow before the gods of so-called scholarship while at the same time he develops toughness of purpose and an unyielding commitment to his own disciplines of study. Moreover, these ministers-to-be must always learn sincere consecration to the total welfare of those who will constitute their parishes and to all they serve in the spirit of Christ. By doing this they will be able to “take it,” because they know how to pray: “Our Father … thy will be done.”

The talented preacher thus learns that every contribution he can make, by both the teaching and the preaching ministry, is desperately needed. These critical days demand a united effort by all who are concerned with the future of the Church and of Christianity. Even if we fail to see the world redeemed, we can at least hope that God will use us in such a way that the world will not destroy itself! Furthermore, since high religion deals with attitudes and relationships to God, to fellow workers, and to people of all creeds, colors, and characters, our integrity and Christian dedication are involved. All this becomes a call we dare not ignore when we realize that the present crisis offers exciting opportunities to make God’s will central in human affairs.

We are now deciding whether we want to pattern the Church on familiar political procedures or on what Christ called the Kingdom of Heaven. All young people who are contemplating the ministry as their life-work, as well as those of us who are seeking to make the years we have left count for God, must demonstrate intellectual integrity and moral honesty. We now have the necessity and the privilege of facing frankly the most critical situation we have known and eagerly acting upon its challenge.

G. Ray Jordan is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Preaching and chapel preacher at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He holds the A.B. from Duke University, the B.D. from Emory University, and the A.M. from Yale University.

No more urgent need exists in the Church today than that of confronting gifted young people with the challenge of the call to the ministry. During the past several decades Christian leaders have become increasingly aware of this need. But the Church has not been sufficiently aroused at the local level for enough of our youth to consider prayerfully whether or not God might be calling them. Moreover, several factors have caused difficulties.

First, the amazing opportunities for work in science and technology attract vast numbers of young people. These fields often claim the best students in high schools and colleges before these young people have so much as considered the challenge of the ministry.

Second, the problems of the ministry have often been paraded in magazines and have also been on display in seething communities engaged in the struggle over human rights. Many parents do not want their sons to get involved in complicated social issues. They envision little more than disfavor, trouble, and meager pay for a minister. Besides this, periodic attacks of ignorant people who insist that the ministry is infiltrated by Communists or other subversive groups have done some damage. These strangely twisted minds, who “see a scorpion under every stone,” have created misgivings and aroused needless fears.

But the chief difficulty lies, not in these factors or in others like them, but within the Church itself, in the spirit and thinking of ministers and laymen. There is an inadequate understanding of the whole sweep of the biblical revelation according to which the sovereign purpose of God is to realize his Kingdom through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our tendency is to start with the need for ministers, the number who retire and drop out each year and the number needed to replace them, the job opportunities in the various fields of Christian work. This information we must have. But it will not do much to inspire a gifted young man who has an opportunity to go into industrial management, electronics, international affairs, law, or medicine.

Since our understanding of God’s revealed purpose is often obscure, the thought of the call to the ministry tends to become vague and remote. The sense of urgency evaporates.

There must be absolute clarity at this one point: God’s policy is to realize his Kingdom through people under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The proclamation of his Gospel requires the ministry. God does not leave the carrying forward of his work either to the mercy of blind chance or to the whims of people. He deliberately acts through the Holy Spirit to call some into the ministry because only in this way does he choose to accomplish his holy purpose. No one knows before confronting God’s challenge whether or not God wants him to preach the Gospel. But God expects consecrated ministers and laymen to be alert to his aims and policies and therefore to assist in presenting the call.

Some Questions

Someone may ask, “But are you sure that God calls people to the ministry?” The question is natural and must be faced. The answer is to be found in an adequate theological understanding. The God who created the universe deliberately for his purpose, who sent the Saviour into the world to die for sinful men and to inaugurate the new era of the Kingdom, who sent the Lloly Spirit to create the body of believers who magnify Jesus Christ as Lord—this God would not be so irresponsible and foolish as to neglect what is necessary for continuing what he started. And the ministry is necessary for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul rightly thought of himself as “set apart for the service of the Gospel” (Rom. 1:1, NEB).

But does not God call everyone? The answer is that he calls everyone to surrender his or her life to Jesus Christ but calls only some to devote their whole time and energy to the understanding, teaching, and communication of the Gospel. At this very point there is confusion among both ministers and laymen. I have been at many conferences on Christian vocations in which the impression was left that almost any good work connected with the Church is on a par with the ministry. Is not any honorable work a divine calling?

There is a truth here from the heritage of the Reformation that must be preserved. Every layman, doing his task faithfully under Christ, is surely called of God to be a true workman wherever he is. Moreover, when anyone prayerfully decides that it is pleasing to God for him to do a particular kind of useful work in making a living, that work becomes for him a divine calling. But there is a difference between this and the call to the ministry. Some are set apart for the awesome responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel. Although they might do any one of many things that would otherwise be honorable, none of these other forms of daily work would be honorable for them, since God has called them to be his ambassadors through leadership in worship and service at home and abroad.

Moses was doing an honorable work in tending Jethro’s flock. But he would not have been honorable had he kept on doing that after God called him to lead the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. All useful tasks contribute in one way or another to God’s holy purpose. But unless some are specially called and commissioned to understand, preach, and teach the Gospel, every activity of mankind will get lost in a barren and futile secularism. The minister is called, therefore, to speak for God, in behalf of God, to the end that all of man’s activities may be coordinated toward the realization of God’s Kingdom. The minister’s calling is not special because he as an individual is different from other men. It is special because his commission and work have to do with what is at the heart of God’s revealed policy for mankind. It is special because it requires, in a way that no other responsibility does, the direction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. All noble work takes on a new glory when it is carried forward under the inspiration of the Spirit. But in a unique way this is true of the work of the minister.

It cannot be emphasized too much in these days that Christianity is revealed religion. At its heart is the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ to all who repent, believe, and have faith. This Gospel, then, is no merely human discovery. God acted through the patriarchs, through Moses, David, and the prophets, to prepare the way for the coming Deliverer. Then, in the fullness of time, he sent forth his Son. Indeed, creation itself was aimed toward fulfillment in Jesus Christ. To understand the deep meaning of the call to the ministry and the power of its hold over those called, therefore, we must have a clear view of God’s revealed determination to do his utmost to draw all men into his Kingdom through Jesus Christ. God has mightily acted toward this end through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the Saviour.

God’S Sword Thrusts

While translating the Book of Jonah some years ago I came to that place which says that God “prepared” or “appointed” a great fish to swallow up the prophet (Jonah 1:17). When I checked on the Hebrew word (manah), I found to my surprise that it also meant “to ordain” (Koehler’s Lexicon, p. 537). “An ordained whale,” I facetiously thought. But my wonder increased when I came to the fourth chapter. There I found that God also “ordained” (manah) a plant, a worm, and a sultry east wind! “A whale or a worm, a gourd or a wind,” I thought; “if God ordains them, he can use them.”

Over the years this rather strange and humbling little lesson has often come back to my heart to encourage me in the ministry.—SIDNEY A. HATCH, Portland, Oregon.

The Need For Proclamation

But this good news requires proclamation. “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). Paul saw clearly that there must be an inherent connection between the Gospel and its proclamation. The same God who acted to reveal his redemptive purpose and strategy had to set apart some for teaching and proclaiming his salvation in Jesus Christ.

For this reason, the call to the ministry is not identified merely by adding up psychologically attested gifts, nor human attainments—whether educational or otherwise—nor even by natural ability. Paul knew that gifts and qualifications have their uses. But, according to him, prior to all else is God’s plan of sharing his Gospel with men. Nothing supersedes in importance here the willingness to be receptive to the authority of the Word and to the empowering grace of the Holy Spirit. No qualification surpasses that of the commission from God himself to proclaim his Word. Those who are thus set apart, of course, must prove themselves within the community of faith and must carry out the implications of their calling by applying themselves, through prayer, study, and discipline, to the tasks at hand.

In the light of all this, it is reasonable to suppose that God would give people some clear indication that he is calling them. To be sure, men must bring themselves close enough to hear. And if they hear, they must respond. Otherwise the call is of no avail. God commissions; man accepts.

How does God call his ministers? A few persons, like Paul, have received an extraordinary call, and their response was almost inevitable. They could not do otherwise. For most, however, this has not been so. In the lives of most ministers the call came as a growing experience. The Holy Spirit took innumerable events, impressions, and impulses, too mysterious to understand, and fashioned them into his divine commission. Often one person—a minister, a Sunday school teacher, a speaker at a youth camp—was God’s instrument in completing the transaction. But whether gradual or sudden, the fact of the call is no less real.

Four signs of the call to the ministry are worthy of special note here. They are not absolute; the mystery of God’s dealings with a human soul cannot be caught up into any simple formula. But whenever these signs come together in the experience of a young person, he may be sure that God is challenging him to take a careful look at the Christian ministry.

First, if in his highest and holiest moments there is the recurring sense that he ought to give himself to Christ for the work of the ministry, he should pay attention to this. It is very likely that this is the Holy Spirit calling. Everyone has mediocre moments. They are unauthentic. God finds it difficult to speak through the static of our trivialities. If the Holy Spirit speaks to us at any time in life, surely he does so in those moments of great inspiration and holy consecration. It is important to note the word “recurring.” For most people one experience is not enough. It is the recurring and growing movement of thought and life that goes deepest.

Second, if in a young person’s growing awareness of the world’s vast needs, he feels that he must do something personally to minister to those needs, this too may be the call of the Holy Spirit. The concern of a young Christian for humanity, for people in their needs, is a sure sign that God is at work in a special way. By itself alone this sign may indicate any one of many avenues of possible service. But, coupled with the first, it would definitely tend to confirm the fact of a call to the ministry.

Third, if there is a growing sense that the answers to man’s deepest questions, both individually and socially, are to be found only in the Lord Jesus Christ, this too is a mighty confirming factor. Here the negative experiences of people past and present suffice to show that Jesus Christ is not only the way but also the only Saviour from sin and the inaugurator of the Kingdom.

Finally, if a young person finds a growing sense of satisfaction in the opportunity to speak at youth services, in Sunday school, and in churches, or to visit the sick, the prisoners, and the lonely, or to lead in camp activities and social concerns, this too tends to confirm the validity of his call. In general, the desire to speak and serve in churches and other groups—particularly when accompanied with talents in this area—may be another sign that the Holy Spirit is calling.

A word of caution is needed here. Some are slow to find their way in public utterance. Others are shy at first. These too may be called. For neither slowness of speech nor shyness is a fatal obstacle. Moses, keenly aware of his inadequacies, said he was “slow of speech and of tongue” (Ex. 4:10); yet he was chosen to be the deliverer of Israel. God takes man’s weakness and turns it to his mighty ends. Nevertheless, it is still true that the increasing enjoyment of the kind of work that goes on in the life of a local church is a good sign.

No one of these four signs is sufficient by itself. Indeed, all four of them together offer no final proof. But when these signs are recurringly present in a life that is seeking God’s will, the Holy Spirit uses them to confirm the call to the Christian ministry.

Mack B. Stokes is associate dean and Parker Professor of Systematic Theology in Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He holds the A.B. degree from Asbury College, B.D. from Duke University, and Ph.D. from Boston University. The author of three books, he is an ordained Methodist minister.

Protestant Christianity no longer responds to any one final authority. The sad result of its theological defection from the biblical norm shows in the chaotic condition of Continental religious thought. For the third time in a century the supposed bulwarks of Protestant theology are falling and scholars are seeking new strongholds.

Many questions are being asked in Europe, some of them of special interest and significance for America. What future remains for the “theology of the Word of God”? What theological development and progress can be expected in the days ahead?

But, preoccupied only with each other, the theologians seem wholly unaware of their fading prestige in the world of thought.

Is this chaotic condition in contemporary theological thought a sign of God’s judgment upon the theologians? Has their persistent compromise or sacrifice of the message of the Holy Scriptures made them victims of their own confusion?

Theologians frequently remind us that divine judgment must “begin at God’s house,” a theme well-entrenched in modern dogmatics. Could it be, however, that they themselves have overlooked one of the subtler points of the biblical message—namely, that even theologians are not exempt from God’s scrutiny?

When theology was queen of the sciences, theologians recognized the indispensability of Jesus and of the apostles for understanding contemporary man (theologians included). But now that modern theologians have made themselves indispensable to the “understanding” of Jesus and the apostles, theology has become the slave of speculators. What God may be proclaiming in the history of our times is that modern theologians and their theology are quite unnecessary for the well-being and on-going of his Church.

Many theologians on university-related faculties seem oblivious of their fallen status; they seem unaware that their colleagues no longer give them the same academic esteem that scholars in other disciplines enjoy. One reason for this demotion is the apparent inability of modern theologians to communicate their convictions intelligibly. It is true that the frequently changing frontiers of dogmatics now necessitate conquering novel terrain with countless hazards of discussion. Nonetheless the physical scientists escort their colleagues over equally devious paths and do so successfully. This leads some academicians to ask whether the theologians—in the midst of their strongly asserted individualistic preferences—are perhaps using ambiguity to conceal their insecurity.

It is not only simpletons who cannot understand these theological subtleties but also some other scholars, whose own fields of specialty are highly complex; they stand amazed in the presence of the verbiage concealing Jesus the Nazarene.

But we do not believe that the theologians are deliberately clouding the atmosphere. Amid the confusion they have brought about, they are simply trying to market what is non-intelligible; that there are few takers in academic circles should surprise no one. Is it perhaps a sign of divine wrath and judgment that the theological leadership of major denominations is wielded predominantly by those who are content with changing fashions of doctrine, or who establish these changing fashions? The fundamental question for the cult of the professional theologians is simply this: What is God saying to them, to the theologians, who claim to be specialists in what he is saying to others? What is God trying to teach them in the historical fact that Protestant theology is suffering its third collapse in the twentieth century? Is he telling the theologians that they no longer know what the Word of God is?

As the religious thinkers of Europe look into the near future, what do they anticipate? While a few scholars wonder if German theology is approaching an era of divine chastisement, apparently none senses that judgment may already be in process. “It is likely,” thinks Adolf Köberle of Tübingen, “that in a short time dark events and judgments of God may come over us. The future of European theology hangs heavily on events in world history.”

The future, says Emil Brunner, is “a matter of the Holy Spirit. Bultmann does not even acknowledge the legitimacy of the term; for him the Holy Spirit belongs to ‘the myth.’” “Communism,” continues Brunner, “is still the greatest and most powerful ideological opponent of Christianity. Truth does not play a role in Communism, and totalitarian power can do away with theology.”

Most scholars abroad look for a generation of action and reaction in the realm of religious thought, a time of adjustment and readjustment, of combination and recombination. The course of European theology has been determined in the past so largely by the prevailing winds of philosophical speculation that Tübingen professor Otto Michel says candidly: “No man can predict the future. Spiritual developments are rooted deeper than the theological emphases of the professors. Yet they hang together with the philosophical currents and cultural and historical phenomena which often prove decisive.”

No new philosophical current as powerful as Hegel’s or Kant’s or Heidegger’s has appeared on the German horizon. The voices of Moses and Isaiah, of Jesus and Paul are permitted to say only what the critics allow. Younger theologians evidence a rationalistic drift to philosophy of religion. No clear alternative to the broken Bultmannian perspective is yet in view. While a few strong voices are rising, each distinct from the others, none speaks comprehensively and influentially enough to warrant recognition as an established alternative to Bultmann.

One thing is clear, however. No one anticipates a golden era of theological prosperity in Europe. The conservative scholars on the seminary faculties are a woeful minority, and are often isolated. Thus any decisive shift in the outlook of Continental theology is less likely to issue from an evangelical counter-thrust than from some novel philosophy. As a successor to Heidegger’s existent, such a philosophy may accommodate Christian motifs to new forms of speculation. Or in a context of some dark turn in European history it may either plunge the Continent into bleak despair and unbelief, or prompt men in their anguish to seek afresh the God of the Bible.

Predictions concerning the future of theology differ in perspective and intensity. “The dialectical theology is secure,” says Rudolf Bultmann, despite its present turbulences, “and it has a future.” Wilfried Joest of Erlangen, who agrees that the division of Bultmann’s empire need not signal an end-time for dialectical theology, notes, however, its drift toward more extreme positions: “The Bultmann school is separating into diverse shades of emphasis.… It assumes even more radical forms among some of the Mainz professors.” According to the Göttingen New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias, “the hopeful sign and promise of a fruitful future in German theology exists through the evident turning from Bultmann’s presuppositions. We must now labor as carefully as we can to get at the words of Jesus and the content of his message.”

Two others, individualistic enough to preclude their attachment to any school of thought, should also be quoted here: Ethelbert Stauffer of Erlangen, now retired, and Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg. In these next years, says Stauffer, who is sometimes pictured by other New Testament scholars as “a twentieth century Renan, though not so sentimental,” “the Church will find it necessary to stand in the forefront of all human concerns, and we shall see the rise of a new Christian humanism.” “In 1916,” observes Stauffer, “Barth’s Römerbrief said a nein! to humanismus. The Nazi era divided Church from humanismus and Hitler fought both and conquered. What is needed now is not Khrushchev’s socialistic humanism but a new Christian humanism in which the Good Samaritan can lead us on.” Thielicke hopes that the present dead-end street in dogmatics will encourage new interest in the widely neglected realm of theological ethics: “The crisis of modern preaching lies in the fact that it speaks only to the ‘inner man,’ instead of addressing his socio-cultural situation.”

Yet in one major respect the present age of European religious thought differs from the recent past, and particularly from the generation that Barth called to a fresh hearing of the Word of God. This new generation is the one that has already heard the summons to “the God who reveals himself” and yet has turned away to Bultmannian and post-Bultmannian positions.

What will be the plight of a future generation whose spiritual confusion is compounded by the fact that the Barthian “rediscovery of special revelation” and the message that God speaks is for it an already by-passed option?

While Barth’s Wort-theology crumbled the defenses of the old liberalism, the new liberalism traced its own ancestry to the Wort-theology! What is the destiny of those who meet the plea for special revelation with deliberate detachment, who reject it as an incoherent and unconvincing option of dialectical theology?

Otto Weber of Göttingen captures the sorry mood in this observation: “Bultmann stressed that there is a Word of God even if he was unsure what it is. Bultmann’s students all speak about ‘the Word.’ But now we are already seeing a movement away from the certainty that there is such a Word.”

“Sometimes I fear the end of Protestantism in such a generation,” confesses Köberle of Tübingen. “But in a dark hour, many may long again for a firm foundation and for living bread” and by God’s grace “ears may be open again to the old unshortened Gospel.”

At present the prospect of a rediscovery of “the old unshortened Gospel,” by the theologians at least, does not seem very bright, for the chaos of contemporary theology rests in the frontier realm of the problem of religious knowledge. It is a strange fact of modern European theology that while most of its theologians stress special divine disclosure, they differ woefully as to its nature, content, and significance.

“The basic problem remains Christology,” insists Wilfried Joest of Erlangen. “The real issue is the meaning of the person of Christ for the Word of God, for truth, and for justification. Is he only the prophetic mouth of God, or is he present in the Word?”

But what is this Word? Notes Peter Brunner of Heidelberg: “If the Church does not experience a new awakening—not necessarily in the eighteenth or nineteenth century sense of pietistic renewal—then we shall not have a real renewal of theology. The prophet Amos speaks of a time when people go through the land and ask for the Word of God and there will be no Word of God. This bad situation must be turned by God’s grace into a good situation, or there is no hopeful future for German theology.”

Text: [Peter] lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside … (Acts 10:6).

When a great idea bursts upon the world, its first and perhaps worst battle is to free itself from the ropes and cords that its own prejudiced friends try to fasten round it. Like the young bird in the shell, it has to crack the covering and get free. Our Lord’s great declaration of salvation and redemption to all men everywhere provides a striking instance of this. For the first thing that the early Christians themselves tried to do was to bind and tie His universal message to the old Jewish narrow system in which they had been brought up.

This is easily understood. These men and women were Jews by birth and religion: and they had no idea at first that any break-away from the Temple or the Synagogue might be needed. For years, although they had become Christians, they went every day to their devotions in the Temple. Ananias, for example—the man who helped Paul to escape in Damascus—is described as “a devout man according to the Law,” although he had become a convinced Christian: and James, our Lord’s brother, who was the Head of the young Church in Jerusalem, worshipped regularly and faithfully in the Temple, according to his life-long custom.

In fact, there soon arose an active party among the converts who argued that a Greek, a Roman, a German, or a Briton, if he wanted to become a Christian, must first become a Jew and must observe the full rites of the ancient system of Moses.

If this attempt had succeeded, we now see clearly that the so-called Christian Church might have become merely a new form of Jewish nationalism, and certainly its universal appeal and redeeming quality would have been lost for the Gentile world. In other words, the big free dream would have been shackled—tied down with ropes and strings by its own friends.

How was the young Church saved from this disaster?

The happy answer is that fortunately the dream itself was so galvanic and so self-expanding that it burst the ropes as if they had been threads. One by one, these man-made strings were snapped, until the message of Jesus was set free in its own natural fullness, free to enlarge and expand itself in its native power, free to win all men of every nation, heritage, or tradition, free to be itself, and free to proclaim the illimitable mercy of God without controls or conditions.

In the story of Simon the tanner, I imagine that we can see and even hear the first rope snapping. In principle, the future of the Church was settled in this apparent casual incident.

It is common knowledge that the Jews divided the concerns of life and religion into the clean and the unclean: and their ceremonial worship was very strict—and still is fairly strict—on this question of the clean and unclean. In particular, certain animals were regarded as ceremonially unclean; for instance, the pig, the camel and the coney: and in the same way, certain trades and occupations were put by them under the same dark shadow. One of the most despised of these occupations was the now fully honourable trade of tanning—the reason being, no doubt, that the tanner must handle the hides and skins of dead animals, and might even have to deal with the skins of unclean animals! No tanner, therefore, was regarded as clean or was allowed to have his house or his business premises inside the sacred city walls.

This accounts for the fact that this man Simon the tanner was forced to live outside the environs of Joppa, down by the unfrequented seashore—and let us remember that the seashore in those days was an outcast and derelict place, possessing none of the romantic or seasonal attractions it has for us to-day! Nothing is just so modern as our love of seaside resorts.

We can readily understand, then, the underlying bitterness of ostracism and aversion in this short sentence: “One Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” By compulsion, he had to live and work there, beyond the protection and amenities of the town, because no one would have tolerated him or his business inside the city walls. “Unclean, unclean!”

When Peter came to Joppa, we are told that he lodged “with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” Small as this fact seems, it represents nothing less than a revolution—a revolution of outlook and custom. What did this fact imply?

Go back five years before this, and say to Peter, “We are glad you have come to Joppa, but we are sorry that the town is so full that we haven’t a stray corner to put you up. But if you don’t mind, we shall lodge you tonight with a man called Simon, a tanner, whose house, of course, is outside the city walls.” What do you think Peter would have said?

We know that before he met Jesus, this disciple had a considerable gift for strong language, pungent and scathing. Indeed, even after he became a disciple, he could use his native talent in the court-room at Jerusalem with oaths and curses. I leave you then to imagine what his language would have been, had you told him five years before this that he was to lodge with Simon, a tanner. To put it mildly, he would have said, “Not on your life! I would rather sleep on the moors, in a hay-loft, or even in the streets. But I will not lodge on any account with an unclean tradesman like this tanner whose house is by the seaside.” And that would have been that!

I do not imagine that when he came now to Joppa, Peter had in any way thought or argued the matter out in his own mind. But I do suggest that when he did go down to Joppa and actually agreed to stay with Simon the tanner, his act helped to snap the first rope that bound the young Church! For in so doing, he broke with the whole ancient Jewish tradition of the clean and the unclean.

Remember, all these converts were still wholly Jewish in their ideas and customs. As we have seen, they regularly attended the Synagogue: they went to the Temple and offered sacrifices: they observed the full Jewish ritual and lived under the strict law of Moses. Especially in regard to the clean and the unclean, they had no notion as yet of the real meaning of Christ’s command, “Make the inside of the cup clean.”

Well, Peter came down to Joppa on this occasion.

So far, there were few converts in the town. But one of them, praise God, was this man Simon, the tanner, whose workplace and home lay out of the town, where he and his proscribed trade could not be an offence to his scrupulous Jewish brethren.

Rather diffidently—almost with a stutter and a very uneasy smile—he said to Peter, when he arrived, “I wonder, sir, if you would care to lodge with me? Fortunately, I have plenty of room in my house, and I think I can look after your comfort. But I ought to say, sir [here his smile must have become rather twisted and anxious]—I ought to say, sir, that I am one Simon, a tanner, who is compelled by our Jewish law to live outside the city walls. But, of course, if you are unwilling to come, I’ll understand at once.” And we can imagine how he must have feared, from old experience, a rude or (perhaps worse) a frigidly polite refusal, or some faked excuse that the Apostle was already engaged.

God bless you, Peter! I believe that at the moment when the man asked you to lodge with him, you got one of the shocks of your life! I think perhaps you were flummoxed and were completely taken aback at the moment. Then you remembered Jesus, and you said in a flash, “What would Jesus, my Lord and Master, do?”

And so, as quickly as you could, to cover your previous hesitation, you said, “My dear Simon, I’ll be honoured indeed. Yes, I’ll gladly stay with you in your house.” And you put your arm through his—whom no Jew had willingly touched for years—and you said, “Give me my little bag, and we’ll go straightaway to your house by the seaside,” and you went through the town arm-in-arm, bless your soul. I am sure that two men went down that narrow street with a new revelation in their hearts—you, Peter, who saw for the first time that your Master comes to all equally, clean or unclean, Pharisee or sinner—and Simon, a despised tanner, who for the first time walked that street as if he were treading on air. For he was a man now, equal with any and all, a really honoured man at last!

If you think of it, this is the first bursting of the ropes that threatened to shackle the free Gospel of Jesus. For it is the clear proclamation—in act, if not in words—of the liberating and ransoming Gospel of His love. What silly and narrow prejudice of man could possibly remain when the great Gospel came in and cut the ropes men tie about God and the human sold?

And now let us sit down and apply it to our own concerns.

There are as many, as vicious, as brutal, as Satanic prejudices today as ever cursed the social and religious life of Peter’s generation. If these prejudices are new or different—questions of race, land, blood, rank, class, or privilege—they are only the more devilish and hateful for that. For we are forming and enforcing them in spite of centuries of Christian teaching! Perhaps the old test may still sift many of us into Christian or non-Christian, or at least sub-Christian. Can we go down and lodge with one Simon, a tanner, whom people have kicked out and compelled to live outside the pale of the city—yes, and not patronize him, or talk down to him, or condescend to him, or blush for him, but regard him as our open equal, at whose table we can sit, not as if we were conferring an honour, or doing something for which we should get a pat on the back? If we act as if we were “honouring” someone, then we are not supping with Simon, but supping with the Devil! There is no real Christ in our hearts—the liberating, enfranchising power of Jesus—until all the little rotten arrogances of the prideful world and all the insolences of assumed privileges are blown clean out of us with the bursting of the ropes.

A few years after this, in a quiet gathering at Ephesus, the converts were having a Communion service. A new member was welcomed at the door. The simple Christians were glad to receive him, for he was a man of some influence and power. One of the disciples said, “Perhaps, my friend, you will take that seat over there—you see, that vacant seat on the other side.” The man hemmed and hawed for a moment and then whispered, “I say—ahem—you will excuse me, won’t you, but the man you are asking me to sit beside is—ahem—my own slave.” The disciple was silent for a moment, and then said with courage, “Yes, and why not?” “But,” said the man, “you know—er—he is my own slave!” “Yes,” said the disciple again, “and why not?” And then the man squared his shoulders, walked round the room, shook hands with his own slave, and sat humbly down beside him. Praise God!

When a thing like this takes place—master sitting humbly beside slave—Peter linking his arm with an unclean tanner—the ropes of human prejudice and custom, and all the cursed cords of shame, begin to crack for ever. This proclaims the glorious message that people may be outside the pale of the city, and yet be inside the pale of Christ.

Don’t let any of us try to dodge this terribly modern issue, more ghastly now than ever. Prejudice still runs red like a trail of blood through our social, political, and religious thinking. Let us believe and practise the following Christian affirmations.

1. There are no inferior races fit only to serve us and the likes of us. To believe in race inferiority is merely out-dated barbarism. What has the pigment of a man’s skin to do with the colour of his soul? All men are of one blood before God—equal in need, response, and capacity—and are made in God’s image. Be we white, black, brown, or yellow, to believe anything else is not only unchristian doctrine but also anthropological nonsense.

2. There are no inferior classes who are born to fetch and carry for our clean and dainty hands. There are, of course, natural differences of gifts and aptitudes among men, but there is no difference in their quality, capacity, or destiny. To believe otherwise argues a stupid view of the dignity of human labour, the worth of man, the ends of life, and the purposes of God. Classes, as we use the term, do not exist in the thought of Jesus. His is the one perfectly “classless” society.

3. There are no inferior people to whom we can graciously unbend or condescend. There are, of course, vulgar and common people everywhere in every so-called grade of society: but the worst vulgarity of all is the vulgarity of conceit, pride, affectation, vanity, the arrogance of riches, and the insolence of intellect. I praise God that Jesus gave His finest blessing to the “meek and lowly,” those who are essentially humble of heart.

4. There is no clean or unclean except what comes from the inside. We are not made dirty by our hands but by our hearts, or filthy by our clothes but by our minds. The world must live by honest dirt: and the only real “muck” I know is the muck in men’s thoughts. If you and I ever think some man, some job, some work, or some class unclean, the uncleanness is only in our own thinking. It is our type of mind that makes our type of world.

5. Jesus preached a glorious equality. Men and women equal! British and foreigner equal! Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Afghan, Negro, and American equal! Do I touch any of us on the raw? If so, it is not I, but Jesus, who stabs us. And He cuts the sore only that He may drain the poison.

Peter had his prejudices like any one of us. No doubt he called them “honest” prejudices. (I wonder why we always call them honest?) He believed, as so many of us do, that there are natural grades in life—things clean or unclean, chosen or outcast, privileged or common, precious or cheap. But as he allowed the power of the Gospel to liberate his soul and cleanse his mind, he was able to cast his prejudices to the clean winds of God and to stand in the freedom and equality of Christ.

It wasn’t done all at once: but though it took time, it was sure. For one cannot have Jesus and prejudice in one’s heart at the same time. And the cleansing process began here—yes, here—when in the strength of Jesus, Peter, formerly so biased, snapped the ropes that held him down, and went along that narrow street, arm in arm with an outcast, out through the city walls, and lodged with one Simon, a tanner, whose house was by the seaside.

If he hadn’t done it, what?

I wonder how long it would have taken Peter to go out and preach to the whole world the full Gospel of Christ’s grace, if he had stood on his false dignity and refused to accompany Simon, the tanner.

Remember—it is a final secret—one little liberation, nobly answered, alone makes us fit for the next!—From Days of My Autumn, by James Black (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950). Used by permission.

Equal in area to New York State but with a smaller population, Czechoslovakia was taken over by the Nazis in 1939 and by the Communists in 1948. Today it reflects all the good and bad features of a Soviet satellite. It takes four years and a large deposit to get a car, but there is a superb state health and welfare program. A system of informers operates against those churls who find life even in a Socialist Republic less than idyllic; but there is no serious juvenile delinquency, and people can walk the streets of the city of Prague at night in perfect safety.

About nine million Czechoslovaks (65.5 per cent) are baptized Roman Catholics, and 1¼ million are Protestants. Prominent among the latter is Dr. J. L. Hromadka, dean of the Comenius Faculty (current student enrollment about thirty-five). A fulsome eulogy earlier this year by New Testament professor J. B. Soucek purports to show how Hromadka by successive steps found liberation from various kinds of bondage. These stages included “the complacent glorification of culture prevalent in the years of his youth,” his “entanglement in the nationalistic sentiment,” “timid anti-bolshevism,” the equally narrow-minded anti-catholicism” current after World War I, and his “desperately clinging to the past forms of social and political life.” Thus, says Soucek, he has reached his present position courageously and without regret, seeking “the way of a christian and of the church in the midst of the rising socialist society.…” We might have hoped for more precise definition of terms here, as Soucek builds up the image of a man battling his way gamely through intellectual perils, toils, and snares, trying the spirits, and eventually choosing a sphere of service in which church and socialism work hand in hand for a better tomorrow.

Is this a complete likeness of the enigmatic figure who turned his back on the United States in 1947 after having held a professorship at Princeton Theological Seminary and who later joined Britain’s Red Dean in charging the Allies with using germ warfare in Korea? A little investigation might suggest that here is no latter-day socialist. In a penetrating and well-documented account of Hromadka’s theological politics, Dr. Matthew Spinka tells how at a convention in Prague as long ago as July, 1923, Hromadka declared that the “frequently derided and proscribed atheistic, materialistic socialism” could not be “brushed aside with a mere phrase ‘materialism’ and ‘atheism.’ ”

Twenty-five years later, at the WCC assembly in Amsterdam, Hromadka was already recognized as spokesman of the Eastern Europeans at a time when the Communist coup d’état in his homeland was barely six months old. He denies that Communism is either totalitarian or atheistic. “Its atheism,” he asserts, “is rather a practical reaction against the forces of the pre-socialistic society than a positive philosophically essential tenet.” He suggests that it is in many ways “secularized Christian theology, often furiously anti-Church.” The official report of Hromadka’s address on this occasion was significantly less anti-Western than the version published in Hromadka’s own periodical in Prague. (See M. Spinka, “Church in Communist Society,” Hartford Seminary Foundation Bulletin, June, 1954.) The vision of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin as Christians unawares is as intriguing and as theologically confusing as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s conviction that he will meet atheists in heaven. Both interpretations would tend to make a Party member very cross.

Despite an earlier avowed purpose of “Christianizing” the regime (a course endorsed by Karl Barth), Hromadka now evidently supports all its policies except the blatantly anti-religious. Eighteen months ago in Dresden, he said proof was available that soon after World War II certain “circles in the West” were preparing to liquidate the Soviet Union. He blames the United States chiefly for making West Germany a bridgehead for the economic, military, and diplomatic fight against the Soviet Union and charges Western propaganda with “casting the shadow of prejudice and false ideas” on East Germany. No one who reads such utterances with their maddening lack of precision, or who heard Hromadka’s keynote address at the Christian Peace Assembly this year, is likely to get the impression of a non-partisan quest for peace. Indeed, one sometimes gets the oddest sense of martial music just offstage.

Matthew Spinka a decade ago, in a remark still relevant, concluded with customary shrewdness: “Dr. Hromadka’s experiment in cooperating with the Czechoslovak and other Communist regimes is not without its positive value: for had he not made it, no one could tell whether this was a possible solution of the acute problem of the relation of the Christian churches to Communism. Now we know that it is not.”

In Prague I found the Second All-Christian Peace Assembly devoid of a strong eschatological note. Peace was the great preoccupation, in pursuit of which it is necessary (here I quote from the movement’s aims) “to concentrate all energies of Christian believers.” Many earnest Christians have been beguiled by the challenge offered in this dangerous half-truth. It goes far beyond Bonhoeffer’s reasonable statement (approved by the CPC) that in the past Christians had done much to further the various wars and that they should now do as much (or more) in a common Christian campaign for peace.

A godless regime (J. L. Hromadka has not proved it otherwise) would have liked the much-publicized findings of the Prague assembly less if an old lesson had not been overlooked: that true peace involves not merely the absence of conflict but the presence of God.

Charges of “ballot stuffing” at the last two Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings are likely to be a major topic of discussion for the SBC Executive Committee this month.

SBC leaders are said to be deeply concerned over broad accusations leveled by Dr. Joe W. Burton, convention registration secretary. Burton, also Sunday school publication editor, says “confidential reports” have convinced him that ballot-stuffing took place in Atlantic City last spring and also the previous year in Kansas City.

At least one member of the Executive Committee has indicated he will bring up the matter when the group meets in Nashville September 23 and 24.

Burton made the charges in a letter to editors of Baptist state papers. “My point has no reference to which side of any issue anyone may have supported,” he said, “but has only to do with reported actions aimed at causing one vote to count more than another’s.…”

Dr. Wayne Dehoney, who was elected president of SBC in May on a second-ballot 4,024–3,223 vote, branded Burton’s charges as “impulsive and irresponsible.” He made a counter-charge that Burton conducted elections at SBC meetings of the past two years in “an irresponsible manner.”

While denying that there is “evidence from any source” giving basis to the registration secretary’s charges, the SBC president commented:

“It is conceivable, however, that an isolated incident may have occurred as there were over 13,000 messengers [delegates] attending the convention. Anyone could have entered the building off the boardwalk.”

Protestant Panorama

A Minnesota district convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will ask the parent denomination to declare a new translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism unacceptable. The translation was a joint project of the three major U. S. Lutheran bodies.

The Assemblies of God plan to establish a “depository of Pentecostal theology” in the Springfield, Missouri, headquarters. The project will seek to assist researchers in connection with the current interest in glossolalia.

Miscellany

Roman Catholic bishops in California issued a document condemning racial discrimination last month. It made no specific reference, however, to a controversial proposal on which Californians will vote in November. If passed, the proposal would abolish a law against discrimination in housing transactions and permanently bar the legislature from considering “fair housing” legislation.

The new Complete Protestant Bible, a revised version of Luther’s translation, will go to print this fall as the first book to be published jointly in both East and West Germany since the erection of the Communist Wall and the subsequent enclosure of East Germany.

Twelve U. S. Senators introduced last month a proposed constitutional amendment that would add the words “under God” to the Preamble to the Constitution.

Protracted negotiations over the disposition of Russian church properties in Israel were climaxed with an agreement providing for purchase of virtually all the properties by Israel at a cost of $4,500,000. Originally donated by members of the Czarist imperial family to the Russian Orthodox Palestine Society, the properties include pilgrims’ hostels and large buildings in Jerusalem and Nazareth, and valuable real estate in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

New church construction took a surprisingly sharp upturn during the summer, according to the U. S. Department of Commerce. Estimated July construction was $91,000,000, $2,000,000 ahead of the same month of 1963, the first month this year that church construction has been ahead of the 1963 level.

Alice Lanshina, head of the Lumpa religious cult whose rampage in the remote bush country of Northern Rhodesia cost more than 500 lives, surrendered last month and called on her followers to end their “holy war.”

An American archaeological expedition led by Professor Ernest Wright of Harvard University has unearthed the Old Testament city of Shechem, the first Palestinian site mentioned in the book of Genesis. The expedition unearthed layers of the ancient city from Islamic, Christian, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Canaanite periods.

Protestant leaders in New South Wales, Australia, are protesting a new syllabus for state-operated primary schools which, in separating general religious teaching from social studies, emphasizes that Christian religious beliefs must be discussed only as part of the study of general religious philosophical beliefs.

Personalia

Dr. Arthur B. Rutledge was named executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board.

Mrs. Robert T. Fetherston was elected president of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, the first woman ever to hold the office.

The Rev. William Haverkamp was appointed editor of De Wachter, Dutch-language weekly published by the Christian Reformed Church.

Mrs. John M. Ballbach was appointed dean of women at Moody Bible Institute.

Dr. Lewis Webster Jones will retire as president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews next summer.

A British teen-ager, the daughter of a delegate, uttered the obvious sequel to the prayer theme, “Come, Creator Spirit,” of the nineteenth General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The delegate quoted from her letter: “I hope He came.”

Had the Spirit come? The host city of Frankfurt am Main was not visibly shaken during the eleven-day proceedings, but some felt that there were indeed moments when it was clear that all present were responding to a presence, not merely to a spoken word.

One such time was marked by the storm of applause that greeted the first reading of a committee report on Roman Catholicism. “First we express gratitude for the ‘new climate’ and rejoice with our Roman Catholic brethren in the signs of renewal in that church.” It was not merely these precisely spoken, yet warm words of the committee chairman, Dr. Ermanno Rostan, moderator of the Waldensian Church of Italy, that sparked this response. It was rather a feeling on the part of many that in our time God’s Spirit is breathing new life into his whole Church through the sudden and unexpected opening of doors long closed. Bitterness had been purged out of Dr. Rostan, and he ably defended the report. Adoption was by an overwhelming majority.

Another high moment came at the adoption of a recommendation concerning racial questions. Two delegates from South African churches had urged an amendment for words of the report that they felt could be misused in their country to encourage violence. They won rather unexpected support from Dr. Wilhelm Niesel,¹Niesel, reportedly a staunchly conservative theologian, is known chiefly for his studies on Calvin. moderator of the Reformierter Bund of Germany, who had just been elected to a six-year term as president of the alliance. Among those arguing against the amendment was Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A. The vote was more than 90 per cent against the proposed change.

The final text declared that the “exclusion of any person, on grounds of race, color or nationality, from any congregation or part of the life of the Church contradicts the very nature of the Church.”

That statement added that “Christians are called to protest, in the light of God’s Word, not only in words but in action and to participate in responsible efforts toward the establishment of racial justice and equality. In that involvement they will ask for the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit and count on the advice and support of the Church. Now as violence and revolutionary action are spreading, it is of primary importance for the Church to be prepared through serious study of the Holy Scripture and of the political situation to help its members face responsibility under the guidance of Jesus Christ, Lord of Peace, such hard problems as civil disobedience of violent action. In any case, Christians participating in the struggle for racial justice will remember that God is love and that their ultimate vocation is to exercise among men a ministry of reconciliation.”

Services were held in a large, windowless university lecture hall with closely set wooden seats. The atmosphere was not conducive to worship, still less to spiritual fervor. Dr. Ralph W. Lloyd, retiring president, tried to keep spirits up. But his efforts to keep order were handicapped by the substitution for the familiar gavel of a small bell of the type once used to call the maid from the kitchen—back in the days when there were maids.

A colorful note was provided by costumes worn by West African and Asian delegates, a red fez on a man from the United Arab Republic, and the great variety of physiognomies and complexions. Two ever-smiling observers from the Vatican sat faithfully in one corner of the hall.

Council debates focused on four main themes, the first being “Come, Creator Spirit, for the Re-Making of Man.” Many laymen felt lost in a sea of theological terms. And many representatives of the younger churches found the long theological discussions not merely boring but basically irrelevant.

The remaking-of-man report, optimistically labeled “final draft,” was cut to ribbons by the theologians. The Germans especially complained of the confusion between humanism and Christianity. On the final day a new “final draft” was approved for transmission to the churches. But since satisfactory clarification of the disputed sections had proved impossible, the whole matter was referred to the theological department of the alliance.

One of the basic theological problems that emerged in this discussion and also at several points in later reports was how to identify the work of the Spirit outside the life of the Church. No Reformed theologian was willing to limit the action of the sovereign God, but the question of identifying the true actions of the Spirit in the outside world demands a considerable exercise of discernment. Since there are no clearly defined criteria for such judgment, a tendency to follow personal preferences is all too easy.

The second theme, asking the coming of the Spirit “For the Renewal of Worship and Witness,” was received far more easily. The ensuing report declared a consensus “that a more frequent and a more joyous celebration of the Lord’s Supper is badly needed in many of our Reformed churches.”

In discussions of the third theme, “The Calling of the Churches Together,” an unsuccessful attempt was made to tone down emphasis on the sinfulness of division. Dr. Niesel defended the role of world confessional alliances, saying that they served as an introduction into ecumenism for many younger and smaller churches. Readiness to continue talks with the world body representing Congregational churches, talks that could lead to a merger of the two bodies, was also stressed.

Section Four, “For the Redemption of the World,” embraced the debate on racial problems and dealt also with “Peace” and “New Forms of Ministry.”

Delegates voted a resolution that would welcome an agreement among the churches of the world for fixing the date of Easter. Another resolution specifically requested the alliance executive committee and the Vatican observers to remind the Roman Catholic Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity that “a great strain is caused in ecumenical relations by the present practices of that church with regard to mixed marriages in most countries and by the restrictions of liberty of worship and witness and by civil disabilities suffered by minority evangelical churches in some countries.”

The growth of the alliance was itself a matter of some concern. This year’s council was by far the largest ever, with 419 delegates from 96 churches participating, as well as more than 300 fraternal delegates, consultants, observers, staff, and officially recognized visitors. A resolution to cut the size of the council in the future was adopted; it affects only the medium-sized and larger churches and will change the balance in favor of representation from smaller churches.

The Church: Place And Mission

In the small town of Zeist in the beautiful heart of Holland, the International Association for Reformed Faith and Action spent eight days stressing the importance of the Church’s faithfulness to its Lord in the midst of the ideologies and temptations of the time. The IARFA brought to its fifth International Reformed Congress last month six speakers from five countries to discuss the general theme, “The Church: Its Place and Mission in the Modern World.”

An element of continuity was achieved through daily Bible studies under the guidance of Dr. J. Cadier of Montpellier, France. The studies underscored the import of the scriptural letters to the churches of Asia (Revelation 2; 3).

Dr. P. Ch. Marcel, the French pastor who is president of the IARFA, placed the theme in its present reality in his opening address. The great danger to the Church comes from within, he said, noting evidence (1) in the reduction of God and Christ to the purely human level, as in Robinson’s Honest to God; (2) in the attempt to identify Christ with the Church, as if the latter automatically represented the former; and (3) in the fusion of Church and world, so that little remains of the distinctiveness of the faith. This (con)fusion was described as leading to an unbiblical universalism, so that even atheism is looked upon as an instrument of God, and to the denial of absolute norms for life, as in today’s sexual morality. Marcel asserted that Christianity has become humanized instead of humanity’s becoming Christianized.

The Church can challenge the world, said Dr. L. Coenen, German pastor and editor, only through a radical subjection to the norms of the New Testament. He charged that Protestant churches have become hierarchical and juridical establishments, and that “officials” carry the responsibility in our too-large congregations, which can hardly function as the body of Christ in which each member, fitly framed together, has his function and place. He challenged the congress to decide whether the New Testament church knew our “special offices” of elders, deacons, and preachers, who mainly perform the Church’s tasks today, and whether these tasks should not be the organic, harmonious expressions of every member of the body of Christ.

The idea was emphasized still more by H. Kleinert, a lay Christian from the Rhineland, who pointed out that the New Testament does not know our distinction of clergy and laity. He said that the Church is effective only when all its gifts, distributed to every member, can function in the Church’s action.

Dr. W. Stanford Reid of McGill University, Montreal, said that Christians today must learn from the Reformation. He noted that the Reformation was the work not of theologians and synods but of the Spirit of God. Implied were a rediscovery of God’s sovereignty and the rejection of church hierarchy; these lead to a God-focused life, lived in the patterns and structures of creation and providence, on the basis of redemption liberating man from sin so that the whole world can become the theater of human endeavor.

The Rev. E. L. H. Taylor of the Church of England said the Lord has judged the West by two world wars because the idols of scientific humanism have been worshiped. He declared that these idols can be broken only through a return to the biblical view of human life as religion, a view which cuts off the de-humanization and neutralization of existence as favored in the political and educational policies of the West. He insisted that the Church must be distinct from the world and suggested that it might be necessary to establish Christian schools, unions, and political parties.

Nineteenth-century individualism, said Dr. Herman Ridderbos, Dutch New Testament scholar, can be overcome by the new insights into the Word of God, which teach that the unity of the Church is a visible unity, since the Church is Christ’s body. According to Ridderbos, this unity can be visible in the Church as an organism, in the many Christian activities which cross denominational lines, but must also be present in the institutional church. He warned against two extremes: the one often found in the small seceded churches which often look upon themselves as the only perfect manifestation of Christ’s Church; the other found in the attempt to found a church transcending historical differences.

The congress at Zeist followed similarly convened meeting at Montpellier, France (1953); Detmold, Germany (1955); Strasbourg, France (1958); and Cambridge, England (1961). The IARFA is an association of persons who have tried to exert a unifying influence among Reformed-evangelical Christians since 1953.

BERNARD ZYLSTRA

The New And The Stable

An address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., highlighted the European Baptist Conference at The Hague last month. The Negro Baptist integration leader’s appearance was televised to the Netherlands, West Germany, Denmark, and Sweden through a Eurovision network hookup.

In his televised sermon and in an earlier address to the conference, King stressed the obligation of the Church to support equal rights and opportunities for all men.

Citing the worldwide social and technological revolution, he declared that “the Church cannot say ‘let us go back to the quiet, stable world’ without violating the word of God that he makes all things new.”

King called on all Christians to “work together, seek together, and suffer together” in the face of worldwide challenges. He urged increased aid to developing nations of the world.

On international affairs, King welcomed the offer of Pope Paul VI to intervene in conflicts threatening world peace. However, he suggested that perhaps churches have “lost their right” to speak on world affairs because of Christendom’s failure to stop two major wars.

Forecast Of Tensions

Increased tension, disruption of order, and possibly violence as a result of the racial revolution were predicted by the national general secretary of the United States YWCA, speaking last month in Beirut, Lebanon, at an international YM-YWCA conference.

The YWCA official, Miss Edith Lerrigo, declared that “the years ahead are bound to be painful, costly, and in some places tragic.”

‘For Such A Time’

Cleveland, Tennessee (population 18,000), a suburb of Chattanooga, got a vote of confidence last month from the 200,000-member Church of God, which has its world headquarters there. The church’s General Council turned down a recommendation of its Supreme Council that the headquarters be relocated in a more cosmopolitan area such as Atlanta, Memphis, or even nearby Chattanooga. Instead the General Council voted to erect a new $1,500,000 office building in Cleveland and renovate existing facilities.

In another important policy decision, the church, one of the largest Pentecostal bodies in the United States, voted to increase its Executive Committee from four to six members.

Both decisions, made at the Church of God’s fiftieth General Assembly in Dallas last month, reflect rapid growth. The church originated in 1886 with a group of eight persons. Now it has some 6,366 churches and missions and is represented in all fifty states and in sixty-eight foreign countries. The foreign membership totals 454,952. U. S. membership is most concentrated in Tennessee and several adjoining states.

Assembly delegates voted without dissent a resolution affirming equal rights for all Americans. The statement said that “no American should, because of his race or religion, be deprived of his right to worship, vote, rest, eat, sleep, be educated, live and work on the same basis as other citizens.”

“No Christian can manifest a passive attitude when the rights of others are jeopardized,” the resolution continued. “Christian love and tolerance are incompatible with race prejudice and hatred.” Members were urged to “support that which assures all people those freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution” and to “continue to practice the love and brotherhood it preaches.”

The theme of the Dallas meeting, “For Such a Time,” taken from the story of Esther, emphasized the church’s evangelistic spirit.

Program For The Deprived

Delegates to the 152nd Seventh Day Baptist Conference, held in Salem, West Virginia, last month, called on the entire denominational constituency to “commit themselves to a more vigorous and Christlike program for the extension of love, mercy, and justice to persons deprived of their rights as free members of society.” A resolution adopted by the delegates noted that “any limiting qualifications of race as to church membership or attendance are not in harmony with the teachings of Christ.”

Salem was also the site of the first World Consultation of Seventh Day Baptists last month. The two-week conclave drew delegates from seven countries.

Scanning The Spectrum

“Spectrum of belief” is no mere catchword among members of the American Scientific Affiliation. At the annual meeting last month at John Brown University, Siloam Springs, Arkansas, ASA members demonstrated both the common basis of their faith and the range of their diversity in a program that focused on the origins of the universe, life, and man.

Professor John A. McIntyre led off with a paper that criticized the evangelicals’ lack of social concern, called for more imaginative biblical interpretation, and suggested that scientific research could glorify God as much as evangelistic activity.

More of the spectrum became evident the next day in an exchange of views of the “three-story universe,” Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., saying that the Old Testament did not assume such a universe, and Dr. Alder T. van der Ziel maintaining, “We read our own ideas into the text. Why not go to the text?” Dr. Buswell, dean of the faculty at Covenant Seminary, replied, “That’s my point.”

One of the more vigorously debated topics was the “Can Scientists Create Life?” question, which came up principally in a paper by Dr. Duane T. Gish, who has done pioneer work in biochemistry and biophysics. “The nature of the origins of life may be beyond the realm of scientific investigation—I certainly believe that they are,” said Dr. Gish.

The convention also included three papers proposing three possible dates for the creation of man—50,000 to 60,000 years ago (Professor James Murk of Wheaton College); 10,000 years ago, or not much before the development of agriculture (Dr. Stanley D. Walters of Greenville College, Illinois); and several hundred thousand years ago (Professor James O. Buswell, III, of Wheaton College). A fourth position would place Adam at the very beginning of tool-making man. Since all of these post-difficulties, Professor Buswell said it was a matter of choosing “which set of problems you want to be stuck with.”

In the concluding lecture of the convention Dr. Buswell took vigorous but charitable exception to the lovers of the kind of paradox that means genuine contradiction. “If something that the Bible declares to be true seems to be false, for me the only proper attitude toward the problem is to study, and pray, and wait for further light, while I cling to those plain anti simple truths which are clearly revealed and not contradicted,” said Dr. Buswell.

The ASA, which was founded in 1941 by five scientists of evangelical Christian conviction, has grown to 1,200 members. In recent years the group has included more and more evangelicals involved in pioneer scientific research, such as Dr. Gish of the Upjohn Company, Dr. McIntyre of Texas A and M, Dr. L. Evans Roth of Iowa State University, and Dr. Wayne U. Ault, of Isotopes, Inc. During the same general period, the group has broadened its spectrum of belief while retaining an evangelical orientation.

Since last year’s meeting, however, some members, led by Dr. Walter E. Lammerts, a geneticist, have formed the Creation Research Society, which has been variously characterized as a split, a revolt, and a protest movement. Although some CRS members are indeed critical of what they see as compromise by the ASA on vital issues, those talked to at the convention deny a split. One of them said that as far as he knew, all the old ASA members had retained their ASA connections. Some explain the existence of the new group by saying that the CRS is engaged in a specialized study of the evidences of creation, and that it is designed to provide an adequate forum for such studies.

The CRS statement of faith is longer and more specific than the ASA’s two-point statement: “(1) The Holy Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, the only unerring guide of faith and conduct. (2) Jesus Christ is the Son of God and through His atonement is the one and only Mediator.”

The CRS statement includes reference to the historical and scientific accuracy of the Bible, a universal flood, and a “creation week,” though opinions in the CRS on a literal six-day creation period tend to vary. Moreover, the ASA includes members who would not deny many points in the CRS statement.

The ASA has also changed its concept of mission over the years. A decade ago one objective was to supply information to ministers and theologians in order to keep them from crawling out on precarious scientific limbs. More recently the ASA has endeavored to keep its own members informed on theology so that they would not crawl out on precarious theological limbs. The ASA has close ties with the Evangelical Theological Society and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. It will meet concurrently with the IVCF Faculty Fellowship next year.

GEORGE WILLIAMS

Controversial Guest

America faces greater moral and religious problems than those of an economic and social nature, Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, said last month in an address to 12,000 members of the American Lutheran Church’s Luther League youth organization.

“For the first time in history we have technical ability, thanks to automation, to satisfy the massive material needs of humanity,” he said, “but we still need to develop the ability of filling the needs of the inner man.”

Both at his introduction and at the conclusion of his address, Reuther received a standing ovation from the crowd in Cobo Hall, Detroit.

The enthusiastic reception for the labor leader was a sharp contrast to the message of some literature distributed outside the convention hall. Pamphlets told the young people, “You’re being misled.”

The labor leader was the subject of a pre-convention controversy. The church council of an ALC congregation in Los Angeles charged that he is “strong for the Soviet Union” and “denies God.”

An ALC spokesman countered that Reuther “has done an outstanding job in ridding [his] union of … Communists.”

The Mass In English: Some Theological Surprises

On August 24, in St. Louis, a Roman Catholic Mass was celebrated in English for the first time in the United States. Kiel Auditorium was comfortably filled by nearly 11,000 persons, including some 180 Protestants. The Mass in English was part of the program of the twenty-fifth Roman Catholic Liturgical Week, which is the largest single gathering of Roman Catholics and an annual opportunity for bishops, priests, nuns, and especially lay people who are committed to the renewal of the church through changes in the central act of worship.

For Protestants the English Mass was of deep interest. Its setting was modern and plain, like that of a modern play. The altar was a simple, unadorned block, and choir members sat on wooden cubes on each side of it. The service was preceded by fifteen minutes of singing directed by a song leader who was at a desk to the side of the altar. The singing was from a prepared booklet, and its purpose was obviously to acquaint the congregation with the songs for the service to follow. From a desk on the other side the congregation was guided through the service by John Mannion, executive secretary of the Liturgical Conference. His guidance characterized the whole service—an interplay of high formality and warm folksiness.

Celebrant of the Mass was the Rev. Frederick R. McManus, associate professor of canon law at Washington University and consultant for the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Liturgy which was established for the Second Vatican Council. In a brief homily before the Mass he put forth the role of every member of the church: “You are the body of Christ.” Not all are apostles or “successors of apostles,” but all must serve in “adoration and renewal.” He offered prayers for “those others in Christ” and for “Jewish believers.”

In the Mass itself, a procession of laymen brought the bread to the altar to be blessed along with the wafer of the priest. Normally this bread is touched only by a priest or a nun. Disappointing, however, was the fact that in the canon—to the Roman Catholic the most sacred part of the Mass, during which the hosts are consecrated—the-celebrant spoke in Latin and almost inaudibly. It was reported after the service that although this was not as much as the Liturgical Conference would have wished and was not necessarily in line with the forward-looking views of McManus, it did represent the best wisdom of the group on how far they could go in this first use of English.

Theologically, there were some surprises. Mannion, in introducing the service, explained the Mass as the “offering of Christ to the Father in sign.” The altar was not against the wall but out in front, and the celebrant faced the congregation. The introduction to the reading of the Gospel spoke of “breaking the bread of God’s Word,” and the Mannion referred to the reading as the “peak” of the service. The congregation stood for this reading. Mannion was not robed but wore a grey business suit. The singing was enthusiastic and the leadership of the choirs beautiful. A new hymn, “God Is Love,” was led by its Negro composer, Clarence Joseph Rivers.

Asked what meant most to him, a young priest answered, “That English was used at all.” Donald Quinn of the press room, a Roman Catholic layman, said, “My spine tingled when the ‘Our Father’ was said in English, and when we were dismissed in English.” The whole great congregation was joyous, and the enthusiasm after the service was contagious.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Malay-Chinese race riots in Singapore left twenty-two dead, hundreds injured, and a unique evangelistic project in jeopardy last month.

The threat melted into victory, however, as the Asian Evangelists Crusade began on schedule and drew 4,000 persons nightly to the Singapore National Theater. The crowds were easily the largest ever to gather for gospel services in the city’s history.

Yet less than twenty-four hours before the start of the crusade a curfew had been in effect that kept all of Singapore’s population indoors nightly. The fifteen evangelists from seven countries who pooled their efforts to sponsor the crusade had seriously considered calling the whole thing off. No one knew how long the curfew would continue, or whether the riots would flare anew!

On August 1, the crusade’s opening day, it was announced that the curfew would be lifted until midnight. The group regarded it as a spectacular answer to prayer that the curfew lifted for the entire week of the meetings—dates which had been set a year in advance—before public meetings were again banned because of further disturbances.

The crusade, planned in conjunction with the Asian Evangelists Conference the following week, featured a different country each night, with an evangelist from that country as speaker. Represented were Formosa, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. A total of 903 persons registered decisions for Christ and were individually counseled in one of four languages. The evangelistic campaign was the first ever sponsored by Singapore churches.

Television Crusade

One-hour telecasts on some 200 stations across North America this week will enable millions to share the benefits of evangelist Billy Graham’s July crusade in Columbus, Ohio.

In most areas the telecasts will be seen on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings (September 8–10).

The television audience will hear three of the sermons Graham preached in Columbus. Meanwhile, the evangelist will conduct crusades this month in Omaha and Boston.

A corps of young people distributed 100,000 handbills and tickets house to house. There were more than 400 counselors and some 250 choir members.

At the three-day evangelists’ conference the following week, participants hammered out a bold strategy to reach Asia’s increasing millions with the Gospel. They adopted a six-point program:

—Sponsor biennial campaigns and conferences in key Asian cities.

—Conduct city-wide gospel rallies.

—Form and encourage the dispatch of international gospel teams.

—Promote systematic village evangelism.

—Encourage and train a new crop of evangelists.

—Operate a clearing house for information and intercessory prayer.

The conference was planned by a committee of missionaries and laymen, including representatives of Malaya Evangelistic Fellowship, The Navigators, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Singapore Bible College, and Singapore Youth for Christ.

Navigators representative Roy Robertson noted the need to promote with national evangelists a “more aggressive, coordinated program for public proclamation of the Word.”

Much of the committee’s action is credited to the spearheading influence of evangelist Gregorio Tingson of the Philippines, who insists that nationals take responsibility for stepping up Asian evangelism.

Another result of the conference was the establishment of an Asian Evangelists Commission, which promptly began laying plans for a crusade and conference in Bombay in the spring of 1966.

The summer of 1964 seems to have given birth to a rank-and-file movement for spiritual recovery in mainstream Protestantism. New organizations are springing up to combat theological dilution within the large American denominations. Behind the drive is a renewed spirit of determination, especially among laymen, to demonstrate the integrity of the Scriptures and their supreme relevance to modern problems.

Foremost in the movement as of now is an organization called Concerned Presbyterians, composed exclusively of members of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). But similar groups are emerging in at least three other large U. S. denominations.

Champions of orthodoxy have long chafed over theological deviations and neglect of spiritual priorities in leading religious bodies. In the forepart of this century, however, these protests resulted mostly in defection and schism. The new approach is to work within the framework of existing denominations and to seek recovery of their historic purpose through established channels.

The current grass-roots drive makes no effort to conceal its distrust of the National Council of Churches. It is committed to no specific alternative. But the NCC is deplored as providing the machinery for achievement of liberal programs while its leadership is insulated from any need for answering to individual church members for its actions.

Inasmuch as it is virtually, by definition, a campaign for the recovery of theological orthodoxy, the movement’s objective, as one spokesman put it, is simply “revival in the Church.” The main goal is to reestablish the priority of the Church’s challenge of men and women to the necessity of spiritual regeneration. Also important is the Church’s responsibility for grounding believers in scriptural truth. In many churches ministers are under increasing criticism for the investment of time and energies in ecumenical and social concerns while the primary task of evangelism is neglected. In addition, the complaints of the laity increase over the neglect of orientation in basic biblical doctrines by many Protestant pulpits.

These biblical priorities seem to run afoul of current interest among some Protestant leaders who contend that redemption is a concept now best applied to certain programs of social reform. The Church’s political involvement in select public issues¹Two generations ago the emphasis was on pacifism; a generation ago it was on prohibition; presently it is on civil rights, relief for the needy, and rapprochement wth the Communist world. is regarded by many denominational officials as an ultimate test of genuine moral concern.

The alternative view of the new crusaders is that the Church’s job is to see that individuals are confronted with the necessity of spiritual commitment and equipped to serve in their separate vocations as the salt of the earth.

The group known as Concerned Presbyterians was organized last month during the annual Presbyterian Journal Day observance at Weaverville, North Carolina, in the mountain resort area near Asheville. The Journal, an independent weekly (circulation: 22,500), will reflect the group’s emphases. Goals of the organization, listed in a resolution to Journal directors, include concern for “the integrity of the Word of God … a return to serious and intensive prayer … a new zeal for evangelism and world missions … a new seeking for the power of the Holy Spirit … a new dedication to love and concern for one another in Christ.…” The group also called for “union with Reformed bodies who are obviously and sincerely dedicated to the Reformed interpretation of the Scriptures” and “a plan for the use of the funds contributed to our Church’s causes that will enable individuals and churches to give as the Holy Spirit leads them, with the assurance that the funds will be used only for the purposes for which they were given.” Named as co-directors of the steering committee were Kenneth Keyes of Miami, former president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and Roy LeCraw, former mayor of Atlanta.

The grass-roots drive is expecting counter-criticism, since ulterior motives are frequently ascribed to reform movements in ecclesiastical circles. For this reason, participants are zealous not to embrace the cooperation of those whose antipathy to the NCC rises out of wrong reasons (e.g. racism).

The new crusaders stress that social concern falls within the proper province of Christian thinking, but they deplore its replacement of evangelistic priorities and its attachment to political methods and programs.

Their battle for recovery admittedly faces a formidable institutionalism that resists any turnabout. Some laymen, realizing that the institution holds a whip of security over its clergy, expect little help from ministers. Others are more optimistic. They refuse to contemplate any growing cleft between laity and clergy and see limited signs of denominational renewal in areas where ministers themselves are concerned and active.

Sit-In Settlement

Nine clergymen were released from a Tallahassee, Florida, jail last month after serving four days of sixty-day sentences imposed as a result of sit-in demonstrations in 1961. The men—four white and three Negro Protestants and two rabbis—chose the jail terms instead of $500 fines after three years of unsuccessful appeals (including one to the U. S. Supreme Court).

“We received no preferential treatment, and the other prisoners were very congenial,” commented Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, well-known United Presbyterian churchman.

A tenth minister, the Rev. Ralph Lord Roy, paid the $500 fine after his request to join the other clergymen “within a few days” was turned down by the judge. Roy said pressing pastoral duties made it necessary to remain in New York. He recently became minister of two Methodist churches.

Members of a freedom-riding group testing discrimination in interstate transportation terminals, the ministers were charged with unlawful assembly after attempting to integrate an airport restaurant. A Florida appellate court ruled that they had pursued their demonstration to “unreasonable lengths imposing unreasonable burdens on others.” The ministers had canceled flight reservations repeatedly, frustrating attempts by the airlines to accommodate other would-be travelers.

The Amish Dilemma

A bill is being considered by Congress to exempt the Old Order Amish from participation in the social security program, and Treasury Department legal experts say “there is no valid constitutional objection to the proposed exemption.”

Republican Representative Richard S. Schweiker introduced the measure, which would permit members of churches whose established doctrines forbid participation in such programs on religious grounds to waive their benefit rights and be exempted from social security taxes. While the Old Order Amish have been in the forefront of the campaign for such a law, other groups which proscribe insurance also would be relieved of the dilemma.

The administration has not indicated support of Schweiker’s bill, but an opinion from Treasury Department General Counsel G. d’Angelot Belin sees no constitutional bar.

The government, which has maintained a moratorium on collections of the tax from the Amish, has proposed that members pay into social security and, upon retirement age, the money paid as “taxes” be refunded in monthly installments equal to the social security benefits for which they would ordinarily qualify.

Amish leaders have contended that the tax is really an insurance payment and understood to be such by the government itself. The sect, and many small ones similar to it, believe that individuals, by fruitful industry in their younger years and reliance on God throughout life, should look to no outside sources for help in their old age.

In the last few months, in anticipation of settlement of the crisis, Internal Revenue Service has quietly placed liens against many properties, particularly in Pennsylvania, in an effort to collect taxes held in abatement by the moratorium. Two years ago tax agents impounded horses and livestock of Amish who refused to pay the tax. The impounding stopped after a wave of public protest.

The Nominees

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, selected last month as the Democratic party’s nominee for Vice-President, is a member of the First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) of Minneapolis and holds affiliate membership in a Methodist church at Chevy Chase, Maryland, a Washington suburb.

Humphrey and President Johnson will run on a platform that takes no stand on the controversial prayer amendment proposal. By contrast, the Republican platform supports, with qualifications, a constitutional amendment “permitting those individuals and groups who choose to do so to exercise their religion freely in public places.”

On the eve of the Democratic convention Johnson entertained evangelist Billy Graham and his wife at the White House. The president attended Sunday services at the National City Christian Church where Graham spoke. The evangelist also called on Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater at Goldwater’s invitation.

Winona Breaks Fuller Link

Trustees of the Winona Lake (Indiana) School of Theology voted unanimously last month to invoke a reversion clause in their December, 1961, agreement with Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. They requested immediate return of the title to the Indiana campus.

The initial agreement, which climaxed a decade of consultation and planning, made the Winona Lake school the summer division of Fuller. Some 130 students were registered this year.

Reasons for the “drastic and necessary” action, according to Winona President John A. Huffman, were multiple. These included, he said, “gradual deterioration” of Fuller’s doctrine of the Scriptures; the signing of Fuller’s statement of faith with “mental reservations” by some Pasadena campus faculty members; the elimination of English Bible requirements from the curriculum; and the projected phasing-out of the master’s degree program at the Winona school.

A Question Of Language

The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Protestant Episcopal clergyman and sometime playwright, was reprimanded by the Bishop of Michigan this month for using profanity in one of his dramas.

Although he was not named, Boyd, chaplain at Wayne State University, was obviously the clergyman singled out for criticism by Bishop Richard S. Emrich in a church newspaper. The bishop noted that a one-act play written by Boyd was “banned because of its profanity by the radio station of a great university.”

The twelve-minute drama, Boy, a social protest play, was turned down by the Michigan State University educational television station because it includes the words “damn” and “nigger.”

Emrich stated that “since the clergyman preaches and practices high and sensitive standards in race relations, it astounds me that his standards in language are so low.”

A Bid For Attention

Religious “non-commercials” may soon be seen as well as heard.

The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., which has tested several low-pressure radio spot announcements by Stan Freberg and is now beginning to run them in major U. S. cities, is contemplating a similar campaign on television, according to Richard Gilbert, executive director of the church’s radio and TV division.

No dates have been set, no one has been commissioned to do the spots, and there is some uncertainty about where to get the money. However, Mr. Gilbert says that “we are pushing ahead to see if we can develop some TV spots.”

The original radio announcements reached the general public in the form of the cold print of advance press publicity, a medium for which they were not designed and which exhibited them at their least effective. Mr. Gilbert says they are at their best when sandwiched in between layers of “top forty” tunes, rock n’ roll, and the other elements that make up the daily fare of radio.

Freberg’s reputation for “goofy, spoofy” commercials; the fact that he uses a swinging group of forty-five singers and musicians; and the whole ambience of show business surrounding the venture—it is these things, perhaps, that have evoked such comments as “nauseous,” “most offensive,” and “grotesque.”

According to Mr. Gilbert, most of these comments come from people who have only read about the spots, not heard them. Speaking for the program are these points:

• Most people who heard the spots in the cities where they were tested remembered them and reacted favorably to them.

• Since the announcements do not make a “religious” sound, they have been able to escape the limbo to which most religious programs are consigned—the early-morning devotional hour, prayer after the late-late show, and the “Sunday ghetto.”

• In Detroit and St. Louis, the two cities where the pilot tests were run beginning last August, research showed that 99 per cent of those who had heard the announcements got the message straight; moreover, 75 per cent of those polled in Detroit and 79 per cent in St. Louis said that the spots made them “wonder about living with God.” One denominational official said that he considered the tests “wildly successful.”

Mr. Freberg, who took on the assignment as a kind of mission, waiving his usual fee, says he uses an “espionage approach” to “sneak up on” the listener.

“I believe,” says Mr. Freberg, “it [the program] is the first major step the Christian Church has taken in broadcasting to attempt to reach the subconscious mind of the young American, who will do anything in his power to snap off anything of an even remotely religious nature.”

One of the three spots he developed goes like this:

First voice: Look, I’m quite self-sufficient … I made myself what I am, thank you.

Second voice: But don’t you think all of us, occasionally, could use a little divine … uh …

First voice: (Ahem) Gee, I’ve got to run … here’s my card anyhow … I’m a vice-president now …

Second voice: Well good …

First voice: Yes indeed.

Second voice: But your name … it’s just penciled in here …

First voice: (Ahem) Well, there’s a big turnover in personnel. You know how it is.

Second voice: Uh-huh. Well, that’s just about how it is in life, isn’t it?

First voice: Pardon?

Second voice: We’re all just penciled in.

Music:

“Where’d you get the idea

You could make it all by yourself?

Doesn’t it get a little lonely, sometimes,

Out on that limb … without Him?

It’s a great life, but it could be greater—

Why try and go it alone?

The blessings you lose may be your own.”

GEORGE WILLIAMS

Unpopular Alien

Two Americans have consistently hit the British headlines during the past months, and both have been handled roughly. One is Barry Goldwater, whose policies have perhaps been imperfectly understood in many quarters. The other is “Big Jim” Taylor, leader of one section of the Exclusive Brethren (see “The Uttermost Farthing,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, May 8). Delegates to a Methodist conference roared applause when the Brooklyn draper was compared unfavorably with Lenny Bruce, who had been refused entrance to Britain as an undesirable alien. Taylor’s teaching was described in the House of Lords as “the antithesis of Christianity,” but the Home Secretary had earlier ruled that he could not be excluded because he had broken no law.

Last month more than a thousand Brethren met for a three-day conference at Dorking, near London, evidently undismayed by the fact that five times that number have left the movement during the past four years in protest against the leader’s instructions about separation from unbelievers. This doctrine has resulted in broken homes, suicides, and untold distress. Sixty examples of such were collected by Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, a Conservative Member of Parliament whom the elusive Taylor reluctantly agreed to meet for discussion. Mr. Cooke interrupted his holiday and returned to London for the occasion, but Taylor did not keep his promise. Eventually an unsigned telegram came from New York, saying, “Will not meet you for substantial reasons.” The substantial reasons were said to have been not unconnected with the manhandling “Big Jim” had received from some irate women the previous day. Mr. Cooke is now preparing further representations to Parliament to debar Taylor from future visits to Britain, while company director Leslie Pearson, whose Exclusive wife has left him, is contemplating an appeal to the American Senate.

A reliable source not given to humor tells of Taylor’s advice to a worried brother who had found a television set in his motel room: “Take a sheet off the bed and cover it.” British comedians have not been slow to realize the immense possibilities in this line of thought.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Adventure In Adversity

From their “picture window on the Wall’ in their parish house apartment, the Rev. Ralph Zorn and his wife have a clear view into East Berlin and Communist Germany.

“It makes an interesting evening’s diversion for us,” Zorn says. “Hulda and I and the five kids may take turns with the binoculars. Sometimes when we focus on the Communist guards we find they are looking right back at us. Kind of eerie.”

Zorn, formerly a Lutheran pastor in the United States, has for two years served an Evangelical church in West Berlin some 500 yards from the notorious, Communist-erected wall that divides the city. At least four tunnels have been dug by East German refugees under the wall into his parish. He attempts to minister to both East and West Berliners and as an American citizen is able to make regular visits to the Communist side.

During one of his trips last winter Zorn called on a 70-year-old widow who lived alone. He found her cutting apart one of the beds in her flat—just to have firewood.

Zorn related numerous similar experiences when this correspondent visited him recently during a tour of Berlin. He spoke of dreadful circumstances in which Christians in East Germany, particularly younger ones, have been targets of ridicule and discrimination because of their faith.

“I know of a ten-year-old girl who attends church regularly,” he said. “Sometimes on Monday morning, when she arrives at school, she will be taunted by her teacher. On one occasion the teacher and all other students in her class pointed their fingers at her and shouted, ‘Stupid Christian girl.’”

Teen-agers in East Germany who avow their faith probably forfeit any opportunity to attend college. Zorn showed me a silver pin with a cross on it.

“In East Germany, it takes real conviction to wear this pin,” he said. “If you do, you’re immediately susceptible to ridicule and attack. Any young person who wears this quite likely sacrifices his chance for higher education. Yet thousands do wear the pin unashamedly.”

Zorn at 38 is a handsome, youthful man with a heavy shock of hair and deep blue eyes. He grew up in New Jersey, studied at Concordia Seminary (Missouri Synod), St. Louis, and held pastorates in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York City before going to Germany.

Mrs. Zorn is a German who came to the United States to study. The couple met while she was a foreign student in North Carolina.

Zorn’s church, called the Church of Peace, was constructed seventy-five years ago. The former pastor left at about the time of the construction of the wall. The red brick structure includes a tall steeple, a vigorous, noisy system of bells, and some artistic wood carvings near the pulpit. It is located in a poor section of West Berlin.

“Berlin really doesn’t have the slums of Latin America or Asia,” said Zorn. “But this is the worst section.”

He declared that in contrast to East Berliners, whose faith apparently has been strengthened through persecution, West Berliners are indifferent toward spiritual things and few attend church. “They suffer from the stifling environment of a state church,” he said.

To help arouse interest among young people Zorn and his wife promote an intensive program of recreation at their parish house, believing that “sometimes you can spread the story of Christianity at the ping pong table instead of the pulpit.”

Zorn is uncertain about his future as a clergyman. He may devote his career entirely to a ministry in Germany. Or he may return to the United States.

“Working and living so close to the Wall, so close that you see it every day, you understand about the complexities of life and politics here,” he said. “If there ever was a need to apply the principles of the Christian Gospel, it is here in this divided city. The solutions lie not so much in money as in people. We need dedicated Christians to come here and work.”

ROGER SWANSON

Suspected Subsidy

A “subsidization of sabotage” is what a Dutch Reformed journal in South Africa calls the World Council of Churches’ $56,000 contribution to assist political prisoners there.

An editorial in Kerkbode, official organ of the largest of the Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa, says the money is not given out of sympathy with the needy but to support persons who take issue with a certain political policy.

Indicting Makarios

Petrusblatt, weekly organ of the Berlin Roman Catholic archdiocese, sharply criticized Archbishop Makarios, president of Cyprus, for “promoting force, terror, and hatred and playing with war.” It called the Greek Orthodox leader “a nuisance for the world, Christians and the Church.”

“Should one not expect of a bishop of a Christian Church that he would rather try everything to reconcile conflicts on his island?” Petrusblatt asked, adding:

“It is not our business to find out whether the Greeks or the Turks are more to blame for the situation, but the annoyance which Makarios causes falls back on the whole of Christianity.”

In New York, meanwhile, the leading American Orthodox churchman came to the defense of Makarios. Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America deplored what he called the “abusive attacks,” including “scurrilous lampooning in vile cartoons” of Makarios in the American press. The U. S. churchman said that while it may seem “strange and untenable” that the leader of Cyprus Greek Orthodoxy also is the elected leader of the country, the “history of centuries-long Greek persecution and enslavement at the hands of the Turks” makes Archbishop Makarios’s role “eminently explainable and consistent.”

Back at his desk after a sabbatical leave spent on three continents, Editor Carl F. H. Henry contributes the first in a series of essays on the theological situation in Europe today. The essays reflect interviews with leading Continental theologians and New Testament scholars, among them Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Emil Brunner, Helmut Thielicke, and Anders Nygren.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY welcomes to its editorial staff as associate editor Dr. Harold Lindsell, former vice-president and professor of missions at Fuller Theological Seminary. An ordained Baptist minister, he holds the B.S. degree from Wheaton College, A.M. from the University of California (Berkeley), and Ph.D. from New York University.

This issue’s masthead also announces the advancement of Dr. James Daane to the post of assistant editor.