Page 5673 – Christianity Today (2025)

With this issue Carl F. H. Henry begins a three-part analysis of the most vigorous attack against evangelicalism to surface in recent years. Oxford University don James Barr writes this hard-hitting polemic mistitled Fundamentalism. Henry’s response is stiff theology but worth reading for two reasons. It reveals clearly the theological climate faced by conservative evangelical students in the religion departments and theological faculties of the great universities of Christendom. It also demonstrates that evangelicals, left, right, and center are in this thing together—all tarred with the same brush.

For over a year now, a cloud has hovered over the village of Oberammergau, location of the world-famous Passion Play. My wife and I recently visited this Bavarian village, spending some time with persons vitally concerned with the course of the upcoming decentennial commemoration of the crucifixion of our Lord, due in 1980.

The mood of Oberammergau has for months been one of uneasiness, due to the controversy over the form and staging of the coming presentations. The text used in recent presentations has been adapted from a script written 300 years ago. Until recently, there were few major objections to it. From time to time members of the Jewish community have felt that parts of the script made too much of the role of Jewish authorities in the trial and death of Jesus. However, the major stimulus to controversy came with pronouncements in the midsixties of the Vatican Ecumenical Council, which sparked suggestions for a radical revision of the Passion Play script that would avoid reference to, or suggestion of, Jewish responsibility for the death of our Lord.

The village of 4,200 has for a decade been divided into two camps, that of the “no-change traditionalists” and the “now-play progressives.” The latter have campaigned for a replacement of the seventeenth-century script with a more recent one, in which the forces of evil leading to the death of Jesus are shown allegorically. This would serve to absolve the Jewish religious authorities of our Lord’s time of responsibility for the crucifixion event. As the controversy has progressed, however, it has become clear that the demands for the elimination of that, plus the correction of some historical errors, have served as a pretext for a demand by some for a thorough updating of the play. Such a script has been prepared. The traditionalists, who call themselves the “1980 Passion Play Citizens’ Action Group,” reject the new version as newfangled and irreverent. Anton Preisinger, who played the part of the Christus in 1970, feels the new version is unsuited to Oberammergau and to amateur players.

We were privileged to go behind the scenes and see the displays of costumes and properties. A survey of the materials made ready for the revised presentation (and there have been three rehearsals with the new format this summer) indicates that there is a wide departure from the historic Play. Such props as the cross, the staging, and the costumes for most of the lead characters, suggest a thorough modernization of the upcoming presentations of 1980. The August rehearsals, which were an immediate sellout, seem to have been trial balloons, by which sentiment for or against the new form could be determined.

There are other significant departures in the proposed new version. Formerly this presentation was designedly “amateur,” using (with a solitary exception in 1950) only villagers as characters. The newer format would require not only cast members from outside Oberammergau, but some professional actors as well. The part of Mary, formerly reserved for a single woman of the village under age thirty-five, may now be played by one not meeting these specifications.

By the best information that visitors from outside Oberammergau can secure, the alteration goes much further. Responsible citizens of Oberammergau have held that the proposed new version will radically alter the deeper meaning of the play. Originally planned and presented in response to a vow, made as the village was spared in the plague of 1633, the Passion Play was essentially that—a pledged dramatization of the death of our Lord. The new version is said by persons familiar with it to be more in the manner of a medieval morality play, out of keeping with the original design.

The play as given in recent decades has been embellished by a number of supportive scenes, given by groups from the two wings flanking the main stage. These scenes are introduced by a narrator whose lines highlight the coming main-stage presentation. The wife of the narrator, who served as a personal guide to our party, confided to my wife and me the misgivings of her husband, and the feeling that he would probably not narrate in 1980 if the revised script were used.

The modernization proposed would, it seems clear, alter greatly the thrust of the play, and thus appeal to a somewhat different audience than has been the case in the recent past. It was reported that some of the supporting scenes would, if the new plan were adopted, reflect Bavarian folk festivals, rather than the emphasis originally intended. Some have maintained that the proposed musical alterations would include adaptations of the Bavarian Schuhplattler and the introduction of some rock music.

Although much of the pressure for modernization has come from the younger townsfolk, whom the conservatives view as being overly reflective of the secularized German society, there have reportedly been some older people favoring change. The people who want the traditional script regard themselves as guardians of the historic vow and spirit of Oberammergau. These people are also distressed by the commercialization of the Passion Play, as visitors from distant lands seek out the village’s major event and repeatedly fill its 5,200-seat theater with its mammoth open-air stage.

Word has just come to the effect that the issue has been resolved, at least for the present (according to the Washington Post, March 7, 1978). It seems that the municipal council in charge of the affairs of Oberammergau had decided that on the basis of the response to the three presentations last August, it was prepared to go along with the use of the modernized version in 1980. Then in March in the municipal elections, the present council was voted out, and one was elected that opted for the traditional presentation.

This decision does not, of course, settle the matter of the feelings of the world Jewish community, to whom the presentation of the passion of our Lord is, quite understandably, offensive. Whether or not the script is needlessly expressive of the involvement of first-century Jewish leaders in the crucifixion, it remains that any such presentation, if true to the Gospel narratives, can scarcely be regarded as complimentary to them. We attended the play in 1950, 1960, and 1970. We followed the German text carefully, and did not ourselves feel the material to be as negative toward the Jewish leaders as some regard it to be.

The naïve person would, of course, say that Jewish organizations today should take this in stride, just as do persons of other nations or races when they see presentations that are not especially complimentary to them. However, as Christians we must remember that none of us has experienced any national or racial catastrophy of the extent and the malignancy of the Holocaust during the nightmare called Hitlerism.

Bearing the Holocaust in mind, one can understand the fears of Jewish people that even if the Oberammergau presentation expressed only the New Testament narrative, yet it is a selective presentation, and is seen by well over 200,000 persons from all parts of the world every ten years. Fear of anti-Semitism is understandably a constant with the Jewish community, and the fear of actively reviving this disease is a very real factor in the thinking of Jewish people, and especially those who narrowly survived the Holocaust or who lost loved ones during this nightmare.

As Christians we need to understand this aspect of the question that revolves around Oberammergau. Although it would alter the entire economics of this delightful Bavarian village, one could wish that the observance of our Lord’s Passion could be less commercialized, less showy, and perhaps inclusive of a smaller number of people. The controversy catches evangelicals between their concern for God’s ancient people on the one hand and the integrity of the passion narratives in the Gospels on the other. I feel this dilemma keenly and have no final word of resolution for it.

Following a political battle of monumental proportions, Oklahoma evangelist Oral Roberts emerged late last month with state approval to start construction of the hospital portion of a huge medical complex on his university campus in Tulsa. The evangelist had first sought permission for a 777-bed hospital. During controversy over whether Tulsa needs or can afford another hospital, Roberts earlier this year offered a scaled-down request for 294 beds as a compromise. Authorities okayed the 294 beds with the understanding that Roberts can proceed with the other beds if the need is demonstrated and if the other hospitals in town are not hurt by the newcomer.

Roberts says God told him to build the medical center and gave him the details for it in a vision during a sojourn on a desolate California desert. He explained that he had gone to the desert to pray following the death of his daughter and her husband in a plane crash in February, 1977.

The evangelist returned from the desert and announced the launching of the City of Faith medical complex. He described it to his television audience: Arising from a common base would be a sixty-story clinic and diagnostic center, flanked on the west by a thirty-story hospital and on the east by a twenty-story research center. At the front would be sixty-foot-high sculptured hands (signifying the hand of medicine and the hand of prayer), with a wide tree-lined stream flowing from a large fountain. Further, said Roberts, God told him that it was to be opened debt free and that he should ask his “partners” (donors) to send contributions of $7, $77, $777, and $7,777.

The price tag of the complete complex: an estimated $250 million or more. So far, according to sources at the 3,800-student Oral Roberts University (ORU), the evangelist has raised more than $27 million of the $55 million initial-stage costs. The complex is to be an integral part of the ORU medical school, which is scheduled to open this fall with fifty students. A dental school is also to open this fall. (The twelve-year-old ORU is located on 500 acres on Tulsa’s posh south side, with assets estimated at $150 million.)

Ground-breaking for the center came on January 24, Roberts’s sixtieth birthday. Then came protests and pressures from some in Tulsa’s medical and political communities. The Tulsa Hospital Council went on record opposing the complex and endorsing “appropriate means to discourage project implementation.”

Members of the hospital council said that the city’s five big private hospitals and suburban facilities were already in trouble, with nearly 1,000 of 2,944 licensed beds not in use because of lack of demand. At the same time, said the medical people, the hospitals were struggling to pay off $150 million in construction bonds. The proposed ORU hospital, they pointed out, would be located only two miles from the largest general hospital in the state. The new hospital, they predicted, would drain patients and staff from the others, driving costs of health care still higher. Some hospitals might go under, they warned.

Roberts, known best for his emphasis on faith healing, argued that the City of Faith would not be simply another local operation. It would, like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, attract patients and staff from around the world, he insisted. The center, he said, would emphasize research on heart, cancer, and aging problems.

ORU’s vice provost for medical affairs, James E. Winslow, Jr., went even further and suggested that the City of Faith would draw so many ailing people to Tulsa that all the other hospitals would benefit from the overflow. Of the 400,000 prayer-request letters that Roberts gets each month, 100,000 refer to “clear-cut medical problems—22,000 with cancer, 26,000 with heart disease,” he said. Already, 250,000 visitors come to Tulsa every year to visit the ORU prayer tower, he said, and 30,000 of Roberts’s “partners” come annually to attend spiritual seminars. If that many healthy people come to ORU, he theorized, from 500,000 to 1.2 million sick people a year might seek help at the City of Faith. (Winslow was formerly the ORU basketball team physician.)

Federal laws required Roberts to submit the hospital part of the proposed center to a review process. The review proceedings were set up under 1974 congressional legislation designed to eliminate costly duplication in health-care facilities around the country. State or regional planners are required to certify that a new facility is needed. The three-member Oklahoma Health Planning Commission is the certifying body in that state. It is served by an advisory body, the Oklahoma Health Systems Agency (OHSA), which has both staff and volunteer members, including consumer representatives.

Dented Income In Dentsville

They believe in taking a stand on principle at Rehoboth United Methodist Church in Dentsville, a small community near Columbia, South Carolina. Eight years ago the church agreed to let Dentsville Piggly Wiggly supermarket use a church-owned parking lot on a ten-year lease basis at $400 a month. Recently, the store began selling beer and wine, and the church board unanimously voted to cancel the lease. A fence encloses the parking lot today, and a large sign informs passersby and wouldbe parkers that Piggly Wiggly broke the lease by deciding to sell strong drink.

The action was taken because the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline that was operative when the lease was written “prohibited United Methodists from making any profit, directly or indirectly, from the sale of alcohol,” explained pastor Ron Pettit. Earlier, his members had opposed the store’s license application at a hearing.

Piggly Wiggly owner James P. Mc-Keown III, whose store is open seven days a week, says that he must sell alcoholic beverages now in order to meet the competition from other stores in the area. “No one sold beer and wine when we first came out here,” he said, so the no-alcohol stipulation was not a big problem at that time.

Piggly Wiggly’s customers will have no major hassle in finding a place to park, but the church will miss the income from the parking lot. The amount represents one-eighth of the church’s budget.

Twice the OHSA voted (by 19 to 6 and 12 to 7) to recommend that the planning commission reject the hospital proposal.

Roberts pulled out the stops. He asked his three million partner-families to pray and to write letters to Oklahoma government officials and the health planning commission. An amendment was introduced in the state legislature; it apparently was designed to exempt ORU from planners’ control. In March, Roberts traveled to HEW headquarters in Washington, where he complained of unfair hearing procedures to Henry Foley, head of HEW’s Health Resources Administration. Foley said he would send a top aide to investigate. The Washington Star later quoted sources as saying that the probe never occurred.)

The campaign paid off. Some 400,000 letters poured into commission headquarters during a six-week period, virtually all pro-Roberts. Governor David Boren said his mail hit 1,500 pro-Roberts letters a day. Thirty-eight of Oklahoma’s forty-eight state senators and forty of the 101 house members—some with budget authority over the health and welfare agencies headed by the three commissioners—publicly backed the hospital.

Following a two-hour hearing in a packed auditorium in the capitol at Oklahoma City, the commissioners voted unanimously to approve the City of Faith hospital. Both Roberts and his opponents in the Tulsa hospital community gave strong emotion-laden appeals for their respective causes during the hearing.

A spokesman for the commissioners said that their staff study had turned up fewer empty beds than reported by the OHSA and that there were doubts about the ability of Tulsa’s existing hospitals to handle ORU’s medical students. It would be wrong to assume that the commissioners had caved in under pressure from legislators, he told reporters. The action, he affirmed, “is an expression of the sentiment of the people of Oklahoma.”

(HEW secretary Joseph A. Califano, Jr., acknowledged in a press conference that he had once represented Roberts as an attorney. But, said he, that would not require him to disqualify himself should an appeal be lodged with HEW against the hospital’s inclusion of construction costs in Medicare-Medicaid reimbursement—as recommended in the commission’s action.)

Roberts and his followers meanwhile are exulting in God’s power “to move mountains.”

Church of Scientology documents seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (see May 5 issue, page 46) “indicate that the church has been waging an extensive, sophisticated campaign to identify, attack, and discredit its ‘enemies,’ including Justice Department investigators, other public officials, and inquiring journalists,” the Washington Post reported late last month in a copyrighted story by reporter Ron Shaffer.

Quoting sources “close to an intensive federal investigation of the Scientologists’ activities,” Shaffer said that an attack-and-destroy campaign by the church’s Guardian’s Office to silence critics “has involved illegal surveillance, burglaries, forgeries, and many forms of harassment.”

A number of covert operations carried out by Scientologists are documented in the church’s internal memoranda and directives, the sources alleged to Shaffer. The reporter cites the following allegations:

• Scientologists obtained the personal stationery of author Paulette Cooper, who had written a book in 1971 entitled The Scandal of Scientology. A bomb threat was typed on the paper, and it was mailed to a Scientology office, which reported the threat to police. Miss Cooper was arrested in connection with the charge. She denied writing the note, but the paper had her fingerprints on it, and federal prosecutors charged her with perjury. The charges were eventually dropped after Miss Cooper submitted to lengthy questioning under a truth-serum drug, but in the process she reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown.

• Scientology agents staged a phony hit-and-run accident involving then mayor Gabriel Cazares of Clearwater, Florida. Cazares had been a central figure in a dispute with Scientologists over the church’s purchase of a Clearwater hotel (see February 27, 1976, issue, page 41). During a visit to Washington, D.C., the mayor was a passenger in a car driven by a female Scientology agent. The agent struck a pedestrian in a park, sped from the scene, and urged Cazares not to report the “accident.” Unknown to Cazares, the pedestrian was another Scientology agent who helped to stage the accident. Later, the Scientologists tried to use the incident against the mayor in a political campaign.

• An attempt was made to discredit a Clearwater reporter who had covered the arrival of the Scientologists in town and the ensuing dispute. A Scientology agent forged the rough draft of a newspaper story under his byline and slipped it to state legislators whom the reporter was covering. The story supposedly linked Florida politicians to the Mafia.

• Scientology members were placed in at least three government agencies to collect information and steal documents related to the agencies’ dealings with the church. The agencies: the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

• A harassment campaign was directed against prosecutors handling Scientology cases. The campaign included telephone calls and background investigations that sought details ranging from grades in school to personal habits.

Spokesman Greg Layton of the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington denied the allegations in the Washington Post story. He said the church has documentation to refute the charges, and he implied that the Post had been supplied with a compilation of “false reports” as part of a government harassment campaign against the church. Other Scientology members voiced similar sentiments, but as of early this month the church’s national headquarters in Los Angeles had not released any official comment regarding the allegations. Information officer Arthur Maren did issue a news release that suggested “corrupt officials” in government had used the press, including the Post, “for smear campaigns to try and invalidate the traditional reform role of the church.…”

After the Post articles appeared, Scientology attorney Phillip J. Hirshkop petitioned the federal district court in Washington. He asked the court to obtain and destroy whatever seized documents the Post might possess along with notes pertaining to them. He argued that the documents had been improperly leaked to the newspaper by government agents who were reviewing them. Judge John H. Pratt, however, rejected the request. He said that it was a “clear violation” of First Amendment rights, and he indicated that a subpoena for the reporter’s materials would not be enforced. Pratt agreed with a Post attorney that Shaffer could invoke privilege and not answer questions about the documents if he were called on to testify in court.

A Justice Department official said that an investigation would be conducted in an attempt to find out the source of the Post story.

Maren’s news release was issued to acknowledge that the Church of Scientology “has been ‘spying’ on the government for years.” The government, he said, calls it spying, “but we call it reform action.…” He explained that Scientologists “have been involved in exposing government illegalities and coverups for years, and this is a legitimate and traditional function of the church.” The reform-action program was code-named Snow White in Scientology’s inner circles, Maren indicated.

The publicist, recently released after spending some seven months in jail for refusing to answer questions for a federal grand jury investigating the church, explained that the Snow White project was kept confidential because “we didn’t want to embarrass government officials.” He said that when certain materials were found, they were turned over to government agencies and congressional committees. The raids of Scientology churches and seizure of documents by FBI agents last July were aimed mostly at Snow White, he suggested. “Apparently some dishonest bureaucrats found the Snow White program upsetting,” he commented. (The Scientologists have filed a $750 million lawsuit against the FBI agents and virtually every government officer and agency connected with the raids.)

Maren outlined what he claimed were some Snow White accomplishments and activities (documentation concerning Interpol, the international police intelligence agency based in France; publication of confidential IRS policies; exposure of inhumane conditions in South African mental institutions where more than 8,000 blacks were confined; leadership in use of the Freedom of Information Act). He then announced the formation of a national “spy network of honest citizens” to “expose and publicize illegal government activities.” Maren urged “every honest government employee” to turn over to the new group information on illegal government activities and dishonest officials. “We will investigate, document, expose, and publish what we find,” he pledged.

The release concluded by listing the names of thirty-eight present and former employees of the Drug Enforcement Agency who at one time worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. There is no indication in the release as to why they were named. Also named were two foreigners connected with Interpol: the Scientologists say they have been involved in drug traffic. In addition, the release cited alleged FBI intelligence operations against groups in Los Angeles.

There are about two dozen Scientology churches in the United States and three times that number abroad. More than three million members are claimed, according to press reports. Observers question the membership figure (an average exceeding 30,000 members per church), but it seems to be in line with Scientology’s broad definition of membership and with reported income. Informers have told federal investigators that Scientology’s U.S. churches may gross more than $100 million a year. Much of this money comes from fees for church courses and Scientology-style counseling, in which advanced members attempt to help others to achieve a “clear” or untroubled state with the assistance of a mechanical device known as an E-meter.

The church has been embroiled in legal confrontations almost since its founding in 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer and author of Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health, the bestseller bible of the Scientology movement. Many of the church’s problems with the government involve tax issues. Only about half of its U.S. branches have been able to obtain tax-exempt status. Some legal decisions have viewed it more as a business or secular philosophy than a religion.

One thing is certain in light of the Washington Post revelations: Scientology’s most serious legal battle is yet ahead.

A Jewish Look At Luther

Martin Luther’s legacy to his spiritual heirs includes a certain discomfort about Jews. Generations of Lutherans have disclaimed his 1543 treatise, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” but it keeps coming up, most recently on the NBC television network’s “Today” show. In his old age the Reformer wrote that Jewish schools and synagogues should be burned. A New York psychoanalyst and author of a book on the Nazi era, Arnold Hutschnecker, cited a passage from the 400-year-old controversial work during a “Today” interview that dealt with NBC’s “Holocaust” series last month. Luther contributed to anti-Semitic feeling that “has existed in Germany for hundreds of years,” Hutschnecker claimed.

Lutheran leaders issued protests immediately. They requested air time from the network to reply. NBC said no, but “Today” host Tom Brokaw next day told viewers that the remarks had “caused a stir in the Lutheran community in this country.” He then attempted to put the quotation in context and expressed the hope that the Luther statements “will not be misused.”

The NBC’s dramatized documentary, viewed by an estimated 120 million persons on four successive evenings, was widely hailed as a broadcasting triumph. More than 50 per cent of the nation’s television audience watched some nights. In New York alone an estimated six million saw the initial installment. The series sparked commentaries and letters to the editor in media all over the nation. Critics were unhappy with the film’s commercial interruptions, and some thought the production smacked too much of Hollywood.

A carefully planned educational program was prepared for use in schools and churches in connection with the telecasts. Interfaith “remembrance” services were held in many communities. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said it had distributed nine million newspaper supplements about the Holocaust. Religious News Service reported that a Washington pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sent a copy of the novel on which the series was based to each member of Congress, key administration officials, and members of the Washington press corps. A note was enclosed mentioning the committee’s opposition to the proposed sale of jet fighters to the Jewish state’s Arab neighbors.

The telecasts and associated emphasis on the Holocaust came on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the modern state of Israel.

Martin Luther’s offensive quotation was not cited as such, but one prominent Jewish spokesman accused the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) of having “sadly revived the medieval image of the Jews” in an evangelism program. Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee last month scored the synod’s 1977 convention resolution on Jewish evangelism and a witnessing manual used in the church. “By singling out Jews for intensive proselytizing,” he declared, “the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has, in effect, branded Judaism as an inadequate and incomplete religion.… The resolution is a moral affront to the Jewish people and to forty centuries of Jewish religious life and theological self-understanding.”

Rudin’s blast came after a series of consultations with Missouri Synod officials. Accounts of the results of the conversations differ. Erwin J. Kolb, executive secretary of the LCMS board of evangelism, said members of the synod’s Jewish-witness committee agreed that Rudin had some valid criticisms of their materials. He disclosed that the committee also agreed to make certain changes in the manual and that Rudin would be allowed to review the final manuscript. Meanwhile, stated Kolb, all parties agreed not to make public statements. The new edition of the manual is not due until this July, but Rudin went public with more criticism in April. Rudin, when asked about the agreement, said he had agreed with Kolb that no reporters would attend their meetings but that he made no promise about public statements.

In another ticklish situation related to Lutheran views of Jewish questions, the American Lutheran Church recently suspended two Long Island congregations that incorporated Hebrew traditions into church life. Following a long squabble, denominational officials last year officially charged that the Gospel was being “subordinated” to Jewish tradition. Pastors and people wore skull caps and prayer shawls, and one ritual slaughter of goats was reported. Kosher kitchens were being kept by some members of the congregations. Neighborhood Jews, as well as area Lutherans and some other Christians exclaimed “about time” when the denomination cracked down, reported the Lutheran Forum Letter.

Memo to Lutherans: ‘Let’s Merge’

At its founding convention in December, 1976, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) formalized the split in the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). This followed years of controversy over doctrinal interpretation and administrative practice.

At the AELC’s second convention, held last month in Milwaukee, the 135 voting delegates gave almost unanimous voice approval to the view that the young denomination’s chief business is to go out of business—by trying to spark “organic church union” among the bulk of U.S. Lutherans. (The AELC has about 110,000 members in 245 congregations.)

A “Call for Lutheran Union” adopted by the delegates envisions in late 1979 a “consultation … to establish an implementation process” for the union of the Lutheran denominations that have formally committed themselves to a merger goal by that time. The document states as axiomatic what the LCMS would officially reject: “Lutherans are already united in a common, Gospel-centered witness to the Christian faith through our common commitment to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.” Therefore, the call reasons, there should be a “move beyond cooperation, which though admirable in itself, does not enable Lutherans to exhibit and express fully the oneness which God has given.”

A few delegates argued that it is presumptuous or premature for a denomination so young and so small to speak up in such a way. After a couple hours of polite discussion, however, those who felt that the call would be salutary—or that the AELC at least should speak its collective mind and see what happens—easily carried the day.

Although the call is addressed to “all Lutheran church bodies in North America,” no one suggested at the convention that a favorable response is likely from the LCMS, the 400,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, or the several largely isolationist U.S. Lutheran minibodies. Instead, chief targets of the call are the three-million-member Lutheran Church in America (LCA) and the 2.4-million-member American Lutheran Church (ALC), both of which have national conventions this year.

The presidents of the ALC and LCA brought fraternal greetings to the assembled delegates. The ALC’s David Preus endorsed coordination, cooperation, and even partial merger “whenever such actions … clearly” make the church “more effective in mission.” But as a result of the ALC’s own recent restructuring, he said, “we are a church on the move. We have gotten our act together. We are functioning effectively.…” This is not the time, he suggested, to spend time, energy, and resources on “organizational matters.” He foresaw the likelihood of “booby traps,” including “unnecessary theological … battles,” in major merger efforts.

Greeted with a standing ovation, Preus was simply applauded when he finished. The LCA’s Robert Marshall, though, managed to bring the delegates to their feet after as well as before his endorsement of the AELC call. Having recently surprised many by announcing he will not run for reelection as LCA president, Marshall forcefully reiterated his personal as well as the LCA’s constitutional support for North American Lutheran union. Working at structural union, he affirmed, would help, not detract from, Lutheran mission and ministry. Citing examples of the difficulties he has experienced in cooperative efforts, Marshall said “the time that we have spent on cooperation that fizzled is far greater than any time that’s going to be spent on achieving Lutheran union.”

Besides approving the union call, delegates overwhelmingly reelected AELC’s part-time president William Kohn, pastor of Capitol Drive Lutheran Church in Milwaukee. Also, they directed the AELC national office to “refuse to do business with any financial institutions making loans to the private or public sector of South Africa until apartheid injustice is eliminated.” Other resolutions were adopted urging AELC members to join Jews in commemorating the holocaust, to “respond to the issues of injustice to American Indians,” to support programs fighting world hunger, and to “continue working toward changing our language style in church communications … to be non-racist and non-sexist.”

TOM DORRIS

Churchmen in a Huff

Tuition tax credits, abortion, human rights, foreign sales of military hardware, deductions for charitable contributions, and youth camp safety are issues enough to keep Washington’s church-related lobbyists busy. But in this congressional election year they have another worry: a bill to regulate lobbying.

A bill (H. R. 8494) opposed by most religious lobbies passed the House of Representatives last month by a vote of 259 to 140. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas, one of the bill’s staunch supporters, said it would simply “… require these organizations to disclose … exactly what they are doing.” Introduced by George E. Danielson of California, the measure requires lobbying groups that spend a certain amount of staff time or money in Congress to report to the comptroller general their total expenditures for such activities, the identity of lobbyists, and a description of the issues on which they are working. Churches must report if they seek to influence legislation, and then must pass the expenditure “thresholds” described in the bill.

Similar proposals are pending in the Senate but they are sure to encounter stiff opposition in committee. Among the opponents of tighter regulation of lobbying are the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the United Church of Christ, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Among the proponents are Common Cause and AFL-CIO union lobbyists. Barry Lynn, a United Church of Christ representative on Capitol Hill, called the measure “a slap in the face of democracy.” John W. Baker of the Baptist committee considers it a simple question of religious liberty and served notice that if enacted into law the provisions would not be followed by his organization.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington’s best-known Baptist went on record in favor of the legislation. President Carter told a news conference that his Adminstration has “been actively involved in drafting (the bill) in the strongest possible terms, and I do support it.”

The Capitol Hill Baptists were closer to the position of their White House brother on another piece of hot legislation: tuition tax credits. The Administration continued to oppose the credits as unconstitutional aid to private schools (many are church-related). Instead, White House spokesmen asked Congress for more grants and loans for students and their institutions. While the Baptists and Methodists active in Congressional affairs generally agreed with the Administration position, Roman Catholics and some evangelicals in the private school movement continued efforts to salvage tax relief for parents of their students.

Members of the House Ways and Means Committee, who handle all tax proposals, dealt the Administration a serious blow last month when they rejected a Carter proposal on charitable deductions. They voted to permit taxpayers who choose the “standard deduction” on their income tax returns also to itemize their charitable contributions—including gifts to churches. William P. Thompson, the United Presbyterian executive who is president of the National Council of Churches, had asked the committee to treat such contributions differently from other deductible items. In his testimony he said such treatment “is not a ‘loophole’ for avoiding taxation since the gifts deducted do not remain under the control of the giver but go to benefit the whole community, often with greater efficiency and effect than the same amount paid in taxes.”

Even if Congress settles all the tax questions early, as it would like to do in this election year, it will still have plenty of other issues to keep the lobbyists busy. Revision of the federal criminal code (including gun control), foreign aid, and ethics in government are issues about which church representatives are waiting to have their say. A “sleeper” issue that has aroused heated discussion in past years, the Youth Camp Safety Bill introduced by Senator Alan Cranston of California, has recently come back to life with White House blessings. Administration support came with introduction of provisions to encourage state enforcement. Some camp operators and religious groups have opposed similar legislation in the past on grounds that it would mandate government interference in religious activities.

St. Paul Speaks: ‘No’ to Gays

Homosexuality, seldom discussed publicly a few years back, may be one of the top political issues of 1978. Voters in St. Paul, Minnesota, last month served notice that Middle America might be tuning out the talk about gay rights. Led by Pastor Richard A. Angwin of Temple Baptist Church, citizens of St. Paul went to the polls in unusually large numbers for a referendum and voted two-to-one to repeal a city ordinance banning homosexual discrimination. Television viewers around the nation saw some of the victory celebration at Temple Baptist. Asked why a city with liberal leanings would produce such a vote, Angwin told reporters, “You can’t be progressive about sin.”

As in other cities around the country, however, the religious community was not all on one side of the St. Paul issue. United Methodist bishop Wayne K. Clymer sent a letter of support for homosexuals’ rights to St. Paul members of his denomination. The Minnesota [Methodist] Conference Board of Church and Society opposed the repeal of homosexual protections in the ordinance. Charles Purdham, United Methodist district superintendent in the area, said of the vote, “It appears that those who support human rights issues did not take seriously the possibility that the repeal vote would win and thus did not bother to vote. If so, then fear and apathy have combined to deprive people of their just rights as citizens and children of God.” The bishop commented that the vote was indicative of “how deeply imbedded fear and anxieties of people are on this issue.” He also suggested that “the vote accurately reflected where the country is at this time.”

Both proponents and opponents of repeal quoted Roman Catholic archbishop John R. Roach of the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese to bolster their positions. Those favoring retention of the gay rights measure quoted the part of his statement that said “economic security and social equality” should be provided for those who “find themselves to be homosexual in orientation through no fault of their own.” Champions of repeal quoted Roach when he said, “In affirming the rights of homosexuals, we must not neglect the right of the larger community. The Catholic Community … cannot sanction the gay lifestyle as a morally acceptable alternative to heterosexual marriage.” The archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Bulletin, was clearer on the issue. It took a position against granting “special protection” to homosexuals. A representative of the archbishop noted that the paper has always been free to express views independent of those of the prelate. The priests’ senate of the archdiocese opposed repeal.

Among the national figures associated with the pro-repeal forces were Carl Lundquist, president of nearby Bethel College and Seminary and of the National Association of Evangelicals, singer Anita Bryant, and television preacher Jerry Falwell.

After the St. Paul vote, gay activists served notice that they were preparing to fight those who are out to set back their cause in other parts of the country. Not only are the homosexuals and their supporters trying to get friendly ordinances onto the books in many cities, but they also are trying to put those already enacted beyond voter recall. Politicians in the District of Columbia are currently debating procedures that would make it impossible for the citizens to vote on certain “human rights” measures. So far the discussion concerns procedures recently added to the District’s home rule charter providing for initiatives and referenda. No one has formally proposed an election on any part of the human rights issue. However, candidates for mayor and city council posts are taking sides on the subject, and voters may be able to take an indirect stand on the issue when they choose the District’s executive and legislative leaders later this year.

San Francisco, meanwhile, has elected an avowed homosexual to the city council and has passed an anti-bias ordinance. Over 300,000 signatures were collected in California to put on the state ballot this year an initiative that would bar homosexual teachers. Some 1,000 people attended a Los Angeles rally against the referendum. Among the national and state politicians lending their names to the cause was former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. The senator told the crowd, “I had to accept this invitation because of the basic principles you and I stand for in all the struggles against discrimination. I don’t think anyone needs to be told this is a controversial area, but I don’t think there’s any need for controversy over someone’s freedom to personal privacy and against prejudice.” He added that he came to the meeting because he did not want “any Americans to feel alone and deserted.”

Homosexual teachers have won court cases in several states, but their cause suffered a setback last year when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand Washington state and New Jersey decisions that allowed the dismissal of homosexuals. Teachers have been the focus of the argument in many of the cities and states around the country. A Gallup Poll last year indicated that although the majority of those surveyed believe that homosexuals should have their job rights protected legally, about two-thirds feel that such protection should not be applied to school teachers.

The issue may eventually reach a showdown in Congress. Edward Koch, now New York City’s mayor, is known as the principal sponsor of a bill still pending in Congress to guarantee homosexual rights at the federal level. Among the cosponsors was congressman Frederick W. Richmond of Brooklyn who last month entered the District of Columbia’s first offenders’ program after being caught soliciting homosexual favors from an undercover policeman. Earlier he had been seeking to buy the sexual services of a sixteen-year-old boy. About twenty New York politicians, mostly fellow members of Congress but including Koch, rallied to Richmond’s defense. In effect, they called for his reelection. Homosexuals and their opponents probably will be watching closely to see whether the voters return Richmond and the colleagues who supported him to Congress.

Future Church: One on One?

Are there too many clergy in the pipeline? How many are too many? Would one minister per lay person be more than enough?

A study released last month indicated that if current trends continue the Episcopal Church will have an equal number of lay and clergy members in just over a quarter century. They found that other groups have a similar clergy glut.

The study of twelve main-line predominantly white denominations was reported at a recent conference of seminary placement officers, denominational executives, and regional church leaders at Duke University. The conference and the research—by Jackson W. Carroll of the Hartford Seminary Foundation and Robert L. Wilson of Duke Divinity School—were financed by the Lilly Endowment.

Findings of the researchers did not get high grades from one United Methodist official who had earlier withdrawn from the study’s steering committee. Robert Watts Thornburg, an executive in the United Methodist Division of the Ordained Ministry, complained that the Lilly project’s study method was so broad-based that it failed to consider the uniqueness of the Methodist itinerant system. Carroll and Wilson had predicted that the Methodists would have a preacher for every person in the pew by the year 2038 if membership continues to decline and ordinations continue to increase at the current rates. To the contrary, said Thornburg, “all indications are that there is no oversupply and that, in fact, there could be a shortage by 1984.”

The authors of the study concede that the trends may not be reliable long-term indicators. For instance, they suggest that the declining membership may soon “bottom out.” They even see the possibility of a “significant religious awakening” that could throw out all their predictions. Such awakenings, they admit, are hard to predict, since “the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will.…”

Lacking any significant change in the trends, however, they predict that at least through 1985 the effects of the current oversupply are likely to be felt. One reason for the oversupply in most major denominations is the increasing number of women studying for the ministry. In the Episcopal Church, for example, 18.4 per cent of those earning seminary degrees are female, the researchers said. Other figures show that about half of all current Episcopal seminary students are women.

Another reason has to do with the post-World War II baby boom’s contributions to the job market in the past decade, coupled with the sudden falloff in the birth rate in recent years.

In addition to the Episcopal and United Methodist churches, the greatest oversupply of clergy is in the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern), according to the researchers. Even the 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention faces a serious situation, they said. Although membership is not yet in decline, they pointed out, the denomination’s seminaries are virtually filled (with about 9,000 students). Current projections show the Baptists having one pastor for every lay member by the year 2023, the study concludes.

Catholic ‘Crisis’

Although one study indicates that American Protestantism is faced with an oversupply of clergy (see preceding story), that is certainly not the case with the Roman Catholic Church. It is generally agreed among Catholic leadership that a critical clergy shortage exists, and a number of Catholic researchers say the situation will get much worse before it gets better.

Sociologist Richard Schoenherr of the University of Wisconsin, who codirected with Andrew Greeley a landmark study of the American priesthood in 1972, is quoted in the National Catholic Reporter as saying that the random closings of parishes and the cancellation of programs headed by priests are bound to reach “epidemic proportions” in the early 1980s.

The independent Catholic weekly in a special report on the crisis points out that there were 59,000 priests and 46,000 seminarians in America in 1966. Currently, according to estimates, there are 51,000 active priests and 16,800 seminarians—a net loss of 14 per cent of the priests in twelve years and 64 per cent of the seminarians. The experts, according to the newspaper, predict a net loss of 25 per cent of the priests nationally by 1985, “and no one has attempted to estimate where the seminarians will be by then.”

The loss factors involve resignations, retirements, and deaths. Schoenherr’s studies found that between 1966 and 1973 the church lost about 17 per cent of its active priests (more than 10,000) through resignations. About 15 per cent of the priests (8,800) have retired since 1966, the Reporter concluded from its studies, noting that some men retired early and some were persuaded to stay on past retirement age. An estimated 10 per cent (5,900) of the non-retired priests died between 1966 and 1978, the paper added. The priests who remain are frequently overworked and frustrated, adding to the pressures to drop out, the paper indicated.

If the present rates of loss persist, projections indicate that by the year 2015 the church will experience a 50 per cent loss of clergy, said the Reporter.

Conditions vary from diocese to diocese, the newspaper found, and in some dioceses in Texas and the Dakotas “the shortage generally is regarded as a fullblown crisis.”

To illustrate its story, the paper cited the following incidents:

• A 110-year-old church was closed in Freeburg, Minnesota. A clergy spokesman told the press that the move was necessitated by the “extreme shortage of priests.”

• Bishop Joseph Brunini told a Jackson, Mississippi, church audience: “There is a vocation crisis in this diocese at the present time and in five years it will be a major disaster.… [Therefore] I am calling a five-year moratorium on any priest serving outside the diocese.”

• Bishop Glennon P. Flavin of Lincoln, Nebraska, noted in a pastoral bulletin that only seven young men were beginning studies for the priesthood in the diocese, less than half the number of entering students the year before. He called on his priests to promote vocational ministry, then added: “By the way, since we will have no ordinations to the priesthood until June, 1979, no priest of the diocese may die until then. This is an order.”

Religion in Transit

A suit was filed against the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., seeking to halt the museum’s use of taxpayer’s money to propagate the evolutionary theory of the origin of man. The move was led by radio evangelist Dale Crowley and his son Dale, Jr., a Washington pastor.

The 200,000-member Morality in Media organization has called for a national TV blackout on May 23 to protest the networks’ plans to increase sex-oriented television programming in the fall season. A reduction in advertising revenues “seems to be the only language the networks understand,” said MIM’s chairman, Rabbi Julius G. Neumann.

A Dallas Seminary student, Jeff Wells, 23, finished second in the famed Boston marathon last month. He ran the twenty-six-mile course in two hours, ten minutes, and fifteen seconds—two seconds behind winner Bill Rodgers of Massachusetts, but ahead of 862 men and 154 women. His seminary roommate John Lodwick finished eighth. Wells has his eyes on the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has relaxed its opposition to legalizing contraceptives, making it likely that the Irish parliament will pass legislation this year allowing them to be sold. The bishops reiterated their stern opposition to contraception on moral grounds but said that the state is not necessarily bound to prohibit what the church deems wrong. Studies indicate that tens of thousands of Irish Catholic women are using birth control pills.

Ukrainian Baptist Peter Vins, 21, of Kiev, the son of Georgi Vins, the imprisoned leader of dissident or unregistered Baptists in the Soviet Union, was sentenced last month to one year in prison for “parasitism” (not having work) and “hooliganism” (possession of two Bibles). Stated Clerk William P. Thompson of the United Presbyterian Church sent a cable to Soviet leader Leonid I. Breshnev, appealing for the release of both Peter and Georgi Vins.

The Chili Wasn’T So Hot

The 500-member First Church of God in the little town of Benton, Illinois, had a problem: How do you pay off a big mortgage on a new church building when income is already tight?

Into the picture stepped Dallas oilman Robert Philpot with an answer. He had a new engine additive named Add-A-Tune that he wanted to introduce, but he needed a way to capture attention. He and First’s pastor, J. Lloyd Tomer, decided to team up. Philpot leased for the church a lavishly appointed Convair 880 jet that had belonged to the late rock king, Elvis Presley. Tomer endorsed Add-A-Tune and organized a nationwide tour of the plane that was to begin this month in Dallas.

Admission to the plane—named Lisa Marie for Presley’s daughter—will be granted for a $300 donation to the church, Tomer announced. Those who tour the plane will receive free color photos of the jet’s interior and a case of Add-A-Tune.

Those who can’t afford or don’t want to tour the plane will be treated to a free “Tribute to Elvis” show featuring the Stamps Quartet, Presley’s backup group for six years. The performance will also feature a thirty-minute puff for the lubricant and a chance to buy Elvis-related photos.

Tomer estimated that “probably 5,000 couples will go through the plane each day” of the tour. If so, he projected, income will total $150 million. As a fundraising idea, he said, “this sure beats chili suppers.”

David Drew and his family live ten minutes away from the Mekong River in the far northern Chiang Rai region of Thailand. Across the river is Laos, now ruled by Communists. Drew is a doctor from Britain serving a year’s hitch as a volunteer with the World Vision missionary relief organization. His job is to provide medical care to the thousands of refugees in the several camps in his area.

A Baptist, Drew became a Christian in 1967 through the witness of fellow students at the University of Bristol. Janet, who later became his wife, accepted Christ the following year as the result of the ministry of American street evangelist Arthur Blessitt. The Drews and their two small children live in a small wooden house perched on poles on the outskirts of Chiang Khong. They like it here. The lush flatlands give way to hills in the distance, accenting the remarkable tropical beauty that visitors to Thailand never forget. For the most part, the people around them are friendly and gentle-spirited. The Drews take special delight in Thai food, and they serve it like their neighbors, who eschew utensils and instead scoop up “sticky rice” with their fingers.

Drew is often frustrated but manages to maintain a bright spirit. Much of his time is spent training young men in the camps to be paramedics. The turnover among the intelligent and skilled refugees tends to be high; they are generally the first ones chosen by interviewers from the West for resettlement in their countries.

Infections are rampant in the refugee camps. Children are everywhere, and the majority have running noses. Sanitary facilities are woefully inadequate. Outdoor latrines and fly-covered food stalls exist side by side in many places. Water must often be carried great distances from an overused well. There is a shortage of good-quality rice, and signs of malnutrition abound in some camps, especially among the young. Chickens and dogs vie for existence with the humans.

Gloom hangs upon many refugees who have been waiting two years or more for resettlement. Some have given up hope of ever getting out, and they simply sit around waiting to die.

The camp hospital or clinic is primitive by American standards. It is usually a long wooden shed. There is a single ward of ten beds or so without screens or partitions, an examination room, a dispensary, and an operating room that is no different from the other rooms except for an occasional coat of white paint. Serious operations are handled in the government and mission hospitals outside the camps.

One of Drew’s first tasks of the day at the 5,000-plus refugee Chiang Khong camp is to take his paramedics and practical nurses on rounds through the ward. He examines each patient and conveys his insight and conclusions to his entourage through an interpreter. Assignments are given, and then it is time to examine out-patients who have been screened by the paramedics. Almost always, the patients should have come much earlier for treatment, says Drew.

Outside he examines a small girl who has been brought piggy-back by a sister only three or four years older. The little one’s right ear lobe is badly infected. In accord with tribal tradition her mother had pierced the child’s ear, but without resard to sterilization. As is true of many of the hill people who have come over from Laos, she didn’t know any better. Drew instructs a paramedic to apply some medicine. “She’ll be all right,” he says.

At times Drew wishes he could engage in a more spiritual-oriented ministry among the refugees, such as organizing a Bible-study group. The relationships, however, among the voluntary agencies that work in the camps, the Thai government officials who run them, and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, which provides goods and services, are fragile. Agency field executives therefore have passed the word to their workers not to do anything that might jeopardize those relationships. Although Thailand is predominantly Buddhist, some workers—including Drew—feel that the field executives are oversensitive in drawing up policies governing religious activities.

There are fifteen refugee camps in Thailand. They are strung along the serpentine borders of Laos and Cambodia. Most of the nearly 100,000 refugees in them are from Laos: hill people from the Mhong (or Meo), Yao, and Haw tribes, along with the Laos. There are also camps for Cambodians and Vietnamese.

Churches have been organized in most of the camps. These are led by both ordained and lay leaders among the refugees, with assists from missionary workers, mainly from the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and Thailand Baptist Mission (Southern Baptist). Other groups, such as World Vision, supply food, medical and educational services, rehabilitation workers (who conduct sewing classes, for example), literature, and the like.

At the Chiang Khong camp there are at least three congregations: Yao (nearly 100 members), Mhong (a similar number), and Haw (about two dozen members). The Yao congregation is led by elder Chong Ling Young, 57, a Haw. He became a Christian ten years ago in Laos under the ministry of missionary Jerry Torgerson of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA). Young is assisted by another elder, Beer Wong, 33, who was led to Christ in Laos in 1974 by his neighbors. They said they fled Laos because of Communist hatred toward Christianity. “It is dangerous for Christians and Mhongs there,” said Young. The pair said that they had no late news about the churches in Laos (spawned mostly by the CMA) but that there were rumors the Communists were closing churches.

Tens of thousands of Mhongs have fled Laos. Many claim that the Communists are carrying out a program of genocide against the tribe. (The Mhongs have fiercely resisted the Communists, and during the Vietnamese war years the U.S. financed an army of Mhong guerrillas who fought against the Pathet Lao. Some fighting is still reported in certain hill districts.)

The largest Christian congregation is in the 12,000-refugee camp near Loei in the north central border region. It has some 2,500 Mhong members and is served by eight ordained clergy. Several pastors came to Thailand with their entire congregations from Laos. Pastor Nhia Sao Xiong, 27, confirmed the special danger to Mhong Christians in Laos.

The senior refugee pastor at Loei is Seng Pao Thao, 48. A minister since 1967, he accepted Christ in 1951 when a visiting pastor witnessed to him. Later, said Thao, his entire village of Phukabow became Christian. Thao, who often can be found witnessing to large crowds in the “streets” of the camp, disclosed that more than 300 Buddhists have been baptized at the Loei camp, “and many more are waiting.” Thao recently received word that he has been approved for resettlement in the United States. (More than 170,000 Indochinese refugees are in the U.S.)

How should American Christians pray for the industrious, organized Mhongs at Loei? Should they pray about the food shortages, unclean conditions, and occasional brutality from Thai guards?

Yes, affirmed pastor Seng Yang Yong, 34. But a greater priority for prayer, he said, is for strength and wisdom to deal with all the people undergoing instruction as they await baptism and church membership. Also, said he: “Ask the Christians of America to pray that we might find a place in the world where we can all be resettled together.”

Some CMA missionaries, including Reginald Reimer (coordinator of CMA refugee work) and Wayne Persons (resident CMA missionary at Loei who served for years in Laos), are working toward that end, along with relief and government officials in Thailand and Bolivia.

Mission-Mindedness In Europe

More than 900 young people from twenty-two nations and thirty-five Bible schools across Europe assembled last month on the campus of the 145-student Belgium Bible Institute at Heverlee, a town near Brussels. The occasion was the biannual meeting of the European Student Missionary Association (ESMA), an organization founded in 1955 at the European Bible Institute in the suburbs of Paris. The ESMA now has twenty-one member schools; three of them were added at Heverlee.

“God’s dominant concern is the message of redemption for the whole world,” declared American keynoter David Howard of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. That message, he asserted, “was always intended for all nations.”

One of the places where the message is needed most is Europe, other speakers suggested. They pointed to the ascendency of secularism and materialism and to the steady decline of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Jeff Fountain of Youth With a Mission warned that persecution may be ahead if there is no significant Gospel advance in Europe within the near future. The answer lies with Christian young people, he affirmed.

Nearly everybody attended a Saturday-night prayer meeting in which the needs of the world were remembered. The meeting, led by Jonathan McCrostie of Operation Mobilization, lasted nearly all night—“a touch of genuine revival,” reported correspondent Robert J. Campbell.

Platform sessions were translated simultaneously into the four main languages of the conference. Dozens of mission agency representatives set up displays in an exhibit area, handed out literature, and counseled prospective missionary candidates. Conference costs were underwritten entirely by the young participants, and they contributed to two offerings: $800 for a new missionary-placement information agency and $ 1,475 to help with outreach at the World Cup soccer championships in Argentina in July. Hundreds of young European Christians are expected to travel to Argentina to participate in the evangelistic project, which is being coordinated by Youth With a Mission.

Uncertainty In Afghanistan

The future of Afghanistan’s only Christian mission, located in the capital city of Kabul, is uncertain following the recent coup in which the government of Mohammed Daoud was replaced by the Marxist oriented Republican Revolutionary Council.

Only days before the revolution, the Afghanistan government ordered all foreigners without permanent visas to leave the country because of increasing riots and demonstrations. That decree affected the eighteen members of Dilaram House, an evangelical mission which works primarily with tourists and does some individual evangelism among Afghan people. Most of the mission workers left before the coup. Early this month they were in Pakistan waiting for the border crossings to reopen in hope that the new government will issue them visas to continue their work.

Dilaram House, which is the Persian name for Place of Peace, was established as a youth hostel in the late 1960s by the Kabul Community Christian Church. The house is staffed mainly by North American young people who live in Kabul on tourist visas which are valid for six month periods. Many of the youths have been associated with Youth With A Mission.

Originally established to work with drug-oriented western youths traveling to India via Afghanistan, the mission now distributes Christian literature to tourists and provides medical care for those who become ill during the journey. It is estimated that several hundred thousand tourists, primarily Canadians, Americans, and Britians, travel through Afghanistan each year. There are also approximately 1,300 Americans living in Kabul year round working with the U.S. embassy.

A former director of the mission, who prefers to remain anonymous since he hopes to return to Afghanistan, said: “On any given day there are at least 1,000 tourists in Kabul. Behind the travel is a basic discontent with western values. Many people are not just on vacation but are searching for answers and running away from problems. We are here to provide a Christian alternative.”

Although some of their work involves evangelism of Afghans, that aspect of their mission must be done discreetly since the country is predominantly Islamic. Afghanistan is the size of Texas with a population of more than 20 million, 90 per cent of whom adhere to a very conservative form of Muslim faith. Afghan Muslims have been very sensitive to any Christian presence in their country and have introduced a capital-offense statute forbidding its citizens to convert to Christianity.

Because of the strong Muslim faith one of the first announcements made by the new revolutionary government over Kabul radio assured the citizens it would “preserve the spirit of Islam.” In the past the government has tolerated only two or three house churches, located in Kabul, to meet the needs of officials connected with foreign embassies. In 1970 the Kabul Community Christian Church obtained permission to erect a $320,000 church but the government tore it down in 1973 at the insistence of militant Muslims who were upset over the visibility of the church. The government also ordered the founding pastor, J. Christie Wilson, a United Presbyterian missionary, to return to the United States where he now teaches missions at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston.

VICTOR M. PARACHIN

Unreal

It happened on April Fools Day, but it was no joke. An Episcopal woman priest, Elizabeth Habecker, administered communion to several dozen Roman Catholic nuns and laypersons following a social-action conference at McAuley House, a mission operated by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy in Providence, Rhode Island.

In official Catholicism the communion administered by Mrs. Habecker was only an illusion. The Vatican’s historic position is that Anglican and Episcopal clergy are not validly ordained—and therefore their administration of communion is invalid. Although modern policy permits Catholics to be involved in ecumenical meetings and activities, it does not permit them to partake of non-Catholic communion (and it does not permit Protestants to participate in Catholic-administered communion).

After Catholic bishop Louis E. Gelineau learned of the incident, he issued a letter to his priests and to his ecumenical-relations unit, reminding them about the rules and regulations of the church regarding ecumenical involvement.

The leader of the Catholic sisters expressed regret “for any harm that may have been caused,” but the chairmen of the local Episcopal and Catholic ecumenical agencies issued a joint statement saying that no damage had been done to the relationship between the two church groups.

The chairmen, Catholic priest Lionel Blain and Episcopal clergyman Howard C. Olsen, acknowledged that intercommunion is not approved. Blain suggested that Mrs. Habecker had acted “wrongfully” in acquiring permission to speak in the Catholic diocese without divulging her wishes or intentions about communion. Olsen, however, may have had the last word. The Episcopal Church would not ban Catholics from receiving communion in Episcopal churches, he gently countered.

Evangelistic Round-Up

Redeemed? Say So!, by Robert J. Plekker (Harper & Row, 1977, 191 pp., $3.95 pb), HIS Guide to Evangelism, by Paul Little and others (InterVarsity, 1977, 157 pp., $2.50 pb), That None Be Lost, by Oliver V. Dalaba (Gospel Publishing House, 1977, 127 pp., $1.25 pb), Go Make Disciples, by Rolf A. Syrdal (Augsburg, 1977, 128 pp., $3.50), I Believe in Evangelism, by David Watson (Eerdmans, 1977, 190 pp., $2.95 pb), and Evangelism in a Tangled World, by Wayne McDill (Broadman, 1977, 181 pp., $3.95 pb), are reviewed by Richard V. Peace, assistant professor of evangelism, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Many people are concerned about evangelism. Witness the six different traditions represented in these books, which span the ecclesiastical spectrum from an Anglican rector to an Assemblies of God minister and in between a Lutheran professor, a Southern Baptist denominational executive, a Christian Reformed layman, and an interdenominational campus minister. Each of them is concerned that we get on with the job of sharing the good news. But when it comes to how each one views the work of evangelism, we find quite different viewpoints.

Robert J. Plekker is a Michigan dentist and a layman in the Christian Reformed Church. He opens his book by commending as a model for personal witnessing a man he once met on a plane to Florida. Plekker first noticed the man when he rushed into the plane, late: “His shirt [was] half way out of his pants, his tie was loose and his head was topped off with a red golfer’s cap … He ran down the aisle with bags, camera, books and other paraphernalia” and sat down next to Plekker. Then in a loud, embarrassing way he introduced himself, and proceeded to “witness” to Plekker. Apparently this gentleman confronted each and every stranger he met, without fail, with a plan of salvation. Later that day, he and Plekker shared a fifty-mile car trip in Florida that took twenty-four hours to complete because of this man’s insistence upon stopping for every hitchhiker so he could confront them with his message until they literally “broke down.”

In sharp contrast is an anecdote cited by Mark Pettersen in HIS Guide to Evangelism: “An agnostic friend of mine was approached by a Christian with the lecture approach. After the Christian made his first point, my friend objected that he was not ready to grant the existence of any God let alone a God who loved him but the Christian insisted they finish the outline before they discussed that issue. My friend was forced to listen to a presentation that obviously did not relate to him. The immediate effect was that he lost both warmth for the Christian as a person and freedom to ask further questions.” A style of witness commended in one book is condemned in another. Although the contrast between books is generally not this pointed, it is interesting to note the wide range of ways in which evangelism is perceived.

Oliver V. Dalaba in That None Be Lost uses what might be called a potpourri approach to evangelism. Rather than examining anything in detail, he gives us lists. For example, he discusses eleven methods of outreach, nine philosophies of outreach, eight witnessing plans, seven witnessing places, and six guidelines to compassion. His book tends to be a series of loosely related snippets of information. Dalaba’s approach is oriented to the needs and concerns of the Assemblies of God. (He makes frequent reference, without explanation, to such programs as Royal Rangers and Missionettes.)

Rolf Syrdal, former director of world missions for the American Lutheran Church, is more theological. Although Dalaba focuses on the “have to” in a summary sort of way, Syrdal looks at the theological and historical issues involved in evangelism. He deals with such areas as the relationship between baptism and evangelism, preaching and personal evangelism, and evangelism and Christian service. He is concerned that evangelism be directed not only outside into the unbelieving world, but inward toward those church members who have stopped living in Christ: “At the close of the service of baptism of infants, … the parents and sponsors are admonished to nurture the spiritual life of the children so they will be brought up in the faith.… The very fact that this admonition is necessary implies that it is possible that a child who is baptized may later break the covenant by willful acts.… The prophets were evangelists to the people of the covenant who had departed from the faith.… We are to proclaim (the Gospel) also to those who have fallen away from God and need to be brought back in repentance and faith. The church must have an ‘outreach’ of the Gospel to those outside the church, but it is also necessary that the church has an evangelical ‘inreach’ … to save those who have left Christ.”

The concern in HIS Guide to Evangelism is the college campus. These eighteen articles (by sixteen authors) appeared originally in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s magazine, HIS. As in any collection, the quality of the articles varies. Many, however, are very useful (and not just in a campus context). Some of them, such as Beckey Manley’s “Sharing Christ, Ourselves and Pizza … All at Once” are excellent. She begins: “Christians and non-Christians have something in common: They are both uptight about evangelism. The common fear of Christians seems to be ‘How many people did I offend this week?’ They think that they must offend in order to be a good evangelist. A tension begins to build inside: Should I be sensitive to people and forget about evangelism or should I blast them with the gospel and forget about this person?” She goes on to discuss how we can learn to be ourselves as well as letting others be themselves; at the same time we are transparently honest about Jesus and his claims. This article alone is worth the price of the book.

Often in stark contrast to that approach is Plekker’s book, Redeemed? Say So!, in which the approach is much more mechanistic (e.g., Chapter 13 in which twenty-one “Satanic Tangents” are listed along with concise suggestions on how to get the conversation back on track again) and high pressure (e.g., “The seventh rule may not sound too nice but it is essential. Avoid allowing someone the ‘out’ of thinking it over. Giving someone time to ponder things is bad kingdom business”).

The real gems in this set of six books are David Watson’s I Believe in Evangelism and Wayne McDill’s Evangelism in a Tangled World. Watson’s book is the best general introduction to evangelism I have seen in years. It is profoundly biblical and intensely practical. Watson, pastor of St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church in York, England, begins with a series of word studies (“evangelism,” “gospel,” “proclamation”), which are academically sound and immensely readable. He establishes a biblical foundation. His chapters on personal evangelism and follow-up are filled with insight and his chapter on evangelism and the local church is a blueprint for healthy church growth. The special thing about the book comes in the final two chapters in which Watson explains the relationship between worship and evangelism and then discusses “the spirit in evangelism.” He begins his penultimate chapter: “In the 1,470 page report of the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation there are only 2 short paragraphs specifically on worship. However, on many occasions I have seen the close link between the praise of God, when marked by the freshness and freedom of the spirit’s presence, and powerful evangelism.” He goes on then to amplify and illustrate this relationship. In his final chapter there is as clear, profound, and moving a discussion of the work of the Holy Spirit in evangelism as I have seen.

Wayne McDill is a Southern Baptist, serving as an executive in the Evangelism Division in Texas. McDill’s book shows deep insight into the people we are seeking to reach through our evangelism. Other books (e.g. Plekker’s) seem preoccupied with the Christian’s role in evangelism but McDill forces us to examine our methods and message from the point of view of those to whom our efforts are directed. He constantly asks: Will they understand? Does this touch people at a point of authentic need? For example, in discussing the message of the Gospel, he begins with the biblical material, but then “repaints the ancient pictures” by means of a series of metaphors that will communicate the Gospel content to modern man. He then goes on to discuss conversion, beginning with what he calls “biblical psychology” and then exploring the cognitive, moral, emotional, and volitional aspects of the conversion experience. His examination of the Great Commission is by means of seven questions or options—“Will the believer be characterized in the mind of the church as a salesman or as a witness for Christ?” (he opts for discipleship and for witnesses). Either McDill’s or Watson’s book would be an excellent text in a course on evangelism. Their attitudes and insights will serve as a corrective for much that is being written about evangelism today. They will stimulate each of us to get on with the task of sharing Jesus with others in a loving way.

What About The New Religions?

The New Religious Consciousness, edited by Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah (University of California, 1976, 400 pp., $14.95, $5.95 pb), is reviewed by Kenneth W. Shipps, associate professor of history, Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois.

From what might be called the new Fertile Crescent of the world comes the first of a projected series of books on the new religious consciousness. Two professors of the University of California at Berkeley have edited the essays of graduate students and contributed their own thoughts in pondering the “deepest meanings” of the cultural upheavals of the sixties. Using social science techniques, they report on nine of the scores of more or less religious groups that flourish in the Bay area: the Healthy-Happy-Holy Organization, Hare Krishna, Divine Light (Maharaj Ji), the New Left, the Human Potential Movement, Synanon, the Christian World Liberation Front, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the Church of Satan. Besides these nine case studies there are several other essays including three fascinating ones on how “traditional religion” has responded to the youth “counterculture” and two that project four alternative futures. The volume also includes a summary of the data collected by Robert Wuthnow, who designed and supervised a random survey of the religious awareness, beliefs, and practices of 1,000 Bay Area residents in 1973.

Filmstrips

Thank You, God is another of the fine products for children from the Thomas Klise Company (Box 3418, Peoria, IL 61613). Designed as a continuation of the biblical material in Praise the Lord (see Oct. 21, 1977, issue, p. 32), it leads children to praise and thank God not only for the revelation of his Word, but also of his world. This filmstrip does require careful preparation by the teacher. Delightfully animated for the very young.

Also from Klise, but for adults, is A Thanksgiving Service, which sensitively blends photos of nature and man’s stewardship as a sacred and secular idyll. We hear both sexes give genuine thanks.

Even though The Spanish Missions: Yesterday’s Dream is about the California missions that were established after the Pilgrims had already come ashore in New England, it is well to remember that the missionary impulse to the New World of which the California missions were a part began two centuries before the Pilgrims arrived. This filmstrip seriously discusses the pluses and minuses of Spanish missions. It raises questions of a historical nature that are also relevant to Protestants. This is a secular production from Multi-Media (Box 5097, Stanford, CA 94305) meant for schools, but it can be studied by churches, particularly as a balance to foreign programs that too often seem happily and enthusiastically oblivious to some of the consequences of mission practices. It is a fair and balanced presentation, but the filmstrip gives no answers to the questions it asks.

Shocking and sobering are the words to describe Christians & Jews: A Troubled Brotherhood. This two-part Alba House (Canfield, OH 44406) production for teens and adults has no peer in the rendering of its theme. Finely crafted in the hands of Suzanne Noffke, a Dominican sister, these filmstrips are an artistically powerful presentation of the troubled relations between church and synagogue over the centuries. The story is told with striking examples of Christian anti-Semitic art that is rarely seen. The music background, by Bloch, Bruch, and Partos, conveys the anguish of the Holocaust. Although this production ought to be viewed by every Christian, there are two troubling aspects to its viewpoint. One is the assumption that anti-Semitism is partly rooted in the Gospel accounts themselves, and the other is the assumption that anti-Semitism is mostly a Christian problem rather than a universal one. These filmstrips deserve wide circulation among Christians.

Although tame by today’s standards, some have thought Gustav Doré’s lithographs of the works of Dante a nineteenth-century excursion into pious voyeurism. However Gustav Doré’s Vision of the Bible is an interesting period piece from Contemporary Drama Service (Box 475, Downers Grove, IL 60515). The black and white pictures have been tinted to add dramatic color. The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception from Vedo Films (85 Longview Rd., Port Washington, NY 11050) is an exquisite tour of the largest Roman Catholic building in North America. It is aesthetically pleasing, but Protestant viewers will be amazed (or dismayed) at the strength of Marian devotion that raised this incomparable structure in the heart of Washington, D.C. A lavishly illustrated booklet comes with it.

The Great Men of Art series from Encyclopaedia Britannica (425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611) is an excellently prepared program on da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Van Eyck, and Dürer. All of these artists worked within the Christian milieu; their most memorable works are scenes of biblical motifs. Sadja Herzog of Ohio State University notes the spiritual impulses of the Renaissance and the Reformation. This is particularly evident in the Dürer segment, the great Protestant engraver and friend of Luther.

DALE SANDERS

Portland, Oregon.

Wuthnow’s work is so valuable that it resulted in a companion volume, The Consciousness Reformation (1976, University of California). There Wuthnow details the methodology and results of his survey. In Wuthnow’s essay based on his survey he found that only one out of four in the Bay Area was aware of even one of the thirteen new religious groups listed for the area. Wuthnow’s conclusions suggest that all these movements have garnered their adherents from the better educated; also, interest in counterculture groups is likely to remain limited to a very small minority and only in the years of their youth. In his book he also traces through American history what he calls four symbolic universes: theistic, individualistic, social scientific, and mystical. Unfortunately his projections of religious typology on American history and contemporary religious belief, as well as his theory of change through generational conflict, are misleading and reductionistic.

Each of the movements studied provides a fascinating profile in itself, and in some cases they clearly were an exotic response to the turbulent sixties. Also each chapter suggests why millions of Americans have recently experimented with nontraditional religions and lifestyles. For example, through the Healthy-Happy-Holy process participants find release from the pressures of the material world, a purifying lifestyle, and inner harmony with their Creator. To set themselves apart adherents have adopted the dress of Sikhism—a white robe crowned by a turban. They want to lead the world into a new age of Aquarius.

With the designation “quasi-religious,” the editors can show a more intimate connection between the alternative lifestyles of the seventies and the burned-out political activism of the sixties, but not without straining. Bellah insists that there “was something religious” about the political activism of the period, but he suggests that it was the homelessness, the daring, and the disaffection of youth. Bellah’s imprecise language about religiousness, which is shared by other essayists, leads to confusing, exaggerated, and misleading links between religious, social, and political radicals. In fact only occasional examples are provided to show any connection between the newly religious and the leadership of the broader movements of the time from the civil rights movement through the antiwar movement to the women’s rights movement.

The essays by Donald Heinz on the Christian World Liberation Front, an evangelical group founded in 1969 (much of which survives in the Berkeley Christian Coalition), and by Randall Alfred on the Church of Satan, headed by Anton LeVey, offer brilliant sketches of those groups. Bellah, who is widely known for his oft-reprinted 1967 essay “Civil Religion in America,” in a series of sweeping generalizations assesses the decade of the sixties as an “erosion” of the basic systems of meaning in American history: biblical religion and utilitarian individualism. Bellah sees self-interest undermining “conscience,” his strange paradigm of biblical religion. Religion itself “became for many a means for the maximization of self-interest with no effect link to virtue, charity or community.” Bellah also sees the rising prestige of science, technology, and bureaucracy as further supporting utilitarian individualism and the consequent demise of shared values and ends. Glock, a leading survey researcher, has quite a different set of assertions about science. For him the sciences do not contribute a world view, though they do conflict “with supernatural and individual modes of consciousness.” The sciences must interact with all sorts of forces from the biological to the sociological. From all this monumental reductionism Glock and Bellah proceed to their interpretations of the sixties and beyond.

For Bellah the new consciousness turned its back on utilitarian individualism, indeed the whole apparatus of modern industrial society. Similarly Glock, who evidendy also likes to have his speculations published, says that the counterculture inspired a disenchantment with the historic view that man could control his environment. For Bellah America may continue its mindless accumulation of wealth and power; it may “relapse” into traditional, persecuting authoritarianism as symbolized by a growing “conservative Protestant fundamentalism”; or improbably, as Bellah himself suggests, a revolutionary religious change may promote “greater concern for harmony with nature and between human beings.” This change would provide the simple, free culture suggested in the values and worship of the new groups.

Glock maintains that a “new cognition” has arisen out of the sects of the sixties. This new way “to comprehend the world, but unlike its American predecessors, is not one given to shaping and finding meaning in the world.” In part, according to Glock and contrary to Bellah, the youth of the sixties reflected their predecessors in their search for more individualism and in their condemnation of a people who had turned too far from the God of their creation. Yet the counterculture denied prevailing views and adopted “the new cognition” of the sciences, which Glock sees as the wave of the future. This scientific view, which has emerged slowly in this century, stresses a lack of consensus, a limit to human knowledge in a complex social and biological environment, a set of relative and ambiguous values, and no possible answers to questions of ultimate meaning.

Thus the book ends pessimistically in unsupported or reductionistic speculation, hypotheses not unlike what the curious professors had found in research prior to their own investigations. Certainly we know more about a few marginal Bay Area religious groups. Several researchers used new methods of social research well, and Wuthnow’s survey of religious beliefs will remain valuable for comparative research. Yet many of the groups have few members and a declining impact. Other movements might have proved more useful for the research and related more to national followings; these include the evangelical charismatics, the Zenists, TM, Muslims, or even the Unification Church. But of course part of the problem in the book is how and when to relate local interests to the larger view. The editors attempt to relate the upheavals of the sixties to history, to the national scene, and to future religious scenes; their efforts, though bold and full of insight, become highly speculative. It appears that a certain millenarian effervescence has captured the professors; they tend to confuse peripheral, transitory religious movements with long-term fundamental change.

More effective in surveying a broader scope is Religious Movements in Contemporary America, edited by I. Zaretsky and M. Leon (1975, Princeton University). Without the coordinated financial backing of the Berkeley group these writers set forth more theoretical perspectives. Subjects include such groups as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, Mormons, Afro-Americans, Meher Baba. Chapters relate to law, music, linguistics, theology, political science, and homiletics. This massive book also has a forty-three page bibliography.

Another broad book on contemporary British and international religious movements is Sectarianism: Analyses of Religious and Non-Religious Sects, edited by Roy Wallis (1975, Halsted/Wiley). This book contains useful distinctions to separate the religious from the nonreligious. It has essays on the Krishna movement, Scientology, and various therapeutic sects. Perhaps with criticism and competition, researchers on the new religious consciousness in the new Fertile Crescent will give us more thorough studies.

Although interest in new religions is on the rise, none of the recent works has used a Christian theological perspective in assessing their work. Making generalizations about religious consciousness in America has led to fewer differentiations between the myriad religious groups in the world, past and present. Hence the CWLF, an innovative expression of evangelicalism, submerges into the counterculture as some kind of countercultural force against the overriding traditions of American Christianity. Generalizations on the relationship between peripheral sects and predominant christianizing and dechristianizing movements need more refinement than can be found in most of these books. Also, techniques of religious studies, especially in the Glock-Bellah work, have difficulty accounting for shifts within so voluntaristic a scene as American religion. They tend to overplay an undefined traditional religion or make rash demarcations about major changes in a complex, variable environment. And none of these books point out how destructive these sects can be. Christian churches have long had ways to differentiate between spooky, heretical, and destructive sects as compared with a more serious, religious experience.

Edifying Addresses

Our Sovereign God, edited by James Boice (Baker, 1977, 175 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by D. A. Carson, associate professor of New Testament, Northwest Baptist Theological Seminary, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The title of this book captures a theme that has in recent years rekindled a lot of interest among evangelicals; but the subtitle more accurately reflects the contents of this book. Here are fifteen addresses presented to the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology by seven men. John R. W. Stott deals with “The Sovereignty of God the Son” and with “The Sovereign God and the Church.” Roger R. Nicole expounds “The ‘Five Points’ and God’s Sovereignty,” “The Doctrines of Grace in Jesus’ Teaching,” “Optimism and God’s Sovereignty,” and the historical implications of “Soli Deo Gloria.” Stuart D. Sacks draws relationships between “God’s Sovereignty and Old Testament Names for God,” and James I. Packer contributes a section “On Knowing God.” R. C. Sproul follows up the latter theme with “Why We Do Not Know God” and “Why We Must Know God,” and then discusses two further topics, “Discerning the Will of God” and “Prayer and God’s Sovereignty.” Ralph L. Keiper gives us “The Key to Knowing God” and “Witnessing and God’s Sovereignty.” The editor, James M. Boice, seeks to reconcile “Disobedience and God’s Sovereignty.” I confess I found the book extraordinarily difficult to evaluate, not so much because of the diversity of approaches and of merit from chapter to chapter (a problem in most symposia), but because I enjoyed and appreciated the work more than my critical faculties tell me I should.

The unifying feature is the forum at which they were delivered rather than some common theme. For example, Stott’s second message affirms that “[the] purpose of our sovereign God is not just to save isolated individuals, but to call out a people for himself.” Stott then expounds Acts 2:42–47 in a manner that would be acceptable anywhere in evangelicalism, not just at a Reformed conference. The exposition, as one might expect from Stott, is competent and telling; but its link with the “theme” of the book is no more than could be generated by considering the connection between any biblical passage and the sovereignty of God. The same artificiality afflicts more than half the chapters in the book, but comes to its apex in the second of the four sections into which the book is divided. That section, “Knowing the Sovereign God,” has very little within it that has any exclusive connection to Reformed theology.

The diversity of approaches adopted by the various contributors adds to the reader’s awareness of disarray. In his chapter “On Knowing God,” Packer consciously presents his material as an exposition of Calvin’s thought. In one of his four chapters, Nicole seeks to reformulate the traditional “five points” in ways open to less ambiguity, effectively jettisoning TULIP en route while retaining its essential content. Keiper is largely anecdotal; Sproul, though scarcely less so, organizes his material topically. Boice tries to deal with the difficult topic “Disobedience and God’s Sovereignty” by expounding selected parts of Jonah; but the limitations of the passages chosen preclude the possibility of admitting important considerations from elsewhere, though the centrality of the topic makes some of the exposition forced—a classic case of the mutually destructive homiletical marriage between exposition of a major topic and exposition of a restricted passage.

To this methodological disarray must be added two or three major errors. Considering the fruit of Anabaptist research during the last three decades, it is astonishing to be told that “The Anabaptists of Calvin’s day were similar to the liberal and radical theologians of our time, for they appealed to the spirit in their own minds rather than what was said in the Scriptures. They said, ‘Because we have spiritual intuitions that come strong upon us, we are going to follow them. We accept them as from the Spirit of God; if this means leaving the Bible behind, well, so much the worse for the Bible!’ Calvin denied this, for he denied that the Spirit contradicts himself.” No doubt that is the way Calvin perceived things; but Calvin never enjoyed any first-hand knowledge of the leaders of the Anabaptists, whose writings portray them to be no less biblically oriented (to say the least) than any of the other branches of the Reformation. A little later in the book, a writer takes pains to differentiate between the person who knows God’s will as revealed in Scripture, and the one who seeks to discover it when it is not so revealed. “It is one thing,” we are told, “to put out a fleece in attempting to discover that which God has not revealed. But to test that which God has revealed is to insult the integrity of his word, and I will not do it” (p. 93). I will try not to do it, too; but I can’t help remembering that when Gideon put out the fleece—twice, at that—it was for no other purpose than to test that which God had indeed already revealed.

Again, when a contributor writes that in forty years “I think I have heard only one truly honest prayer from the pulpit,” does he intend to use hyperbole to underline the remarkable candor and humility of the example that he then proceeds to give? It must be so, for I cannot believe his ecclesiastical experience is as limited as his words suggest.

Despite my criticisms, however, I find this little book quite compelling. It cannot be compared with Grace Unlimited (edited by Clark Pinnock), for the latter is openly polemical and designed as a symposium of written essays, whereas Our Sovereign God expounds its position with little polemic, and is scarcely more than transcribed addresses. So little concerned is this book to offer a definitive defense of Reformed theology that there is virtually no mention of such topics as covenant, Romans 9 or Ephesians 1, decree, ordo salutis, or a crux interpretum like First John 2:2. Yet this formal lack nonetheless conspires to make this book a helpful, edifying volume, eminently useful in a wide reading circle. To say this is not to despise the polemical work or to give it no place; but it is to say that its place is rarely for edification per se. Our Sovereign God is a work that, though not very profound, is not polemical either, and is edifying.

Although the reader must put up with an informality of style more suitable behind the pulpit than on the printed page, yet he does not have to read far before gaining genuine and valuable insights. One man writes, “Knowledge of God is more than any particular experience of God. For, like the Biblical writers, Calvin comes out of an era when people were less self-absorbed than we are. They were more interested in the realities that they experienced than in their experience of those realities” (p. 63). Another says, “Foolishness is in many of the catalogues of serious sins in the New Testament, along with adultery and murder and things like that. Foolishness is a moral refusal to deal honestly with the truth” (p. 81). And peppered through the book are choice quotations from Calvin, Wesley (!), Warfield, Kierkegaard, Geoffrey Fisher, Brunner, and others.

If you are looking for a book that will establish the truth of Reformed theology, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a generally interesting and edifying collection of sermons, this is for you.

Teaching Them All Things

With Christ in the School of Disciple Building, by Carl Wilson (Zondervan, 1976, 336 pp., $5.95 pb), is reviewed by Peter R. Grosso, pastoral intern, Cedar Park United Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

From a thorough study of the life of Christ Wilson finds evidence for seven steps in developing disciples: repentance and faith, enlightenment and guidance, ministry training and appreciation of benefits, leadership development and government under God, reevaluation and separation, participation and delegation, and the exchanged life and worldwide challenge. He underscores the urgent need for a balanced biblical emphasis and method for discipleship.

The church’s failure to do this, Wilson thinks, has been the pivotal factor in the crisis now facing the world, particularly Western society. The church has unintentionally through enculturation of the Gospel ceased to build disciples effectively. The incompleteness with which many American Christians interpret the Great Commission is characteristic of this. Often evangelism is emphasized to the neglect of Christ’s command to teach believers to obey Christ’s teachings. Our cultural, social, and political responsibilities are frequently ignored. The church, therefore, has fallen critically short in obedience to Christ’s command to prevent corruption and to drive back darkness, often sinning by placing the pursuit of blessing and man’s well-being above the service and praise of God.

In the midst of this dangerous vacuum of adequate Christian teaching, secular humanism is succeeding in its bid to control our minds, lives, and institutions. Wilson points out that today many churches are subservient to this deceptive philosophy. Our public school system is another sphere of its influence. Wilson traces the history of the causes for the decline of biblical discipleship and lay ministry since the early church. He also delineates the trends causing the loss of effectiveness in disciple building in the United States and the corresponding loss of the church’s influence in our society.

Yet Wilson sees the present kairos as unique for the restoration of the New Testament method of discipleship. Both positive and negative factors could contribute to such a restoration, he thinks, resulting in the return of the church to her rightful identity as God’s holy and healing assembly in an evil and broken world. He calls the church to return to the faithful pursuit of her Lord’s will, and emphasizes the need for making disciples who are able to live the exchanged life, a relatively stable, consistent walk in the Holy Spirit.

The book is instructive and will be valuable for the pastor or layperson.

Briefly Noted

Booksellers, librarians, and bibliophiles take note. Religious Reading 3 appeared late last year, third in a series of annual surveys of religious book publishing in the United States (Consortium Books [Box 9001, Wilmington, NC 28401], 313 pp., $15). Some 1,577 books that were published just in 1975 are classified into thirty-two categories and briefly described (but rarely evaluated). The author and title indexes are essential since many books aren’t classified where one might expect. The listing is definitely not complete, for six of the twenty-two 1975 books that we had considered “choice” are not included. But it has improved considerably since the first in the series. Both popular and scholarly books are included, as are books for children. Many reprints are listed, but contrary to the publisher’s intention, they are not always indicated as such. The two previous volumes are still in print. As this series continues, becomes more complete, enlarges some of the descriptions while shortening others, and adds a subject index, it will become an increasingly valuable tool for every religious bookstore and church or school library.

A recent reference book to assist elementary-age children when reading their Bibles and preparing for family devotions and Bible lessons is The Children’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary by V. Gilbert Beers (Nelson, 316 pp., $7.95) with 1,214 alphabetical entries. Each entry takes one-fourth of a large-size page and has a full-color illustration of the person, place, thing, or concept that is described. There is no denominational bias. An example for four consecutive entries: “Day’s Journey,” “Deacon,” “Dead Sea,” and “Debir.” One serious drawback (although some may not consider it so) is the absence of entries on most of the commonly asked about Bible words relating in some way to sex. If your child asks who publicans are, he can look it up here; but if he asks about harlots, you’re on your own. Baptism and murder are here, but not circumcision or adultery. Both theologically and practically, I think it reflects poorly on the author and publisher that they would presume to omit so many God-inspired words.

For a first-hand account of the tragic Ugandan situation, read Idi Amin Dada: Hitler in Africa (Sheed, 184 pp., $7.95). Written by the last United States Ambassador to Uganda, Thomas Melady, and his wife, the book chronicles Amin’s rise to power and describes life in Uganda since his reign. The authors present chilling accounts of bloodshed, arrest, and torture to support their charge that Amin is another Hitler.

Teaching Children as the Spirit Leads (Logos, 315 pp., $4.95 pb) by K. J. Allison claims to be a complete source book for Christian education. It is a thorough study, covering everything from “Spirit-Led Bible Teaching” to “Materials and Books” to a resource section for running a preschool program. Take note: it only considers preschool-age children. For a Catholic perspective on working with youth, see Youth Ministry (Paulist, 212 pp., $2.95 pb), edited by Michael Warren. The book has sixteen practical and foundational essays about evangelization, programs, and the development of leadership. Help! I’ve Got Problems! (Standard, 48 pp. and $1.50 pb each) is more elementary. The five-volume series is designed to help the teacher identify problems in the Sunday school class, and it offers solutions. Each volume deals with a different group from preschool teachers to administrators. Buses, Bibles, and Banana Splits (Baker, $5.95 pb) is a practical book compiled by Bill Wilson. This revised edition offers tried and tested ideas for children’s church and bus programs, including poster/flyer layouts ready for use with only the insertion of the specific information.

A new style for ministry is being pioneered by Nicholas Christoff. He makes his home and gathers a church in an apartment complex of 1,200 persons, most of them single. In Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (Harper & Row, 143 pp., $7.95) Christoff relates his transition from a family to a singles-oriented minister. He describes in a captivating fashion the seven deadly sins and seven lively virtues of singles. He details twenty-one actions that churches can take to remove barriers to singles. An excellent book.

Funeral Services for Today by James Christensen (Revell, 192 pp., $6.95) is a helpful compilation of twenty-eight complete (Scripture, prayers, hymns, meditations) services for all kinds of funerals, including especially difficult ones such as for infants, accident victims, nominal church members, or persons of poor reputation.

William Rodgers, a former actor, focuses on the “‘average’ homosexual” in setting forth what he believes is a Christian perspective in The Gay Invasion (Accent, 160 pp., $2.95 pb). He traces the development of thinking concerning homosexuality from Freud to the present day. For him homosexuality is a sin that requires therapy. However, he cautions that such therapy usually falls short of complete effectiveness. Nevertheless, the grace and mercy of God can enable a homosexual to repent of his sin and help him to begin a new life.

The hymnal is second only to the Bible in importance for the Christian. It is a personal, practical, living resource of Christian theology and experience. In selecting a hymnal, you invest in people; you give to every member of your congregation the means to creatively and corporately worship, witness, and respond.

Selecting the right hymnal for your congregation requires thorough preparation and evaluation. Above all, it requires an open mind if you are to make an objective, fully informed decision.

Many hymnals are inadequately used because they were improperly chosen. The prerequisite to receive the most benefit from the hymnal is to intelligently choose the best one for your people. Therefore, you must know what a hymnal is and what kind will help you accomplish your objective in your ministry. Select the book that comes the closest to your specifications.

It is important to understand the distinction between a hymnal and a song book. A hymnal is an organized selection of materials for congregational use in a variety of services. This organization may be theological, progressing in logical manner from one point to another, e.g. from God to eternal life, or it may be liturgical, following the church year. It should contain hymns from the past and prudently choose new ones.

The hymnal is the primary source of congregational music. If a church desires additional, more specialized materials, it may choose a second book, a song book, to be used along with the hymnals. A song book is usually an informal compilation of selections with an emphasis on gospel songs. It makes no pretense to comprehensiveness or scholarship. Many so-called hymnals are really song books.

Know why you want a new hymnal. Carefully study how you use the one you’ve got. Perhaps current needs are different than when you purchased your present hymnal. Maybe your hymnals are outdated. They may be worn out. Are resources adequate for special times? Is your hymnal inefficient, filled with material that is not usable in your church?

If you had a new hymnal, would you use it more than you do your present one? Would you make changes in the congregational repertoire, or not? Do you know what hymns you would like to add, and what ones you want to retain? Know the tastes of your people. Have specific goals for them. Keep your requirements in mind as you evaluate specific hymnals.

Study hymnal reviews in religious and music periodicals. Notice the advertisements of hymnal publishers. Tell the publisher what you need and request a sample of his most appropriate hymnal. It may not necessarily be his latest. Talk to people who are using the hymnals in which you are interested. Discover what hymnals other churches use. If you are in a denomination, consider the denominational hymnal. However, many denominational churches use some other hymnal. Conversely, a nondenominational church may decide a denominational hymnal best meets its needs. Try to obtain at least three different hymnals to evaluate.

It would be best if the evaluation were done by individuals who not only know hymnody but also understand church ministry. Don’t just look in the index for a few favorite titles. Keep your objectives in mind and concentrate on usable material. Materials you will never use waste space. Here are some points to consider:

1. Distinguish innovation from mere novelty. Innovation is creative and encourages use of the hymnal. Novelty is “gimmickry” and eventually discourages hymnal use.

2. Study the organization of the hymnal. The hymns should be in some logical sequence, making it possible to have a clear overview of the book. Indices should include at least an alphabetical index of titles and first lines, an alphabetical index of tunes, a well-organized topical index, and a table of contents. Metrical indices of texts and tunes and an index of scriptural allusions in the hymns are also helpful.

3. Read all the texts. They should be theologically correct and of good literary quality. They should represent a comprehensive range of doctrines, not merely a few. If stanzas are omitted, the basic concept of the hymn should be intact, with literary continuity and logic retained. There should be a good balance of settings of Scripture, hymns, and experience songs.

4. Sing all the hymns. Be open to new hymns, but be discerning. Consider whether or not your people would want to sing this hymn three years from now. The tunes should be singable. Melodies should be strong or easy to sing, not unimaginative or awkward. Rhythms should not be overly complicated in an attempt to be contemporary. Some tunes should be in lower-than-traditional keys, but this practice should not be carried to excess. An average congregation should be able to sing an E an octave above middle C without difficulty. When a tune is lowered too much, the singing loses brightness and vitality.

5. The hymnal should represent our rich heritage of cultures, historical periods, and musical idioms. You need balance and variety if you are going to maintain freshness and interest over a decade, which is the average life span of a hymnal.

6. Consider the scholarship of the editing. All selections should exhibit musical and literary excellence. Texts and tunes should be historically accurate with sources properly identified. If the editors have refashioned the text in content or language, such changes should be justifiable.

7. Consider the physical qualities of the book. Printing should be clear and easy to read. The fabric and binding must be durable to withstand years of handling. Design and appearance should be attractive. Determine whether or not the size of the book permits comfortable use by both young and elderly people.

Go through this process with each hymnal. Make a chart of your findings so that you can quickly compare features. Obtain facts: Don’t rely on impressions. Make your decision, then hold firm.

Think how the hymnal might be financed. You’ll have a better opportunity of having your recommendation approved if you can suggest a method of funding the purchase. Publishing companies can suggest various financing plans. If an individual wants to donate the hymnals, accept only if you can have the one you really want. The price is too high if you accept something else. A good hymnal is invaluable to your ministry. A poor one will cause difficulties.

Purchase the best binding you can afford. Not only will you get more for your money, because the hymnal will last longer, but a good-looking book enhances the impression your church makes on visitors.

When you get your new hymnal, use it as fully as possible. Explore its resources. Treat it carefully. It will enrich your ministry in the years ahead.—RICHARD D. DINWIDDIE, director, Sacred Music Department, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois.

Chuck Girard, singer, composer, and keyboard artist, is mainly responsible for the legacy of music left behind by Love Song, the folk-rock group that revolutionized modern Christian songwriting. Often compared with the Beatles for the quality and influence of its music, Love Song disbanded in 1974, and Chuck started a solo career; he has released three albums so far. Although most of the tunes on Love Song’s two albums, Love Song (1973) and Final Touch (1974), bear his name, Girard’s influence on the group and on the contemporary Christian music scene can only be fully understood in retrospect, and through his solo recordings.

The members of Love Song, all new Christians, met and launched their short, fast-rising career at Calvary Chapel in Southern California in 1970. The songs weave powerful melodies with sensitively balanced keyboard, guitar, percussion, and background vocals—the style of the Beatles that is imitated primarily by groups from the East and the Midwest. Rarely does the California sound associated with the Beach Boys show itself; “Don’t You Know” is an exception. Chuck’s rambling yet controlled combination of piano and solo voice was already cropping up in songs like “Little Pilgrim.” And they balanced biblical truths and experiences of young people, the blend of which has seldom been surpassed in Christian music. Scripture references were printed on the record sleeves next to the lyrics of each song.

Although Love Song was similar in style to the Beatles, the career and break-up of the group stands as a strong witness of the members’ commitment to Jesus Christ. They felt that God wanted them to press on. They pursued separate careers, devoted time to establishing families, and sought spiritual growth and fellowship. No lawsuits followed the split, as with the Beatles, and they still occasionally work together.

Love Song had a reunion tour of the country in early 1976, which resulted in a live album. The group is in a God-ordained “dormancy,” rather than permanently separated.

Chuck Girard is the one who is most involved in expressing his Christian faith through recordings. Chuck’s songs are closely tied to his Christian and artistic growth. His three albums, Chuck Girard (1975), Glow in the Dark (1976), and Written on the Wind (1977), reveal, almost transparently, his daily spiritual walk and his musical experimentation. To listen is to know him.

Chuck’s first two albums combine his usual captivating melodies with a variety of subtle, powerful rhythms. He has the backing of respected artists from the secular music scene: Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon on drums, Leland Sklar and Klaus Voorman on bass, and the group Ambrosia, on whose albums Chuck appears.

In Chuck Girard “Rock ’n Roll Preacher” is a high-paced, high-pitched, and somewhat quizzical song reminiscent of the more hard-driving Love Song arrangements. Girard jokes about the ironic direction of his life—a would-be rock star from the drug culture turned Gospel messenger to the youth of today. His assertion that he “still loves rock ’n roll music,” is a plea for other Christians to recognize that it can present the Gospel to young people. “You Ask Me Why” describes the emptiness of men and women in a rapidly decaying world, and it provides a bridge for Girard to invite them to view his changed life. Through the expansive melody and rhythmically insistent refrain of “Evermore,” he exults that God will “never let me go again.” “Quiet Hour” reveals the intimate joy Girard finds with God, a recurring theme. Soft vocals rest on acoustic guitars to bring out the calm, yet energetic nature of his devotion. He offers the same peace to anyone who has “lost their way” in the haunting, open harmonies of “Everybody Knows for Sure.”

Glow in the Dark is aimed at Christians. Opening with the multi-track voice of Girard in tight harmony on “Anthem,” we hear the theme of the album in “Callin’ You,” “Return,” “When I Was Ready to Listen,” and “No, You’re Not Afraid.” These songs beckon Christians to a closer walk with God, lightly jest at some self-righteous habits, and characterize the firm but gentle work of the Holy Spirit.

The second side of the album experiments with musical forms previously untried by Girard. “Somethin’ Supernatural” pulls no punches, either in describing a Christian through a non-Christian persona, or in its heavy, pulsating musical background akin to the best early works of secular artist Sly Stone. Girard uses the same persona technique in “I Remember.” “Supernatural” and “Old Dan Cotton” venture into blues and ballad styles. “So Thankful,” the best song on the album, was written before an Easter sunrise service. It captures the sad, rejoicing mood of the season. “So Thankful” anticipates his most recent album, with its quiet melancholy and often unrhymed lyrics.

Written on the Wind has fewer backup artists, which suits the more contemplative mood of the album. He experiments with harpsichord, synthesizer, electric piano, and a violin duet to express a range of emotions. The loneliness of a Christian facing a nonsympathetic world in “Fool for Jesus” seems to be an autobiographical account of Girard’s involvement in the recording industry. “Peace in the Valley” and its sister song “Hear the Angels Sing” provide a respite from the more somber songs.

Former themes are prominent in “Plain Ol’ Joe,” and “Harvest Time”; they poignantly remind us of the importance of each person. “Mary’s Song” and “The Warrior” depart from his former style. An almost listless melody conveys the heartbroken resolve that Mary may have felt in accepting Jesus’ ministry and death. “The Warrior” is the most dramatic song produced by Chuck Girard. He alternates wailing with subdued vocals to symbolize the crucifixion. The tension in the album becomes the major difference between it and his earlier works. It is resolved with the final chords of the last song.

Chuck Girard sings about experiences that few Christian musicians have touched. He relates Scripture to his life, and he provides fresh insights for modern men and women. Christian music is trying to confront life without platitudes. Chuck Girard comes to the fore in meeting that challenge.

David M. Hazard works in the public relations department of the 700 Club, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

The Questions Of the Holocaust

The NBC mini-series “Holocaust” is a troubling presentation in many ways. For evangelicals it brings up an issue that is difficult to explain to our Jewish friends. At the particular screening I attended I seemed to be one of the few goyim present. My table companion after the screening was Jewish writer/historian, S. I. Shneiderman. I tried to point out that nominal membership in a state church did not really certify that a Nazi was a Christian.

He rared back, arched his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders, and gesticulated wildly while exclaiming, “Of course they were Christians! And you know it was only the Roman Catholics who protested. The Protestants preached sermons defending the state’s treatment of Jews.”

Round one lost.

The series raises a number of other questions: Is it valid to mingle fiction and history?; Does this drama represent the present day Jewish outlook?; Is it fair to the church?; Can continuing the television tradition of violence be justified even in a good cause?; Does the presentation offer any ultimate answers that might help prevent the future from repeating the immoralities of the past?

One of the reasons the presentation raises the questions so acutely is the fact that it is of such a high quality.

The acting is well above the level of the usual television fare. Fritz Weaver as Dr. Weiss is the family doctor everyone would like to have—gentle, humane, loving. His wife Berta played by Rosemary Harris is the quintessential upper class, aristocratic German hausfrau. And special note has to be taken of the performance of Meryl Streep (that can’t be a stage name) who moves easily from being an elegant young woman to being the high-spirited girl next door. The rest of the cast achieves a generally high level of professional excellence. Obviously a great deal of time and expense went into the settings and staging of the series. All of this gives the dramatization a believability and level of audience identification lacking in less ambitious and professional efforts.

I asked my table companion if he felt that the mingling of history and fiction weakened or strengthened the presentation.

“Oh, definitely weakened it!” he responded without hesitation. “There’s too much solid material for a totally factual documentary without having to make it a historical soap opera.”

And who am I to argue with a historian? I think his point is well taken and it focuses on one of the problems of the new genre of fictionalized history. Historical fiction has been around a long time but that’s different from the current technique of fictionalizing history. Historical fiction normally takes the known events of history and fills in the unknowns of dialogue, motive, and subcharacters. It does so for the purpose of showing something about human nature by placing the characters against an unfamiliar backdrop, or for the purpose of giving the reader some feeling for the ethos of a different time.

Fictionalized history rearranges or invents facts and events for the purpose of dramatic continuity or impact. My companion rightly pointed out that we have no lack of details about the whole phenomenon of the Holocaust. There is a cataract of repugnant detail. This mingling of fact and fiction for dramatic purposes raises questions of historical integrity that have not been fully or satisfactorily dealt with at this point.

I will leave to others the more authoritative decision about whether the series is fair in its treatment of the Christian church. I suspect that within the limitations of the author and director it is. There are several items that are obviously inserted to make the point that there are bad Jews and good Christians.

Inga, a Christian, is heroically loyal to her Jewish husband to the very end. Inga wears a cross throughout the series and it reflects the light in enough scenes to catch the eye of the most obtuse viewer.

In another scene Father Lichtenberg of Berlin attempts to lead his congregation in prayer for the children of Abraham. He later was taken to Dachau for his protests over the atrocities against the Jews. My historian friend assures me that this episode is historically accurate.

No doubt this was a sorry period for the church and we can all be thankful for men like Father Lichtenberg to whom we can point as courageous Christians whose eyes were focused beyond the powers of this world.

One of the really difficult matters to deal with is the question of violence. All of the devices of drama are used to make the viewer identify with the Jewish victims. Watching it I found myself so incensed at the Nazi atrocities that when the Warsaw ghetto uprising came I was cheering for the Jewish resistance forces to kill the bastards.

And that’s just the trouble with the dramatic presentation of violence. It can set up a good guy/bad guy tension and manipulate us in applauding what, in our saner moments, we would know to regret or deplore. Since I’m not a pacifist I think there may be times when a Jew or a Christian can justifiably take human life. But I’m even more sure that it should always be done with sorrow and regret and not joy and satisfaction.

If this dramatization represents the feelings of Jews today the sentiment seems to be: Let us never go quietly again. If they come for us, let it be a life for a life—or if possible a dozen of their lives for one of ours. It’s an attitude Christians can understand, in the light of these events, even if we cannot endorse it.

But worse than all of that is the fact that there is no answer for human sin. In a very telling scene, Frau Weiss, a cultured and talented woman, is being taken from her classroom to a death camp. Her final admonition to her students is to keep up with their studies, because “to be educated is to be a better person.” At that point in the series we have seen more than five hours of inhuman and unbelievable atrocities by highly educated and cultured men.

There is in the drama no hint of the catharsis of forgiveness—of being freed and cleansed by the forgiveness of our enemies. And there is no sense of redemption—no suggestion that human nature can be touched by God and remade into his likeness. For the Christian those are tragic losses.

JOHN V. LAWING, JR.

John V. Lawing, Jr. is a free lance writer who lives in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Harvard Commencement, 1799.

My young friends who have now completed your literary course and are about to receive the honors of the University, It is scarcely possible that we can pass such an Anniversary as this without calling to mind the noble exertions of our pious and venerable Ancestors who founded the University in this place, our honorable and generous Legislators who have been its nursing Fathers, and the many munificent private Benefactors, those Friends of Science and Religion, who, with liberal hands, have greatly promoted and enlarged the means of education in this important Institution. While these Worthies occur to our minds in quick succession, our hearts cannot but be impressed with gratitude by a consideration of their kindness, liberality and public Spirit, who, while they have beneficently furthered the interests of the University have essentially benefited the Civil Community.

For more than a Century and a half has the prosperity of our Country been eminently promoted by this literary Institution. If we take a review of times long since past and those of more recent date, we shall find great numbers of those who have received their education in this University acting worthy parts in Society, and effectually advancing the happiness of their Countrymen, by labors which their advantages have enabled them successfully to perform—some as Instructors of Youth, a very difficult employment, but of the highest importance to the Community—others, as Ministers of Religion, diffusing that sacred knowledge, and promoting those morals, which make men good Members of Society, and fit them for a better world—others as Professional Men concerned with the fortunes and lives of those around them, and who by properly discharging the duties of their Profession are very useful Members of Society—others as Politicians, Legislators, and those in various important Civil Offices in the Community. Many of these have been highly distinguished in effecting our happy Revolution, in forming and establishing our State and National Government; and in securing the Independence of these United States against hostile aggressions and insidious machinations from abroad, too much encouraged by domestic uneasy Spirits. To these worthies, in concert with others, under the Smiles of Heaven our Nation is indebted for its present importance and happiness, and each individual for his freedom and the security of his invaluable rights. And to none are we more indebted for these blessings than to One whose name I could now with the greatest pleasure publicly mention, but which the rules of delicacy and decorum forbid me to utter in his presence.

Such Worthies, my young Friends, has this University produced, whose talents, virtues and exertions have made them great blessings, both in Church and State. Stimulated by a laudable and glowing emulation, may you strive, with unremitted ardor, to equal and even surpass those of your Predecessors in this University, who either have distinguished or are now distinguishing themselves by their eminent Abilities, Accomplishments and Labors, happily employed in advancing the cause of Religion and Learning, the interests of their country and the good of Mankind.

You have enjoyed in this university many advantages for laying a solid Foundation of various kinds of useful knowledge, upon which if future industry be not wanting you will be able to raise such a superstructure as will capacitate you for being greatly serviceable to Society.—Your friends and your Country expect much from you, and with great justice. Do not frustrate their pleasing hopes and expectations by any misconduct, or by sloth and negligence. Be sedulous in preparing for those employments in which your minds may lead you to engage. And when you shall have entered upon them pursue them with assiduity and fidelity considering that talents and knowledge of business must be attended by these whatever your Departments may be, if you would hope to secure reputation and success.

You are now going forth from this Literary Society, soon to take various Stations in the Great Community; and I hope and trust you will not tarnish the reputation you have here acquired, but will so conduct in all respects as to do credit to yourselves, rejoice the hearts of your friends, and reflect honor upon this Seat of Science.—I doubt not you will show yourselves true Patriots and Friends to the Rights of Mankind—peaceable Citizens and Lovers of Order in Civil Society.—I am fully persuaded that you leave the University (where Federalism almost universally prevails) with a full determination, as far as your exertions and influence may extend, to support our excellent National Constitution which amply secures our invaluable Rights, and makes provision for maintaining that Order and good Government, upon which the peace and happiness of the Community essentially depend. And I have entire confidence in you that while our constituted Authorities shall conduct our great Political Concerns with that distinguished wisdom, unequivocal Patriotism and unshaken firmness which have hitherto marked their Proceedings, instead of calumniating them and their measures and exciting a Spirit of uneasiness, virulence and faction, you will cordially acquiesce in their Decisions, and encourage them all in your power by giving them that approbation and applause which their meritorious services claim.

I cannot take my leave of you without calling your attention to the all-important Subject of Religion vital Piety and good Morals.

I hope and trust you are all Believers in that Sacred Code called the Bible, in which you have been instructed from your early years, and which is worthy of all acceptation, and that none of the writings of Infidels have unhinged your minds, or removed them from the hope of the Gospel. Revealed Religion will stand the strictest scrutiny, and those who have assailed its Foundations have but served to strengthen them, by the able Defences which they have drawn forth. May your minds be more and more established in the belief of the Authenticity of that Religion which is offered to us as a divine Revelation, and may your knowledge of its excellent doctrines and precepts daily increase!—But, my young Friends, do not content yourselves with mere speculation in these great and important concerns, but may it be your serious and constant care and endeavor that your hearts be deeply affected by them, considering that to this end the Revelation of divine truths has been made. May your minds be strongly impressed with gratitude to God and his Son the blessed Redeemer for the display of love, goodness, mercy and grace exhibited in the Gospel scheme of Salvation, so wisely and wonderfully planned, and so completely and gloriously executed. This will tend, through divine Influences, to lead you constantly to cultivate the religion of the heart, to form you to habits of true piety and holiness and to make you practical and devout Christians. Then will your conduct, directed by the best principles and motives, be highly honorable to you and promote your truest interests, both for time and eternity; and while you are reaping the greatest advantages for yourselves, you will be heartily disposed, whether as Members or Heads of Families, private Citizens, Professional men, or Politicians and public Officers to promote in the Community, to the best of your ability the interests of pure Religion and good morals, without the prevalence of which there can be no lasting prosperity and happiness in any Nation; and your example of unaffected virtue and piety may have some happy influence, at least in checking those Principles of Deism and licentiousness and consequent evil practices which prevail at the present time which we have too much reason to call the Age of Infidelity and irreligious depravity, whatever may have been the improvements in literature, Science, the arts and polite refinement. Happy would it be were our Country justly clear from the charge of being tainted with such principles and practices; but while Europe, and particularly one large Division of it, has been deluged by them, they have found their way among us and have too much pervaded even this Commonwealth, whose Inhabitants were formerly distinguished for sobriety of Manners, reverence of the Holy Scriptures, strict sanctification of the Lord’s day, and punctual attendance upon public religious services. In these respects how great is the degeneracy. Instead of sanctifying the Sabbath, and attending upon its worship and ordinances, what numbers are there who make it a day of business, or spend it as a season of pastime and pleasure, even forming parties and making excursions for their recreation, to the strengthening of their own depravity, and to the disturbance of those serious persons who are witnesses of their irregular conduct. (It is much to be lamented that many of our Magistrates have been greatly remiss in exerting what authority they have [far, very far from being too extensive] in checking this evil. Happy should I be could I say that none in high places of trust have by their example in very frequently absenting themselves from the House of God too much encouraged the neglect of the religious services of the Lord’s day, and sometimes by unnecessary travelling countenanced its profanation.)

May you, my young Friends, when you go forth into the world instead of falling in with these too fashionable customs, be patterns of strict virtue, sincere Religion and undissembled piety; and may you endeavor, in every proper manner to check the growing evils which have been mentioned. Thus will you be the greatest ornaments and benefactors of your Country, and will exhibit the truest marks of your being the Friends of God.

(It is hoped that none in this Assembly will consider this religious advice as calculated to damp the innocent pleasures of this day of festivity and joy. Should any be ready to entertain such sentiments they may be assured that those who are influenced by the religious principles which have been recommended are the persons who have the truest enjoyment of all the blessings of life, and receive them with grateful hearts as bestowed by the Parent of all good through his Son the benevolent Friend of man. This consideration gives the sincerest relish to every innocent gratification while it guards against the abuse of favors. Indeed the Religion of the Gospel forbids no pleasures but such as are licentious and irrational which always leave a sting behind them whenever they are indulged.)

(While I trust that all will free me from the charge of opposing or checking innocent enjoyments I hope there are none who will consider me as having indulged to the wildness of enthusiasm while inculcating the Religion of the heart. That Religion can be of little worth whose influence is not thus experienced; and it is by no means the Religion of the Gospel. That divine system is directly calculated to impress the heart and warm the affections as well as to regulate the life. And should any present be disposed to charge me with enthusiasm for urging what the Gospel itself strongly inculcates I would answer nearly in the language of Saint Paul to Festus ‘I am not enthusiastic my respected Auditors but speak forth the words of truth and soberness’!)

Nor let any censure me as delivering these sentiments at an unseasonable time. Providence has been teaching me for many months past by very painful and afflictive lessons the precariousness of life; and perhaps I may never have another opportunity of delivering before those who have been committed to my charge truths of such high moment and of giving before so large an Audience my attestation to the excellency of the Religion of the Gospel, so admirable formed for our benefit in all the changes of this transitory life, and for our consolation and support in the last trying scene; and which may with the greatest propriety be called an anchor to the soul both sure and stedfast. And could my feeble attestation, even in a small degree influence any to esteem and reverence the Religion of our blessed Savior and to conform to its precepts I should wish that my voice could extend far, very far beyond these walls;—“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation to every one that believeth.”

Finally, my young friends, that you may become distinguished Citizens of the United States—may serve your Country with fidelity and applause—may essentially promote the interests of true Religion piety and virtue in the Community, by which you will essentially subserve the public Good—and that your exit may be tranquil and your future reward glorious is my sincere wish and my ardent prayer to the Bestower of every good and perfect gift.

Even Diamonds

We are all of us broken cracked,

shattered splintered partial panes

left jagged

in the puttied corners

of the windows

that are we

in a glass menagerie

who all throw stones.

Chipped and sharp

we clatter past each other

sometimes slashing,

sometimes scratching

as we pass,

sometimes blunting

with our glancing blows,

sometimes bleeding

from the re-etched wounds.

Yet sweetly in the wind

even slivers and odd pieces

can dance music in their striking,

even splinters can become

the variations of an orchestra,

and the pieces

colored individuality

may find themselves mosaicked

stained glass wonders

when the dark is sundered.

For those broken

gathered by that runic Wind

bound and lighted

glow

an icon

of the restoration.

We are broken

all of us are broken

shattered

but a remnant of the plan,

pulverized and spun

splattered in the mud

tossed aside,

unable to align

to fit

the glazier’s grand design.

Yet even diamonds

must be smashed

and faceted

to release the glory

of their fire

in the light

that scatters

Glory’s fire.

DOUGLAS LIVINGSTON

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Labels don’t tell the whole story.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?” That’s what many of those labeled as “left evangelicals” in Richard Quebedeaux’s latest book The Worldly Evangelicals are certain to ask. If he didn’t repeatedly make it clear that he considers himself a “left evangelical,” the reader might well think that Quebedeaux is a “right evangelical” who wants to expose the errors of wandering brethren who need to be called back to the fold. And if they won’t return, they should be expelled.

A common response to the book will be for readers and nervous leaders associated with donor-dependent schools and evangelistic organizations to think that the author is distorting the picture about the particular groups with which they are associated but may be closer to the truth about others. It would be better to reserve judgment across the board on Quebedeaux’s assertions and accusations.

Quebedeaux wants to help nonevangelicals (both religious and secular) understand who evangelicals are, what they believe, how they behave, and where they are changing. He also wants to alert (or warn) evangelicals themselves about where he thinks they are headed and whether they really want to go there.

It’s hard to guess how much the nonevangelical will be helped here, since such a welter of individuals and groups are named and located. The impression one receives is more that of jumping beans hopping around on a checkerboard than pieces of a puzzle being firmly joined together.

However, one hopes that nonevangelicals who trouble to read Quebedeaux’s book carefully can lessen some of their misunderstanding of who evangelicals are. Quebedeaux consistently defines the core of evangelicalism quite satisfactorily: “That group of believers who accept the absolute authority of the Bible, have been converted to Christ (are born again), and who share their faith with others” (p. 7). From time to time throughout the book he elaborates on what this means, so that none of the unregenerate need be in any doubt.

Unfortunately Quebedeaux immediately clouds his definition by accepting Gallup Poll figures that one out of every five Americans, aged eighteen and up, is a “hard core” evangelical. If tens of millions of adult Americans are committed evangelicals (not just folk who are nominally religious or know what kinds of answers they ought to give to pollsters), where is the evidence in American life or, for that matter, in the religious institutions? I think the 40 to 60 million figure for practicing evangelicals that one increasingly hears is inflated. How about some state-by-state and denomination-by-denomination breakdowns of that figure by those who assert it so that skeptics can check it out? When the country has a bumper wheat crop or a season of bad weather, we get specifics that add up to the generalization. Let the boon (or bane) of evangelical fecundity be documented and demonstrated, not mindlessly declaimed.

According to Quebedeaux, evangelicalism is divided into three “highly visible subcultures”: fundamentalists, charismatics, and evangelicals proper (formerly known as neoevangelicals). The last group is then subdivided into right, center, and left. The book is primarily concerned with the subdivisions of the last group and claims to refer only in passing to the first two.

Quebedeaux used a slightly different classification in his first book, which he finished writing in 1973, The Young Evangelicals (Harper & Row). (See Carl Henry’s review article in our April 26, 1974, issue, page 4, to which Jim Wallis responded in our June 21, 1974, issue, page 20.) There he distinguished separatist from open fundamentalism, and establishment from new evangelicalism (with the young evangelicals of the title emerging as a more venturesome and action-oriented thrust from the latter). The charismatics constituted a fifth (or sixth) group. Interestingly Dallas seminary, which was the key institution in open fundamentalism, has shifted by Quebedeaux’s reckoning so as to be, along with Trinity, one of the two key schools for nonleft evangelicals. In both books, Fuller seminary is the school to which Quebedeaux gives the highest praise, but in the later one it has much more company on the left end of the spectrum. I am sure that this pleases Fuller.

It is unfortunate that the author chose to omit fundamentalism from his recent book, since journalists and scholars are constantly confusing that expression of evangelicalism with other forms. Often, the two terms are used interchangeably, to the displeasure of many. It would not have added many pages to discuss such men as Bob Jones, Carl McIntire, Jerry Falwell, Jack Hyles, and their related organizations. The omission leaves nonevangelicals to infer that fundamentalists are almost as divergent a group as the Mormons. Since Quebedeaux in practice constantly treats together those whom he calls right and center neoevangelicals, he could just as easily have used the term center for all of those who have separatist fundamentalists to their right. Right-wing evangelicals would then be simply another designation for fundamentalists and would more accurately reflect the historical and doctrinal links. Another good reason to have included fundamentalism in his purview is that so many of the center and left individuals were raised in it.

Quebedeaux says he is largely omitting the charismatic movement, but in fact he does not. Its leaders and institutions constantly appear, sometimes labeled almost fundamentalist, sometimes linked with the center, sometimes with the left, and often the classification is fuzzy. Quebedeaux did his doctoral dissertation at Oxford on the older and newer pentecostalism (published in 1976 by Doubleday as The New Charismatics); he knows the movement well enough to realize that he can’t force it to fit into his right to left spectrum.

This leads to one of my major complaints: Not just charismatics, but all movements and organizations, and even individuals, are much too complex to classify so firmly. Quebedeaux acknowledges the precarious nature of labeling, but says it is because people move around or because they “will resist the labels we choose” (p. 27). I identify with those whom Quebedeaux warns “will repudiate labels altogether,” at least with the spirit and rigor that Quebedeaux uses. It is one thing to use labels for convenience when speaking about a particular issue, such as the role of women in the church. But the addition of even one other factor, such as the attitude toward alcohol, complicates the picture. It is not at all uncommon to be left on one of those two issues and right on the other. Moreover, Quebedeaux is not dealing with a few issues but with many, each with its own spectrum.

Knowing Who We Are

Several other new books reflect increasing interest in the evangelical movement. The most critical one is Fundamentalism (Westminster, 379 pp., $7.95 pb) by James Barr, a British professor of Bible. The book was released in the United Kingdom last year and we plan to publish a three-part discussion of it by Carl F. H. Henry, which will start next issue. We will also have a long review of it by a younger scholar, William Wells. Despite the title, the book is chiefly about evangelicals who Quebedeaux would classify as center or left.

In our April 21 issue we printed an article from Evangelical Roots, a collection of seventeen essays edited by Kenneth Kantzer (Nelson, 240 pp., $8.95). Like Barr’s book, this collection focuses primarily on the distinctive evangelical attitude to the Bible. In Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity (Zondervan, 256 pp., $8.95), Robert Webber of Wheaton College calls his fellow evangelicals to a greater appreciation of the subapostolic church. Another Wheaton Bible professor, Morris Inch, gives an overview of the movement in The Evangelical Challenge (Westminster, 144 pp., $5.45 pb). Nathan Hatch, Mark Noll, and John Woodbridge provide a historical dimension with essays composing The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story of America’s Evangelicals (Zondervan, 260 pp., $9.95). Also look for a major two-volume work of systematics to be released later this year from the prolific Donald Bloesch of Dubuque seminary, Essentials of Evangelical Theology (Harper & Row).

Last year revised editions of two books published a few years earlier appeared in paperback. Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (Harper & Row, 184 pp., $3.95 pb) by Dean Kelley is well known. Sometimes those who approvingly cite his data do not seem to have thought through the implications of some of his explanations. The Evangelicals (Baker, 325 pp., $4.95 pb) is a collection of essays edited by David Wells and John Woodbridge. Most of the chapters are by evangelicals but some are by friendly critics. In the footnotes and in my own bibliographical essay one can find references to most of the available literature.

D.T.

Besides women and drinking, at one or more points we are introduced to the evangelical diversity on: the inerrancy of the Bible and appropriate methods for biblical scholarship; historic confessional differences, such as Calvinism or Lutheranism, and the degree of attachment to them; conformity to comfortable suburban lifestyles, where the center keeps getting accused of worldliness; the practice of sex within (and sometimes without) marriage; political preferences, where we are continually told about the conservative Republicanism of evangelicals, though Jimmy Carter and moderates Mark Hatfield and John Anderson are the most often named evangelical politicians; commitment to charismatic and relational theologies; attraction to traditional liturgical worship, which seems to be called progressive but could as well have been called conservative; evangelistic methodologies; and the intention to stay within (or join) one of the mainstream denominations rather than to be in a consistently evangelical denomination or independent congregation. With respect to the last category, Quebedeaux conveys the impression that the left has or is in process of joining the mainstream to facilitate witness from within. But he gives at least as many examples of those he calls left who are definitely not in the mainstream, and much of what he calls center is in it.

Quebedeaux’s book would have been much better had he confined himself to discussing such issues and the differing and changing stances that evangelicals and their organizations take regarding them. He should have resisted the urge to force people as a whole into simple left or center categories. By doing so Quebedeaux is guilty of promoting what has been called “lump thinking.” (It is not sufficient for Quebedeaux to put occasional qualifiers or exceptions. The overall thrust of the book is what readers remember.) Instead of respectfully and seriously considering what someone has to say about an issue, lump thinking encourages us to watch for a few code words, look for a few identifying practices, then quickly label the person, lumping him or her in with others whom we have so labeled. This penchant for labeling and lumping is repudiated by Paul in First Corinthians 1–4. There is no substantive difference between what Paul censured and our charging “he is far right,” or “she leans left,” while claiming “I follow Christ.”

I do not say that Christians should not be forthright about their differences. Just because Paul was against factionalism within the body of Christ, this did not blunt his drive to rebuke specific ideas or practices that were wrong. In the four chapters in which he lambasts the spirit of sectarianism, he also rebukes the wrong concept of wisdom and power advocated by at least one of the Corinthian factions. Later in the letter he finds fault with a good many other practices and teachings that were going on in Corinth. We should follow Paul’s example. Faults can be identified without factionalism being fostered. But if we engage in wholesale labeling we greatly reduce the possibility of ministering to one another.

The tendency to factionalism is not restricted to those who are more conservative. Those to the left on one or more issues often demonstrate a sectarian haughtiness toward their brothers who defend the former ways.

I suspect that by reading Quebedeaux many center evangelicals might oppose change of any kind for fear of where it might lead. But I would urge everyone to remember that what Quebedeaux says about those on the left (or elsewhere) is not necessarily so. Many of his more provocative statements are undocumented, such as the assertions: that Bethel, Gordon, and Trinity colleges are more liberal than their respective seminaries; that “rumor has it that 70 percent of Wheaton College seniors are breaking the pledge regularly” (p. 93); that “we can assume that the radicals’ methodology will eventually become dominant in left evangelical circles” (p. 124); or that “the governing boards of these colleges are not blind to this situation. They know that many of their faculty sign the required statement of faith tongue in cheek.… What does concern the governing board … is that the infringement of doctrinal standards and rules of conduct remain a local, ‘in-house’ matter. As long as professors do not publish their liberal views in widely circulated popular magazines read by conservative financial backers of these institutions, much can be tolerated” (p. 93). Quebedeaux predicts in his preface that “many evangelicals will not like what I say or the way I say it.” Such conjectural barbs will undoubtedly make his prediction come true.

Other charges and changes are adequately demonstrated, but then the question needs to be asked, is change necessarily wrong? What might loosely be called the center has undergone many changes in the break with the right that began in the forties. Nor has the right been standing still. Older readers can remember when bobbed hair for women was as keen an issue in many a family and church as ordination of women is today. Doctrinally speaking, a staunch Calvinism befitting Westminster seminary was once widespread among evangelicals. This, too, has changed.

The basic question is not whether someone or some organization has changed, but whether the change is for the better or for the worse. The Protestant Reformation was a movement that introduced major changes. Jesus did many things quite differently from the normative Judaism of his day. The problem is not that Quebedeaux says all change is bad, or that any of his readers would say it in so many words. But in practice many readers will resist even minor changes, because they fear major ones are just a little further down the road.

Instead of resisting all change each proposal or development should be considered on its own merits, and in the light of the Word of God as we are guided in our understanding by the Holy Spirit. Virtually every practice and every doctrine of every believer and congregation is the result of change somewhere along the line, since the days of the apostles. Does this mean that truth changes? No. But our perception of the truth is partial and distorted. And effective ways of communicating truth can change with the circumstances. Change sometimes means that we are moving away from the truth, as evangelicals think that the mainstream has done, or closer to it, as anyone who makes changes believes that he is doing.

Earlier I asked, “If tens of millions of adults are evangelicals, where is the evidence in American life?” Perhaps there aren’t that many evangelicals. But perhaps evangelicals (however many there are) aren’t more conspicuous in the world because, as Quebedeaux says, we have become too worldly. That is a disturbing possibility. Indeed, if evangelicals of the right, center, and left on any issue would seriously consider the shortcomings and sins of which we accuse each other, we might very well do together what we are not doing separately—attaining to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, speaking the truth in love, growing up in every way into him who is the head, from whom the whole body, when each part is working properly, upbuilds itself in love (Eph. 4:13, 15, 16).

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.