Page 5897 – Christianity Today (2024)

NEWS

In recent weeks, parents, pastors, law-enforcement officials, and Jesus-movement leaders around the country have been concerned, intrigued, baffled, and even dismayed by the sudden and mysterious rise of a sect-like movement called the Children of God. Who are these zealous youth and their charismatic leaders, how did the movement arise, and what are its teachings? What strange fascination does it hold for an increasing number of young people?

To answer these and many other questions, the news department ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYtalked to dozens of persons in and out of the movement and dispatched correspondent Rita Warren and her husband to the San Diego area for interviews. Russell Chandler obtained a long interview with promoter J. Fred Jordan, and Edward Plowman visited parents and communes in Maryland, Georgia, and New York and spoke to Children of God leaders in Seattle, Texas, and California. J. D. Douglas investigated the movement in England. Mr. Plowman wrote this story:

Suspicion, intrigue, charges, and counter-charges are swirling in a maelstrom of controversy that involves a growing band of far-out young Christian vagabonds known as the “Children of God.”

The Children’s opponents include parents, pastors, Jesus-movement leaders, former benefactors, and ex-Children. Backers include parents, pastors and Jesus-movement leaders who have joined up, current benefactors, and ex-Children. Charges against the Children range from hypnotic spellbinding and demon possession to apostasy and hate-mongering. Not guilty, reply the sect’s youthful elders, who blame the imbroglio on non-Christians’ inability to comprehend Christian discipleship and on the failure of establishment Christians to forsake the hated world system.

The Children have experienced spectacular gains and severe setbacks alike in the past two months. Under harassment from a newly formed Parents Committee To Free Our Sons and Daughters From the Children of God, the San Diego area Children say they may have to get out of California. Similar parents committees have sprouted elsewhere in southern California and in Texas, and show signs of spreading as rapidly as the Children’s own “colonies.” (There are dozens of colonies in the United States, and bases have been opened this year in Mexico, England, and the Netherlands. Although the Children numbered fewer than 300 at the beginning of the year, thanks to media exposure and super-aggressive outreach their ranks have swelled to nearly 3,000.)

Last month a pro-Children parents group surfaced, led by wealthy Houston industrialist M. J. DuPuy.

Also last month the Children resettled hundreds of their clan after Los Angeles television preacher Fred Jordan evicted leaders from property he owns in Texas and California. Having recently ripped off large segments of the mainstream Jesus movement in the Pacific Northwest, the Children moved many of their refugees to movement houses in Seattle and Vancouver and to a large farm near Burlington, Washington. Shortly after their arrival in Seattle, the Children incurred the ire of ministerial groups; even a gigantic “open house” they threw for the city failed to overcome the suspicions of the church community.

Jordan, 62, cited “disobedience” of the sect’s elders and errors in doctrine as his reasons for evicting them. He had incorporated the Children as a branch of his ministry in mid-1970. Since then, says he, he has given the Children $98,000 in cash (to provide transportation, repairs, and “operating expenses”) and spent $500,000 promoting the group. Jordan claims the outlay included a $ 1,000-a-month salary to the Children’s founder, David Berg, 52. Berg, formerly a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor and connected with Jordan’s American Soul Clinic mission agency since 1954, reportedly is living in London while writing a book and has not been associated with the Children for a year, elders say.

Linda “Deborah” Treadwell (Children shed their “worldly” names for biblical ones), 26, Berg’s eldest daughter, disputes Jordan’s claim about finances. “Other than $100 a week he gave our Los Angeles colony for food,” she claims, “we have not received a dime.” Her husband, “Jethro,” formerly ran Jordan’s data-processing department.

Jethro helped Berg and other relatives get the Children organized in Huntington Beach, California, in the summer of 1968. The group adopted no official name at first, though they were variously known as Teens for Christ (after an earlier Berg group) and Revolutionaries for Christ. The following year a trained group of thirty struck out for various cities in this country and Canada, calling converts to “100 per cent discipleship.” They patterned themselves after the disciples whom Christ sent out “two by two” without possessions, relying on God to provide all needs.

The group included Berg’s other children and subsequently their spouses. They are: “Faith,” 20, and Arnold “Joshua” Dietrich, 30; “Jonathan,” 22, and “Esther” Berg; and Paul “Aaron” Berg, 24. With Dietrich’s brother, Arthur “Caleb,” 23, and Caleb’s wife “Lydia,” the clan is known to insiders as bishops, to outsiders as “colony advisors” or overseers.

Leaders say that charismatic churches at first gave warm welcomes and invited them to speak, then turned a cold shoulder when the Children openly exhorted church members to repent of system-enmeshed lukewarm Christianity and to sell their goods and take up communal-type discipleship. Then the Children went uninvited to churches, issuing calls to repentance or standing in silent vigils.

“We did freaky things in those days,” recalls “Samson,” red-bearded elder at the Children’s colony near Ellensville, New York. In one Ohio fundamentalist church, he recalls, six men ejected him bodily as he quoted Scriptures and a seventh choked him into silence.

The clan and their converts gathered in a silent vigil at the casket of Senator Everett Dirkson in Washington, D. C., in 1969. Clad in red sackcloth they lamented, as Deborah says, “the closing of an era—the country’s failure to put prayer and Bible reading back into the schools.”

After the Dirkson vigil they traveled intact as a “family” in ancient “prophet buses,” trucks, and assorted jalopies. They crashed a Sunday-morning service at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco after a sermon by Episcopal bishop C. Kilmer Myers and startled worshipers with a call to repentance. The city council of nearby San Rafael took up an offering to pay gasoline, bridge tolls, and towing charges to get them out of town there.

Finally, Jordan let them settle on a large ranch hear Mingus, Texas, and in a building he owns in Los Angeles. Later he purchased a 100-acre spread at Coachella, California, and settled a colony on ten acres in return for work in his orchards. He featured testimonies of Children on his television shows, sometimes pegging his appeal for offerings on them. He also licensed and ordained a number of the young men through his Bible college, thereby earning them draft deferments. (One of the Children, who says the sect believes in law and order, relates how he showed up at his draft board and began reciting Scripture at the top of his voice. He says he was thrown out and has not been invited back for classification.)

It was at Jordan’s desert property in Coachella that the Children’s spat with Jordan erupted, says Deborah. Elder “Belteshazzar” complained to Jordan about work and living conditions, especially lack of air conditioning, she explains, adding that the Children worked many hours without pay. Parents, she says, wondered how Jordan could live “in his $100,000 mansion” on the property in plain view of the Children’s poverty conditions. At first Jordan wanted to oust only several elders, but the Children refused to be divided, and the rupture became complete.

The Children live a tightly structured communal life. Members are placed in various “tribes” according to their communal assignments (Zebulon, farming; Joseph, procurement of goods; Levi, elders; Ephraim, laundry; and so on). Basic indoctrination classes for new converts last from three to five months. For the first five days a new convert learns about eternal salvation (the Children are Calvinists), baptism in the Holy Spirit (the Children are Pentecostal), the first five chapters of Acts, and the Children’s relationship to “the world,” particularly their parents, the churches, and “the system.” Then the convert is asked to sign “the revolutionary sheet” introduced last year (many of the early members have not signed it), which commits him and his possessions to the Children. Unusable possessions are sold and the money used to buy and repair buses, shortwave radio equipment, and other items.

The Children do not even own their clothing; they salvage anything in the laundry room that fits. They are conservation conscious. Signs posted in bathrooms specify a limit of three sheets of toilet tissue. Food is plentiful, usually of the donated leftover and dented-can variety. They say they are appalled by American wastefulness. One elder says he discovered bakeries selling leftover bread to pig farmers for a penny a loaf “while poor people go hungry.” Frequently the Children distribute free food to ghetto dwellers.

Colonies are integrated. Most Children are in their late teens and early twenties. About one-third come from nominally Catholic backgrounds. They operate kindergarten and elementary schools using the Montessori method. Dating is forbidden. Marriage proposals are offered during an instant of courtship “as God leads” and subject to approval of the elders. Many of the colonies keep in touch through short wave sets.

Cigarettes, booze, and drugs are taboo. Prayers, not aspirin, are applied to headaches. Television and all magazines and books except the Bible are shunned.

Each colony looks after its own finances and operates as both a missionary training and sending facility. In many cases, the Children’s property has been lent by parents impressed at the transformation of an offspring.

Natural childbirth is practiced. Babies are usually placed in the full-time custody of nursery attendants. “We want our children to feel like they belong to the entire family,” explains Gary “Elijah” Spence of the Washington, D. C., area colony. Critics of the Children, however, say that the practice unscripturally disrupts the basic family unit.

Parents have complained that their children have been spirited away, held incommunicado for days, and somehow alienated from home ties. Parents of Children at a recent Atlanta meeting said their offspring had undergone dramatic personality changes. Such terms as hypnosis, brainwashing, witchcraft, Satanic influences, and drugs were tossed around freely as possible explanations. Indeed, a number of the Children seen in various colonies last month did have glazed eyes and walked about as if in a trance. The explanation, according to Elijah: “We’re stoned on the Spirit, man.”

Seattle Times religion writer Ray Ruppert observed last month that there is no “overt hypnosis on a one-to-one basis. But there may be a kind of self-hypnosis induced in the susceptible by a schedule that keeps members constantly busy and which includes group singing and lively dancing. Some of the young people seem to be worked into a state of frenzy as the dancing and singing goes on for hours.”

A Christian psychiatrist in Atlanta whose daughter is with the Children is convinced that brainwashing techniques are “definitely” used.

Ex-Children said in interviews that they were always at the point of near-exhaustion, and that with the intensive Scripture-memorization program (even during chores) and endless class sessions they had little or no time for personal Bible study or meditation. Skits, songs, and chants stressed hatred of the system, parents, and churches, they said.

New converts are admonished to submit themselves completely to the elders. Ex-Children say leaders hurled vulgar descriptives at them to test the brokenness of their wills. Deborah says, however, she would rebuke elders for using four-letter Words. And Samson declares he would oppose “any elder who does or says anything not in keeping with the Word of God.”

A “security” system also ires many parents who have been unable on visits to talk with their children alone or to get mail through uncensored. Samson says that the security is necessary to prevent parents or infiltrators from planting dope and thus triggering police raids, and to discourage the bodily removal of clan members. “Besides,” he adds, “we want the kids to stay with us.” Incoming mail is censored because parents have tried to “bribe their kids with dope, plane tickets to Europe—anything to get them to come home,” he explains. Outgoing mail is censored in order to “spot spiritual needs.” (His and the mail of other older elders, he admits, is not censored.) Telephone calls are monitored.

Samson says Children are encouraged to write at least one letter home each week and that Sunday afternoons are usually set aside for this chore. “After all,” he scowls, “we want to keep the parents off our backs.” But, he complains, many Children simply don’t write. Also, the Children move around a lot on witnessing assignments, and mail is often late in catching up, he says.

Ex-Children (the dropout rate is said to be 15 per cent) cite numerous reasons for leaving: the emphasis on hatred, dislike of the regimentation, homesickness. One Detroit youth told a reporter the Children’s style of life was simply too rugged; he held no ill will toward them.

Most converts to date have been youths in the drug, free sex, New Left, and eastern religion scenes. Children usually roll into an area in buses, hand out free food, perhaps dance and play rock music, then identify with their subjects and voice expressions of care. The outpouring of love and concern overwhelms many youths from broken homes now existing in a lonely street world.

The Children deny the unproved charges that they are arming themselves. “Vengeance belongs to God,” says Deborah. Even in the event of a Communist takeover of the government—the Children fear this will happen soon—there will be no violence. “The only way to sabotage the government,” declares Samson, “is to live the Bible. This means ripping out every idol in our hearts with spiritual weapons.”

Eschatologically, the Children believe in a mid-Tribulation rapture viewpoint. A Communist anti-Christ will take over America and persecute Christians. The only Bibles left will be those stored in minds. The “systemite” or establishment Christians will cave in. Only a strongly disciplined remnant will survive to witness for Christ.

Early this year NBC television featured the Children in an hour-long documentary (see January 29 issue, page 35) that was rerun this summer. An NBC official reports that most responses came from young people who wanted to know how to contact the Children. Hundreds joined.

Some of the biggest hauls lately have involved the mainstream of the Jesus movement, including Atlanta street-Christian leader David Hoyt, Russell Griggs of Vancouver, and Linda Meissner Salveson of Seattle (see January 29 issue, page 34). All had large followings.

Hoyt joined in June and led most of his 120 followers with him. The Children closed his coffeehouse, restaurant, and all but one of his home ministries, which they colonized with outsiders. Interestingly enough, Hoyt had been writing a book to warn Jesus people about false cults—including the Children of God.

Hoyt’s move split leaders and members of house ministries he had organized in other Southern cities. His mentor, San Francisco street evangelist Kent Philpott, who led Hoyt to Christ in Haight-Ashbury in 1967, denounced the Children in a letter to the 400,000-circulation Hollywood Free Paper, and severed relations with Hoyt. Philpott refuses to recant despite threats of lawsuits by the Children. (Several newspapers, under such threats, have retracted unfavorable stories and apologized in print to the Children.)

An explanatory letter from Hoyt led Griggs, 26, an ordained Pentecostal minister who directs an extensive street-Christian ministry in Vancouver, along with Everett, Washington, leader Robert Cramer to investigate and join the Children. In turn they influenced their colleague Mrs. Salveson to join last month. However, many of her followers balked, and a deep rift has opened between them and the Children. It extends to Mrs. Salveson’s marriage: her husband has sided with the churches and other dissidents against the Children. He claims the clan is trying to break up his home. (A San Diego wife has sued for divorce saying her husband ran away with the Children.)

Families are in turmoil. The Jesus movement is staggering. Churches are troubled. In London a spokesman says the Billy Graham organization people “are split three ways” on the Children. (Deborah insists the Graham office in England helped her sister Faith and other Children to get established in London.)

As Samson puts it: “We are catalysts. We are so far out that no one can claim neutrality. We make people cold or hot. I want to make it so hard that only real Christians will stand up.”

Amid all the ferment many parents are still wondering where their children have gone. “What did we do wrong?” asks a Maryland architect whose 18-year-old daughter dropped out of college to join the Children.

“Parents just can’t admit that they didn’t give their children what they really needed,” Samson muses.

Rx For Medical Ethics: An Injection Of Compassion

It took fifteen days, but the baby finally died. A fairly simple surgical procedure would have corrected the intestinal block that prevented his assimilation of food; but because of another congenital defect—mongolism—his parents refused permission for the operation. When a judge said that because of the child’s retardation no court would overrule the parents, doctors removed the infant to a dark corner of the hospital nursery with a sign on his bassinet: “Nothing by mouth.”

With that emotional bang—presented in a film of an actual case at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore—a day-long symposium on medical ethics opened last month in Washington, D. C. It was as startling as the cannon boom that tested acoustics in the John F. Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, being used for the first time. The acoustical experiment’s cloud of smoke disappeared in the theater’s red ceiling; the murky issues raised at the symposium, sponsored by the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, were not so readily dispelled.

The experts in medicine, law, politics, and ethics who assembled during the morning session for a panel discussion of the film agreed that the life of the infant should have been saved. It was, said Episcopal minister John Fletcher, who directs Washington’s Inter-Met Theological Institute, “a very primitive way of handling the problem.”

But that society should somehow have intervened was the closest the group came to consensus on how the case should have been handled. “To be human,” declared Yale ethics professor James Gustafson, citing Old and New Testament texts, “is to be for others as well as for ourselves.”

Man’s ability to make life-and-death decisions gives him no choice but to “play God,” author Michael Harrington told the overflow audience of Kennedys, doctors, clergy, and students. “Once we have that ability, even the humble refusal to exercise it in the name of higher values is itself a God-like choice.”

The issue had been anticipated by symposium planners, who had arranged seven concurrent panels comprised of about a hundred scientists and ethicists to spend the afternoon discussing the three “Rs” basic to Kennedy Foundation concerns: human rights, retardation, and research. Topics ranged from who has the right to be born to how and why people should care about others.

At the end, moderators were hard pressed to summarize lively and far-ranging discussions. Perhaps the sharpest disagreement occurred when panel members discussing “fabricated” babies challenged the experiments of a Cambridge scientist that are leading the way toward test-tube babies. Moral theologian Paul Ramsey called the work of physiology professor Robert Edwards “unethical medical experimentation on future possible human beings.”

Laboratory fertilized eggs may produce deformed babies, Princeton University professor Ramsey and others cautioned; no amount of testing before birth can guarantee a normal child because the final test might cause the deformity. “You can only go ahead if you accept the necessity of infanticide,” warned Harvard biologist James Watson, who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

The panel headlined by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner may have been the afternoon’s major attraction. Addressing a standing-room-only crowd that included Joan Kennedy and a young, blue-jeaned couple carrying their motorcycle helmets, the controversial Harvard professor discussed which comes first: compassionate feelings or charitable acts. A person feels compassion for, say, institutionalized retardates who are being mistreated, Skinner suggested, after he has behaved charitably as a result of being subjected to controls himself. The behavior produces—as a by-product—a feeling usually called compassion.

Meanwhile, the audience at another panel seemed to reverse Skinner’s order of acts and feelings. The group, composed largely of uniformed clergy and nuns, asked several questions about how to translate caring into action. Among panel members questioned was Mother Theresa, a nun whose concern for the poor in Calcutta, India, led her to found an order now ministering around the world.

At day’s end, the issues remained as cloudy as ever, leaving much for Georgetown University’s new Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics. A $1.35 million Kennedy Foundation grant will, according to Georgetown president Robert J. Henle, bring “ethicists into laboratories, clinical areas, operating and delivery rooms where the life-and-death decisions involving both science and ethics are daily being made.”

JANET ROHLER GREISCH

Future Theology: Hope Or Suffering?

The role of theology in helping man to realize his future, and whether that future will culminate in the unification of mankind, were among problems discussed at an international conference on “Hope and the Future of Man” held last month in New York City.

The conference was sponsored by the American Teilhard de Chardin Association, Cardinal Bea Institute of Woodstock College, Trinity Institute, and Union Theological Seminary. It brought together leading representatives of the German theology of hope, adherents to the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, and American process theologians. During three days of discussion the thinkers exchanged ideas and views on the future of man, emphasizing suffering more than hope. More than 1,000 theologians, seminarians, teachers, and students attended.

Jürgen Moltmann of Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen, author of the book Theology of Hope and a founder of that school of thought, injected a point of controversy early in the conference by questioning its very theme:

“The theme ‘Hope and the Future of Man’ had a great appeal ten years ago,” he said. “Now the catch-words are no longer ‘Hope and the Future of Man,’ but perhaps more, ‘Frustration, Betrayal, and the Oppression of Man.’”

Moltmann challenged the Teilhardian idea that mankind is moving toward a convergence. He asserted that the hopes in the First World and the Third World are different hopes, and suggested that theology will have to speak to oppressed groups more than it traditionally has. He called for a “liberation theology” that “radically focuses on Christian hope.”

Wolfhart Pannenberg, also associated with the theology of hope, attempted to synthesize the theoretical and practical natures of theology in a way that would be acceptable to both sides. “Certainly theology, as every other intellectual activity, always expresses the concerns of a particular individual as a member of a particular group,” he agreed, adding: “To the degree we get at truth, we overcome other particularities of our diverse interests.”

By the end of the conference, the participants’ attention had been so focused on the political applications of theology that Johannes Metz of West-falische Wilhelms University in Münster, a representative of the theology of hope, affirmed that “every theology attempting to reflect on Christian traditions in the context of the world’s problems becomes political theology.” He concluded that the problem of the future is primarily political and social.

Because of the nature of the conference and the three schools of thought represented, evangelical theology was for the most part excluded. At one point Carl Braaten of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, an adherent of the theology of hope, observed that “an eschatology without Christology is very difficult for me as a Christian.”

DARRELL J. TURNER

Billy Graham’S Day

North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County paid elaborate tribute last month to its most famous native son, evangelist Billy Graham. The acclaim symbolizes the marked change in public attitude toward evangelistic ministries since the heyday of fundamentalism, when itinerant preachers were widely equated with Elmer Gantry.

Leading the tribute was President Nixon, who flew in from Washington for the occasion. He called Graham “the top preacher, the top evangelist in the world today.”

The highlight of “Billy Graham Day” in Charlotte was a special commemorative program witnessed by a turnaway crowd of more than 12,000. “You have contributed to America and the world one of the great leaders of our time,” Nixon told them. Thousands of other people lined the streets of Charlotte and waved and cheered as the President and evangelist drove from the airport on a clear, warm autumn afternoon.

The climax of the program, held at the enclosed Charlotte Coliseum, was the unveiling by Nixon of a three-by-four-foot bronze marker that has a likeness of the evangelist and an inscription composed and signed by the President: “Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time. Truly a man of God. The force of his spirit has ennobled millions in this and other lands. I salute him with deep affection and profound respect.”

The marker is being put on the site of Graham’s birthplace in Charlotte.

The ceremony honoring Graham was probably the most prestigious commemorative affair ever arranged for a Christian evangelist. Along with President and Mrs. Nixon were Treasury Secretary and Mrs. John B. Connally, the two U. S. senators from North Carolina, congressmen, the governor, the mayor, and many other dignitaries.

Local business and government leaders who arranged the event gave Graham a plaque proclaiming that he was “a preacher of the Gospel of Christ to more people than any other man in history.” Graham responded by praising the people of the area and also putting in a good word for Nixon (the two have been friends for nearly twenty years).

Graham commended Nixon for his moral sensitivity. He recalled a time when he made a suggestion to the President only to have it rejected by Nixon, whom he quoted as saying, “That wouldn’t be morally right.”

The two local newspapers carried lead editorials honoring Graham. The Charlotte Observer expressed concern, however, over whether he is assuming the role of “court chaplain.” The Charlotte News noted in an apparently complimentary context that Graham has become “the symbol of what might be called America’s ‘civil religion.’”

Graham’s closest friends point out that there is a vast quantitative gap between people who endorse Graham theologically and those who merely respect him, and that mutual admiration ought not to be construed as religious or political collusion.

Graham, who will be 53 on November 7, was born on a small dairy farm now the site of a commercial development. He was converted in a tent meeting under the ministry of the evangelist Mordecai Ham (the site was just a mile from the coliseum where Graham was honored). He now lives at a mountain-top home about 100 miles west of Charlotte.

Nixon, who came on the program after the evangelist had spoken, declared that “it’s the character of a nation that determines whether it survives,” and expressed confidence that America would retain its moral and spiritual strength. He said Graham had contributed significantly to that end.

But in contrast to the evangelist, who seldom makes a public utterance without exalting Christ, Nixon, perhaps all too aware that he is president both of saints and of skeptics, avoided any mention of deity.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

That american college education is in serious crisis, particularly in the liberal arts and sciences, is apparent. Far-reaching social and cultural changes sweeping our campuses are leaving behind a strange flotsam and jetsam for us to sort out.

Academic strongholds, presumably exalting rational criteria, have erupted into places of rioting and demonstration, moral deviation and permissiveness, drug addiction and youth rebellion. Once the intellectually critical fortresses of American life, colleges and universities are instead being shaken and remolded by pressures with which they may be unable to cope. As the price of staying in business, not a few college administrations have compromised the role of reason and persuasion by placating minority groups, radicals, and reactionaries.

American education as a whole is headed for far-reaching changes in the very near future. Almost all traditional notions about education are likely to be questioned by creatively critical educators. To what extent should parents determine the educational policies and procedures affecting their children? Can education be achieved, and perhaps more effectively, by alternatives to the liberal-arts college or university? Is the bachelor’s degree—or any four-year program, for that matter—sacrosanct? Should new patterns of post-high-school education be projected that automatically pour every student into collegiate work? Are mass-media teaching techniques adequate substitutes for the classroom?

Questions like these may not be the fundamental ones in education, but they point to pragmatic matters that must be faced. Evangelicals, too, must face them, for Christian education can escape neither the impact nor the competition of such concerns. Indeed, a virile educational task force would take some initiative in projecting creative alternatives.

Public criticism now often leveled at the secular campus concerns the content and consequences of liberal learning more than its means and methods. Relativistic attitudes toward truth and morality, disrespect for inherited values, ready tolerance of radicalism, blatant atheism, and neglect of reflective exposition and appraisal—these are matters of mounting complaint.

But on-campus discontents strike even to deeper levels. Why have advanced liberal learning at all? we are asked. Some students contend that campuses ought to be platforms for aggressive political activity and social change, rather than towers of rational contemplation. But others ask whether—in view of its ambiguous rationale, intellectual open-endedness and lack of cohesion—a college education is any longer worth $12,000 and four years of time and energy. Why not simply accumulate this world’s goods and preferred vocational status, since many business firms now devalue a college degree? Still other students welcome educational happenings that take a novel form, such as the free university. Some think that science’s destructive uses—whether in war or pollution—and its massive technological depersonalization require opting out of the whole cultural enterprise.

A great and influential god is dying. On its breastplate are etched the words LIBERAL LEARNING. Its final blasphemy is its verdict that the God of the Bible is dead. The fatal cancer of liberal learning is its assumption that empirical methodology validates the only truth and reality on which man can bank his life. The more this sensate methodology is scientifically refined, the more it demeans theological and moral assertions to the level of personal preferences and excludes intelligent decision, purposive acts, and personal selves from the real world. Man no less than his Maker is reduced to insignificance. When modern philosophy sponsored “Does it work?” (or “Is it profitable?”) in place of “Is it true?” as the prime question, it addressed to the world of reality its theory of knowledge that made mastering the cosmos more crucial than preserving man’s soul in this life and the next.

Colleges and universities in America are in line to experience the public disfavor that has already engulfed the institutional church. Just as multitudes of disenchanted churchgoers are canceling financial support and dissociating themselves from ecclesiasticism gone fuzzily ecumenical and doctrinally nebulous, so educational institutions may plummet into disfavor among alumni who have long championed liberal education but who are now perturbed by administrative policies of schools they endow and the open rebellion of students they shelter. Some alumni will turn their educational sympathies to new educational forms and structures.

Many church-related colleges are caught in the compromises of both institutional church and secular education, and may be doubly vulnerable to alumni pressures. Financial cutbacks are already heavy.

With the rise in enrollment expected in government-subsidized institutions, evangelical colleges are likely to influence a smaller and smaller segment of the student world. In many cases they will face a strenuous fight for survival. As colleges strive to keep abreast of the times, expanding computerization, the need for increasingly sophisticated, scientific equipment, and incorporation of bigger and better communications techniques will continue to push competitive education to the hilt and often to the wall.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Christians fail, and the Church fails, when the wrong weapons are used. Failure is written across the shattered efforts of millions who name the name of Christ because they were unaware of the nature of the warfare in which they were engaged, or because they tried to contend using the natural weapons of this world rather than the supernatural ones God provides.

As to the nature of the warfare, the Apostle Paul says, “Our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12, Phillips).

Even though we may recognize that the struggle in which we are engaged is spiritual, we so often sally forth with man-designed weapons. And so often we fail miserably!

Recognizing this tendency to fight the Lord’s battles with the arm of flesh, the Apostle Paul warns us, “Though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3–5).

No wonder we fail! We answer human arguments with human arguments; we meet organizations with organizations of our own, and worldly power with equally worldly methods; we oppose the wisdom of this world with wisdom of the same sort—anything that human ingenuity can devise with seemingly equal ingenuity. And we get nowhere!

The battle in which we are engaged is a spiritual battle for the minds of men, and there is no human wisdom by which we can win that battle.

The arguments against the divine revelation and the mystery of the Gospel are satanically clever. No man can defeat them through the natural processes of reason.

The human mind is capable of imaginations that plumb the depths of perversity and depravity. They cannot be countered by philosophies that originate at the human level.

Until and unless we realize that we cannot overcome “spiritual wickedness in high places” by our own natural resources, we are doomed to failure when we attempt to engage the enemy.

The limit of human pride and conceit cannot be calculated, for it extends to a resistance to God himself. That such resistance can be humbled and made captive to Christ is a fact to be treasured and is the ultimate hope of any witness for our Lord.

What are our invincible weapons? Are they available to all? How are they to be used?

The amazing thing is that they are not only available to all but are effective in the hands of even the humblest saint. But before we consider these God-given weapons, let us clear up some widely held misconceptions.

The Church is not in the world to convince men of its relevance to contemporary life. Rather it is here to convict men of sin through the preaching of the Gospel.

Nor is the Church in the world to win men’s allegiance to an organization. It exists for the purpose of winning men to faith in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, its purpose is not to proclaim a logic compatible with the world’s outlook. The Church is the custodian and the minister of spiritual truth as revealed in the Scriptures.

Because its warfare should be on a God-designed plane, the Church is effective only as it recognizes itself to be a spiritual organism, empowered by the Spirit. Therefore, the weapons of its warfare are credible only to those willing to accept and use them by faith.

These invisible and invincible weapons include:

The power of a risen and triumphant Christ.

The power of his Holy Spirit.

The power of the Holy Scriptures, the Sword of the Spirit.

The power of prayer.

The power of a life exhibiting the transforming presence of Christ.

The power of faith in the promises of God.

And finally, the power of unselfish love.

To the world, such “weapons” are meaningless. To those who use them in faith, these weapons are the power of God unto salvation and the means of spiritual victory.

The Apostle Paul, a man whose life demonstrated his complete surrender to his Lord, states his heart’s desire in a poignant affirmation (Phil. 3:7–11) in which he recognizes that the supreme witness to the Gospel’s power rests in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have that same witness today. Our hope rests not in a creed but in a living Saviour, one who overcame the power of death and through whom we have a similar hope.

How we need to realize that with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost there was made available to all believers a new and inexhaustible source of power! No men have ever had such privileges as our Lord’s disciples, but even they were instructed to wait for the Holy Spirit. Jesus told them “You shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you” (Acts 1:8). How many battles are lost today because they are waged by “manpower” and not in and by the Holy Spirit!

Then there is the power of the Word. How Satan hates the Scriptures and how consistently he has attacked them! In the entire armor of God the Scriptures are the only offensive weapon. Can we not learn from our Lord’s three thrusts of the Sword at Satan in the wilderness? Are we so ignorant of the validity and effectiveness of this weapon that we fail to use it when beset by the devil?

In the mysterious providence of God he has ordained the power of prayer. Countless saints know by experience that the impossible becomes a reality because prayer is powerful. By it the resources of Almighty God are brought to bear on problems and situations that confront us; we see and know that “prayer changes things.”

A surrendered Christian exhibits power—not anything that he is of himself, but the power of a new life in Christ—and through the witness of a redeemed life he stands in the midst of and also above all that the world can muster against him.

Also in the arsenal of the invincible weapons God has given us is complete faith in God’s Son—his person and his work. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith” (1 John 5:4b).

And finally, victory comes through Christian love, a love that is “patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, willing to yield to others, not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor. 13:4, 5, paraphrased).

Our God has provided invincible weapons for our warfare. Let us, like King David of old, put off the armor of another and go forth to the battle fully equipped by the Lord of hosts.

Centuries ago Aristotle said that the aim of education is to make pupils like or dislike what they should. There are some things men ought to like, and these constitute values that remain forever valid. In Western culture the Judeo-Christian heritage has always been the source of values. But today that value system seems to be losing its grip.

Professor Seymour Halleck of the psychiatry department at the University of Wisconsin has said:

In my opinion we are moving toward a crisis related to the manner in which values are generated and maintained in a changing world. As old values are attacked we are not creating new ones to replace them. There is a real danger that values of any kind may be losing their power, and that young people in particular may find themselves existing in a valueless world. There may be an inherent rightness in doing away with traditional values that seem irrational and cannot be justified. Yet if such values are indiscriminately destroyed before they are replaced by more rational values, our society will experience an unprecedented degree of chaos [Think magazine, Sept.–Oct. 1968, p. 6].

In days not very long ago certain values were accepted by most men. Such traits as self-reliance, honesty, truthfulness, sincerity, fairness, courtesy, altruism, honor, obedience, loyalty, and patriotism were highly regarded and widely practiced. Sneaks, bullies, cheats, bad losers, traitors, tattletales, busybodies, bad sports, and crybabies were looked down on. Bastardy, homosexuality, and fornication were regarded as outside the pale of decent society.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt fell in love with his wife’s secretary, Eleanor Roosevelt offered him a divorce so he could marry the woman. But in that day a divorce would have meant the end of his political career, and so the marriage was preserved. Not many years ago Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce caused him to lose his bid for nomination for the presidency of the United States. Today it would make little difference.

Senator Edward Kennedy, who was rusticated from Harvard for having someone else sit for one of his examinations, was later caught up in the Mary Jo Kopechne case at Chappaquiddick. Many people thought that politically he was through. Only a few years later, however, changing values leave him as one of the leading presidential candidates.

Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman wrote a best-seller (with the help of a ghost writer who recently sued to get some financial returns) entitled Steal This Book. In this instructive manual he describes in detail how people can get a free ride through crooked dealing. He tells how to get air travel without paying for it, for instance, and how to avoid paying a restaurant check. But the worst thing about the book is its wide sales. What it says about its author it implies about its audience. If Hoffman’s morally degenerate practices became universal, society would come to a standstill; every man would do only what was convenient and to his liking and immediate advantage.

Hoffman might shout “Right on!” to an article in a recent issue of Psychology Today in which Dr. Lawrence R. Zeitlin, an industrial psychologist, regards employee theft as “a motivational tool” and a “form of job enrichment.” “By permitting a controlled amount of theft,” he argues, “management can avoid reorganizing jobs and raising wages.” This is a purely pragmatic approach, uncomplicated by a sense of abiding right and wrong.

Bearing a child out of wedlock seems neither to have embarrassed Bernadette Devlin nor to have affected her political career. Daniel Ellsberg won acclaim for stealing and shamelessly reproducing the Pentagon papers. Young people have been cheered for burning draft cards, bombing draft-board offices, defying the police, and trashing the city of Washington. The disheartening list could go on and on.

In The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis clearly shows that values cannot be created: they can only be discovered, for they are part of ultimate reality. He scores the decline of true values and claims that to negate these values threatens to bring about the abolition of man himself. “If nothing is obligatory for its own sake,” he says, “nothing is obligatory at all.”

When true values go, civilization collapses. Internal moral rot can do to a people what no external force could accomplish. What is urgently needed today is a recovery of true values. As we approach the Thanksgiving season, however blessed we may be materially, we will be devoid of what we really need unless we recapture the ethical undergirding of the Pilgrim fathers and once again embrace for ourselves and teach our children the real values that make up a good life. And the best way for this to come about is through a spiritual reawakening.

The Children Of God

The “Children of God” are a burgeoning sect of young Christian radicals who may be making more enemies than converts (see News, page 38). But they must be taken seriously.

The controversial Children deserve to be commended for their commitment to all-out discipleship, their love for one another, their feeding of the poor, their attempt to follow Scripture, their dedication to evangelistic outreach. The drug-cure rate among those who stay seems to be close to 100 per cent. Many Children are lovable young believers who seem to be sincerely pursuing what they believe are the ideals of New Testament faith.

There is little or no evidence to support some of the criticisms leveled at the Children: that they are Communists, that they practice mass hypnosis and use drugs, that they hold converts captive against their will.

But there are saddening, objectionable elements in the Children’s beliefs that can only damage the cause of Christ. Their teaching that theirs is the only valid life style if one is to be a disciple is to be rejected as unscriptural and divisively exclusivist. The prime basis of their claim is Acts 2:44, 45—“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” But this is merely a description, not a command. The Holy Spirit beckons believers to live as disciples within the context of many vocations and styles, to develop God-glorifying attitudes toward possessions and work. The Children’s narrow views, tinged with spiritual pride, are splitting the Jesus movement and confusing many young people whom God may be calling to another kind of life. If the Children claim a singular obedience they are simply revealing their lack of a sense of history.

Admittedly, many church members may not have shown the Children much about true discipleship; but this does not justify the Children’s insistence that local churches are not in God’s plan and must be dismantled.

The Children’s tendency to bend the Bible to fit their own whims smacks of cultism and leads to dangerously blind spots in crucial realms of life. They presumptuously accuse Paul of having been out of God’s will whenever he worked at tent-making. (No one has yet suggested this of Christ, who during his “silent years” presumably worked as a carpenter for pay.) The Children need to be more honest in their use of Scripture. A greater understanding and appreciation of hermeneutics would help.

A dual code of ethics seems to prevail among the Children’s leaders. Four-letter street vulgarities are common, and often used (sometimes on allegedly biblical grounds!) for shock value. Procurers frequently evade the truth in their approaches to businessmen. Some leaders justify lying, stealing, and cheating to rip off Satan’s “system.”

The Children’s regimented training program that stresses “security” and unquestioning submission to elders lends itself to brainwashing techniques and inhibits the dynamic spontaneity of the Spirit. One result is that some Children seem more devoted to their cause than to Christ.

The alienation cited by many parents and other outsiders who have had dealings with the Children stems in part from a pressured conditioning (chants, songs, lectures) that unduly stresses the “hate” of Luke 14:26 (“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple”) and the need to hate the “system.” Children tend to confront the world along the judgmental lines of Old Testament prophets rather than in the New Testament spirit of love.

We hope that the Children of God will come to a wider acceptance of the Body of Christ, and that they will adhere more closely to the “truth-in-packaging” mandates of the New Testament. It is not hard to understand the appeal that the Children of God movement has for many young people who have emerged from a drug culture or who are fed up with overemphasis on materialism and an establishment system that is top-heavy with bureaucracy. Many of the Children have come out of the dregs of evil with scars. Some Children of God leaders are more culpable. Many of them have been in—and out—of various Christian movements for years. When the charisma of and enthusiasm for the latest expression of experiential religion wane, they seem to cast about for a new “high” to rejuvenate the high-pitch zeal so necessary to keep their leadership role unchallenged.

Nevertheless, we also hope that those in the churches will not shut their doors or ears—or hearts—to the Children but will act out of compassion. Those who are sincerely misguided deserve an extra measure of patience and tolerance.

On Concentrating Energies

A one-year-old citizens’ lobbying group that is generally acknowledged to have had some success in influencing legislators’ votes recently offered a set of principles to account for its accomplishments when many similar organizations are mired in futility. Some of the principles could serve as guidelines for those who are “lobbying” to persuade men to vote for Christ as Saviour and Lord.

The first principle called for “full-time, continuing effort.” Enthusiasm that waxes and wanes is sufficient neither for winning votes in Congress nor for obeying properly our commission to proclaim the Gospel. The second principle is “to limit the number of targets and hit them hard.” In contrast to many Christian groups, this citizens’ lobby doesn’t take positions on some topic just to declare itself, nor does it carry on education just for the sake of education. It takes stands only on issues that it intends to fight through to a conclusion. Many Christians, both individually and in groups, take on far more tasks than they can properly handle. How much better to carry on a few ministries well than many inadequately! Elsewhere in this issue it is recommended that congregations feel free to specialize in those activities for which they are best fitted rather than try to maintain a token effort in every area (page 12). Good advice.

A final principle of the citizens’ lobby that is especially relevant for Christians is the need “to organize for action.” The explanation is worth quoting—let those who have ears to hear ponder its application to their Christian associations: “It sounds so obvious. But it so often doesn’t happen. Many groups talk of action but are essentially organized for study, discussion, or education. Still others keep members busy with organization housekeeping, ego-gratifying committee chores, internal politics, and passing of resolutions.”

Our Lord himself said that in certain matters “the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Surely we have just been considering an example of secular wisdom from which the Church can learn.

Confronting Church Lobbyists

A commendably forthright letter signed by nineteen Presbyterian congressmen questions whether it is wise and proper for church bodies to make political pronouncements.

The letter declares: “As Presbyterians currently serving in the United States Congress, we wish to express our concern that the deliverances of the 183rd General Assembly (1971) of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and certain statements and actions of officials of that body are being interpreted as religious doctrine of the Christian faith or moral dogma of the Presbyterian denomination.”

They called such interpretations “inconsistent with the belief in the personal and direct relationship between the individual and his God” and “offensive in view of the traditional separation between Church and state in our land.”

The letter was sent to Dr. William P. Thompson, United Presbyterian stated clerk, and to the editor of the Presbyterian Layman, which published the full text in its October issue. In July, at the direction of the General Assembly, a luncheon was held in the Capitol for the purpose of presenting Presbyterian congressmen with copies of the General Assembly’s pronouncements. The congressmen’s letter expresses the view that such lobbying is highly dubious activity.

“As public servants who are also Presbyterians,” the letter states, “we belong to different political parties and hold divergent philosophies on questions of public policy relating to the political, economic, social, and international issues of the day which the temporary occupants of the hierarchy of our Church feel constrained to address. We acknowledge that our divergent views on temporal matters often spring from common spiritual and religious convictions and question that our political differences make us any less Christian or Presbyterian.”

We join the congressmen in petitioning church leaders “to concentrate more on the issues which unite us as men of good will seeking personal salvation, and less on those conceits which divide us as partisans on transitory issues.”

The Facts Of (New) Life

Hariette Surovell, a sixteen-year-old student in Queens who is a member of the High School Women’s Coalition, works for her beliefs and gets things done. In an article in the New York Times entitled “Most Girls Just Pray,” she describes the ways in which she is working to combat misinformation or lack of information about contraception. Her revealing report on the knowledge most high-school girls have about reproduction seems to give validity to some sex educationists’ cause. But she concludes with this:

It is obvious that the answer to this problem [of unwanted pregnancy] is not to tell the teenagers to stop having sex. The solution is that we be taught methods of birth control and where to obtain contraceptives. This does not mean that every teenager must use birth control. If a girl wants to get pregnant that should be her option [New York Times, October 1, 1971].

C. S. Lewis remarked, more than once, that in this age it is impossible to convince an unregenerate person that premarital sex is sinful until you convince him that Christ is who he says he is and therefore demands our allegiance and obedience to his laws. Rather than merely wagging our heads over and fingers at promiscuous young people, let’s try to forward God’s facts of life more effectively.

The ‘Local’ Vote

We are realizing that although we have local elections, there are, strictly speaking, no local issues. The problems that plague New York’s Manhattan ultimately effect Kansas’—and vice versa. Honesty and responsibility in government, the ecological and economic challenges, these are at the heart of all the political contests waged the past few weeks at city, county, and state levels across America.

It is unfortunate that local elections have taken such a back seat to balloting on a national scale. Many of our problems are such that if we tackled them more energetically and realistically within our communities, the overall picture might not be nearly so bleak. But we choose to pass the buck up higher—and then complain about the results.

Bringing Peace To Ulster

The informal war between Ulster and Ireland continues unabated. Thousands of British troops guard the embattled region as more people die needlessly.

The great contradiction in this conflict is that while both the Protestants and the Roman Catholics profess to be Christian, neither side seems to live up to that profession. If people who profess Christian principles cannot resolve their differences in the Spirit of Christ, motivated by the law of love, what hope is there for an end to strife between those who do not accept these principles?

One of the marks of Christianity is its ability to transform men so that they are reconciled not only to God but also to one another. As the Christmas season dawns and we celebrate the birthday of the Prince of peace, it will be an anachronism for Ulster and Ireland to remain at loggerheads. Certainly the time is ripe for those who really love Christ to get together, Protestant and Catholic, and work out a settlement. Nothing would do more to prove to a skeptical world that Christianity is a live option and a peace bearer in a strife-torn world.

On Parking Your Intellect

Don’t try to understand God. This is poor advice that comes all too regularly from some well-meaning and otherwise intelligent Christian believers. Some put it this way: “If God were small enough for our minds, then he wouldn’t be big enough for our needs.”

The statement is a non-sequitur that presumes mental satisfaction not to be among mankind’s legitimate needs. It is also a disappointing apologetic. It stems from an unwarranted concession to skepticism, and is a weak counterattack against the argument that biblical faith is rooted in irrationality.

Such a defense is unnecessary. Nobody asks to know all there is to know about God. The intellect merely seeks enough understanding to fulfill the desire that He himself created within us.

Except for lazy people and those who insist upon looking for him only on their own terms, God can be adequately understood. That’s why he has revealed himself in the written and the incarnate word.

The Compassion Pace

For nearly a decade the world has been bathed in a Niagara of talk about Southeast Asia. Yet in this same time relatively little private initiative has been expended to aid suffering Asians. Most people are content simply to press for the kind of solution that would disengage the rest of the world from the continuing problems there. Never mind, for example, that it may be many years before Southeast Asia has anything like a half-decent amount of medical care.

It is good to note that evangelicals are again in the forefront in looking out for the physical as well as the spiritual needs of that part of the world. Next year, World Vision plans to construct a $500,000 hospital in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. It will open with at least one hundred beds and will be the first Protestant institution in that land. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, which has served in most parts of Southeast Asia longer than any other group, will administer the hospital.

The venture obviously involves risks, but as an expression of Christian compassion it will pay eternal dividends. May it also prod concerned people everywhere to join in voluntary action to alleviate Cambodia’s needs.

Spiritual Copout

Passing acquaintance with the lives of Christian saints may give one the impression that these people somehow attained a quality of life that eludes the rest of us. But biographers tend to accent the victories of their heroes and underplay the defeats. While it is important to stress what life in Christ ought to be, we need to realize that few if any reach this ideal this side of the grave.

David the sweet psalmist of Israel was a man after God’s own heart. Yet his pilgrimage was uneven; his problems were many, his defeats (including adultery and murder) epochal. We tend to read David’s psalms looking only for expressions of faith, confidence, and victory. We miss the marching beat of anxiety, fear, vacillation, the desire to escape or run away.

In Psalm 55 David cries out: “I am overcome by my trouble. I am distraught by the noise of the enemy.… My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me.…” This is no picture of a conquering hero. Here is a finite human being, perplexed, anxious, and fearful. He has not appropriated the resources available to him. He is hanging on grimly.

In a passage that could be taken to be a product of our own day, David expresses his desire to run away from his problems, to find release by what is currently called copping out. He exclaims: “Oh that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; yea, I would wander afar, I would lodge in the wilderness, I would haste to find me a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.” But there was no place to go.

In this extremity David said: “I will call upon God.” He could not know whether God would remove his difficulties, but he did believe that God would hear him and would give him the endurance he needed. So his despair gives way to hope, his lament to a song of expectancy. He sings out: “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.”

We all have moments of darkness and fits of despondency. So have all the saints through all the ages. This is part of life and helps to prepare us for that glorious moment when the deliverance and the rest we crave will finally come.

In Or Out Of The Circle?

The Church Before the Watching World, by Francis A. Schaeffer (1971, Inter-Varsity, 105 pp., paperback, $1.25), is reviewed by Donald Tinder, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Of the many issues currently dividing evangelicals, none has been more acrimonious than the question of what to do when one’s denomination becomes influenced by those who advocate doctrinal error. A Christian may freely move from one denomination to another when he changes his own doctrinal views. But what does he do when his denomination changes its mind?

The four basic answers have been to leave regretfully, to leave bumptiously, to stay in quietly, and to stay in to contend for orthodoxy. Francis Schaeffer used to take the second position. (In the thirties he left the Northern Presbyterians with Machen and soon sided with McIntire in the disputes among the seceders.) But for some years now he has advocated the first (having sided with those opponents of McIntire who broke from him in the mid-fifties). Schaeffer well knows two of the attitudes that he now decries: failure to love apostates as persons, and failure to love fellow believers who do not agree with the timing or manner of seceding.

This latest book consists of four essentially sermonic essays. The first concludes that “historic Christianity and either the old or the new liberal theology are two separate religions with nothing in common except certain terms which they use with totally different meanings.” Data to support this conclusion can be found in Schaeffer’s other books.

The second essay effectively marshalls the biblical evidence demanding the harsh but true conclusion that the theology of our day that “is only humanism spoken in classical Protestant terms” is spiritual adultery, “worse, much worse, than physical adultery.” This essay has already appeared as an appendix of The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century.

In the same book the other appendix was “The Mark of the Christian,” which was also issued as a separate book. It is necessary reading because in it Schaeffer contends for observable love among true Christians who disagree among themselves. Indeed, many do disagree with Schaeffer’s contention in his third essay that Christians should not be in denominations where false teaching is too prevelant to be disciplined. I definitely agree with both contentions, but, regretfully, I don’t think Schaeffer has made a strong enough case to convince those who don’t agree. He tells what those who leave or have left should be like, and this is needed. But the United Methodists and Presbyterians, the state churchmen of northern Europe and Britain, and others who believe in opposing apostasy from within their historic denominations are not given biblical reasons to change. Perhaps Schaeffer will address himself to this task, guided especially by the arguments he has found have actually worked in convincing individuals and congregations to secede in the proper spirit.

There is one glaring inaccuracy in the chapter. It is not true that only three of the larger Protestant denominations in America failed to come under liberal control a generation ago. Even today, of the fifteen largest white denominations (theological evaluation of the black denominations must be along different lines), six are conservative and three more have large conservative minorities.

The final essay is an appendix that presents what Schaeffer considers to be irreducible essentials of the faith. He describes them by the boundaries that should not be crossed rather than by exact formulations, over which there are legitimate differences. “There is room for discussion within each circle, but we must not forget that there is a circle to be in.” This essay provides a good starting point for discussion. Although I agree with the proposition, I would add that the circles themselves, as Schaeffer has drawn them, are also open to discussion.

On the whole, this is another stimulating piece of work, yet one that calls for further and more substantial offerings from the author to increase the likelihood of convincing many others of both “the principle of the practice of the purity of the visible church” and “the principle of the practice of an observable love and oneness among all true Christians regardless of who and where they are.”

The Fabric Of Exposition

The Thought of Rudolf Bultmann, by André Malet (Doubleday, 1971, 440 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Robert D. Knudsen, associate professor of apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Even though nearly everybody wants to go beyond him, Rudolf Bultmann is still one of the best for the theological student to read if he wants to grasp the tendencies of contemporary theology. The reader may differ sharply with him; yet he can only be amazed at the deftness of erudition with which Bultmann weaves his reinterpretation of the gospel message together with threads of thought to which modern man has been attached to form a complete theological system.

Bultmann himself gave enthusiastic endorsement to Malet’s book. The work must certainly rate among the best expositions of Bultmann’s thought. It is precisely that, an exposition; it offers almost no criticism of Bultmann. According to Malet, Bultmann has successfully carried out his task of liberating the true gospel message, of letting it be seen in its true proportions so that it can be efficacious for modern man. The evangelical will have to take issue with this conclusion; nevertheless, he will profit immensely if he takes this genial compendium in hand as a guide to the reading of Bultmann himself, and also as a stimulant to comparing Bultmann’s position with those of other contemporaries.

An important qualification Malet has as an expositor of Bultmann is his thorough acquaintance with the background (“ontological”) of Bultmann’s thought. A definite lack in this area vitiates most discussions of Bultmann, including those of the bulk of conservative theologians; the result is usually an exposition that skims the surface and a criticism that largely misses the point. If one is to believe Malet himself, this failure is one that even the most renowned theologians have not escaped. Note his excoriation of Karl Barth, whom he flays for his “clumsiness” of exposition. If the orthodox theological student is to take seriously the advice of such staunch predecessors as the divines of Old Princeton, he ought to acknowledge that understanding an opponent’s position and being able to expound it clearly should be prerequisites to the assumption that one has some right to criticize it.

Even in a much longer review, it would be impossible to recapitulate what Malet says about the background of Bultmann’s thought. What the reviewer can do, however, is to report that what Malet says is very exact. The serious student can use Malet’s book to check out his own interpretations as he begins to penetrate into Bultmann’s world of thought.

An important aspect of Malet’s exposition bears some comment here. His presentation, as every good one must, involves an incisive and well thought-out interpretation. He views Bultmann’s work as an attempt to discover a proper conceptual schematism (Begrifflichkeit) for getting at the true gospel message. This takes place in the context of a hermeneutic of the “objectified” and “mythological” writing of the New Testament, in which form this message comes to us from the confession of the early Church. It is especially Martin Heidegger, Bultmann feels, who has provided us with the conceptuality in which this message can be understood and made relevant, because he offers us a penetrating, uncommitted description of what man is, as one who is open to what is beyond him (to “being”). Grant that Christians, including Christian theologians, have as a matter of fact related themselves to Jesus Christ; it is of the utmost importance that they have available an adequate conceptuality in which to understand this encounter. Malet interprets Bultmann, as Bultmann himself wants to be interpreted, as being first of all a theologian, in the sense that he lays bare the gospel message in which the encounter with Jesus Christ is enshrined and in the medium of which it occurs even today. He will not admit that he has imposed a philosophy, even the philosophy of Heidegger, on this original, eschatological message. The conceptuality (Begrifflichkeit) is regarded to be simply a means of understanding and opening up the gospel message, which is intact and operative even apart from it.

Malet presents a sophisticated interpretation of what Bultmann intends and how he understands the relation of the Gospel to theology and to ontological analysis. However, it is my conviction that if one allows himself to be swept along with this interpretation, he does so at his own peril and at the risk of undermining the Gospel. This supposedly neutral conceptuality must be unmasked as not being neutral at all; it takes a stance toward the Gospel, and that a negative one. Far from explicating the Gospel, this stance in effect denies it. The conceptuality that Bultmann uses, in the line of Heidegger, must be subjected to a critique that lays bare its ultimate religious presuppositions. Such a critique would show, I believe, that this conceptuality capitulates to the spirit of the age and distorts the Gospel.

Let me cite one example. Bultmann’s position entails that there must be an opposition of the event of encounter in Jesus Christ to a supposed intellectualizing of the gospel message into doctrines that are to be believed, and the elevating of certain events in space-time into events whose occurrence one must accept if he is truly to believe the Gospel. This opposition plays such a role in the thinking of Bultmann and others that they reach even into the writings of the apostles themselves to criticize them for sometimes falling prey to the temptation of “objectifying” the gospel message. Far be it from us to say that the Gospel and our relation with Christ is an intellectual affair. It is a matter of living commitment, of response to what God has done in Christ. But at the same time this relation involves what God has done and accepting his own interpretation of what he has done. This requires an intellectual grasp, be it ever so simple.

The believer will not reject Paul’s admonition to Timothy, “Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine …” (1 Tim. 4:16). And if accepting this means the believer must worship God in a fashion that in the eyes of Bultmann and his enthusiastic expositors is contraband, then let him confess to it, as Paul did to Felix during one of his defenses of himself long ago, and confess also that he believes “all things which are written in the law and in the prophets” (Acts 24:14).

For Stimulating Reflection

Philosophy and Religious Belief, by George F. Thomas (Scribner, 1970, 363 pp., $10), is reviewed by Myron Miller, assistant professor of philosophy, Nyack Missionary College, Nyack, New York.

This survey of the problems in religious knowledge is readable, interesting, and stimulating, despite its length.

Its unifying viewpoint is a very philosophically contentious one: religious claims refer to objects that transcend human sensory knowledge, but they are knowledge claims nonetheless. Although these claims are partially substantiated in sense experience, evidence must be allowed from other sources as well. Moreover, the character of God does not prevent at least limited factual knowledge of him nor is the nature of man so limited that he cannot obtain factual knowledge.

The first section, “Grounds of Belief: Experience and Reason,” begins rather disappointingly by saying that neither phenomenological description nor linguistic analysis will achieve true statements about religious beliefs. The alternative for Thomas is the method of metaphysical thinking. It is not clear how this is a genuine third alternative, however, for both phenomenological description and linguistic analysis involve metaphysical thinking.

In general Thomas is clearer on phenomenology than on analytic philosophy. His criticisms deal with logical positivism or naturalism, as in A. J. Ayer and Gilbert Ryle, but he overlooks completely some very important work—of Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds; J. M. Bochenski, The Logic of Religion; and R. M. Martin, Logic, Language, and Metaphysics. Bochenski, especially, uses the tools of analysis to aid in a rational reconstruction of religious beliefs in much the same way that Rudolph Carnap argued for a “rational reconstruction of the world” for scientific explanation. Thomas is still somewhat frightened by an old boogyman, the notion that analytic methods are limited to purely scientific methods.

The next section, “God and the World,” presents a lucid discussion of pantheism with a good summary of the problem of evil for the theist. Yet Thomas again neglects to explain the methods of linguistic analysis. In refuting J. L. Mackie’s claim that the existence of evil precludes believing in a good God who is omnipotent, Thomas simply subsumes Mackie under the heading “determinist” and dismisses the argument. He sometimes gives the impression that identification of someone as “empiricist,” “analysist,” or “determinist” equals refutation of that thinker’s arguments.

Numerous turns of Thomas’s discussion would have been greatly strengthened by more awareness of the force of linguistic arguments. In the last section, “Man, Freedom, and Grace,” we turn to the nature of man. The discussion generally is clear, and the arguments in such problem areas as the relation of “soul” to “body” are neatly outlined.

There is an interesting obscurity, however, in Thomas’s treatment of Ryle’s behaviorism. After criticizing Ryle for failing to do justice to the distinctive nature of intellect and self-consciousness, Thomas offers as an alternative “the dynamic view of mind”—that mind is the subjective knowing, willing, and feeling activity of a unified person. But it is just Ryle’s point to analyze the terms knowing, willing, feeling, in order to determine their reference. Nowhere does Thomas explain how his alternative avoids a possible behavioristic interpretation after a Rylean fashion. We can and should avoid Ryle’s behaviorism, but not by baptizing the nest of problems with another name. A better analysis of Ryle’s difficulties can be found in Charles Taylor’s The Explanation of Behavior.

The book ends with a discussion of the relation of faith to reason; again Thomas gives a neat outline of the views of several philosophers and theologians.

The author’s systematic way of handling the material in each of the chapters makes this an excellent supplementary text for courses in the philosophy of religion as well as a stimulating guide for the reflective person interested in such problems. An added feature is that Thomas includes some discussion of the philosophical import of Eastern, specifically Hindu, beliefs. The book is highly recommended to the reader who is always ready to ask the author, “Why so?”

In The Journals

For those who want to find out what evangelicals are writing, a marvelous aid is the Christian Periodical Index (910 Union Road, Buffalo, N. Y. 14224; $15 a year), which is now appearing quarterly, cumulated annually and every five years. Currently thirty-two journals are indexed.

The Post-American (Box 132, Deerfield, Ill. 60015; $2 a year) is a quarterly tabloid for the expression of radical commitment both to Christ as personal Saviour and to the biblical call for social justice. It decries the captivity of the churches to an unbiblical Americanism.

Another attempt to launch a periodical for the charismatic movement of our times has produced the Logos Journal (185 North Ave., Plainfield, N. J.; $3 a year, bi-monthly). The September–October issue includes the articles “Why Tongues” and “Why Did God Baptize You in the Spirit.”

A twelve-page monthly tabloid of book reviews has just begun, The Review of Books and Religion (Box 2, Belmont, Vt. 05730; $3.50 a year). Reviewers are generally from the denominations in the ecumenical movement.

With all the talk about the philosophy of Whitehead and Hartshorne, a journal devoted to it is certainly in order. The first issue has appeared recently of the quarterly Process Studies (1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, Calif. 91711; $6 a year).

Newly Published

First and Second Corinthians, by F. F. Bruce (Oliphants, 262 pp., £ 3.5). Another commentary by Bruce is always welcome. Perhaps this volume in the “New Century” series will find an American publisher.

Atlas of the Biblical World, by Denis Baly and A. D. Tushingham (World, 208 pp., $12.95). Much, much more than a set of maps. Dozens of well-chosen illustrations and a well-written and -indexed text enhance the value of this work.

Commentary on the Gospel of John; by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 936 pp., $12.50). Will probably be recognized as the best recent commentary by an evangelical. A volume of the “New International Commentary.”

Faith on Trial in Russia, by Michael Bourdeaux (Harper & Row, 192 pp., $5.95). One of the best writers on Soviet religion gives a good account of the evangelicals generally called “Baptists” in that land. Treats fairly the division among them over degree of cooperation with the state.

Governing Without Consensus, by Richard Rose (Beacon, 567 pp., $12.50). An American teaching in Scotland writes on Northern Ireland. Much of the study is based on intensive interviews.

Religious Institutions, by Joan Brothers (Humanities Press, 104 pp., paperback, $2.50). One of a series of books on the social structure of modern Britain. Includes chapters on social class, role of the minister, and kinds of participation.

Grace, Guts, and Goods, by C. S. Calian (Nelson, 161 pp., $4.95). A challenge to affluent Christians to get involved personally with the concerns of the world’s “have-nots.” It takes “guts” to risk frustration without reward to further justice and progress. The author says Christ is the only reliable guide for this task.

A Parsing Guide to the Greek New Testament, compiled by Nathan E. Han (Herald, $12.95). Verse by verse, in biblical order, each verb is fully parsed. Much more accurate and much easier to use than Bagster’s Analytical. Struggling students will rise up and call Han blessed!

Healing and Wholeness, edited by D. Wayne Montgomery (John Knox, 240 pp., $7.50). A collection of thirty-two articles originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Examples: “Physicians, Clergymen, and the Hospitalized Patient,” “Sex and Mental Health on Campus,” “Ethical Guidelines for Organ Transplantation,” “Religion and Psychiatry.”

Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament, by Morton Smith (Columbia, 348 pp., $9). A much revised Th.D. thesis seeking to determine by whom and why the documents we know as the Old Testament were assembled.

The Church of Our Fathers, by Roland H. Bainton (Scribner, 222 pp., paperback, $2.65). Reprinting of a work first published in 1941 by a renowned church historian. A survey of the Christian past ably written for younger readers.

What Theologians Do, edited by F. G. Healey (Eerdmans, 354 pp., paperback, $3.95). An introduction to the various branches of theological study. Thirteen British professors contribute a chapter each on such topics as Old Testament, philosophical theology, worship, and applied theology.

Samuel Davies: Apostle of Dissent in Colonial Virginia, by George William Pilcher (Tennessee, 229 pp., $9.75). He lived only thirty-seven years, but during the mid-eighteenth century Samuel Davies was one of the foremost evangelical leaders. This well-done, scholarly biography is long overdue.

Annointed to Serve: The Story of the Assemblies of God, by William W. Menzies (Gospel Publishing House, 436 pp., $7.95). A thorough account from the beginning before World War I to the present of the largest American Pentecostal denomination (some 8,700 congregations) by a qualified scholar and participant in the movement.

Broadman Bible Commentary: Volume 4, Esther-Psalms, Volume 11, II Corinthians-Philemon, edited by Clifton J. Allen (Broadman, 464 and 388 pp., $7.50 each). Latest additions to a major commentary series.

Ministries of Dialogue, by Henry Clark (Association, 224 pp., $6.95). Describes the efforts of various church organizations in cities across the country to make an impact on social problems of our day. Interesting and informative.

I Understand: A Handbook for Counseling in the Seventies, by Edmund J. Elbert (Sheed and Ward, 289 pp., $6.95). Attempts to help the counselor honestly say, “I understand.” The author includes specifics of certain problems as well as theory.

Jesus, by Eduard Schweizer (John Knox, 200 pp., $7.50). Though written for the educated general reader rather than the specialist, this book is probably best read only by those who are well grounded in the work of more evangelical scholars.

Der Markus-Stoff bei Lukas, by Tim Schramm (Cambridge, 207 pp., $13.50). An important new contribution to the monograph series of the Society for New Testament Studies. The author challenges the view of many recent scholars that Mark’s Gospel was Luke’s exclusive source for that part of the life and teaching of Jesus which is paralleled by Mark. The overall effect is to encourage a much more positive attitude to the trustworthy character of the Lucan writings than is current in some academic circles.

POSTER TALK

The other day a neighbor boy, Jim Beard, arrived home from college. I came up the walk as he was unpacking his car.

“Hi, Jim,” I called.

“Be free!” he returned, making a “V” with two fingers and smiling broadly.

“I’m sure everyone wants to be free,” I said laughingly as I drew nearer.

His response was delayed as he lifted out his eight-hundred-dollar stereo set and carefully set it down on the driveway. Then he said, “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to do better.”

I was somewhat puzzled at that. “Are you suggesting that we are all in need of moral improvement?”

“Judge not that you be not judged,” he shot back as he leaned his golf cart against the side of the car.

I was having a little trouble following the train of thought so I took a nondirective tack. “You think we should live and let live.”

“To live is the rarest thing in the world,” he responded, beginning to unload his fifteen blue denim jackets. “Most people exist, that is all.”

“Well, perhaps you’re being a little too judgmental …”

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he broke in seriously.

“What do you suggest as an antidote?” I asked. I was beginning to get the hang of being a straight man.

Lifting a three-foot stack of rock albums out of the trunk, he replied, “Through love one creates his own personality and helps others create theirs.”

“Well, I suppose everyone wants to feel loved and valued.”

“Everyone wants to be somebody: nobody wants to grow,” he replied, sitting down on one of three pieces of matched luggage and lighting a pipe.

Now I was in the full swing of my part.

“How would you characterize growth?” I asked.

“To grow is to change, and to have changed often is to have grown much.”

“Not bad,” I replied. “Is that your own?”

“Newman,” he said.

“Oh. And the others?”

“Camus, Jesus, Oscar Wilde, Thoreau, Anonymous, and Goethe.”

“I can see you’ve really been searching for the meaning of life in your two years in college. What answer did you find?”

“All around us for as far as the eye can see the universe holds together.”

“Eliot?” I guessed.

“Teilhard,” he replied with a frown.

“Are you still majoring in philosophy?”

“I quit!” he said somewhat gruffly.

“Muhammad Ali?” I asked.

“Jim Beard.”

“I see. You mean you’ve dropped out.”

“In a world of fugitives he who takes the opposite direction will appear to run away.”

“Chesterton?”

“Eliot.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“Yes,” he answered. “You see, not to decide is to decide.”

“Harvey Cox,” I said knowingly. “What are your immediate plans?”

“I’m going to celebrate,” he replied with an expansive gesture.

“What are you celebrating?”

“I celebrate myself.…”

George Orwell taught us to beware of men who think in slogans and talk in bullets. He didn’t really need to add the last phrase.

TONGUES OR TRANSLATIONS?

Kudos on the four reviews of recent Bible translations (Books in Review, “Old Wine in New Bottles,” Oct. 8). O that we might have a reprieve for a decade—at least!—from this inundation of English translations! More money and effort would better be expended on the “Two Thousand Tongues to Go.”

I for one greatly appreciate the stupendous labors of Jay Green in making available to the general public the wealth of past and present orthodox volumes at unheard-of prices. May he be successful in opening a hundred of his book supermarkets. However, his KJ2 reveals, in my opinion, that his talents lie outside the field of Bible translation. What “bizarre-ities” the reviewer uncovered are no doubt in multiples of ten or greater and will combine to detract from orthodoxy on the open market. Let us pray that KJ2 will rest quietly in the library and museum.

Asst. Prof. of Philosophy

Tennessee State University

Nashville, Tenn.

GLOSSOLALIA—YESTERDAY AND TODAY

In “A Truce Proposal for the Tongues Controversy” (Oct. 8) Clark Pinnock and Grant Osborne mention my name after the following statement: “In addition, it is held that glossolalia, where it does appear in church history, arises in heterodox circles like the Montanists; therefore, it is concluded that the gift ceased after the canon was concluded …” (p. 7). What I actually did say (What About Tongue-Speaking, pp. 112, 113) is that the almost total absence of glossolalia from A.D. 100 to 1900 in the Church must give us pause, though I clearly conceded that the argument from history is not absolutely compelling (p. 113). The next sentence of the article states that some use First Corinthians 13:8 (“tongues shall cease”) to prove that glossolalia ceased in the early Christian centuries; I agree that this passage cannot be appealed to for this purpose (p. 106, n. 8).

While granting that I cannot be dogmatic on this point, I do have serious questions about whether the tongue-speaking which occurs in Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal circles today is the same thing as the gift of tongues described in the New Testament. My reasons for questioning this are as follows: (1) When claims are made for tongue-speaking which are not taught in Scripture (cf. pp. 8, 9 of the above-mentioned article), I must seriously question whether the activity called tongue-speaking today is the Spirit-inspired gift to which Paul refers. (2) The Scriptures do clearly teach that the so-called miraculous gifts of the Spirit, like tongues and healing, served to authenticate the Gospel and the apostles who brought that gospel (see Acts 14:3; 2 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 15:15–19, and Heb. 2:3–4). (3) There is no injunction in the New Testament for the continued exercise of the miraculous or spectacular gifts of the Spirit, whereas the Church is frequently enjoined to continue to exercise the non-miraculous gifts of the Spirit-like teaching, exhorting, ruling, giving, and showing mercy (compare Romans 15:19 with Romans 12:6–8; and note that in the Pastoral Epistles, where the qualifications of officebearers are given, no mention whatever is made of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit—see First Timothy 3:1–13 and Titus 1:5–9).

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Mr. Pinnock and Mr. Osborne appear to me to be suggesting not a “truce” but rather a complete surrender on the part of the non-glossolalist and a complete victory for the “tongue-talkers.” One is reminded of the words of Tryon Edwards, “Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another, too often ending in the loss of both.” The article seems to say that we may become reasonable men by giving up our convictions.

Andrews Avenue Church of Christ

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

OFF PITCH

[I was disappointed] that … you would … print a news article in which you demean television preacher Rex Humbard (“Edifice Rex: Grubstaking the Gospel,” Oct. 8). It seemed to me to be less than the normative Christian ethic for your writers and editors to obviously find fault with the business practices of this gentleman. You did not cite him for misappropriation of funds or charge him with swindling people who trust him. Yet the whole tone of the article was critical.

Whereas the main thrust of the article was to speak about Reverend Humbard’s expanding business involvement, the demeaning attitude in the article descended to belittling statements regarding his personal image and mannerisms. By no stretch of the imagination can your writer’s statement [about his Hawaiian TV special] be construed [as] complimentary.…

We take it for granted that your magazine will champion Billy Graham—the man, his message, and his methods. So do I. Let us also thank God for those who preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in a manner that is used of God to reach millions of people every week on television. You have acknowledged the fact that he is a fundamentalist. Thank God for that. Give proper praise or commendation to this man who, admittedly, uses folksy methods to reach millions of folks whom God loves with the message of redemption through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The First United Brethren Church

Peoria, Ill.

WITHOUT WELFARE

Thank you for “Careers With Christian Impact” (Sept. 24). I especially appreciated the emphasis regarding “sacred-secular” distinctions and the anticipated context of a career. I think a subsequent article could well be put forth in which the “two broad career categories” are spelled out more fully in terms of preparation, qualifications for tasks, and particularly strategic value in the effort of winning the world and/or influencing our culture in this day of change.… You say, “Paul left his tents … to become a missionary.” I would like to suggest that Paul may well have used his skills to support himself while preaching, in order to relieve the Church of undue financial burden and to make his preaching more independent, in effect, more freedom from fear of reprisal (1 Cor. 9:12). While Paul did not deny others this possibility of making a “living wage” in connection with their labors for Christ, he appears to have retained some means of support independent of the local churches which he served. In the absence of Social Security or welfare, many suggest Paul relied on his special skills in hours not spent furthering the Gospel more directly.

Bethel Church

Farmer City, Ill.

AWAY FROM THE TREND

I just want to say how much I appreciated the article “The New Paganism” (Sept. 24) by Gilbert Meilaender. 1 think it is time we call these religious writings and songs exactly what they are. The trend today seems to be to praise everything that has the name Jesus connected with it. The theology seems to be a secondary thing. We need more men who can discern error among the religious jargon and call it such.

First Baptist Church

Zeeland, Mich.

The haunting refrain in Superstar, “I really want to know,” suggests a hungry paganism, surely; and Jesus has a word to all who hunger. For the Christian the opera helps remove the docetic images with which we have been smothered in a rationalist era, helps reinforce our comprehension of how Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. And to the one for whom Christ is real now, and not just then, the dramatic replay of his agony and scourging is very moving! So I suggest the rock opera has something for Christian as well as pagan, plus some fine satire to shaft both Pharisee and secularist. I appreciated the article.

Dean of Faculty

George Fox College

Newberg, Ore.

Perhaps the greatest positive impact of Jesus Christ Superstar has been overlooked. Many more people are acquainted with the title, which has a sort of colloquial uplift, than they are with the inadequate theology of the piece. The title will be remembered long after the “new paganism” of the work is forgotten.

Calvary Baptist Church

Dallas, Tex.

A EUTYCHUS REVIVAL?

Evidently Eutychus’s tongue was in his cheek in “Electric Weltschmerz” (Sept. 24). Too bad. He might have used it to remind us of First Corinthians 6:19 and Second Corinthians 6:14–16. The trouble with pot smoking and “copulative verbs” is not that they are annoying, but that they blaspheme the Holy Spirit and make us less than Christian. The trouble is not that unbelievers sing songs of loneliness, hate, war, death, etc., but that they offer discredited palliatives. The trouble is not that yesterday’s songs were profound and today’s are shallow, but that unbelievers will always be with us and they will always write songs—some nonsensical, others affecting great truths.… Eutychus has again slumbered. Let’s pray the Apostle Paul will again revive him.

West Redding, Conn.

The late James D. Pike, well-known Episcopal maverick, often dwelt on the incompatability of the biblical language of a “three-story universe” with modern man’s post-Copernican understanding of space and time. He liked to inform audiences that, since scientific research had rendered the biblical picture of the universe obsolete, the Christian doctrines associated with this outdated world-view must also be considered untenable, at least in their traditional form. Man’s dwelling-place is not a flat earth with four corners. God’s is not above the bright blue sky. The dead do not descend into the lower parts of the earth. The earth is not central to the cosmos. The sun doesn’t rise as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber to run his course. In short, talk about the universe as three-storied is meaningless to space-age man.

Similarly, Bishop John Robinson of Woolwich, England, enamoured of Tillich’s abstraction “Ground of being” as a name for God, broadcast the idea that “out there” or “up there” (caricature concepts regarding God, anyway) could very well in these days give place to some image from depth psychology. Divine transcendence is out! Human sensitivity is in! But the theological iconoclast shows a blithe naïveté when he offers the spatial image of “depth” to replace the spatial image of “height.”

With such unconvincing “demythologizations,” proponents of a radical theology for tomorrow offer to deliver Christianity from an irrelevant frame of reference. If we take as our mentor Paul Tillich, then we can have a world-view “rooted in the divine ground which is man’s own ground.” Or if we welcome Teilhard de Chardin as prophet for our evolution-oriented culture, we can have a theology in which God is looked upon as the goal of the universe rather than its creator. The criterion for deciding whether a particular doctrine may or may not be believed appears to be its appeal to the twentieth-century secularist. If the typical man of our technologically-oriented age approves a doctrine, then it is considered relevant and intellectually respectable. If not, then the doctrine must be discarded.

The theological revolutionary has some hidden assumptions that do not seem warranted either by Scripture or by common sense. His attitude seems to be that since we find ourselves in a world transformed by scientific knowledge, we should jump to the conclusion that God is calling his Church to exchange its God-given role in the world for a role virtually dictated by that portion of the modern world that feels self-sufficient; then, allowing the world to prepare its agenda, the Church should provide for the world a doctrinal buttress for its mancentric world-view and, in general, a quasi-scientific “religion without revelation.” We are invited to fall for the fallacy that the secular viewpoint is the final criterion of what can be thought, uttered, or believed in.

Let us consider the red herring of the “three-story universe.” The Apostle Paul did indeed speak of three realms as a means of indicating the universal scope of Christ’s cosmic redemption, for which “every knee should bow—in heaven, on earth, and in the depths” (Phil. 2:10, NEB). In attributing to Christ the total prerogative and execution of the creativity of God, Paul spoke of “everything in heaven and earth … not only things visible but also the invisible orders of thrones, sovereignties, authorities, and powers,” as “created through him and for him” (Col. 1:15–20). The creeds do indeed speak of Christ as the One who “came down from heaven,” “descended into hell” (or, the place of departed spirits), and “ascended into heaven.” We rejoice in the whole biblical witness to the centrality of Christ in the divine scheme of things and the all-embracing validity of the cosmic redemption he accomplished. And there is not one shred of evidence that the obsolescence of the Ptolemaic world-view and the ensuing changes in the world-view of Western man have invalidated any of these biblical doctrines.

The argument used by proponents of a reductionist or radical theology runs like this: Christianity was originally propagated in an age ignorant of the scientific facts that began to come to light with the Copernican revolution in cosmology; therefore modern Christians should jettison doctrines whose biblical sources employ language reminiscent of the idea of an earth-centered, three-story universe. But this argument injects unnecessary confusion. It may be quite proper to use the term pre- or post-Copernican in a chronological sense in a discussion of the history of modern science. But it is quite another matter to employ the terms polemically when the context of the discussion is theological. It is as unscholarly as it is unfair to fling pre-Copernican as a kind of dirty word at Christians who see no threat to the faith of the New Testament in the advance of modern science and the scientific world-view.

The world-view discredited by the Copernican revolution is not the biblical view so much as that element in medieval Thomist cosmology derived from Aristotle. Cosmological references in the Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament are neither Ptolemaic nor Copernican. The poetry of Psalm 104 is as appropriate for the twentieth century as for the first: “Thou hast spread out the heavens like a tent.… Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it can never be shaken.” And Psalm 102:25, “The heavens shall grow old as a garment,” sounds more like the Second Law of Thermodynamics than anything Copernicus ever said.

A Christian world-view can readily subsume within its total presentation the insights of Einstein. Yet there is no reason why modern Christians should not still use “three-story universe” language and still be considered intellectually honest. It is hard to improve on the language of St. Paul if we want to communicate his insight into the universality of Christ and the cosmic efficacy of his saving work. No one would criticize the astronauts for talking, as they doubtless often do, about the “sunrise” or “sunset,” or label them “pre-Copernican” for this. They do not let their technical knowledge rob them of the spiritual insights that are a valid witness to truth.

Men who get their scientific knowledge from its literary popularizers often show less humility in the presence of the mysterious universe than professional scientists. The scientist is a devotee of truth as his researches uncover it. In the laboratory he pays little heed to the philosophical implications of his discoveries. From time to time he may have to contradict the imperfect, partial, or even false conclusions of his predecessors. And at all stages of his progress as scientist it is still possible for him to be a Christian believer and accept essential New Testament truth. The noted scientist Sir A. S. Eddington has said:

A belief not by any means confined to the more dogmatic adherents of religion is that there is a future non-material existence in store for us.… The scientist declares that time and space are a single continuum, and the modern idea of a Heaven in time but not in space is in this respect more at variance with science than the pre-Copernican idea of a Heaven above our heads [The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge, 1933, p. 351].

Then, in his conclusion regarding the lack of finality of scientific theories, he wisely warns: “The religious reader may well be content that I have not offered him a God revealed by the quantum theory, and therefore liable to be swept away in the next scientific revolution” (p. 353).

The achievements of science have been due in part to the intellectual joie de vivre and curiosity of thinkers and experimenters emancipated from the last vestiges of pre-Christian superstition in the Western world, and in part to the desire for utilitarian rewards; but most significantly scientific progress came from intuition into the ultimate principles at work in the physical cosmos, and to that inspired devotion to the discovery of what Einstein, borrowing a phrase from the philosopher Leibniz, called “a pre-established harmony.” This devotion is wholly in harmony with the essential Christian outlook on the universe as expressed by the Apostle Paul in his paean to the Christ whose Person, prerogatives, and power are cosmic in their relevance and redemptive scope. “His is the primacy over all created things. In him everything in heaven and on earth was created.… The whole universe has been created through him and for him … and all things are held together in him.… Through him God chose to reconcile the whole universe to himself” (Col. 1:15–20). “God has made known to us his hidden purpose—such was his will and pleasure determined beforehand in Christ—to be put into effect when the time was ripe: namely, that the universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ” (Eph. 1:9, 10). “This is in accord with the age-long purpose which he achieved in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:11).

We can have a space-age Christology without the exaggerated fears of those who have made shipwreck of the faith on the grounds that three-story-universe language is now untenable. A space-age Christology will see Christ as the Creator-Sustainer, the everlasting Lord and sole Redeemer of the whole universe. The magnitude of the universe as unveiled by astronomers is indeed awe-inspiring, but it is of less significance than the amazing grace of God in the biblical story of his dealings with and purpose for his creature, man, and of the centrality of Christ in the achievement of these.

The question arises: What would be the relation of Christ to creatures in other worlds, assuming there might be such? Biblically revealed truth is unchangingly relevant. There can be only one God, and one Mediator between God and his creatures. Therefore the whole universe, in its totality and in all its parts, is subject to the sovereignty of Christ the eternal Word, through whom it has been created; he is the rightful recipient of the adoration and praise of all orders of creation. There is as yet no evidence of the existence of human beings in other worlds; it is just a conjectural possibility based on the assumption that, given the existence of countless numbers of stars, it might be considered mathematically improbable that the planet Earth should out of all this wealth of creation be the only one that could support life and have human inhabitants. It now seems clear that in our own solar system no other planet has conditions that make even the most rudimentary forms of life possible. Yet it may be permissible to assume, for theological purposes, the existence of sentient and conscious life in other worlds than our own.

C. S. Lewis in his space trilogy has written fascinating stories based on this assumption, in such a way that the underlying theology is perfectly sound and in harmony with the Scriptures. And in his essay on “Religion and Rocketry” (The World’s Last Night, Harcourt Brace, 1960, p. 84), he says, regarding the supposed threat to Christianity, particularly the doctrine of the Incarnation:

Usually, when the popular hubbub has subsided and the novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides find themselves pretty much where they were before. So it was with Copernican astronomy, with Darwinism, with Biblical criticism, with the new psychology. So, I cannot help expecting, it will be with the discovery of “life on other planets”—if that discovery is ever made.

He then raises a point that non-Christians always seem to forget:

If there are species, and rational species, other than men, are any or all of them like us fallen?… They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because they are not worth dying for: to make them worth it. Notice what waves of unwarranted hypothesis these critics of Christianity want us to swim through. We are now supposing the fall of hypothetically rational creatures whose mere existence is hypothetical!… Perhaps of all races we only fell. Perhaps man is the only lost sheep; the one therefore whom the Shepherd came to seek.

Then, after wondering how things would go if men met an unfallen race, Lewis concludes: “I have wondered before now whether the vast astronomical distances may not be God’s quarantine precautions. They prevent the spiritual infection of a fallen species from spreading” (p. 91).

In his science-fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet, the same author has imagined a conversation between a redeemed astronaut visiting the planet Mars and Oyarsa, the planet’s tutelary angel. Speaking of the “war in heaven” when the Bent One was driven back and bound in the air of his own world, Oyarsa says:

There doubtless he lies to this hour, and we know no more of that planet: it is silent. We think that Maleldil would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that he has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into [Out of the Silent Planet, Macmillan, 1947, p. 130].

Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, is a cosmic Creator and a cosmic Redeemer. Just as the Old Testament prophets were inspired to tell of the grace of God awaiting future generations and “tried to find out what was the time, and what the circumstances, to which the spirit of Christ in them pointed, foretelling the sufferings in store for Christ and the splendours to follow”; and just as St. Peter and the other apostles were able to proclaim: “Now it has been openly announced to you through preachers who brought you the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven” (1 Pet. 1:11, 12); so too we may be permitted to say, These are things that angels in charge of other worlds and all the invisible orders of thrones, sovereignties, and powers that happen to have been created “through him and for him,” as the Apostle says, “long to see into.” We can even conceive of a missionary role for the ransomed of earth into the farthest limits of outer space. For the worship of heaven will ever be the worship of “the Lamb in the midst of the throne.” By the light of the Lamb “shall the nations walk, and the kings of the earth shall bring into it all their splendour … but nothing unclean shall enter, nor anyone whose ways are false or foul, but only those who are inscribed in the Lamb’s roll of the living” (Rev. 21:24–27, NEB).

The Challenge Off Resistance

No doubt a world in which matter never got out of place and became dirt, in which iron had no flaws and wood no cracks, in which gardens had no weeds, and food grew already cooked, in which clothes never wore out and washing was as easy as the soapmakers’ advertisements describe it, in which rules had no exceptions and things never went wrong, would be a much easier place to live in. But for purposes of training and development it would be worth nothing at all.

It is the resistance that puts us on our mettle: it is the conquest of the reluctant stuff that educates the worker. I wish you enough difficulties to keep you well and make you strong and skillful!

—HENRY VAN DYKE

John W. Duddington has retired from the post of associate rector of St. Peter’s Episocpal chruch, Redwood City, California. He previously was a caplian at Stanford University and a missionary in the Phillippians and China. He has the M.A. (Durham University, England).

Unless we find some way of knowing when a church is large enough, we may be in for an era of superchurches with attendance and membership figures of 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000. And if 10,000 is not too large, why not a church of 20,000 or even 50,000? If the only effective restriction is the size of the auditorium and related facilities, we can build Astrodomes to handle the crowds. There are great pressures on the Church to conform, and since the trend in government and business is toward ever larger operations, the religious conglomerate may be just around the corner.

In a continuing series on “Great Churches in America,” a well-known Christian journal has thus far covered large churches exclusively. The implication is that smaller churches are somehow failing, that the future belongs to the church big enough to attract the world’s attention. But surely we don’t believe that the only effective strategy for reaching America is found in the superchurch.

Granting that a healthy church is a growing church, who determines when or how that growth will peak? Is the ultimate size of a congregation to be determined by such unrelated factors as leadership capacity, lay vision, availability of more land, community exhaustion, and social change? Very few growing churches have any plan to stop expanding. There is always another program to set up, another staff member to add, another building to erect. And larger buildings mean more programs must be developed to make effective use of expensive facilities, and so still more staff must be engaged. Inevitably the cycle stops somewhere. The rate of growth first slows down and then stops. Attendance charts once posted in hallways are hidden away in closets. With more than a hint of self-reproach these churches look for the reason why they have stopped growing. Rarely do they consider the prior question of whether they should be larger.

There is a better strategy than open-ended growth. For every church of 2,000 or more, there are hundreds of vital churches that maintain or have the capacity to maintain a congregation of 400–600. These middle-sized churches have strengths denied the truly small church, yet avoid many of the weaknesses inherent in the developing superchurch. In the first place, a church of 400–600 can usually support a professional staff of at least two pastors. This avoids the weakness of the small church that may have a pastor who excels in the pulpit but founders in Christian education.

Adequate finances also mean that a church can move beyond the point of self-preservation. An alarmingly large number of smaller churches are excessively introspective. They have to be. Loss of a key family or the temporary disenchantment of a generous member can spell real trouble. On the other hand, the mid-size church can be motivated not only to provide adequately for itself but also to give financial support to home and foreign missions. Surprisingly, the bulk of missionary support comes neither from the small church that is struggling to stay alive nor from the superchurch that is striving to be still larger but from the mid-size church that has the ability to look beyond its own needs. For example, a survey showed that per-capita giving for foreign missions in three of the largest evangelical congregations in America (average membership 7,228) was less than $20 in 1970. In the same year the Evangelical Free Church, a denomination with no churches among the country’s seventy-five largest, gave $92 per capita to missions.

The church of 400–600 also avoids the small-church syndrome of discouragement. A feeling of inadequacy and failure is often reflected in telling ways in small churches. Peeling paint, cluttered classrooms, and ink-stained bulletins can sometimes mean the small church has given up heart in its effort to reach its world. The mid-size church, however, can afford the kind of office tools and buildings it needs to provide a well-rounded ministry to the whole man. Such a ministry is possible, not only because of adequate financing, but also because a leadership pool either exists or can be developed that will provide trained workers.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of the mid-size church is its ability to provide diverse expression without losing personal contacts. In such a congregation, the pastor can know everyone by name. More important, he can know something about each person, visit in his home, share his joys and sorrows. This kind of contact still has value, not only for the pastor, who must preach to real people, but also for the layman, who learns that Sunday’s preacher is more than a good actor, that he, too, is flesh and blood.

There are extraordinary pastors who can personalize their ministry to the thousands. But very few people in their congregations will share their gift. For most of these, worship and fellowship activities will involve a few friends and a great many strangers. A young man recently wrote me about the appeal of a smaller church in which he had worshiped. “It seems that progress is actually retrogression. You feel yourself to be a dignified part of something only when you can identify the other parts. That ‘at home’ feeling increases with familiarity. And as a church gets bigger … well, you’ve seen what happens. When you feel lost in church you are really lost.”

In most churches the Sunday school is the place where people get to know one another best. But a disturbing trend is the number of large churches reporting just one or two adult classes. It is now possible to feel lost in Sunday school as well.

For many churchgoers, the prospect of being a number on a church’s computer tape activated by a contribution, birth, death, or some other vital statistic is somewhat disquieting. The world is depressingly depersonalized as it is, and for the Church to follow this trend is to eliminate one of its potential appeals to modern man.

A recent bulletin from one of the largest churches in the South announced nineteen activities for the week. As far as this reader could observe, only the Sunday church services were designed to involve more than one age level at a time. Even then, those younger than junior high were excluded. It seems that the larger the church, the more thoroughly it segregates its people by age and interest. If the Church is not to accentuate today’s generation gap, it seems that the smaller or mid-size church will have to be the trailbreaker. In most larger churches, couples with toddlers never get to know their older counterparts with teen-age children; people who are single, widowed, or divorced are rarely involved with families; and no one except the deaconesses and the minister of visitation knows the senior citizens. The mid-size church may not be able to offer a fellowship group for every special interest, but it may have the potential for producing greater appreciation for the diversity there is in the Body of Christ.

The person who wants to “worship and run” will be decidedly unhappy in a church where he can be known and identified. Too many Christians seem to crave great preaching and great music and are willing to pay any price except personal involvement to get it. They take up their weekly watch on the end of a pew, contribute to the offering, rejoice in the sermon, shake hands with a greeter (whose name they probably do not know), and are gone for another week. Such Christians will always be with us, perhaps, but we ought not to structure our church strategy to make it easy to be an invisible member of the Body of Christ.

The church that encourages long-distance commuting and buses large numbers from distant communities is unconsciously creating a warped picture of the Church unless it also provides opportunity for vital service and fellowship in those distant communities. The extent of the problem for the very large church is often dramatized by the great disparity between Sunday-school attendance and the turnout for other gatherings during the week. A Sunday-school attendance two and three times larger than worship-service attendance ought to make us nervously aware of the superchurch as a potential gathering place for the irresponsible Christian.

At just this point the mid-size church has its greatest advantage. It must be dependent upon its lay leadership. It cannot have a large staff of professionals; it must look to the layman to play his God-given role by the exercise of his spiritual gifts. There is no reason save clergy reluctance why laymen cannot chair important committees, prayerfully set goals, direct the spiritual ministries of their fellows. A church staff of twenty or forty or more, no longer uncommon, would be unnecessary if every layman was persuaded to take his proper place and to minister along with his pastor.

Recently the coordinator of one of the West Coast’s largest churches told me that when the church was established some fifteen years ago, the pastor was deliberately made answerable to no one. The reason given was that he never wanted to be put in the position of having his plans and programs thwarted. The result has been a benevolent dictatorship—successful, to be sure, but still a dictatorship. Such an “us and them” attitude is never articulated to the membership but is nevertheless discernible. A member of the church commented to me on the large turnover of talented, spiritually minded laypeople in leadership positions. Perhaps they were gifted to lead but never allowed to do so. Such a person may leave to take his place in a smaller church willing to utilize his God-given talents.

The matter of community visibility is a mixed blessing. A large church more easily attracts not only crowds but also critics. And one of the loudest complaints against churches in recent years is the amount of money spent in erecting buildings infrequently used. Congregations, districts, presbyteries, and denominations are becoming increasingly sensitive to the charge of “edifice complex.” Recently a large and vital church in metropolitan Washington, D. C., faced opposition to its building program from the local governing body, which was uneasy about the propriety of investing so heavily in brick and mortar when subsistence-level poverty existed just a few miles away. While equally sincere and well-meaning friends may argue on both sides of the question, the fact remains that large buildings usually have a greater cost per pew seat than smaller ones.

Church builder Richard Niehaus of Pittsburgh argues that greater cost is not the result of structural necessity. Economical construction is almost indefinitely expandable, he says. But large churches face subtle psychological pressures that make added luxuries and greater cost almost inevitable. There is the feeling that the large church “ought” to be impressive. Making that impression is usually a costly procedure.

The mid-size church is better able (though still pressured) to resist the call for grandeur and let its architecture speak its concern for people, not cathedrals. A startling fact is that interest alone on a $1 million loan would be sufficient to completely finance two or three churches designed for 400–600 people.

Indeed, financing for the very large church has led some into very strange alliances. Rare indeed is the church of size that has no income-producing property or stock holdings. In some cases the church can no longer stand alone, so wrapped up has it become in its financial maneuvers. No wonder such churches hesitate to speak clearly on social issues involving business or government. Surely such involvement was never pictured by Christ when he said, “I will build my church.”

Putting a limit on growth need not stifle either ambition or energy. There will always be a neighboring community in need of a Christian witness in our sprawling suburbias. A community of 500,000 will be served best, not by one superchurch or by 500 neighborhood chapels, but by fifty dynamic churches that know where they are going and when they get there!

The mid-size church can offer the security of a close family relationship and still provide many of the wide-ranging benefits of a larger church. Two or more dynamic churches serving a community could structure their parish programs to cooperate rather than compete. Perhaps because of location one is better suited to provide a ministry to senior citizens. Another has facilities for a youth center. In a developing community of young families, there may be still another primed to begin a Christian school. Every church would not be under pressure to provide a full complement of weekday activities and services but would be free to do whatever it does best. On Sundays there would still be the recognizable family of faith gathered for worship. On weekdays the program would scatter in different directions.

Perhaps it is idealistic to expect that already established churches could manage to find the kind of selfless honesty needed to initiate such a program. But there are churches that could rediscover the principle of mothering. From the very start there could be the awareness of establishing a cooperative ministry. Through this linking of the principle of mothering churches with the extended-parish idea, there could be a dynamic rebirth of vitality in America’s evangelical churches.

When it became apparent that the phenomenal church growth of the fifties was not going to continue on momentum alone, a much needed study of the dynamics of church growth began. Books, theses, conferences, and retreats have all helped to promote the various principles discovered. The fact that there are scores, perhaps hundreds, of churches now with attendance in the thousands proves that growth is not a phenomenon limited to one decade. But in the interest of manageable church fellowship, the time has come to study the upper limits of church growth. Optimum size may vary widely depending on local circumstances but will in every case be found by putting priority on people.

James A. Davey is pastor of Arlington Memorial Church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Arlington, Virginia. He received the B.A. degree from Wheaton College and the Th.B. from Nyack Missionary College.

Does the Church need a new strategy for reaching large metropolitan areas? Mobility and anonymity have created problems for church outreach, compounded by rapid population growth and the continued movement of Americans to metropolitan centers (suburban and urban). The Church apparently does not have the finances or manpower to establish a neighborhood geographical parish for every hundred acres that is transformed into a housing tract. There seems to be no effective, all encompassing program for maintaining churches in cities when people move to suburbia. The apartment dweller tends to be a reluctant prospect for the corner church. And rural areas are witnessing more church closings each year; many ministers do not want to live in a rural hamlet and minister “out of the action,” to a small congregation. These facts suggest that the neighborhood geographic parish church can no longer hope to reach all segments of our society with the Gospel.

There is a new movement in American church life that not only cuts across neighborhood boundary lines but also transcends socio-economic barriers and reaches rural as well as urban dwellers. It is the large multi-service church, which offers a diversified program aimed at reaching various segments of the population and ministering to the total man. The large, multi-service church may be part of an emerging strategy that can help evangelize our country.

Churches like these have large staffs. First Baptist in Dallas, for example, which has a weekly Sunday-school attendance of 5,112 (probably the best criterion of size, since a church may have many members but little participation and attendance, and since few churches keep an accurate count of attendance at the morning worship service), has more than one hundred employees.

These large churches offer various services besides preaching and teaching, such as professional counseling, recreation, deaf ministry, foreign-language classes and church services, homes and treatment for alcoholics, senior-citizen homes, day-care centers, halfway homes for released prisoners, homes for unwed mothers, suicide-prevention centers, drug centers, Christian schools (kindergarten through high school), colleges, printing ministries, financial counseling, music lessons, and social activities for single adults. First Baptist in Van Nuys, California (3,167 attendance), lists more than sixty meetings each week in addition to regular services.

The large church usually centers in evangelistic outreach. Highland Park Baptist in Chattanooga, Tennessee (4,935 weekly Sunday-school attendance), which says “soul winning” is its main purpose for existence, last year began a program in which members plan to witness personally to all 322,000 persons in the greater Chattanooga area. Ten of the twenty churches with the largest Sunday schools as listed in Christian Life magazine televise their Sunday-morning service. The main purpose in most of these churches is to present the Gospel to those outside the church.

Roland Allen, an Anglican minister, examined missionary strategy in his book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? He concluded that the Apostle Paul did not attempt to visit every hamlet but rather established strong centers to disseminate the Gospel. Because he began a strong church in the metropolitan center of Ephesus, the message reached all Asia: “And this took place for two years, so that all inhabited Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10). The large church has an outreach similar to that of a powerful television station. A TV station does not establish a tower and station in every small town but covers a large area by means of a strong broadcast signal. Similarly, the large church can reach over wide areas, ministering to people where they are with the Gospel as well as pulling them from long distances to the church.

People will travel as far to church as they travel to work or to buy groceries. Some members of large churches drive thirty or fifty miles one way. Thomas Road Baptist in Lynchburg, Virginia (3,387 attendance), ministers to a large number of people living on farms; some drive fifty miles from areas where rural churches have closed because no pastor was available.

The large church is usually committed to evangelizing the city or metropolitan area, while the small church is limited to a geographical neighborhood. And along with the purpose of reaching the multitudes, the large church has finances and manpower to carry it out. First Baptist in Dallas has divided the city into square-mile sections, with members and deacons assigned to follow up new converts and evangelize prospects within their areas. Landmark Baptist in Cincinnati (4,103 weekly attendance) has more than one hundred Sunday-school buses that fan out into all areas of the city to bring children and adults to church. Several buses travel more than thirty miles one way. Calvary Temple in Denver (2,650 weekly attendance) has the financial base to televise its morning worship service to Denver and into the northern Rocky Mountain area, reaching to the Canadian border. Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron (attendance 1,430) televises its service to more than 275 different stations.

The large church makes possible the exercising of many spiritual gifts. Each fulltime staff member has a particular ability or strength, called in Scripture a “gift” (Eph. 4:11), that makes his ministry different from all others. The large church with several specialists on its staff can give closer attention to the individual needs of members. At First Baptist in Van Nuys, California, one minister trained in counseling handles psychological problems, while other ministers visit the sick and handle pastoral problems. Youth, music, and education specialists can minister in their particular areas. Southern Baptists have advocated adding one fulltime staff member with the addition of every one hundred attenders. This includes secretaries and custodians, so that a church of one thousand should have a staff of ten.

Business has led in innovation and change among social institutions, followed by government, education, and the Church, in that order, at an interval of three to ten years. Therefore the churches should look at business to see what innovations are on the horizon. The greatest innovation in the business community in recent years has been the principle of the shopping center. Two or more large businesses are located together, along with a group of supporting smaller businesses, with ample parking space. One large business will not draw the crowds as will the multiple-service shopping center. This strongly suggests that the multiple-service large church is a coming thing.

Dancing The Rainbow

sharing covenant

with Rebecca,

grey December cat,

in downhill dance

lichens & moss

surrounded by sun

share covenant too,

afternoon spillings

of energy,

obligations to the Creator

whose rainbow upholds

the scruboak

whose right hand uplifts

the ant

& feeds the zinging

wasp whose covenant

includes the poorest

stone, slowest beetle

& all the flaming nuclear

angels of the sun

among jackpine

& scruboak, we dance

within the rainbow-ring

of sure Promise

F. EUGENE WARREN

Dr. Robert Schuller of Garden Grove (California) Community Church (1,913 attendance) says of the large church:

We are trying to set up here a team management on a large enterprising basis for Jesus Christ. If I am still alive by the year 2000 … I expect to be addressing a group of young ministers and saying to them, “While it is a thrilling thing to feel the power and the impact of the enormously strong church in America today, some of you would never believe that in the 1960s and the early 1970s leaders in the church in America were predicting its demise. They were predicting that the church of the future would be away from ground and buildings into small homes and private cells and commune groups. How wrong they were. Only the established churches with building and staff and people and program can form a base for operation for the generations to come” [Decision, March, 1971].

Following in the steps of the Old Testament prophets, a pastor may feel led to speak out against political corruption, social abuses, and other local sins. Dr. Dallas Billington, minister of Akron (Ohio) Baptist Temple (5,801 attendance), usually comments on the political issues of Akron on the televised Sunday-morning church service. Whether or not one agrees with this practice or his conclusions, the fact is that the community is aware of Billington’s position and politicians usually interact with what he says. If he had only a small church, he probably would not have the ear of the community.

Recently the town council of Lynchburg, Virginia, prepared to vote on a recommendation to loosen restrictions on liquor. The vote was expected to be close. Dr. Jerry Falwell, minister of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, told the council, “The only voice this council will listen to is power. My church has 10,000 members and our town has only 53,000 people. If any council member votes for liquor, I’ll see that you are defeated at the next election.” The vote was 9 to 0 against easing the restrictions.

Emphasis on the large church does not mean neglect of the community church or home Bible-study group. There is a place for both the large and the small gathering of Christians. Balance is needed to see the total picture of God’s strategy for evangelizing an area.

America keeps growing in population and changing in life style. The large church has the flexibility to adapt its ministry to changing needs. It can have the tolerance first to accept, then to incorporate new life styles among its members or innovative methods of ministry.

Two years ago there was one church in America averaging more than 5,000 in Sunday school; last fall seven churches were that large. Within this decade we will probably have more than 200 large churches (that is, churches with average attendance of 2,500 or more), at least one in every large metropolitan area. The seventies is a decade of the rapidly growing metropolis, and also of the large, multi-service church, which attempts to evangelize the entire area with the Gospel and minister to its people’s total needs.

Elmer L. Towns is vice-president and academic dean of the new Lynchburg Baptist College, Lynchburg, Virginia. He previously taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He received the Th.M. from Dallas Seminary.

A Roman Catholic theologian said recently that America is on the verge of the greatest religious revival in its history. I agree. The secular press and television are now full of it. Cover stories have flooded our leading magazines. Whole hours on television are given to coverage of the “Jesus phenomenon” sweeping our young people.

What the secular media are just now finding out has already been going on for several years. Various organizations working with young people already knew that young people were turning to Christ by the thousands throughout the nation. During the past five years our crusades in America have become youth crusades. At our crusade in northern California this past summer, 70 per cent of the audience every night was under twenty-five, and we had the greatest response to the Gospel I have ever witnessed in my years of evangelizing in the United States.

This highly encouraging development comes at a time when other thousands of American young people are involved with permissive sex, drugs, and violence on a scale that staggers the imagination. The “wheat” and “tares” are growing together. The devil is at work, but so is God. Time magazine recently ran twelve pages on the spiritual awakening. It said, “There is a morning freshness to it all, a buoyant atmosphere of hope and love along with the usual rebel zeal. Most converts seem to enjoy translating their faith into everyday life.”

While some of these young people look upon Jesus as “the first hippie” or “a revolutionary hero,” or have transferred their “drug trip” to “the Jesus trip,” for thousands of others it is a genuine spiritual experience. Many of them are devouring the Scriptures—one former Black Panther has already memorized most of the New Testament. Scores of new young evangelists are emerging. There are extremes here and there that receive undue attention in the press and TV, but by and large it is a genuine movement of the Spirit of God that is affecting nearly every denomination and every social and educational stratum, and is causing discussion from the editorial room of the New York Times to the dining room of the White House.

There are dangers. There are pitfalls. There are fears. And there are critics. Some say it is too superficial, and in some cases it is. Some say it is too emotional, and in some cases it is. Some say it is outside the established church, and in some cases it is. But even in the early Church such problems were encountered. I have tried to study this movement and have found that several commendable features stand out.

First, the movement thus far centers in the person of Jesus Christ. Look magazine declared, “All the Christians agree that Christ is the great common denominator of the movement.” During the last two years our country has suffered through reports of the gruesome murder orgies of a self-styled messiah by the name of Charles Manson. The leading witness against Manson was Linda Kasabian, who had previously claimed Manson as her messiah. She had adored and worshiped him before disillusionment set in. Recently she announced her conversion to Jesus Christ. Her husband, from whom she was alienated, has also been converted to Christ, and this brought them back together. She says, “I have found my true Messiah.”

Second, the Jesus movement is Bible-based. Life magazine says, “These new Christians see the Bible as the irrefutably accurate Word of God, solving all their problems from the cosmic to the trivial.” Another magazine says, “Bibles abound. Whether the fur-covered King James Version or scruffy back-pocket paperbacks, they are invariably well thumbed and often memorized.”

A third characteristic of the Jesus movement is the demand for an experience with Jesus Christ. Time magazine says of these new Christians that “their lives revolve around the necessity for an intense personal relationship with Jesus and the belief that such a relationship should condition every human life.” One of the more spectacular conversions has been that of the son of the late Episcopal bishop James Pike. After several years on drugs, studying Eastern religions, Chris Pike met Jesus Christ, and his life was transformed. He was quoted in Time magazine as saying, “One day I heard a Christian speaking at Berkeley. He was the first intelligent Christian I ever saw. Soon afterwards I made a commitment. I just said, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m going to give myself to You and nobody else.’ Nothing happened, but I knew. I knew He had reached down and I was saved. The old Chris Pike died back there. I’m a new creature.” He was at our Northern California Crusade night after night.

Fourth, the young people of this movement are putting a renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit. I remember asking Dr. Karl Barth a few years ago what the new emphasis on theology would be during the seventies. He replied without hesitation, “The Holy Spirit.” Little did I realize that it would come through a youth revival in America.

Fifth, these young people have found a cure for drug addiction, which is increasingly captivating and enslaving the youth of America. A man who is perhaps the nation’s foremost drug expert gave me a 2½-hour briefing about a month ago. He said there is absolutely no cure for a person who is hooked on hard drugs—except a religious conversion. Leading authorities, quoted in the American press, are amazed and startled to find that a religious conversion to Jesus Christ has apparently cured many hard-drug addicts.

The sixth characteristic of the spiritual movement is the contribution it is making to the American churches. The average American young person today is “turned off” by the Church. I have four points that I give after asking people to make a commitment to Christ. I tell them to read the Bible, to pray, to witness, and to get into a church. I see them nodding their heads and often smiling when I give the first three, but when I give the fourth, I can sense that I have lost many of them. They just don’t want to be identified with the established church. In our crusades we are increasingly trying to bridge the gap between young people and the Church.

I believe that the message of the Church never changes but that its methods do. Many American churches have doubled, and some have tripled, their membership and attendance during the past year as a result of this new spiritual movement among young people.

I’ll give you one example that I just witnessed in California. Only about a hundred people would attend Sunday-evening services in this particular church. Then the pastor changed the “format” of the evening service to a time of sharing of needs and gifts for the people. He began every service with the question, “Where are you hurting?” It was slow getting started, but soon a climate of honest realism began to prevail. When that was noised abroad, without any particular invitation or advertising young people began to appear. Many were long-haired, barefoot, and bizarrely dressed. The numbers increased by leaps and bounds. Now the church auditorium that seats 750 is jammed to overflowing. A sense of quiet excitement prevails. Love and acceptance are so strongly felt at times that they seem almost visible. The service is called “The Body Life Service.”

Evangelism occurs so naturally it is almost taken for granted. In less than one year’s time, almost 200 university students have been baptized—all reached through the personal witness of new Christians—and community problems have notably diminished. When people get right with God they begin to get right with their neighbors.

The seventh characteristic of this movement is an emphasis on Christian discipleship. One could almost say a new puritanism is sweeping in among many of the young people. It may be partially a backlash and a reaction to the permissiveness of the past ten years. Time magazine says, “They all insist that premarital sex and drugs are out, and many have quite strict rules.”

An eighth characteristic is evidence of social responsibility. The movement is entirely inter-racial. Even in our crusades we are drawing far more black young people to our meetings than we did five years ago. These young people are solving the problem of materialism and the deification of technology by their commitment to one another. It has been a commitment as well to help solve some of the pressing social issues of the day. All kinds of new social projects are being started by these new Christians. In my own community, where a rather large group of so-called hippies have recently been converted, not only are they spending their time studying the Bible, but they are looking for projects in the community where they can witness by their service.

The ninth characteristic of the movement is great zeal for evangelism. One church in California has seen 15,000 youth make commitments in two years. Another in Texas has had 11,000 in two weeks, and one in Florida had 500 in one week. Even hundreds of ministers are joining “the Jesus revolution.” These young people go everywhere preaching the Gospel—into dives, slums, ghettos, theaters, record shops, even the underground.

The tenth characteristic of the movement is a renewed emphasis on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It is refreshing to see a major American magazine article entitled “The New Rebel Cry—Jesus Is Coming,” and to read, “There exists a firmer conviction that Jesus’ Second Coming is literally at hand.”

Yes, nearly all observers agree that a major spiritual phenomenon is taking shape in young America. What its ultimate impact will be I do not know. Will it last? It is too early to tell. I can only report what both the secular and religious press are now full of and what my own eyes have seen and my own heart has felt.

I believe there is a scriptural basis for expecting a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church before the end of the Age. Peter spoke of Joel’s prophecy of the outpouring of the Spirit before “the great day of the Lord” as having been fulfilled at Pentecost. This prophecy has a double fulfillment. The first came at Pentecost; the second will occur just before “the great day of the Lord.” The Holy Spirit began his outpouring at Pentecost and continues his outpouring in spiritual renewals from time to time throughout history. But there will be a “grand finale” just before the Lord returns.

This article is from Mr. Graham’s address to the European Congress on Evangelism, held in August in Amsterdam.