Page 6203 – Christianity Today (2024)

In Alaska on Good Friday, one minister was among the estimated 200 killed by the severest earthquake ever measured on the North American continent.

The minister, 33-year-old Duane Carricker, pastor of the Assemblies of God Church in Valdez, was swept to his death in a tidal wave following the earthquake.

Reports from Alaska indicate that people in the hardest-hit areas were able to be evacuated and cared for by rescue agencies. Damage to church property was widespread but in most places was not severe.

Easter services were held in churches without heat or electricity, or in garages, shops, and homes.

The Rev. Floyd R. Brause, pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Anchorage, said:

“Our Easter services … didn’t set any attendance records, but we had the most thankful people ever to attend any Easter Sunday services.”

Here is a breakdown by denomination compiled from the sketchy reports available:

—Assemblies of God: unestimated property damage.

—Lutheran (Missouri Synod): damage to Anchorage Lutheran Church estimated at 40 to 50 per cent.

—Methodist: total cost of repairs estimated at $500,000. Damage to Alaska Methodist University estimated at $100,000. Also damaged: the Jesse Lee Children’s Home and the Wesleyan Hospital for Chronic Diseases, both in Seward.

—Protestant Episcopal: one member of the denomination among the known dead; church, rectory, and parish hall at Valdez destroyed. Damage in Valdez estimated at $60,000.

—Southern Baptist: many churches damaged; total loss apparently not extensive.

Reports on other denominations were either not available or inconclusive; the full extent of the damage to all church property is still in doubt. Denominational offices tried to keep abreast of the situation by telephone and amateur radio. Denominations associated with the National Council of Churches are helping through the Red Cross; in addition, denominations and churches are helping independently and have announced special collections.

According to the latest estimate, it would cost $500 million to put everything back into working order in the state.

Protestant Panorama

The American Lutheran Church’s Commission on Research and Social Action will ask delegates to the ALC biennial convention next fall to approve a policy statement on “the issues of war and peace.” The document says that Christian doctrine does not require the belief that war is inevitable.

The Church of Scotland’s Yearbook for 1964 gives the number of communicant members as 1,281,559 at the end of 1962, a decrease of 11,058 from the previous year’s total.

The National Benevolent Association of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) is opening a new home for helping mentally retarded and physically handicapped children at Columbia, Missouri. The home will be dedicated during a series of ceremonies, May 3–10.

Miscellany

The U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy has approved the use of English in the mass, sacraments, and breviary. The action now goes to the Ecumenical Council’s Commission on Liturgy in Rome for final confirmation.

Deaths

THE REV. THEODOR FLIEDNER, 85, said to be the oldest Protestant pastor in Spain; in Madrid.

BISHOP GRADY R. KENT, 54, of The Church of God; in Cleveland, Tennessee.

DR. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, 84, noted Unitarian minister; in New York City.

DR. WILLIAM J. GALLAGHER, 70, first general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches; in Toronto.

Plans were announced for the establishment at Suva, Fiji, of an interdenominational “theological college.” It is a projected outgrowth of the Conference of Churches in the Pacific, called by the World Council of Churches in 1962. It is scheduled to open in January, 1966.

Reversing a previous stand, Vermont’s House of Representatives voted, 118 to 86, to kill a bill that would have permitted sale of beer and wine on Sundays.

The Society of Catholic College Teachers of Sacred Doctrine called on the American hierarchy to support at the Second Vatican Council proposals that would “reform thoroughly” the church’s Index of Forbidden Books.

Plans were disclosed in Rapid City, South Dakota, for the establishment of a two-year Christian community college sponsored by evangelicals. Tentative opening date is the fall of 1965.

Emmanuel Bible College, operated by the United Missionary Church, will open its new eleven-acre campus in Kitchener, Ontario, this fall.

The Back to the Bible broadcast will mark its twenty-fifth year on the air next month. A special silver anniversary program is scheduled for May 1.

East German churchmen were denied exit permits by Soviet Zone authorities to attend the enthronement in Hamburg of Pastor Hans Otto Woelber as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hamburg.

Three young people in Minneapolis were given long sentences in the workhouse for harassing a noted church historian and his family. They said they had decided to “get” Dr. Timothy L. Smith because, they claimed, he had prayed during classes at the University of Minnesota. Smith said he merely asked students to join him in a brief moment of meditation, and later dropped the practice.

The American Institute of Holy Land Studies will inaugurate a master’s degree program this summer. Students who complete the course will be awarded the M.A. in Palastinology.

Pastor Lewi Pethrus, leader of the Pentecostal movement in Sweden, came under fire from church leaders for suggesting formation of a “Christian political party.”

A visit to the United States by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, originally scheduled for this fall, was postponed until next spring.

Mrs. Madalyn Murray, whose suits precipitated the Supreme Court ban on public school devotions, demanded this month that the Baltimore Board of Education eliminate the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance when recited by school children.

Personalia

Recurring symptoms of Parkinson’s disease will force the resignation of the Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger as presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. A successor will be elected at the denomination’s General Convention in October.

Dr. E. Theodore Bachmann elected executive secretary of the Lutheran Church in America’s Board of Theological Education.

Dr. Charles S. Duthie appointed principal of New College (Congregational), London.

Dr. Frank Stagg elected to the chair of New Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville.

The Rev. Kenneth G. Prunty named national youth director for the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana).

The Rev. James L. Johnson named executive secretary of Evangelical Literature Overseas.

The Rev. Harald Soeby, a pastor of the Danish Lutheran Church, was suspended by the government for “intolerable conduct in preaching politics from the pulpit.” Soeby reportedly had urged his congregation to join a march against NATO.

Dr. Jack S. Wilkes, a Methodist minister, resigned as mayor of Oklahoma City to become president of Centenary College. Wilkes has completed only one year of a four-year term in the mayoralty.

Dr. Harold W. Richardson named executive secretary of the American Baptist Board of Education and Publication.

They Say

“The Catholic Church’s official policy regarding interconfessional encounters does not allow us to rid ourselves of the apprehension that for Rome the word ‘ecumenicity’ is just another expression for a reunion movement conducted by friendly means and which comes very close to a conversion campaign.”—Lutheran Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger of Munich.

The illness of the church today is largely self-induced. Nothing makes this clearer than the important question of the authority of Holy Scripture. However much she may in practice have been unfaithful to this principle, historically the Church has acknowledged that the Bible, as the Word of God written, is the fountainhead of all saving truth. The attitude of Christ and his apostles to the authority of the Old Testament is unmistakably plain. And the attitude of the post-apostolic Church to the authority of the New Testament is seen most strikingly in the recognition of the Canon as constituting that unique deposit of revealed truth to which all the Church’s teaching and worship should conform. It is through the writings of his apostles that Christ still instructs and guides his Church in the way of truth and holiness.

This great principle the Reformers of the sixteenth century reaffirmed, and in so doing they aligned themselves with the Christians of both the New Testament and the post-apostolic periods. They did so, moreover, not merely as a matter of historical realignment, but because it was through Scripture that God had spoken powerfully, in the Holy Spirit, to their own souls. What they did, in effect, was to reaffirm the uniqueness of the canonicity of the biblical writings. Hence their assertion that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written.”

Last century, however, saw the rise and progress of a radical form of biblical criticism that, coupled with the evolutionistic theories of the “history of religions” school (according to which all religions are explained as relatively true and none as unique), led many in the Church into a position of skepticism and even unbelief as the historic confidence in the authority and authenticity of the Bible was progressively undermined.

The consequences of this are seen in the tragic disarray of contemporary Protestantism. The spectacle it presents is in general that of a religion without authority. The assured proclamation of the Word of God (“Thus saith the Lord!”) has all too commonly been replaced by the fumbling speculations and surmisings of men. The theological “experts” are happier when explaining what they do not believe than when explaining what they do believe. Christian pronouncement is crumbling into nondescript humanism, and Christian ethics into sentimental humanitarianism.

No one will deny for a moment the great debt that is owed to the textual criticism of modern times. Not only the study of manuscripts but also the painstaking examination of contemporary linguistic usage, particularly as revealed in sources of a non-literary nature, has thrown a flood of light on the language of the New Testament and afforded an understanding of the koine that was not available to commentators of a hundred years ago.

It is not here, however, that the problem lies; for textual criticism belongs to the sphere of objective scientific investigation. The problem arises in the realm of the so-called higher criticism, which approaches the text with certain presuppositions (or, it may be, prejudices) concerning, for example, what Jesus could or could not have said and done. In the nature of the case this approach is highly subjective, and can be described as scientific only within the framework of the presuppositions that have been brought to the task. Hence the wide variety of “results” that has been propounded in this field of investigation.

In effect, then, what is happening is that the canonicity of Scripture is now being supplanted by the canonicity of “modern knowledge,” shifting and subjective though its “findings” are. Accordingly, the person who wishes to accept the pronouncements of the biblical “expert” and at the same time to retain a belief in the objective authority of Scripture finds himself in a very real dilemma.

Thus Dr. Alan Richardson, writing in the recently published first volume of The Cambridge History of the Bible, acknowledges that “there were losses as well as gains amongst the consequences of what we may call the new historical control of biblical exegesis”; and among these losses must be reckoned, he says, “the gradual decay of the ordinary Christian’s sense that he can read the Bible for himself without an interpreter and discover its unambiguous meaning. He suggests that “one factor at least in the decline of Bible reading on the part of individual Christians must surely be that the Bible came to be regarded as a book for experts, requiring an elaborate training in linguistic and historical disciplines before it could be properly understood.” At the same time he asserts that “it is of course agreed that the prophetic and apostolic understanding of the meaning of the events of the biblical history is entirely due to the revealing action of God.” “Revelation is a mystery,” he adds, “like all the miraculous works of God. It is God alone who can open the eyes of faith, whether of the prophets and apostles of old or of those who read or hear the biblical message in subsequent generations.” This is certainly a statement that the evangelical can applaud. At this important point he will feel a strong bond of affinity with Dr. Richardson—though he will be surprised at the affirmation that this view of Scripture is “of course agreed” today. Would that it were!

What is still essential today, for expert as well as layman, is that dynamic transformation, that opening of the eyes, which comes when the Holy Spirit unites us by faith to Christ and assures us in our hearts that the witness that comes to us in Holy Scriptures is true and faithful.

I THINK WE PASSED a good civil rights bill in the House. I hope that same bill will be passed in the Senate.… We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.—President Lyndon B. Johnson.

THE ARGUMENT HAS BEEN MADE … that some countervailing rights of privacy or freedom of association are infringed by these proposals. To me a complete answer is that almost every regulatory enactment of the States as well as of the Congress involves some loss of privacy or freedom of association, yet our Nation could hardly exist without them.—Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N. Y.).

SOME OF THOSE WHO COMPLAIN most loudly about interference with private property rights, ironically are often those who most stoutly defend the laws, enforced by a number of States, which forbid Negroes to be served. Surely there is no difference—in terms of private property rights—between telling a businessman whom he may not do business with on the one hand and telling him that if his business is open to those traveling in interstate commerce his doors should be open to one and all, on the other hand.… These facilities are public in a very real sense. They are not at all like a private home or a private club, for example, to which the owner invites only the guests he selects.—Robert Kennedy, Attorney General of the United States.

YOU CAN’T MAKE A MAN, through legal strictures and judicial decrees or executive orders, love somebody else. But we aren’t trying to legislate love. We are trying to legislate issues that regulate behavior.—The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

WHEN YOU TRAVEL THROUGH what we might call hostile territory you take your chances. You drive and you drive and you drive. You do not stop where there is a vacancy sign out at a motel at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and rest yourself; you keep on driving until the next city or the next town where you know somebody or they know somebody who knows somebody who can take care of you.…—Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

THE GOALS OF THIS BILL are simple ones—to extend to Negro citizens the same rights and … opportunities that white Americans take for granted.—Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.).

THE OUTLOOK is for passage of a slightly amended bill that will still be the most dramatic piece of civil rights legislation since the civil war.—James Reston in The New York Times.

THE ODDS IN FAVOR of this shortsighted and disastrous legislation are very great.—Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.).

THE ONLY QUESTION … in my view, is whether accommodation on private property is a public right … whether a public desire to enjoy the privileges of private property can override the private right to the ownership and utilization of that property clearly guaranteed and protected by the fourth and fifth amendments. I submit … that it cannot.—Carl E. Sanders, Governor of Georgia.

YOU CANNOT FORCE Americans to associate with people they do not like.—William Loeb, publisher of the Manchester (N. H.) Union Leader.

ASSUMING THE PASSAGE by Congress of a bill establishing the “equal rights” of citizens in relation to the businesses of a “public” nature, who is to decide when customers or employees are fairly selected and when they are discriminated against? The answer usually given is that this will be left to the courts. Shall we see lawsuits, therefore, every time a motel owner turns away a Negro applicant for a room with the comment that the place is “all filled up” or without giving any reason? Shall employees and their personnel staffs be dragged into court and cross-examined as to why they hire one person as against another?—David Lawrence in U. S. News and World Report.

THE GREATEST PRESSURE ever has been exerted upon us. Educators and ministers of the Gospel have come to me and urged me to vote for the passage of this bill. I have asked them whether they have ever read the bill and know what its contents and implications are. I have always received a negative answer to that question.—Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N. C.).

THE ARGUMENT IS MADE that this invasion of property rights is nothing new—that our courts have for years upheld laws on zoning, minimum wages, collective bargaining, etc.… The same argument would sustain the equal ownership of property, which can only be achieved through the ownership of all property by the state.… In our eagerness to make all things right with the world, let us not forget that inherent in and inseparable from freedom is the capacity to make errors. If this Government were all wise and all powerful, it could prohibit all error. In such event this might be a better nation. But it would not be a free nation. And the state would have taken the place of God.—Farris Bryant, Governor of Florida.

FRANKLY I DO NOT BELIEVE any type of discrimination can be eliminated.—Sen. George Smathers (D-Fla.).

How do reason and experience enter into the concept of Christian faith? What place did they hold in Wesley’s theology? Professor Lawson’s article beginning on the opposite page discusses these and related questions.

A liberal minister offers a frank analysis of the failures and inconsistencies of liberal theology (page 5). See also the editorial, “Liberalism’s Time of ‘Turning Away’” (page 27).

Professor Francisco discusses Genesis 9:18–29 in relation to racial segregation (page 8).… Chaplain Bray speaks out of extensive experience with teen-agers in calling for a different approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency.

Our lead news feature previews the major religious exhibits at the New York World’s Fair, which opens this week.

A call for a “highest level” meeting between American Jewish leaders and Soviet authorities on the problem of anti-Semitism in Russia was issued by some 500 representatives of twenty-four major Jewish religious and other groups that met in Washington this month.

The unprecedented meeting, if the invitation is approved by the Soviet Union, will be part of an extensive national campaign by the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry to safeguard the religious and cultural life of about 3,000,000 Jews in the Soviet Union.

Concluding a two-day meeting, the conference also urged Soviet leaders to take eighteen specific steps to end anti-Semitism in that Communist nation.

The conference set into motion plans to enlist the help of all Americans in speaking out on “the fate of our brothers in the Soviet Union.” It called for a National Day of Prayer in all American synagogues to dramatize the plight of Soviet Jewry, and for the use of mass media to bring to the attention of the world the conditions of Soviet Jewish life.

Republican Senator Jacob Javits of New York said he had “no objection” to serving as part of an American Jewish delegation to confer with U. S. S. R. leaders on the Jewish problem. Other representatives suggested included Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Democratic Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. All three spoke at the Washington meeting.

Javits, who recently returned from a European trip, said the Soviet government “is not impervious to world opinion,” and could be expected to give ground in its deprivation of the Jews.

“What we need is general and universal protest—constantly reiterated,” he stressed. He added that “Soviet anti-Semitism is a threat not only to Jews—though they are the first victims—but to all religious minorities in the U. S. S. R.”

In a reference to the recent confiscation of matzoh by the Soviet government, Javits said:

“It is hard to believe that in this decade a major world power like the Soviet Union, with its nuclear capability and space exploration achievements, would stoop to this kind of petty but cruel and repressive official harassment of a helpless minority.”

The conference’s national program will include efforts to enlist the cooperation of President Johnson in communicating “America’s official concern to the Soviet government,” and to have the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and Congress adopt statements condemning anti-Semitism.

Among other phases in the campaign are: Urging religious bodies and “international Christian forums such as the World Council of Churches” to include discussion and action on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union:

Enlisting the support of civic, labor, educational, religious, veterans’, women’s, and other groups to express their concern for the plight of the Jews;

Conducting a special drive to get statements from “prominent religious leaders, winners of honors and awards in scientific and human fields, outstanding intellectuals, and others … in behalf of Soviet Jewry.”

The eighteen-point program urged on Russia includes the eradication of anti-Semitism by a “vigorous educational effort by the government and party”; permission for the “free functioning” of all synagogues and private prayer meetings; and the production and distribution of religious articles, such as Hebrew Bibles, religious texts, calendars, matzoh and kosher foods.

The Soviet Union also was asked to eliminate discrimination against Jews “in all areas of Soviet public life,” end anti-Semitic campaigns in the press, and stop the “discriminatory application of the death penalty and other severe sentences imposed against Jews for ‘economic crimes’ against the state.”

Educational Crossroads?

A group of Roman Catholic educators voted this month to raise $40,000 to answer arguments in a book challenging the value of the Roman Catholic school system in America.

The action was taken by the Primary Education Department of the National Catholic Educational Association at its sixty-first annual meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The money is to come in five-dollar donations from the NCEA’s 8,000 elementary school members.

Proposed by Msgr. William E. McManus, president of the department and superintendent of schools in the Chicago archdiocese, the defense plan was approved by some 5,000 members of the department.

The book in question, published several weeks ago, is Mrs. Mary Perkins Ryan’s Are Parochial Schools the Answer? In it, Mrs. Ryan, a Roman Catholic, contends that the parochial school system is obsolete and hinders the preparation of the lives of pupils. She urges her church to leave the field of general education and to concentrate on the religious training of children.

A number of Catholic educators have sharply criticized Mrs. Ryan’s views. Msgr. McManus said that she “writes about our children when she doesn’t know anything about educating them.” He declared that the $40,000 drive would “expose the book as simply the example of poor writing it really is.” The money, he added, will be used to hire an author to make an intensive year’s research of all phases of Catholic schools throughout the country. The author will then put together what he has found in repudiation to Mrs. Ryan’s observations, he said.

“We want to prepare a definite statement,” Msgr. McManus said, “of the validity of the Catholic schools as educational means for our children. Mrs. Ryan is not just challenging the quality of our education, but the very idea of having our children educated in Catholic schools.

“We want to show that we are smart, well educated people, blessed with abundant talent. The Blessed Lord is not about to abandon his Catholic schools.”

At a press conference the consensus of four priests who commented on the book was that although it was thought-provoking and accurate in some parts, generally the volume was confusing, self-contradictory, irrelevant, and harmful to the cause of education.

Informed observers feel that Roman Catholic elementary and secondary education may currently be at a crossroads. Lack of adequate funds is preventing the expansion of facilities to meet growing needs. Some programs are being curtailed.

Church and State magazine, in its May issue, has urged a progressive reduction of the Catholic educational program in the elementary grades along with a commensurate expansion of the public school system.

The magazine, published by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, notes that “Catholic leaders have, in fact, already embarked upon such a program. [It] will constrict the swollen classes in Catholic schools with a gradual transfer of enrollments to the public schools. The Catholic operation thus becomes manageable and also of a size which can be sustained by the voluntary gifts of Catholic members.… It has been estimated that every 1,000 students transferred from parochial schools to public schools represent a saving of $500,000 to the Catholic membership.… As this process continues and the savings increase, the necessity for public aid to Catholic schools will disappear even as the clamor for it subsides.”

A Bishop’S Rationale

Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike held up a Gideon Bible borrowed from his hotel room and told a federal judges’ panel in Delaware, “There are a lot of verses I don’t buy at all … but it does no violence to me to read them.” If he can read something he disagrees with, the bishop said, so can an agnostic teacher or student.

Pike was supporting his contention that a Delaware law requiring the Bible to be read at the start of each school day is constitutional. He was chief defense witness called by state Attorney General David Buckson (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 13, 1964, p. 42).

Pike said required Bible readings are not a service because “no religious response or assent is required.” For example, fundamentalist listeners may believe the words “were said by God on a Dictaphone and brought down to earth by a dove,” he said; others may not.

Pike considers study of the Bible a legitimate part of cultural and literary study. The Bible’s absence, he said, would leave the philosophical field open to secularism by default and would therefore represent a position farther from the Supreme Court’s desire for religious neutrality.

The Delaware law also suggests recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, but does not require it. Compulsory, it would be unconstitutional, the bishop said, but it “is not a sectarian prayer, not even a Christian prayer in the specific sense.… It is a summation of Jewish piety.” There was nothing original, the bishop asserted, in the teachings of Jesus.

The judges’ panel told lawyers in the case that they should continue their arguments on May 19.

DICK OSTLING

Silent Meditation

A bill requiring a moment of meditation in public schools won approval from the Maryland General Assembly last month, but only on the understanding that teachers may not hold or read from Bibles during the period of silence.

Maryland Attorney General Thomas B. Finan said that the part of the bill permitting a teacher to hold a Bible as she directed her students to begin a “moment of meditation” was unconstitutional. However, he held that this portion was “severable” from the bill as passed, and that the governor could sign, as constitutional, the remaining portions of the measure.

As passed by the General Assembly, the bill states:

“Principals and teachers in every public elementary and secondary school in this state may require all students at these schools to be present and participate in opening exercises on each morning of a school day and to meditate silently for approximately one moment; provided that no student or teacher shall be prohibited from reading the Holy Scripture or praying.”

Prayer For A Son

A prayer composed by the late General Douglas MacArthur will live on as a spiritual legacy to his 26-year-old son, Arthur. The prayer, written when the soldier-statesman was heading outnumbered U. S. forces in the Philippines in early 1942, was said many times at morning devotions, according to his longtime military aide and biographer, Major General Courtney Whitney. Following is the text:

“Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

“Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee—and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.

“Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail.

“Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high, a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men, one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.

“And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength.

“Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, ‘I have not lived in vain.’”

The billion-dollar New York World’s Fair opens this week. Religious forces are better represented than at any previous fair. They are located in seven major centers scattered across the 646-acre fairgrounds in Flushing Meadow Park in the Queens borough of New York City (adjacent to LaGuardia Airport). Their aggregate investment in fair exhibits has been estimated at $12,000,000.

Evangelist Billy Graham, in formally dedicating a pavilion named for him, observed that the exhibitions at the fair “hold out to mankind the fulfillment of all his age-long hopes and dreams. It is being demonstrated that science could provide a paradise on earth for man.

“However, there is one stumbling block to peace and prosperity—and that is man himself! Christ said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ Modern man is proving Christ right. The human race hungers and thirsts for something more than food, shelter, education, and the ‘good life.’ He has deep spiritual yearnings that must also be satisfied.”

More than 70,000,000 persons are expected to visit the fair during 1964 and 1965.

The broadest assortment of religious witness will be found in the Protestant and Orthodox Center, sponsored by the Protestant Council of the City of New York. The center’s exhibit space is divided among more than two dozen denominations and religious organizations. Also in the pavilion is a theater where a controversial film is to be shown (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, NOV. 8, 1963).

On the eve of the dedication of the pavilion, World’s Fair President Robert Moses asked Protestant Council directors to reconsider their decision to show the film, called Parable.

“The staff of the fair,” said Moses, “have grave misgivings about the propriety, good taste, and validity of the film presenting Jesus as a clown. Of course we do not claim any right of censorship in this field and we realize that this particular symbol has been the subject of much earnest consideration in your ranks. However, most of our people at the fair still hope that you will reconsider.”

The 22-minute color production has been described as an attempt to express the gospel message of redemption, in pantomime, through a parable of the world as a circus.

Dr. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the Protestant Council, answered Moses’ objection:

“We do not feel that it is within his province to prejudge our film as being the proper method of proclaiming the Gospel, especially since he himself has not seen it.”

Another featured billing at the Protestant and Orthodox Center is had by two partly burned pieces of oak that fell from the roof of Coventry Cathedral during a 1940 bombing. Workmen bound the timbers with wire into a cross and set it up in a sand tub. Since then it has been known as the “Charred Cross of Coventry Cathedral.” It was flown to the United States last month amid much ceremony and will be placed in a garden at the center.

The octagonally shaped Graham pavilion will feature a half-hour evangelistic film, Man in the Fifth Dimension, produced by the Todd-AO process and shown on a wide, wrap-around screen. The sound track can be heard in any one of six languages through special earphones. The film closes with an evangelistic appeal, and inquirers will be led to counseling rooms located to the rear of the screen. Counselors will man the pavilion. The film will be shown hourly in the 400-seat theater, which dominates the pavilion designed by architect Edward Durell Stone. Graham said that the exhibit will seek to bring Christ’s message to the fairgoer through “straight evangelism without apology.”

Graham will visit the pavilion periodically. One scheduled appearance will be on June 26 of this year, which has been designated as “Billy Graham Day.” He will speak at that time at the fair’s central Unisphere.

Also dedicated to the task of evangelism among fairgoers is the Sermons from Science Pavilion, which will feature demonstrations well known throughout the world. Dr. George E. Speake and James Moon will use a stage full of scientific equipment in their demonstrations. These are scheduled three times each day. Between them, films from the Moody Institute of Science like The Prior Claim and Red River of Life will be screened in the pavilion’s 500-seat, air-conditioned auditorium.

The activity program at the Sermons from Science Pavilion is patterned after that which proved successful in a similar pavilion at the Seattle fair in 1962. More than a thousand counselors have been trained under the direction of Gordon Klenck of Campus Crusade for Christ. Finances for the pavilion were collected by a group of New York businessmen headed by George Hickman.

The April issue of Moody Monthly predicts that “hundreds of thousands will make the most important discovery of their lives during their visits to New York this summer.” “Leaders of the New York committee recall that 75 per cent of the visitors to the Seattle Sermons from Science Pavilion were unchurched,” the magazine reports. “That means that, if the figures hold true, one and one-half of the two million they expect to reach during the two seasons will be without religious ties or interest. They also expect that the demonstrations will have particular appeal for youth.”

The missionary flavor at the fair will center at the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ 2,000 Tribes Building. It takes its name from the approximately 2,000 world languages yet to be reduced to writing. Inside will be a museum and a 100-seat auditorium. On display will be tribal artifacts and information on methods used to create new written languages and to translate the Bible into languages understandable to isolated tribes.

Wycliffe leaders, taking their cue from the theme of the fair, “Peace Through Understanding,” have chosen as the theme for their own exhibit “Understanding Through Literacy.”

The pavilion was designed by William E. Kohn to suggest a hut and is indicative of the buildings in the areas which Wycliffe serves. It has a diagonal siding of dark wood.

The focal point of the Wycliffe pavilion will be a dramatic 100-foot mural created by Douglas Riseborough, who visited the jungles of Peru to observe Indian life in preparation for his work. The mural, in five panels, shows the impact of Christianity on a once savage tribe. It was inspired by the true story of the life of a headhunting Shapra Indian chief. Some art critics have predicted that the mural will create a sensation when it is unveiled.

Perhaps the work of art that will attract the most attention at the fair will be Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” the 400-year-old marble statue depicting a dying Christ in the arms of Mary. This marks the first time the cream-colored statue has left St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. It was shipped to New York in a crate of foam and will be exhibited at the Vatican Pavilion behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.

Some feel that the statue’s setting in the pavilion will be more dramatic than its resting place in St. Peter’s. It will be mounted on an inclined plane on a low pedestal, reportedly as prescribed by Michelangelo himself. There will be a circle of lights above and also lamps at the sides.

The Vatican’s decision to display the “Pieta” in New York has been a source of controversy, as has the design of the pavilion. Many art lovers felt that the trans-Atlantic trip posed too many hazards for the statue. The shippers have been taking extraordinary precautions, however, to insure its safety. Special policemen will guard it twenty-four hours a day.

In New Jersey, the editor of a Roman Catholic magazine publicly criticized the Vatican’s decisions with regard to their fair exhibits. Father Gregory Smith said foreign visitors and “travelers from our own Midwest” will be “disappointed” in the “staid exterior” of the Vatican Pavilion. Father Smith, writing in The Scapular, claimed that the pavilion tends to be out of harmony with the modern area and gives little recognition to present-day trends in the church. He said that the loan of the “Pieta” is a “crowning achievement” of which Catholics can be proud. But, he added, “one can only question the wisdom that has made a Renaissance work of art the central attraction in a pavilion which should show a contemporary church looking toward the future.”

The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America hopes to attract art lovers to see a 500-year-old ikon of the Virgin Mary which it recently purchased from a private collector for $500,000. The ikon, measuring ten by thirteen inches and encrusted with some 1,000 diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls, is housed in a replica of an old Russian Orthodox church.

American Jewish religious leaders had discussed the possibility of sponsoring a pavilion, but the idea was dropped. A group of Jewish businessmen, however, got together and built the American-Israel Pavilion which includes portrayals of ancient and modern life in the Holy Land.

Other religious exhibits at the fair will be housed in the Mormon Pavilion, which features a replica of the facade of the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, and the Christian Science Pavilion.

A series of 104 special sacred concerts on the fairgrounds will be sponsored by the Bibletown organization of Boca Raton, Florida. The concerts will be given every Saturday night and every Sunday afternoon at several auditoriums and arenas. The Bibletown organization, headed by Dr. Ira Lee Eshleman, owns and operates a resort conference in Boca Raton and an adjacent housing community.

The New York Bible Society has printed a million copies of the “World’s Fair Edition” of the Gospel of John for distribution at the fair. The society’s exhibit is located in the Hall of Education.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in addition to operating its own pavilion, will lease 400 square feet of exhibit space in the Protestant and Orthodox Center.

The largest exhibits in the Protestant and Orthodox Center will be those sponsored by The Methodist Church, the Churches of Christ, and the Lutherans (a composite exhibit of the Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and the American Lutheran Church).

Other exhibitors at the Protestant and Orthodox Center: the Protestant Episcopal Church; the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America; Guideposts Associates, Inc.; Seventh-day Adventists; General Council of Assemblies of God; New York Association of the New Church (Swedenborgian); Salvation Army; Evangelical Covenant Church of America; Aramaic Bible Society, Inc.; Association for a United Church of America, Inc.; John A. Dixon Co. (publishers of the New Analytical Bible); John Milton Society; National St. George Association; and Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

A Baptist display at the center will be jointly conducted by the American and Southern Baptist Conventions, the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., the North American Baptist General Conference, the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, and the Baptist Federation of Canada. A Presbyterian exhibit is sponsored by the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and the Reformed Church in America.

Billy Graham In Birmingham

Legion Field is a football stadium in Birmingham, Alabama, located at the foot of “Dynamite Hill,” a Negro residential section that has been rocked repeatedly by the bombs of the Negroes’ white neighbors.

To this stadium on Easter Sunday came Billy Graham to speak to an integrated audience, and the white supremacists were aroused. “If violence occurs, the blood will be on the hands of the rulers of Birmingham,” said a spokesman for the segregationist “Citizens Council.”

The Citizens Council had pressed for the canceling of the meeting. The Birmingham City Council rejected the request.

“Why have you come to Birmingham?” Graham was asked at a news conference before the rally. “To preach the Gospel,” he replied.

On Easter Sunday at Legion Field, not only was there no violence; people went out of their way to be friendly. The crowd of 35,000 that gathered to hear Graham was the largest integrated audience in the history of the city and the state. Over 300 policemen were on hand, some with truncheons; but no incidents were reported.

“During the waiting period, Negroes and whites chatted informally with those nearby,” wrote Mrs. William McMurry for the Southern Baptist Press. “One woman who was having her first experience sitting by a Negro said later, ‘When she put out her hand to shake mine and smiled, I couldn’t refuse.’

“A white usher responded to a friendly greeting from a woman sitting next to him with, ‘Well, some folks said there wouldn’t be many here, and I just told them maybe those who do come will get a good dose of religion.’”

To this audience Graham preached a simple message on John 3:16. “Integration was not the issue at Legion Field,” said Dr. Sherwood Wirt of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “The issue was the claim of Jesus Christ upon the individual heart.”

Some 3,000 to 4,000 people—about 10 per cent of the audience—came forward at the end of the message to respond to that claim. “I have never seen this [great a] proportion in America,” said Walter Smyth, crusade planning director.

“What a moment and what an hour in Birmingham,” said Graham. “Let’s make this the beginning of a spiritual awakening in Birmingham.”

The reaction of many observers was one of almost stunned surprise. Time magazine put the story in its lead civil rights article, which concluded, “And if it could happen in Birmingham, it could happen anywhere, a fact of which the debating senators might take notice.”

“Rev. Billy Graham has brought out the very best in us,” said Mayor Albert Boutwell.

The mayor sat on the platform during the meeting, as did the president of the Birmingham Ministerial Association and the presidents of the city’s three colleges: Howard, Miles, and Birmingham Southern.

Many Roman Catholics and Jews cooperated, and almost all the evangelical denominations in the city, white and Negro, supported the rally.

More than 1,000 prayer groups had been meeting in advance of the service.

Graham has already been invited back for a full-scale crusade, and he has said the team would be “delighted” to return.

Evangelicals And The Ymca

The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom among men.

With these words delegates to the first YMCA world conference, on August 22, 1855, laid the basis for the admission of new associations. The YMCA movement went on to become part of community life the world over. But the religious leg of its traditional body-mind-spirit triangle eventually sagged (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 11, 1957, “Will the ‘Y’ Recover Its Gospel?”).

Paul L. Hershey, 28-year-old community work secretary for the Central Y in Washington, D. C., is challenging the notion that evangelicals should write off the movement. A letter-writing campaign over the past year has netted him a list of dozens of Y secretaries around the country who are concerned about the movement’s spiritual outreach. Hershey has encouraged them to start prayer meetings and Bible study sessions.

“We seek to see a new power in the YMCA fellowship as we relate to a changing society,” he says. “We still believe that the only way to build a Christian society is through transformed lives.”

As a step in coordinating evangelical efforts in behalf of the Y, Hershey spearheaded sponsorship of a day-long conference in Washington last month that drew some twenty-five Y secretaries and an equal number of interested laymen from several Eastern states. One speaker predicted that the Y’s greatest days were still ahead, but that the movement needed more of a “cutting edge” in Christian convictions. Conferees agreed to press their cause on local fronts and to report back in a year. Hershey hopes that the next conference will have a national scope.

Hershey, who attended Philadelphia College of Bible and graduated from Grace College, declares he has no intention of creating a divisive bloc in the Y movement. The role of the evangelicals, he says, should be one of service consistent with the existing framework.

The Y movement is currently active in seventy-five countries. The nearly 6,000 associations have 6,000,000 members.

Medium For Missions

Establishment of a new non-profit organization to disseminate missionary news was announced in Washington this month. The Evangelical Missions Information Service was incorporated as a joint enterprise of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association. First project: publication of a periodical to be known as The Evangelical Missions Quarterly.

James Reapsome, editor of The Sunday School Times, will also edit the new quarterly. First issue is due by late 1964. The journal will be designed to report on events and trends vital to the cause of missions, interpreting them in the light of the evangelical position.

A Plan Of Union

Two conservative Presbyterian bodies took the first formal step in St. Louis this month toward merging into one denomination. After years of moving together through sharing academic facilities and exchanging ministers, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (General Synod), meeting in its 141st General Synod, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, meeting in its twenty-eighth General Synod, “were all with one accord in one place.”

The forty commissioners of the RPC adopted the Plan of Union unanimously, the 103 commissioners of the EPC by an 80 to 4 vote. Only the selection of a name for the united church aroused lively discussion. Pride of tradition and sense of identity raised the question whether the united church would be a new church requiring a new name, and whether the 28-year-old EPC would suddenly become 141 years old. In the end both groups unanimously adopted the name “The Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod” for the united church.

If the plan is ratified by three of the RPC’s four presbyteries and by eight of the EPC’s twelve presbyteries, the merger can be consummated in April of 1965, when the two synods are scheduled to meet in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

There seemed little doubt that the merger will take place. According to Paul Gilchrist, pastor of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Levittown, Pennsylvania, “The spirit toward union both before and during the 1964 meetings of our respective synods was exceedingly promising. I have little doubt that the merger will be ultimately consummated.”

The EPC has 8,000 communicant members, the RPC 2,000.

If the merger occurs, it will be the first organizational merger within the twentieth-century “separatist” movement. The EPC separated from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1938 and was known as the Bible Presbyterian Church until the defection in 1956 of Carl McIntire and his churches (Bible Presbyterian Church, Collingswood Synod); since that time it has borne its present name.

The Plan for Union includes acceptance of the Westminster Confession, and of the Shorter and the Longer Catechisms. The confession was modified to eliminate the Westminster assertion that the pope of Rome is the “Antichrist.” Modifications and deletions of the Larger Catechism were made in order not to exclude any millennial view that includes belief in a visible, personal return of Christ and does not otherwise violate the teaching of the confession and the catechisms.

The plan also includes resolutions renouncing the various forms of pornography, and warning against the use of tobacco and liquor and against the moral dangers involved in movies, dancing, television, and the sin of gambling. Although the resolutions are included in the Plan of Union which must be adopted to effect the merger, the plan states that “they do not constitute an attempt to legislate.” How such resolutions could be the basis for union and yet be without binding legislative power, seemed to trouble no one.

A resolution about the proper nature of a resolution asserted that resolutions “should bear on the religious and moral issues rather than the strictly political or social issues of the day, or should pertain at least to the moral or religious aspect of any social or political issue,” and that such a resolution “should be aimed primarily at our own constituency … rather than at the high councils of government or at society at large.” Nevertheless, the Resolutions Committee was mandated, immediately upon the conclusion of the synod, “to notify news media of the approved resolutions.”

JAMES DAANE

The Glory And The Shame

The Brazen Serpent, by Poul Hoffmann, translated by David Hohnen (Fortress, 1964, 288 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Kenneth E. Williams, assistant professor of English, Trenton State College, Trenton, New Jersey.

The Brazen Serpent is the final volume of a trilogy on the Exodus by Poul Hoffmann, a Danish lawyer. It begins with the arrival of the Israelites at Hazeroth and concludes with the death of Moses.

This novel is not simply an expanded or imaginative version of the biblical narrative intended primarily for devotional use. Instead, it is a theologically oriented attempt to portray the forces at work in the history of Israel and its changing relationship to God. It uses the two wives of Joshua, Judith and Tamar, whose names are the titles of the two halves, as a mirror to reflect the changes brought about when the desert wanderers enter the Promised Land. As a book presenting part of the history of salvation, it begins with a curiously sensuous description of the cosmos and presents our planet as a dark star, “sick, doomed, pregnant with its own destruction.” The author uses the sense of mystery created by his description to suggest that what was happening at Hazeroth in the camp of Israel was related to Jahveh’s cure of the blighted world. The book ends by stating that the life and resurrection of Christ were a continuation of the work God had been doing in the days of Moses.

One of the ways the author captures vividly the passions and motivations of some of the people whose names dot the history of the Exodus is to echo various religious ideas from non-biblical sources. For example, the book begins with the dispute between Moses and Aaron and Miriam concerning the presence of Gentiles in the Israelite camp, especially Moses’ wife, Zippora. By a skillful use of dialogue the author creates an atmosphere that points up how severe the crisis was for Moses.

The most important character in the book is really Joshua, the military commander of the people. In a chapter written as a letter from Joshua to Moses during the visit of the spies to Canaan, Joshua is presented as a man of strong passion who falls into sin through a pagan orgy only to feel such a sense of revulsion that he feels compelled to wipe out such a depraved race. Later Joshua dreams of Adam and Eve in a way that is filled with countless Jungian overtones; this occurs just before Israel is confronted with the plague of the snakes, to which Joshua himself nearly succumbs. The author tries to show later how Joshua suddenly sensed that Moses was now a very old man who was about to leave Joshua in command of the people, and the effect this awareness had on him. He does it fairly convincingly.

One of the virtues of the book is the way it attempts to fit into some consistent pattern some of the various minor events and to capture the spirit of some of the secondary characters. By presenting the spies as virtual buffoons, the author is able to make their dissuading of their countrymen from invading a truly ironic event.

In summary, the book captures well the sense of mystery that must have pervaded the camp of Israel during those days when the cloud and the pillar of fire led them onward. Readers who are used to thinking of God in terms of the fuller revelation of later Old Testament history and the final revelation in Jesus Christ may find it hard to accept the almost irreverent attitudes of the Israelites, to whom he seemed to be less than the High and Holy One. Most of all, readers may find it difficult to accept the strong sexual drives that seem to be the basic motivation for Joshua’s deeds unless they are used to thinking in such a Freudian frame of reference.

KENNETH E. WILLIAMS

Philosophers On Parade

Faith and Philosophy, edited by Alvin Plantinga (Eerdmans, 1964, 225 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Arthur F. Holmes, associate professor and director of philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Philosopher W. Harry Jellema retired last summer at the age of seventy, after thirty years of teaching at Calvin College, plus twelve years at Indiana and visiting professorships at Haverford and Harvard. A number of his former students and colleagues have collaborated to produce a Festschrift in his honor. That he should have occasioned a volume of this caliber is both a sterling contribution in itself and a significant reminder of the lasting influence of the Christian teacher and scholar.

All of the contributors are professional philosophers in their own right, and their essays are a credit to Christian scholarship. There are two historical studies. Jesse DeBoer of the University of Kentucky provides fascinating insights into the mysticism of the Upanishads, while Henry Stob of Calvin Seminary presents a careful exposition of Jonathan Edwards’s ethics in the light of his idealism. The remaining seven essays represent the constructive role of philosophy done from a Christian perspective.

Nicholas Wolterstorff of Calvin College keynotes the volume with his analysis of the relation of faith to philosophy. “Few, if any, philosophical arguments are proofs—strict, rigorous, deductive proofs,” because in the final analysis a philosophical position is the elaboration of a perspective, a way of seeing things, “an interpretation of our human condition.” Moreover, man’s faith, whether or not directly religious, also affects his outlook on life. Consequently, “there is every likelihood of conflict between one man’s philosophy and some other man’s faith, and between one man’s faith and some other man’s philosophy.” Just as the loyalties of a philosophical outlook keep it from being neutral with respect to faith, so the loyalties of faith keep us from being neutral with respect to philosophical outlooks. Consequently the choice we face is never ultimately between rationality and irrationality, between philosophy and faith; it is a choice between faiths, a choice between philosophies. Christian faith does not inhibit philosophy, and need not be inhibited by it. Rather it provokes philosophic endeavor, and can be enriched thereby.

This is clearly seen in the remaining essays. Francis Parker of Haverford College argues for the traditional view of reason stemming from Aristotle, as against the epistemological cul-de-sac of British empiricism. If these are the only alternatives, his point is well taken; but an overgeneralized classification is apt to leave the impression that we have to be pure Aristotelians or nothing at all. Editor Alvin Plantinga of Wayne State (currently on leave to teach at Calvin), who has previously published on other aspects of philosophical theology, analyzes the use of the phrase “necessary being,” and concludes that its function is to set forth “the unique role played by the assertion of God’s existence in the conceptual scheme of theism.”

The last four constructive essays are on ethics. Henry Veatch of Indiana rejects the contemporary stress on meta-ethics engendered by G. E. Moore in favor of a cognitive approach to normative ethics. Dewey Hoitenga of Juniata College considers the place of Christian ethics in the debate between motivational and deontological theories, and Fred Brouwer of Washington and Jefferson College develops “a restricted motive theory.” Finally Michigan’s William Frankena appeals to proponents of theological ethics to take into account the best philosophical thinking of the time. Agapistic ethics, he believes, has not done so. He accordingly enumerates alternative kinds of rule-agapism, act-agapism, non-agapism, and mixed agapism, and urges theologians to think through Christian ethics in this light. This would be an exciting and rewarding bridge between faith and philosophy.

ARTHUR F. HOLMES

Few Dull Pages

Global Odyssey, by Howard A. Johnson (Geoffrey Bles, 1963, 435 pp., 45s), is reviewed by Oliver R. Barclay, secretary for international relations, Inter-Varsity Fellowship, London, England.

Canon Johnson from the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral in New York began a two-year tour of the Anglican communion in October, 1959. This book records what he saw, heard, and experienced. There are very few dull pages in this lively compound of travel journal, anecdote, and comment upon the political and religious situations of the countries visited. Its aim is to give a fresh vision of the Anglican communion and to describe its situation all around the world.

Although the book is very interesting reading, it is in many ways disappointing. The author has some shrewd summaries of the political and psychological situations of the churches in different countries (e.g., a good survey of the Church of Ireland), but he has almost nothing to say about the spiritual strengths and weaknesses. Evangelistic outreach, supply of men for the ministry, missionary concern, devotional and practical Christian living, are hardly mentioned. Inevitably, perhaps, institutions and the work of bishops and a few other leaders steal the canvas. One sees the churches as organizations rather than fellowships of believing people. The result is an apparent preoccupation with efficiency, organization, and public status. He admits at one stage that he described his outstanding impression of the church by the word “ineptitude.” This is not fair to himself or to the book, but it describes the kind of judgment he most often makes.

Nevertheless, if one accepts the relative superficiality of all judgments of this kind, there is much of interest in the broad sweep of these descriptions, which cover every continent. The writing does give a fresh impression of a great worldwide communion and a fresh humility as one contemplates the vast missionary efforts of the past.

OLIVER R. BARCLAY

Popular But Unplanned

Christian Belief and Christian Practice, by William J. March (Eerdmans, 1964, 219 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Robert G. DeMoss, consultant, DeMoss Associates, Inc., Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

This new book by a prominent Canadian minister seeks in impassioned tones to awaken the Church to the present low state of our religious life and to motivate it to a more vital expression of the faith to which it is committed. Gibbon’s description of the moral corrosion of Rome that prefaced its “fall” is cited as having a modern-day parallel in our own private and national lives.

March understands both the cause and the cure of our present plight to reside in two simple truths: (1) We must go back to the actual teachings of Jesus as foundational to an understanding of the moral basis of individual and societal living; and (2) an understanding of Christian doctrine is without value unless it is practiced in daily living.

It is healthful and indeed necessary that every generation be reminded of this simple but foundational concept, in season and out of season. Dr. March’s sincere and impassioned words are therefore welcome. However, as a book this one leaves much to be desired. The almost complete absence of any structure or development in the more than two hundred pages gives evidence of lack of planning. The hortatory style is rambling and verbose, and lacks precision. There is a great deal of repetition; the contents of the book could have been expressed in less than half the words used.

The work is popular not only in the sense that the language and style are simple or that there is no index or footnotes, but, more importantly, in the sense that almost no cognizance is taken of any current theological or exegetical discussions. Although the author’s sincere desire to awaken the Church is commendable, a written expression of this desire cannot be effective if it exhibits such shortcomings as these.

ROBERT G. DEMOSS

Unique

The Vocabulary of Communism, by Lester De Koster (Eerdmans, 1964, 224 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

In his earlier volume, Communism and Christian Faith, Professor De Koster sought to present the visible structures of the Marxist system. In this present volume he sets forth the anatomy of the Communist movement, utilizing the method of carefully written and closely articulated definitions. About 170 pages are devoted to clear-cut expositions of the major themes, historical phenomena, and clichés relating to the Sino-Soviet system(s). Three extended and highly useful bibliographies complete the volume.

A survey of the definitions, some of which occupy from one-half to a whole page, reveals that the author has done a massive piece of research, covering not only the theory of Marxism but the political embodiment of the movement as well. There can be noted, of course, significant omissions. For example, one sees no entry for Molotov, nor for the infamous pact between him and Ribbentrop.

Two particular features of the work commend it to the reader. First, the articles are non-epithetical, and as objective as can reasonably be expected. It goes without saying that the author avoids the “good God, nice devil” attitude toward the movement which was fashionable in the thirties. Second, the meticulous cross-referencing makes its systematic use easy. The work is likely to stand unique in its field for some time.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Genesis And Science

Creation Revealed, by F. A. Filby (Pickering & Inglis, 1964, 160 pp., 17s. 6d.), is reviewed by Alan Millard, librarian, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England.

The “conflict” between the Creation account in Genesis and science does not cease to inspire in earnest Christians a desire to harmonize the two. Dr. Filby, a lecturer in chemistry, has not followed the usual pattern. He takes Genesis 1 verse by verse, endeavors to establish its meaning, then investigates the results of scientific discovery bearing upon the topic, not insisting upon one to the exclusion of the other, for often the two sides are seen to be complementary.

This book can be criticized in sections not concerned with the author’s specialty; the Hebrew words are not always represented, and too literal an interpretation is pressed upon some. That the Babylonian Creation stories actually refer to the Flood and Babel rather than to Creation is implausible. The existence of chaos at the beginning of Creation is assumed in several places; but did God “progress from disorder to order”? For pp. 121–139 in note 1, p. 57, read pp. 21–24, 34–37.

This book should be of help to those Christians who find in scientific discovery a stumbling block, while others will gain a stimulus to more abundant praise of Him in whom “all things consist.”

ALAN MILLARD

Symbol And Ceremony

Liturgy Is Mission, edited by Frank Stephen Cellier (Seabury, 1964, 159 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by John T. Malestein, pastor, Richfield Christian Reformed Church, Clifton, New Jersey.

Gather at a liturgical conference such men as the Rev. W. Moelwyn Merchant, Shakespearean scholar and head of the Department of English, Exeter University, England; the Rev. C. Kilmer Myers, director of the Urban Training Center, Chicago; the Rt. Rev. James A. Pike, former lawyer, now Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of California; the Rev. William G. Pollard, executive director of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and priest-in-charge at St. Albans Chapel, Clinton, Tennessee; the Rev. Massey H. Shepherd, professor of liturgies at the Church Divinity School—together with the pastor of the Roman Catholic parish, Galena, Kansas, the Rev. Joseph T. Nolan—and you will indeed have, as the editor describes it, a conference “addressed by men of singular distinction, all of them with the invigorating wind of the Liturgical Movement blowing full in their faces.” The six chapters of this book contain an address, a sermon, and several papers that were delivered at the third National Liturgical Conference in Wichita, Kansas, in 1962.

In the introduction the editor makes the somewhat startling claim that the liturgical movement, though “much less spectacular … [is] in many ways as significant as the Reformation of the sixteenth century.” By the time one has finished this book he is likely to concede that within the Church there are stirrings that possess the potential of a mighty leaven. Cellier is quick to allay the hasty judgments of those who might dismiss liturgical renewal as being concerned only with meaningless symbols and empty ceremonies: “… the Liturgical Movement has its roots very deep in the soil of … ecclesiology … and in the soil of sacramental theology” (p. 21). Though one encounters on succeeding pages a modest disavowal of theological capabilities, there is to be found, nevertheless, a profound theological concern for arriving at answers to the question: How can liturgy, resting foursquare on biblical foundations, continue to be the supreme channel of God’s grace to the individual?—and further, how may the individual reflect the efficacy of his reception of God’s grace by the way he confronts the society in which he lives?

Both Shepherd and Myers confront a society that is fragmented and hungry for unity. The sacrament of baptism, avers Myers, is the sacrament of unity and therefore the “beginning of the divine strategy” in the Church’s mission to urban society. Shepherd cautions that before the Church can effectively mend the breaches in a society “out there” she had better heal the wounds of division within. The irrefutable existence of racial division in the Church is a denial of the Gospel, a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and a mockery of holy liturgy; for racial division “rejects the divine grace that works to make us one Body and one Blood in the Lord” (p. 47). In the almost hopeless fragmentation of the Church, Shepherd finds one of the great obstacles to an effective mission throughout the world.

In the sermon-chapter the Rt. Rev. James A. Pike contrasts “two different meanings of life and work, depending on whether one is caught in the time-space continuum—in a secular view of reality—or whether one is caught up into the eternal view of reality and purpose and calling” (p. 128). Pike, like Pollard, sees real meaning and finds a way out of this time-space continuum through worship, but he seems to allow a more significant place for the Word: “We adore God in both his Word and his Sacrament.… Christ is truly and really present in the Word of God; and the Service of the Word is something that, having its own authenticity, can stand on its own feet” (p. 129).

An ecumenical dimension is added to the book in the chapter submitted by Father Nolan. His presentation includes a brief but valuable historical summary followed by an analysis of the present status and significance of liturgical renewal in the Roman Catholic Church. His proposal that Catholics, Anglicans, and other Christians publish a joint hymnal as well as a joint Bible translation expresses a wholesome irenics. His observation—“It seems obvious that as Catholics get more scriptural and Protestants more liturgical, they are bound to meet each other”—embraces more than a modicum of ecumenical truth.

Although primarily of concern to liturgical churchmen, this book merits wide reading by all churchmen. Liturgy Is Mission alerts the universal Church “to the one test by which all worship and prayer is laid under judgment, namely the sense of mission that they evoke among the faithful.” To those who would like to be initiated into the thinking of the proponents of liturgical renewal, to those who would like to engage in a bit of mental sparring with the sacramental theologian, to those who would like to gain deeper insights into the Church’s mission, this book is recommended. The reader may be jolted by some frank criticisms. It would seem, however, that ecclesiastical and theological torpidity demand this very kind of rude awakening.

JOHN T. MALESTEIN

The Changing Family

What’s Happening to Our Families?, by Wallace Denton (Westminster, 1963, 222 pp., $4), is reviewed by Andre Bustanoby, pastor, Arlington Memorial Church, Arlington, Virginia.

According to Denton, our families are being swept off their feet by the changing tides of social and psychological forces, and he discusses these forces in the first part of of his book. The second part covers “some emerging problems of the family that have been provoked by these changes.” But there are signs of hope: part three discusses “some areas of strength in the modern family.” The final section gives some “conclusions for the church and family.”

Denton’s approach to the family is basically “socio-psychological,” and this approach produces a good discussion on “Longer Years of Retirement.”

The last part of the book is its weakest. Two paragraphs are devoted to the relevance of the Bible (pp. 204, 205). Denton admits that the Bible is relevant to family problems. But although he speaks of “an underlying truth [that] is applicable to the modern couple,” he doesn’t say what this truth is. This weakness permeates the entire book. The author writes on the assumption that the patriarchal pattern of family life is a vestige of a past society rather than a divine pattern that transcends all societies. He misses the significance of the primacy of man’s creation and woman’s deception in the Fall.

While the book’s approach is socio-psychological, any attempt to relate the Church to family problems raises the expectation of a sound biblical rationale. This is disappointingly absent.

ANDRE BUSTANOBY

Attractive

The Eternal Legacy from an Upper Room, by Leonard Griffith (Harper & Row, 1963, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, minister, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Successors to notable men usually have difficult times. They so often have to dwell in the shadow of their predecessor and endure the odious comparisons so easily made. Here in the man who follows Leslie Weatherhead we have a splendid exception. Leonard Griffith in this devotional treatise of the pre-arrest events gives ample evidence of his own stature. What is immediately significant is his strong yet simple belief in the Gospel. Noting the various bypaths well worn by seekers, he nevertheless stays on the main road of the biblical teaching.

Direct style, vivid language, and comparatively simple wording all combine to make the book readable. The illustrations are of some substance, drawn from a wide variety of experiences. None of them seems awkward or “dragged in by the heels.” It is also refreshing to find an author who does not feel obliged to have numerous long involved quotations from contemporaries to make his point authoritative.

Tough subjects are touched, and existing problems are probed. A stronger note might have been sounded on the singularity of Christ as the only Way. And one could disagree with the author’s conviction about the necessity of organic union among the churches. However, these items require lengthier treatment than the compass of the book intends or permits. It is an attractive volume in both makeup and content.

C. RALSTON SMITH

Book Briefs

In Sight of Sever, by David McCord (Harvard, 1963, 287 pp., $5.95). For Harvard alumni, particularly those whose college days are several decades in the past, this book of essays by one who has spent forty years in the service of his alma mater brings with its reading a gentle nostalgia. Non-Harvard readers will glimpse through Mr. McCord’s well-bred prose something of the ineffaceable charm the oldest of American universities holds for its sons.

The Uses of the University, by Clark Kerr (Harvard, 1963, 140 pp., $2.95). The president of the University of California devotes his Godkin lectures at Harvard to a discussion of the “multiversity,” such as that over which he presides in California with its 58,000 students on seven campuses. The book is of interest to all who are concerned with higher education. Dr. Kerr writes with precision and prescience about the forward movement of university education in America.

The Age of the Scholar, by Nathan M. Pusey (Belknap Press, 1963, 210 pp., $4.50). The subtitle, “Observations on Education in a Troubled Decade,” describes this book of essays by the president of Harvard University. Included are Dr. Pusey’s famous address at the Harvard Divinity School shortly after his inauguration, when he said of the moralistic religion of his great predecessor, Charles William Eliot, “… this faith will no longer do,” and also his widely quoted baccalaureate sermon of 1958, taking issue with secularism (“Secularism and the Joy of Belief”).

The Destruction of Dresden, by David Irving (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 255 pp., $4.95). On February 13, 1945, Allied bombing of Dresden took about 135,000 lives—almost twice the toll at Hiroshima. A specialist in modern German history gives here the results of his three-year research on the subject, seriously questioning this Allied action, and showing to the new nuclear generation the appalling tragedy of man’s inhumanity to man. Introduction by Gen. Ira C. Eaker.

The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, selected by A. W. Tozer (Christian Publications, 1963, 152 pp., $3). The selections are mystical in a wide sense of the term.

Pathways to Happiness, by Leonard Griffith (Abingdon, 1964, 128 pp., $2.50). The Beatitudes explained as “pathways to happiness.” Very readable.

Devotions from a Grateful Heart, by Sybil Leonard Armes (Revell, 1964, 127 pp., $2.50). Religious themes discussed with literary charm, spiritual grace, and a lively spirit.

Mountain Doctor, by LeGette Blythe (William Morrow, 1964, 221 pp., $4.50). The odyssey of Gaine Cannon, M.D., who has put the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer to work in the remote regions of North Carolina.

Consecration of the Layman, by Max Thurian (Helicon, 1963, 118 pp., $2.95). The Protestant monk of Taizé studies the meaning of confirmation. Is it vitally related to baptism? If so, is it sacramental? An important study.

Paperbacks

A Study of History, Vol. 12: Reconsiderations, by Arnold J. Toynbee (Oxford, 1964, 740 pp., $2.95). In this volume added to his Study of History, Toynbee responds to his critics and shows how his thought has changed on many matters, including religion. First published in 1961.

Religious Conflict in America: Studies in the Problems Beyond Bigotry, edited by Earl Raab (Doubleday, 1964, 232 pp., $1.25). A dozen men write on religious conflict in the United States; with an introduction by Raab. Many of the writers believe that this conflict lies deeper and is more durable than racial conflict, yet paradoxically believe that the religious conflict is more national and sociological than religious.

The Story of the Reformation, by William Stevenson (John Knox, 1964, 206 pp., $1.95). A very popular and readable short history of the Reformation.

Trinitarian Faith and Today’s Mission, by Lesslie Newbigin (John Knox, 1964, 78 pp., $1.25). Newbigin insists that missionaries must remember the trinitarian character of Christianity; by the Spirit, God can deal with pagans prior to the coming of the Gospel—consequently missionaries must sometimes listen to pagans before they preach to them. First American edition.

Bells Still Are Calling, by Kristofer Hagen (Augsburg, 1964, 177 pp., $3). A view of missions that Christians should get to know better in order to recognize and effectively challenge it.

Adventures in Evangelism, by Elmer A. Kettner (Concordia, 1964, 133 pp., $1.50). A popular discussion about how actually to “get started” with the task of Christian witnessing.

Man in Community, by Russell Phillip Shedd (Eerdmans, 1964, 209 pp., $1.95). A study of St. Paul’s application of Old Testament and early Jewish conceptions of human solidarity.

The Pattern of Religious Authority, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1963, 117 pp., $1.50). A probing into the biblical teaching of the reality of religious authority and a critique of some of the competitive ways in which it has been misunderstood and erroneously structured. A valuable study. First printed in 1957 under the title, The Pattern of Authority.

Authority in the Church, by Thomas Coates (Concordia, 1964, 98 pp., $1.50). A very readable, popular discussion about the reality of church authority and how it ought to operate on local and synodical levels. The book speaks to an area of confusion and ignorance. A fine book for group discussion.

Sea Rations, by John Kenneth Bontrager (The Upper Room, 1964, 88 pp., $.50). Thirty-seven meditations written with a pronounced flavor of the sea by a man who served as an enlisted man and is now a Navy chaplain. Excellent for the young serviceman at sea.

The Three R’s of Christianity, by Jack Finegan (John Knox, 1964, 125 pp., $1.75). A discussion of: Revelation, Redemption, Redeemer. Competently done; to be read with questions.

Fundamental to the liberties of man is that faculty of the soul termed “conscience.” Today that term connotes for most people only a moral monitor—a twinge of mind that indicates a moral judgment of right or wrong. But to the mid-seventeenth-century British Presbyterians and Independents who drew up the Westminster Confession (which was to become the definitive statement of Presbyterian doctrine throughout the English-speaking world and strongly influence other Protestant bodies as well), the concept of conscience went far deeper. These men were in the midst of a battle for religious liberty, and they wrestled with the concept in order to determine its real and biblical meaning. They realized that conscience had a major role in determining the liberty of man. Their estimation of the value of this faculty is reflected in such statements as these:

There cannot be imagined a higher contempt of God than for a man to despise the power of his own conscience which is the highest sovereignty under heaven, as being God’s most immediate deputy for the ordering of his life and ways [Robert Saunderson, Twelve Sermons, 1621].

God hath given it more force and power to work upon men, than all other agents [Samuel Ward, Balm from Gilead to Recover Conscience, 1616].

To the Westminster divines the conscience was more than a moral monitor; it was a spring of action. Conscience was a man’s persuasion of what he was to believe and practice, especially concerning things known only by divine revelation. They spoke of “doing one’s conscience,” by which they meant to act according to one’s sense of right. Their evaluation of the term is seen from definitions they gave:

Conscience is considered … as a principle of our acting in order to do what God commanded us in the law and the Gospel [Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1640].

Conscience is a faculty or habit of the practical understanding, which enables the mind of man, by the use of reason and argument, to apply the light which it has to particular moral actions.… The object of a man’s Conscience is a moral act; that is, something actually done, or to be done, or actually omitted, or to be left undone [Robert Saunderson, Lectures on Conscience and Human Law].

The Westminster divines considered conscience a faculty of the human soul implanted by God to rule one’s actions. It was inherent and was not to be considered a habit that might be acquired. It was one of the endowments natural to man and universal with the race. Thus Samuel Ward asserted:

Conscience is a noble and divine power planted of God in the soul, working upon itself by reflection.… A faculty I call it, because it produceth acts, and is not got and lost as habits are, but is inseparable from the soul, immovable from the subject [Samuel Ward, Balm from Gilead to Recover Conscience, 1616].

The divines recognized that the human conscience was subject to earthly influences, but they sought to free it from the authority of man. It may seem commonplace to some that the human conscience is not subject to man’s authority, but this was a revolutionary concept at the time of the Reformation. In the Middle Ages either the church or the state dictated a man’s beliefs, worship, and actions. His social, economic, political, and religious life was under the control of state and church. In their fight to establish the liberty of conscience regarding faith and worship, the Reformers laid a foundation for all liberties.

Even in the seventeenth century it was still the accepted principle: cuius regio eius religio—“whose is the government, his is the religion.” The English king or parliament, for example, considered it a rightful power to rule over both church and state and to determine the religion of the people. It was therefore revolutionary for the Westminster Assembly of Divines to determine in the session of March 30, 1645: “They who require absolute and blind obedience unto superiors for conscience’ sake, do destroy liberty of conscience and reason.”

The divines articulated this position in articles and sermons. Consider, for example, this statement:

To do God and ourselves right, it is necessary we should with our utmost strength maintain the doctrine and power of that liberty wherewith Christ hath endowed his church, without usurping the mastery over others, or subjecting ourselves to their servitude: so, as to surrender neither our judgments or consciences to be wholly disposed according to the opinion or wills of men, though of never excellent piety or parts [Thomas Taylor, Concerning the Right Use of Liberty, 1634].

Although members of the Westminster Assembly saw clearly that conscience must be liberated from ecclesiastical dictatorship and the absolute state, they placed a definite limitation to liberty of conscience. There are modern theologians who would free the conscience from some of the laws enunciated by Christ in the Gospels; but these divines stated clearly that the rights of liberty of conscience are limited by the divine law. Christ did not release the Christian from all laws, nor did he give his followers the right to believe whatever doctrines they pleased; for then assent could be given to falsehood and error, instead of that truth which alone can “make us free.” God of course requires men to believe the truth, as well as to obey his commands. He has given us a rule of faith, as well as of practice, and requires us to think and act according to it. Therefore, it is only at our peril that we allow ourselves the contrary. Limitation of liberty by God’s authority is clearly reflected in the writings of the divines:

The Word of God, and God in his Word, the Scripture, and God in Scripture, is the only infallible, supreme, authoritative Rule and judge of matters of doctrines and worship, of things to be believed, and things to be done [Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, 1645].

God alone has a proper and direct power of command over the Consciences of men; so that none but He alone has a power to impose a law upon the Conscience of any man which it is bound to obey.… He who alone knows the inward motions of the Conscience, He only has a power of prescribing a law to it, but God only, the Searcher of hearts, can discover the inward motions of the Mind and Conscience.… The proximate and immediate Rule of the Conscience is the light of the mind, and the principle and supreme rule is the written Word of God.… The man who designs the Glory of God to be the end, must propose likewise the Law of God to be the rule, of his actions (Isaiah 8:20) [Robert Saunderson, Lectures on Conscience and Human Law].

Because men have ignored the proper limitation of liberty by the authority of God, they have deified conscience. They rebel against the authority of God and refuse any limitation of the freedom of conscience. The Triune God is not considered Lord of the conscience. The individual’s reason, emotion, or habit controls his life, and this he justifies under the authority of freedom of conscience. The divines warned against deification of conscience:

Conscience is hereby made every man’s rule, umpire, judge, Bible, and his God, which if he follow, he is but at the worst, a godly, pious, holy heretic, who feareth his conscience more than his Creator.… Hence, conscience being deified, all rebuking, exhorting, counter-arguing, yea all the ministry of the Gospel must be laid aside [Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1640].

Even though a perverted use of liberty of conscience is to be abhorred, true Christian liberty must be preserved at all costs. Samuel Bolton warns that one of the ways liberty may be lost is by the pressure of a controlling hierarchy. Policies formulated by a few are forced upon an acquiescent majority who little realize that they are forfeiting a heritage of liberty. Ministers have been known to shy away from following their true convictions for fear of giving offense. Some accept without question “policies” formulated by leaders of the Church. They seem not to realize that in so doing they are surrendering a liberty of conscience for which the servants of Christ suffered dearly in the past. Bolton pleads:

Give not up yourselves to the opinions of other men, though never so learned, never so holy, because it is their opinion (1 Thess. 5:21). It often falls out that a high esteem of others for their learning and piety, make men to take up all upon trust from such, and to subject their judgments to their opinions, and their consciences to their precepts [Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, 1645].

Each minister has a responsibility before God to determine His will as revealed in Scripture. Every decision in a church assembly must be confronted by the individual’s own conscience as enlightened by the Spirit of God through the Word. Yielding to ecclesiastical pressure is a betrayal of liberty. This is a lesson too often overlooked by large segments of twentieth-century Protestantism that have enjoyed liberty long enough to have forgotten the high price past generations paid for it.

Civil liberty is very much to the forefront in today’s news. The freedom to vote and deliverance from civil bondage have been purchased with the blood of patriots. But an even greater liberty is that which has been purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus established truth when he entered into the world and was crucified. No sacrifice can be too great to maintain the truth by which Christ set the human spirit free. As Bolton emphasizes, it is worth far more than civil liberty, precious though that may be:

You esteem your civil freedoms the better, in that they cost so much of the blood of your ancestors to compass them. It is baseness to be careless of that which they endured the loss of so much blood to compass. How much more should we esteem our freedom, which was purchased by the blood of Christ? You are redeemed not by silver and gold, but by the blood of Christ, saith the Apostle. So that it is a freedom dearly purchased; yea, and freely bestowed; and mercifully revealed; fully conveyed unto us by the Spirit of Christ; and therefore how should we endeavor the maintenance of it? “To stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ hath set us free, and be not entangled again with yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1) [Samuel Bolton, ibid.].

The Apostle Paul was here contending for the precious truth of justification by faith alone. He feared that the Galatian Christians might be entangled with human traditions and human wisdom. For the precious truth of justification through which men are set free, all Christians should be willing to strive as sacrificially as have patriots for civil freedom. Christ shed his precious blood for this freedom, and that is of itself more than ample motivation for Christians to safeguard the truth by which Christ sets men free.

For the Westminster divines, conscience was more than a mere moral monitor; it was a faculty implanted by God in the human soul that enables man’s mind to apply the light that it has to particular moral actions. The divines claimed freedom for this conscience—freedom from the dictates and authority of man; freedom toward fulfilling God’s commands in Scripture. Liberty of conscience is not an end in itself; it is a means to glorify God by a life of obedience.

Three acute problems relating to the public welfare—automobile accidents, cigarette smoking, and alcoholism—are exacting an enormous toll in human suffering. Of them, alcoholism is the oldest, the most complex, and in its effects the most far-reaching with a national total of more than five million alcoholics, a number that is increasing at the rate of 200,000 each year. Moreover, 25 million others—families and friends of alcoholics—are affected; and the problem also reaches extensively into such areas as crime and accidents.

What man does with drink has been a problem since the dawn of history. Compared with it, cigarette smoking and the misuse of automobiles are the most recent of newcomers. Yet apart from obvious dissimilarities, there is a kinship among the three problems in that each is to some extent controllable by human volition. And wherever human suffering is preventable or controllable, there Christian concern must be manifest.

According to the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization, alcoholism is a disease. (From a purely medical standpoint this is true; but the Bible speaks too emphatically of drunkenness as sin to relieve alcoholics of all moral responsibility.) Yet the etiology and exact nature of this disease are still imperfectly known, as Dr. E. M. Jellinek’s study, The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (Yale Center of Alcoholic Studies, New Haven, 1962), shows. The strange paradox is that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually to persuade people to run the risk of contracting a devastating malady that ruins personality and shortens by an average of twelve years the life-span of those who have it. The decision of WQXR, the radio station of The New York Times, to accept advertising of hard liquor in violation of the code of the National Association of Broadcasters points to the need for more active government concern with the present state of advertising of alcoholic beverages.

It may be that alcohol has so long been surrounded by an aura of social respectability that it has truly become what Dr. Jellinek calls “the domesticated drug.” But its domestication has not mitigated its dangers. And because its use is so intimately related to social customs, attitudes toward alcohol are all-important. Christians differ about its use, and the Bible does not condemn all drinking. Thus problems relating to it must be considered both with care and with charity.

Nevertheless, the plain facts about alcoholism need to be faced. Whether or not one thinks drinking permissible, 75 million Americans are using alcoholic beverages and one out of fifteen of these drinkers is suffering from alcoholism. Thus the United States with its multitudes of alcoholics shares with France the leadership of the world in the incidence of this malady. Teenage drinking is soaring. According to the National Safety Council, special studies have indicated that in fatal highway accidents as many as half of the victims had been drinking. The annual cost of alcoholism to our society is well over $1 billion, and the yearly expenditure of $12 billion for intoxicating beverages far exceeds what is given the churches of the nation. Other statistics implicating alcohol in mental and physical diseases of various kinds and showing the enormous loss to business and industry occasioned by problem drinkers are well known.

The foregoing stands as essential background for reconsideration of a solution that has long been known and practiced by a significant minority and yet is strangely slighted in many current discussions of alcohol and its perils. That solution is voluntary abstinence.

With all that is being written about alcoholism and with the sociological, medical, physiological, and psychological research being devoted to its cause and cure, there is no secret whatever about a sure method of preventing it. No one who does not drink will ever become an alcoholic. Moreover, those who do not drink, while not exempt from highway accidents, will not be subject to accidents resulting from impairment of their own faculties by even very small amounts of alcohol in the body.

Surely the time has come for a careful, persistent, and persuasive presentation of the fact that abstinence makes sense. Regardless of differing religious traditions and varying interpretations of what Scripture says about drinking, youth today—and they are the future drinkers of tomorrow—have the right to hear the plain case for abstinence as a valid and socially acceptable answer to the alcohol problem. Unfortunately this answer is not being given as widely as it should be in literature about alcohol. Too often the gratuitous assumption is made that youth are bound to drink anyway and that therefore they need only to be taught how to drink and how to diagnose signs of trouble in their drinking. One wonders whether this attitude is indicative of adult reluctance to set forth a solution many have themselves rejected and whether it may reflect a covert hostility of the drinker to the non-drinker.

Quite apart from the biblical argument that rests upon consideration for one’s weaker brother, there are compelling reasons why abstinence is a valid answer to the question (To drink or not to drink?) with which our society confronts youth today.

What, then, are these reasons? They are related to an enormously significant fact about alcohol and its use. There is no way of knowing who among any group that begins to drink will become an alcoholic; no medical or psychological research can accurately predict the victims of alcoholism. Estimating conservatively the number of American drinkers as 75 million and dividing a similarly conservative estimate of 5 million alcoholics into this number, the chance of a beginning drinker’s becoming an alcoholic is at least one in fifteen.

Someone has put it this way. Suppose a man goes to an airline counter to book a flight. The ticket is purchased, and the attendant delivers it with these words: “You should know, sir, that on this plane, seating seventy-five passengers, five seats at some time during the flight will suddenly give way and drop their occupants out of the plane.” The purchaser replies, “Don’t put me in one of those seats.” “But,” says the attendant, “that’s impossible; we don’t know the seats that will give way. Have a good flight, sir.”

Youth need to be told that drinking is a gamble and that the stakes are high—not indeed instant calamity, as in the illustration, but personal disaster that might involve loss of work, marriage, children, friends, self-respect, and, if not checked, life itself. (Remission is possible, but only in about 50 per cent of the cases.)

This is the risk against which the oft heard advantages of alcohol as a social lubricant, a means for relaxing tension, an aid to gracious living, and a compliance with prevalent custom, must be weighed. For there is no way of choosing these without running the unavoidable risk of being the one out of fifteen to become an alcoholic. Let youth be told this plainly, factually, and emphatically. Along with this, let them be told also that they are going to live in a society that wants them to drink with it and that will make every effort by social pressure and the unremitting impact of advertising to get them to drink with it.

Nothing short of this is fair to youth. Theirs is the hazard, and they must be informed. The reasonableness of abstinence rests on considerations of responsibility, example to others, and the danger of alcohol itself. Many of those who advocate abstinence find their warrant in Paul’s words, “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient …” (1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23), and in his principle of restricting one’s liberty in consideration of the weaker brother: “It is good neither … to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Rom. 14:21). Abstinence can only be voluntary. Enforced group abstinence cannot succeed. Nevertheless, to refrain from a practice so fraught with danger and to do so not only for self but also for the sake of others is a true Christian answer to one of the great social problems of our time. Consequently it must be presented unashamedly and unequivocally.

In other periods, such as Bible times, the problems about alcohol were different from today. But these are not Bible times. The stresses of living in this space age make the human organism more susceptible to the perils of alcohol than in ancient Palestine. The driver of an oxcart or the traveler by horse or donkey faced different demands for instant decision than the man at the wheel of over a ton of metal propelled by a multihorsepower engine. God expects of us the adjustment of maturity to current problems and holds us responsible for indulgences that may imperil our own lives and the lives of others. In a day like this, voluntary abstinence to the glory of God and for the sake of others is a reasonable and safe solution to the problem of alcohol. It requires the courage of conviction. Let individual Christians earnestly consider it for themselves. And let parents, schools, and churches examine their obligation to teach their youth that abstinence makes sense.

General Of The Army Douglas A. Macarthur

A great warrior has fallen. Slain not on a distant battlefield, General Douglas MacArthur passed peacefully from this life after a last heroic struggle.

His memory readily evokes the West Point motto: “Duty, Honor, Country.” His noble figure seemed to epitomize the words. Yet he also transcended them, for the vertical dimension loomed large in his life. Bypassing a hundred battlefields and a thousand campfires in favor of his mammoth contribution to postwar Japan, he hoped he would be remembered as “the one whose sacred duty it became, once the guns were silenced, to carry to the land of our vanquished foe the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals. Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.”

The general once told Billy Graham that the Emperor of Japan had offered to make Christianity the state religion of his nation. Episcopalian MacArthur said he rejected the offer on the basis that “no nation must be made to conform to any religion …; it must be done voluntarily.” Yet in his own view, progress in the Japanese occupation rested “more upon the application of those guiding tenets of our Christian faith—justice, tolerance, understanding—which without yielding firmness, have underwritten all applied policy, than upon the power or threat of Allied bayonets.”

MacArthur’s personal convictions were reflected in his prayer for his son, which included the words, “Build me a son … who will know Thee …” (see News, p. 43). In a 1949 letter to Glenn Wagner, foreign secretary of the Pocket Testament League, the general said that a plan to distribute New Testaments in Japan had his “hearty endorsement,” and added: “I urgently request that the Pocket Testament League make available to the Japanese people ten million portions of the Scriptures, rather than the one million which have been in the original plan.” Some years later at West Point when an evangelical leader expressed appreciation to MacArthur for his action, the general brightened and responded that he wished it might have been many, many more.

While fighting his last battle and rallying from his second major operation in seventeen days, the old warrior said: “I am going to do the very best I can.” The words simply characterized his life throughout. In his passing America has lost a measure of greatness. But she yet retains it in her heritage.

Anti-Semitism In The Soviet Union

If one were looking for something kind to say about Communism in Russia, there was a time when he could point to the Soviet stand against anti-Semitism in contrast to the awful record of czarist Russia, particularly in the late nineteenth century. But by 1953 there could be no doubt that anti-Semitism had become official Soviet policy. At the ad hoc American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry in Washington early this month (see News, p. 40), Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg listed some of the Soviet limitations on the 2½ to 3 million Jews in the U. S. S. R.:

… the teaching of Hebrew, the biblical language, is banned …; Yiddish, the tongue of 450,000 Soviet citizens, is discouraged; Jewish schools virtually prohibited and non-existent; … and Jewish literature and publications sharply curtailed.

The religious freedom of Soviet Jews is severely limited—more so than any other religious group; increasingly synagogues are closed and private worship restricted; both Bible and prayer books are denied printing; … the training of Seminarians hampered and religious exchanges discouraged.

… there is also evidence that an undue proportion of Jews is being prosecuted and executed for economic crimes.

We salute this conference and strongly support its goal of greater freedom for Soviet Jewry. We also fervently hope the same for other religious groups in Russia.

To Abraham God said: “I will make of thee a great nation, … and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.…” Along this line, perhaps the Soviet leaders should consider the fate, not only of Pharoah’s Egypt and Hitler’s Germany, but also of the Czar’s Russia.

Hopeful Development In Birmingham

The many thousands of Negroes and whites who sat side by side in a stadium in Birmingham on Easter Sunday represented a remarkable and hopeful development in racial relations there (see the news story on page 38). We feel it especially significant that it was the preaching of the Gospel that brought these people together. For Alabama it was a first in terms of such numbers and such a wide cross section of society.

We salute the evangelist Billy Graham and his team and the ministers and laymen of the Birmingham area who showed the courage necessary to bring about such a development. Their confidence in the power of the Word to heal was vindicated. Christians everywhere share the hope that this meeting in Birmingham may have been the beginning of better things for that Southern city.

Liberalism’S Time Of ‘Turning Away’

The significant essay from the pen of the Rev. Jesse J. Roberson provides readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY with a remarkably frank criticism of Protestant theological liberalism. Evangelical Protestants have long made similar charges. But the fact that these charges now come from within liberal circles is telling evidence of the breakup of what was once a formative theological movement on the American scene (cf. “Liberalism in Transition,” Dec. 20 issue).

Plainly and candidly Mr. Roberson declares that as a formal theological and operational force liberalism neglected the baser components of human nature; that it has been impotent to achieve social objectives proportionate to its numerical strength; that its demise is to be welcomed because of its lack of theological-Christological substance; that it specialized in semantic legerdemain aimed to conceal from the laity its negation of biblical positions; that it is guilty of intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice; that it turned its freedom from biblical authority into intellectual license that created “almost as many Jesuses and Gods as there were interpreters” and substituted humanism for historic Christian faith. Nonetheless, Mr. Roberson notes, some liberals cling to their liberalism quite unaware that it has been invalidated. “It will be interesting, and perhaps revolutionary,” he adds, “to see what happens to liberalism and its blandness.”

These are blunt charges indeed, and the one in seven Protestant ministers in the United States who prefers to designate his theological position as liberal (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, NOV. 10, 1961, p. 11) will scarcely find them palatable. Some details may, in fact, appear debatable, particularly the tendency to minimize liberalism’s social penetration; yet it must not be forgotten that even here the fruit of the “social gospel” was the result of an idealistic humanism rather than of anything discernibly Christian. Taken as a whole, there is much in this essay to stir “second thoughts” in Protestant liberal circles, especially among the growing number who share the conviction that evangelical journals like CHRISTIANITY TODAY are effectively dealing with certain essential problems that magazines of liberal persuasion have evaded and are continuing to evade.

It is apparent, however, that Mr. Roberson lacks understanding of the one sound alternative to liberalism—namely, evangelical Christianity. And it would also seem that, for all his sharp insights into the predicament of theological liberalism today, he does not see that its fatal weakness lies in its sacrifice of the authority of the Word of God. Perhaps in this respect he reflects lack of exposure to the cohesive claim of biblical theism, as do a great many other liberal ministers who, as he himself puts it, “attended seminaries that … presented liberalism as a live option, and often offered little if anything else.” The growing momentum of evangelical Protestantism springs not from such concessions to acceptance of liberal positions as Mr. Roberson’s essay imputes to it, nor simply from emotional reaction against the crudities he finds in liberalism, but from the inherent truth and power of biblical supernaturalism. Moreover, the distinctives of conservative Christianity (the plenary authority of the Bible, acceptance of the fact of heaven and hell according to Scripture, the organic union of humanity on the ground of the creation and fall of Adam, the vicarious work of Christ, and so on) simply point to the liberal tradition of compromises which, in giving up one truth after another, robbed theological liberalism of inner consistency and led it into confusion. What Mr. Roberson says so eloquently and so unsparingly is that liberalism’s time of “turning away” has come. What remains to be made known very widely and just as plainly is that the evangelical undertow is continuing to cut a deeper shoreline along the coasts of contemporary American Protestantism.

Twentieth-Century Jericho Road

The New York Times has printed a blood-chilling account of some modern-day non-Samaritans. The scene is not this time the lonely road from Jerusalem to Jericho, nor does it concern reaction to the victim of an unwitnessed assault. The new non-Samaritans live in a well-to-do residential area in Queens, New York City. And thirty-eight of them have admitted to witnessing the murder of a young woman at night by a man who attacked her with a knife three different times, having left her intermittently because of observers’ turning on lights and opening windows. Once he was shouted at. The twenty-eight-year-old woman cried for help, screamed that she had been stabbed, recognized one onlooker and called him by name. He gave no reply. During the bloody thirty-five-minute period of the assault, there was not enough of a Samaritan spirit at hand even to provoke a phone call to the police, who were about two minutes away and could very possibly have prevented the murder had they been immediately called. Not all the witnesses realized what was going on, but some did. One finally phoned the police after the victim was dead.

In reflecting upon the unbelievable event, some have spoken of the depersonalizing influence of big-city life. The excuse most often heard from the immobile witnesses was that they didn’t want to get involved, a mentality that has been used to explain why a Nazi party can come to power.

Yet in this brilliant flowering of unconcern there is the plaintive cry for help of a lost and loveless humanity. In less obvious ways we are all non-Samaritans. And we Christians often pass by our neighbors seemingly unconcerned about souls in peril, when all the while there is a crying need for the Saviour who gave his lifeblood for the salvation of men, a salvation which points them to a love that has as much concern for the neighbor as for the self.

Tragedy In Cleveland

Perhaps it could have been predicted that when a minister was killed in the course of a Cleveland civil rights demonstration, he would be young, white, lovable, deeply committed to principle, a gentle worker with university students, married, and the father of several children.

And perhaps it could have been further predicted that the tragedy would be the result of a mechanical mishap rather than a deliberate act of hostility. Instead of turning the key, the operator shoved his bulldozer into reverse, and the Rev. Bruce William Klunder, 26, was ushered into eternity.

We pray for the young widow and her children. We pray for the hapless driver, John White. We pray for the Negroes who wanted an end to public school segregation and sought to halt construction where the incident took place. We pray for the harried school authorities, and for the students who knew and loved Mr. Klunder. And we pray for America, that she may learn how to solve her problems without such sacrifice.

D. L. Moody once described Christ as saying to the man who thrust the spear into his side, “There is a nearer way to my heart than that.” May it be so in Cleveland, and in all our cities.

Religion And The Peace Corps

American Peace Corps workers in West Africa are making a constructive contribution in many areas, particularly public administration and education. But there are some signs of tension, and Peace Corps directors will do well to take full note of these and to make remedial action.

In the matter of religious commitment, some Peace Corps workers are violating the preliminary understanding of their vocational role. Assurances were given that Peace Corps personnel would not engage in sectarian religious teaching as part of their vocational activity; yet in Liberia a teacher at St. Joseph’s School told us that she is teaching “the entire curriculum, religion included.”

Peace Corps workers were instructed not to obstruct the religious purposes of any institution to which they were assigned, but to maintain the religious atmosphere. In West Cameroon, Peace Corps workers are creating mounting tensions, particularly since a number of recent appointees have been registering a counter-Christian influence in mission schools; their diluting effect is resented by African Christians as much as by the missionary task force. One secondary-school teacher told native students that he didn’t believe in Christ and questioned the Resurrection, and he added that he “came to Africa only ‘for kicks.’” Missionary leaders complain that too many Peace Corps workers have joined the effort in order “to find themselves,” and that though they are talented and well-intentioned, they are not qualified for school leadership roles. Some recent appointees in mission schools not only withhold themselves from chapel attendance but violate the campus moral code. Mimbo drinking is one of the cultural vices against which evangelical Christians have long protested, yet on one mission compound a Peace Corps teacher invited his friends for a drinking party that lasted almost until dawn. The diluting effect of such activities upon the campus atmosphere is easy to gauge.

In West Cameroon, where many of the early Peace Corps workers are rendering welcome service, a variety of developments is prompting many mission leaders to protest a growing tendency to “dump” Peace Corps workers where they are not requested, and to insist on the right to dictate the terms on which the workers will be acceptable. When Peace Corps personnel arrive and displace foreign personnel, or American Peace Corps personnel displace Africans whom the missionaries have long groomed for their posts, simply because the Peace Corps workers have superior training, many problems arise. African nationals in educational work now speak of the threat the Peace Corps poses through the replacement of Africans in schools where American missionaries have long labored to turn the institutions over to Africans. They emphasize that while some of these Africans have less training, many of them have taught for years, whereas Peace Corps workers are often novices; and the Africans are wholly dedicated to the spiritual and moral purposes of the mission institutions.

In the realm of education, many West African nations are now giving large subsidies to religious schools for buildings, scholarships, and salaries of qualified teachers of non-religious subjects. The connection of eligibility with academic qualification has the effect of strengthening the secular offerings in religious institutions, while instruction in Christian truth tends to maintain a less comprehensive and less effective role on the margin of the curriculum. The coming of Peace Corps workers uncommitted to Christian truths and ideals to these faculties can result only in a further secularizing of erstwhile Christian institutions. It is little wonder that Christian educational leaders in West Cameroon—and they are not alone—are taking a second look at Peace Corps benefits, and are calling for conversations with Peace Corps administrators.

In Purchasing an automobile one may have a definite preference for one particular make, but he also knows that there are basic similarities about all makes that bring about general dependability and usefulness.

There are also similarities between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. But we live in a time when Protestants should learn to know those distinctives of their faith that have made it a blessing to countless millions since the days of the Reformation, distinctives that can be surrendered or blurred only at great cost.

There are historical, doctrinal, and political differences between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church that are of vital importance, and there is no indication that councils, present or future, will remove those differences. If out of these consultations there can emerge a deeper appreciation of the Protestant position, good can be done and tensions eased; but this happy eventuality should in no way diminish the essential Protestant witness to the world.

Protestantism was born by faith, founded on convictions, sustained in adversity, nurtured in Christian doctrine, and propagated by Spirit-inspired courage. Its distinctives are so clear that they themselves erect a wall between those spiritually free and those ecclesiastically bound.

The distinctives of Protestantism have been so clear and their effect on the world so great that any tendency to ignore their validity or question their worth must be viewed with the gravest misgivings. Any answering spirit of tolerance or indifference that is evoked by the apparently new tolerance on the part of Rome must be guarded in order to maintain positions that must not be conceded.

Basic to these distinctives is the authority of the Holy Scriptures above that of men and ecclesiastical organizations. This distinctive motivated Martin Luther when alone before the Diet of Worms he said, “Here I stand.” This was not a dramatic appeal to the gallery but an affirmation of his faith in the full and final authority of the Bible.

Confronted by the organization, scholarship, and power of Rome and ordered to recant, he said, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by an evident reason (ratione evidente)—for I confide neither in the pope nor in a council alone since it is certain that they have often erred and contradicted themselves—I am held fast by the Scriptures adduced by me, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s Word, and I neither can nor will revoke anything, seeing that it is not safe or right to act against the conscience. God help me.”

This stand is equally imperative today. Otherwise we who call ourselves Protestants are in gravest danger of forfeiting the liberty that has been ours—a liberty that rests deep in the written Word of God, a liberty for which men crossed seas and for which they were willing to die, because without it life would not be worth living.

This final authority of the Bible as over the final authority of the Church is a distinctive many Protestant leaders are themselves forgetting in our time, for whenever the Church imposes her will and power over the conscience of the individual she is assuming a Romish stance and not that of her own historical setting.

The Church has the duty to instruct, but when she claims infallibility in interpreting God’s Word she has too often shown her own fallibility. Historically Protestantism has shunned such claims. For the Protestant his conscience is free to receive and act on the leading of the Holy Spirit as God speaks through his Word. Not so in the church of Rome, where there is interposed between man and his God an organization that claims for itself, independent of the Scriptures, a divine authority and power over the minds, consciences, and wills of men.

Another distinctive of Protestantism is the separation of church and state. Whereas Rome regards the state as the temporal arm of the church and therefore, per se, an agency of the church, Protestantism has historically kept the church clear of political entanglements, exercising only the right of humble petition in the name of the church and leaving to Christian citizens the responsibility for putting into practice the Christian ethic.

The increasing involvement of contemporary Protestantism in political, social, economic, and other governmental matters in the name of the Church is a reversal to tactics of Rome that have proven disastrous to her essential spiritual mission and that will involve Protestantism in ultimate disaster.

The distinctiveness of Protestantism is nowhere more in evidence than in her doctrine of justification by faith alone—a doctrine firmly rooted in the Scriptures that is a source of freedom and comfort to all who rest therein.

This doctrine must not be surrendered, for it is the basis of man’s hope of salvation. Add to this any doctrine of works, and the full and complete work of Christ is made conditional on something man does for himself. Protestantism has never demanded conformity to an interpretation of the Church, nor has she imposed interpretations and disciplines that in themselves negate the glorious fact that “the just shall live by his faith.” This Rome does.

Again, Protestantism has stood firm in its affirmation of the sole mediatorship of Christ. It is in him that we believe, to him that we turn, in his name that we pray, his merit that we claim, his cleansing that we receive, and his blood that atones; and between us and him there is no intermediary—ecclesiastical or personal.

When Protestantism emerged with the Reformation, men began to enjoy freedom of soul and liberty in matters of their faith. There came the unshackling of body, mind, and spirit which is a part of the liberty that is in Christ.

History has shown Protestantism far more capable of Christian tolerance than Rome, for, while maintaining her distinctives, she has always claimed as Christian brothers all who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Saviour from sin, knowing that within the Roman Catholic Church also there are millions who so believe. But Rome has not accorded Protestants a like status; and if welcome changes may now be in the making, they nevertheless do not overcome the basic assumptions of that faith.

Within the ecumenical movement there are trends having to do with doctrine, polity, and organization, all suggesting varying degrees of accommodation to Rome. These are ominous, for the distinctive witness of Protestantism is involved.

The Church is always in danger where her ecclesiastical structure takes precedence over her message. That danger exists today. A monolithic organization may be outwardly impressive, but it is the message that brings life.

Obviously Rome would gladly welcome us back on her terms. But the distinctives are such, and have been so richly blessed of God, that they cannot be relinquished.

Should this happen, God will raise up others to carry the banner.