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HAVE FUN!

Pastor Peterson often quotes from CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He was impressed by your coverage of the recent White House conference on youth, and cited one educator who favored developing the fun attitude in all living as over against the disagreeable motivation of a sense of duty.

As usual, he lapsed into verse on the subject:

In conference at Washington

An educationist observes,

Americans must have the fun

That every grown up child deserves.

No sacrifice can be too great

To subsidize our teaching staff:

We must learn how to recreate

Our carefree, happy way of laugh.

In classroom frolic every day

The droll instructor leads the way,

Or joins the party when it’s gay,

For all must learn that work is play.

And soon in shops and factories

While music sounds and foremen sing,

The most reluctant boss agrees

That in production play’s the thing.

In government the men of fame

Will find that paper work enthralls

When they can make it all a game

And fill the file with paper dolls.

What morbid fear of missile-lags

Can chill that patriotic son

Who bubbles with the latest gags?

The nation’s greeting is, “Have fun!”

But when this romping has begun,

A single issue is at stake—

If all the job is really fun

Then who will want a coffee-break?

I warned the pastor that, considering his position, he should have a more positive message. Besides, isn’t “Rejoice evermore!” rather close to “Have fun!”? He began to explain the difference between having fun and rejoicing in the Lord. When I left him he was busy with his concordance. No doubt a sermon is in the making.

EUTYCHUS

U.S. PROTESTANT PRESS

Your publication of this letter in the reader’s column of CHRISTIANITY TODAY would be greatly appreciated:

I would like to congratulate Prof. E. Brunner for writing, and your magazine for printing, the splendid article “The Cleveland Report on Red China.” Prof. Brunner’s article shows him to be well informed.…

Unfortunately those refugees who were lucky enough to escape annihilation at the hands of the communists, do not find the proper understanding and attention in leading American Protestant circles. They are seldom, if ever, consulted on matters concerning communism and problems that it creates. It seems to me that people who lived under communist rule would be able to tell us the truth about actual communism, for they experienced this hell and could be beneficial to humanity by exposing it and in this way fighting it.

I can give as an example the activities of the Ukrainian Evangelical Alliance of North America. All of our press releases and resolutions which were passed during our conventions were ignored by most of the American Protestant press.…

We have not even been able to persuade leading American Protestants that Russia is only a part of the USSR, and that the USSR consists of many nationalities which are enslaved by communist imperialism and colonialism. The present communist government in the USSR favors the Russian people, language and culture, and is trying to impose that … language and culture on other nationalities that are living there. Czarist Russia had a similar policy.

The Ukrainians, who number about forty million and are the second largest nation in the USSR, have been struggling for their independence and national survival since 1917. They suffered terrible consequences in the struggle against this inhuman oppression. Millions of them died during an artificial famine, others in concentration camps, prisons, some in deportations, and many were just shot.

How often have we read in American Protestant magazines about this heroic nation, its religious life, history, culture, etc.? About two million Ukrainians live in North America. They are considered to be Russians by most American Protestants, in spite of the fact that these Ukrainians take this as an offense. How many Americans really know that these people have their own highly developed language, which is much older than the Russian language?

It is time to seriously consider the matter of understanding the present conditions in the countries which are under the communist yoke, and to start to appreciate those people who became victims of communist oppression, but never made a compromise with it. This also calls for a new approach in the missionary work among these people. A need arises for using their languages in the preaching of the gospel to them.

WLADIMIR BOROWSKY

Exec. Secy.

Ukrainian Evangelical

Alliance of North America

Detroit, Mich.

Brunner fails to point out a greater danger than an atomic holocaust or even world Bolshevism—viz., a world which may have escaped both of these horrors only to go to hell leisurely in the luxury of Western freedom and democracy. We need above all to be warned again: “Fear not them which kill the body … rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The threat of bolshevism is Satan’s feint.… Not even the advent of America alters the fact that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world.… Those of us attempting to follow Christ may still have to suffer the loss of all things—even democracy—to find Christ and be found in Him.

MARLIN JESCHKE

Evanston, Ill.

I could not help being somewhat frightened with the article by Emil Brunner, a profound and recognized theologian, who could write [such] an article … and never seem to take God into consideration in his estimation of the power of “bolshevism.”

W. J. MCGETTIGAN

Portland, Ore.

As a brilliant man of words, Professor Brunner seems fascinated with ideological systems and verbal abstractions—so fascinated—that he often overlooks practical realities and possibilities for change which are quite obvious to less gifted men.

GEORGE KOSKI

Lutheran Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

It does hardly anything to show how granting a seat on the U.N. would further the cause of communism.

MELVIN W. LANG

Faith Evangelical United Brethren

Freeport, Ill.

Thanks for the Brunner article; it’s a thoughtful statement on a question others of us have (perhaps too quickly) assumed to be closed. But is there not something of an anomaly in using as an insert for Brunner’s article the dubious appeal of Sen. Nelson S. Dilworth of California for what appears to be a decisive attack on our system of free education? Or was it your intention to present a foil to Brunner’s eloquent defense of human freedom?

SCHUBERT M. OGDEN

Perkins School of Theology

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Tex.

Let me express our deep appreciation for Emil Brunner’s excellent article.… Your indispensable journal has from the very first issue (I have them all!) printed the facts concerning the satanic nature of communism and its malevolent march toward the enslavement of every mind, soul, and body on this planet. Thank you for your alertness and vigilance!

RUSSELL F. BLOWERS

East 49th Street Christian Church

Indianapolis, Ind.

Mr. Brunner’s article should be brought to the attention of the government officials responsible for the formulation of the United States’ policies on such matters. Citizens who agree with Mr. Brunner would do well to inform their congressmen that there are American church people who do not subscribe to the Cleveland Message.

BRUCE A. ELLINGSON

Wheaton, Ill.

I hope it is reproduced in the Congressional Record.

EWING E. CLEMONS

Tracy, Calif.

You publish a quotation from Professor J. L. Hromadka and you state that he is a “President of the World Council of Churches.” He has never held such an office.

He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the WCC. The undersigned has been a member of the Central Committee of the WCC ever since its organization, having previously served on the Provisional Committee.

At the New Haven committee meeting I strenuously opposed the election of Professor Hromadka as a member of the Executive Committee. He was nevertheless elected by a minority vote, because so many abstained from voting.

His membership in the Executive Committee has only one explanation. It is felt that there should be at least one representative of the churches behind the Iron Curtain and, so far, no one else has been discovered who is both representative and available.

The members of the Executive Committee must be elected from the membership of the Central Committee composed of men whom the member churches have themselves accredited.

Personally I have consistently each year voted against the election of Professor Hromadka because of his unchristian defense of the Russian rape of Hungary in 1956.

P. O. BERSELL

President Emeritus

Augustana Evangelical

Lutheran Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

RITUAL AND METHODISM

“Will Ritual Save Methodism?” (Apr. 25). The answer is “no,” for only a personal experience of Christ as Lord and Saviour can do that. But, an intelligent, well-ordered service—conducted by a dedicated minister—can certainly do more to lead people to that experience than can some hodge-podge spiritual free-for-all, designed only on individual whim.

ARNOLD POPE

Roanoke Rapids, N. Car.

The present spiritual and biblical revival in Methodism is going hand in hand with this “high-church” movement.

REX D. KELLY

The Methodist Church

Basehor, Kan.

The word “ritual” as used in the article is incorrect. “Ritual” means the Order of Service, and Methodists already have a rite or ritual in their Book of Discipline, taken mostly from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. What the Rev. Mr. Phipps means is “ceremonial”.…

There is great danger, which Anglicans call “spikery,” in introducing symbolic movements (ceremony) and other symbolism only for the sake of atmosphere or churchliness. It becomes a superimposition without basic requirements of apostolic faith and order.…

It is too often said that our Lord’s practice of religion was “simple” in the sense that He was puritanical. The reverse is true, as can be seen by any student of the Bible who will take the trouble to enumerate the myriad of references to Jewish worship in which our Lord Himself engaged as a devout Jew.

I have no knowledge of the “simple form of liturgy” [Wesley] drafted in his younger days, but this would not have affected Methodism, for as an Anglican Wesley continued to use the Prayer Book, and the Methodists upon separating from the Anglican Communion took much of the Prayer Book with them.… Liturgies is not primarily a question of ceremonial, but is first concerned with ritual—an ordered service containing all the elements of public prayer with seasonal variation.… Adoption by Methodism of ritual and sacrament is devoutly to be hoped for, when one understands the basic principle of liturgies, which is the science and art of worship of Almighty God—the principal job of the Church.

ROBERTS E. EHRGOTT

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Mount Prospect, Ill.

It has been my experience through a long and fruitful ministry that the basis for the liturgical revival for the most part is in revealed Orthodox Faith. Liturgical worship and evangelism are not generally, need not be (that is sure), antagonistic but rather supplementary and complementary.

HOWARD E. MATHER

First Presbyterian

Amenia, N. Y.

As the Episcopal Church has long been torn over the problems of ritual, I know something of the values as well as the dangers on both sides. There are many people who lay great stress on elaborate ceremonial but there are those, equally as worthy, who care little about it. However, so many who do not like ceremonial go to the extreme of conducting very sloppy and undignified services, and ceremony and pageantry can be and often are used as a shield behind which men of small ability will hide. They try to make up in show for what they lack in depth. But ritual does not destroy though it may be used to conceal spiritual death. It is like a pall which does not kill the victim but is used to cover him after he is dead.

The services from any good service book are superior in expression and thought to the average extempore ones. The great leaders of the Reformation were inspired men but they were all men whose foundations had been laid on one or another of the ancient liturgies. They knew how to express themselves but could not pass on their background of worship. There are rare souls in the Church today whose scope of worship is broad enough to meet the spiritual needs of people, but generally speaking, extempore prayers follow a definite pattern expressing the spiritual outlook of the person who is praying and the congregation is merely listening to a devout man saying his prayers out loud.

JAMES M. STONEY

Retired Bishop

Diocese of New Mexico and Southwest Texas

Albuquerque, N. Mex.

When ritual becomes too heavy, it is time then to revise, to throw out that part of it which has become a burden. The weight of ritual should be to worship what the weight of wings is to a bird.… Perhaps Methodism will save ritual.…

FRED E. STINSON

St. Paul’s Methodist Church

Eau Gallie, Fla.

“Trends in Modern Methodism” (Jan. 4 issue) points up … weakness in the theological structure in The Methodist Church. The great stumbling block centers [on] the person of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God. This stumbling block will continue to be the major weakness of The Methodist Church just as long as the personnel directing the educational programs continue to circumvent the Saviour of the world. When The Methodist Church begins to focus attention on Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, rather than Jesus Christ, the good example, the Holy Spirit will once again witness with power.

ROBERT ERICSON

Shelton, Conn.

R. P. Marshall made a mistake often made by those not familiar with the history of the Church of the Nazarene. He refers to the Church of the Nazarene as “one of … the several small groups which went out from the parent body.”

The Church of the Nazarene is not a “split” from the parent body (The Methodist Church). It came into being through the merging of several independent groups over a short period of years which finally culminated in the Church of the Nazarene in 1908.

B. P. RUSSELL

Redwood Falls, Minn.

Dirk Jellema

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Third in a Series

In the view of Reality held by the post-modern mind, we suggested, one possible pattern of action is dictated by the Self’s search for security in a world wherein only the Self and the Unpattern are Real. This implies conformity in order to gain emotional security, and such conformity is likely to involve deference to a Group which still retains many of the forms of (vanishing) modern society. But we may also expect Groups which increasingly reject many of these inherited forms and “values,” scorning the first Group as “phony,” ignoring “the Cheshire Cat smile” or remnant of the once formidable body of modern values, and approving modes of action more directly centered around the Self as Reality.

CRAZY, MAN

There is some evidence for such an attitude among many teen-agers, and sub-teen-agers (that is, those who know Hiroshima only as “something which happened before they were born”). The late Robert Lindner, well-known psychiatrist and a consultant to Maryland’s state prison system, concluded that “The youth of today is suffering from a severe, collective mental illness … has abandoned solitude in favor of pack-running, of predatory assembly, of great collectivities that bury, if they do not destroy, individuality. Into these mindless associations the young flock like cattle. The fee they pay for initiation is abandonment of self and immersion in the herd.… The youth of the world is touched with madness, literally sick.… It is not youth alone that has succumbed to psychopathy, but nations, populations.…! From loss of identity has come insecurity, and this has bred the soul-destroying plague we know as mass psychopathy.… Mutinous adolescents and their violent deeds now appear as specimens of the shape to come, as models of an emergent type of humanity (Time, Dec. 6, 1954). And, elsewhere, “We are entering an era which will be dominated by primitive emotional appeals rather than reason.… If society continues its present course, we will unquestionably enter another dark age” (New York Times, Apr. 16, 1956).

Such analysis presupposes, of course, the values of the modern mind (or of the Christian mind). For the view of Reality held by the post-modern mind implies that the things which so alarm Dr. Lindner are really quite sensible and consistent. One man’s Dark Age, after all, may be, from another view of Reality, another’s Golden Age.

Joost Van Meerlo, one of the West’s top experts on brain-washing techniques, speaking of mass participation in rock-and-roll, mentions “prehistoric rhythmic trance … mass ecstasy … Duce, Duce, Duce … as in drug addiction, a thousand years of civilization fall away … depersonalization of the individual … ecstatic veneration of mental decline and passivity … infantile … vicarious … pandemic funeral dances” (New York Times, Feb. 23, 1957). To the extent that we deal here with a mind differing from the modern mind, perhaps there is some point to these remarks.

THE BLIND WORSHIPPERS

When rock-and-roll idol Elvis Presley appeared in Oklahoma City, he needed police protection from adoring teen-agers, who proceeded to mob a reporter who had interviewed Presley: “Touch him!” cried one girl, “maybe he’s touched Elvis!” (Time, May 14, 1956).

RCA alone sold over 13 million Presley records in one year. Over $20 million worth of Presley-approved products were sold to teen-agers (New York Times, Feb. 23, 1957).

Three thousand Florida teen-agers battled police and National Guards who tried to stop a teen-age hot-rod drag race down the main street of a resort town (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 26, 1956).

In New York, crowds of sobbing teen-age girls flocked around disc jockey Alan Freed, fired on suspicion of receiving payola (Time, Dec. 7, 1959).

Bill Haley, rock-and-roll idol, was mobbed by shrieking teen-agers at Waterloo Station when he arrived for an English tour (Time, Feb. 25, 1957).

West Germany’s leading rock-and-roll artist, “Conny,” age 15, has some 10,000 enrolled in her fan clubs, and sold nearly a million and a half records in one year. Twelve-year-old “Gabriele” and nine-year-old “Brigette” also have had major rock-and-roll hits (Time, Dec. 8, 1958).

Hundreds of teen-age girls battled Glasgow police in a rock-and-roll riot, trying to get to the dressing room of “Livin’ Doll” Cliff Richards (New York Times, Oct. 1, 1959).

West German disc jockey Werner Goetze described teen-agers as “clannish addicts … whose god is Elvis Presley, whose idols are their own stars, whose encyclopedia is the comics” (Time, Dec. 8, 1958).

In Sydney, some 700 shrieking teen-agers broke chairs and pushed down music stands in a wild effort to get near rock-and-roll singer Crash Craddock (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 24, 1960).

Japanese teen-agers go ape over American rock-and-roll; a rockabilly (rock-and-roll plus hillbilly) troupe drew 50,000 teen-agers in Tokyo in one week (Time, Apr. 14, 1958).

American-influenced Japanese younger generation are characterized as stressing deep cynicism and abandonment (Time, Dec. 17, 1956). Suicide is the leading cause of death in Japan’s 15–24 age group (Time, Jan. 26, 1959).

Soviet Culture, a Russian newspaper, denounces “stilyags” (juvenile delinquents), who are becoming a serious problem, as influenced by Western rock-and-roll ethos (New York Times, May 4, 1955). A Moscow “stilyag,” caught robbing stores, denounced work and study as “useless” (Time, Nov. 3, 1958).

BEATNIKS AND SUCH

We have been considering the type of ethic resulting from the search for the Self’s security by conforming to the Group. But such an ethic (perhaps dimly related to the philosophy of Dewey) is not the only possible ethic within the framework of the post-modern mind’s definition of Reality as Self and Unpattern.

An attempt can be made to find value for the Self in its freedom—its creative freedom from the Unpattern (the blind world of unfree Being)—as by Sartre.

Or, value for the Self may be sought in contemplation of, or intuition of, the world of Unpattern as something which is mysterious and wonderful, as by Heidegger.

In either case, the Group is regarded as a hindrance to the finding of value within the cosmos of Self and Unpattern. The Group becomes, then, a false road, something to be avoided, and indeed denounced. The Group is a “phoney” answer, a “square” answer, a “false” answer, which stifles the true answer. That is, the Group entangles the free Self, and prevents intuition of the Unpattern.

The attack on the Group as a false way of approach to Reality, whether by the philosopher, by the writer, or by the disciple, is often extreme and angered. Sartre can write a play about nausea; Kerouac writes shouting novels; Ginsberg writes frenetic poems. And this anger has, in a sense, a “religious” concern, for it is basically dealing with the nature of Reality. Thus Kerouac can speak of the “holyboy road,” Ginsberg of the “madman bum and angel,” and of “angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection …” (Howl), Lamantia writes “Come Holy Ghost, for we can rise out of this jazz” (Time, Feb. 3, 1958), and Camus insists with religious intensity that “man must admit that life has meaning only when he admits that it has no meaning” (Time, Oct. 3, 1955). Kerouac has referred to “beat” or “a great revival of religious mysticism,” which “believes in love (of) everything,” which holds that “we are all empty phantoms … and yet, all is well.… We’re all in Heaven now, really” (Time, Feb. 3, 1958). And, if Reality is the Self and the Unpattern, this is sensible enough; indeed, as he continues, when asked whether God exists: “We can give it any name … god … tangerine.…” Such an approach emphasizes (in our analysis) one alternative: finding value for the Self in the intuitive, wondering acceptance of the Unpattern (note, for example, Kerouac’s prose: “grayscreen gangster co*cktail rainyday roaring gunshot spectral immortality B-movie tire-pile black-in-the-mist Wildamerica”). Some existentialist philosophers also propose this. In the philosophy of Heidegger, for example, meaning and value in the old (objective) sense have died with the death of “the old God” and the Weltnacht which follows; but “meaning” and “value” in a new sense may emerge from the World of Being, the wondrous Everything-Nothing, the Beyond-all-values—the Unpattern, in our term. We must always act so as to remain “open” to this world of Being. If we do not, the Self lives “unauthentically,” as when it conforms to a Group, and closes itself off from the Beyond-all-categories. Or, in more popular form, the same emphasis appears in Zen Buddhism, now undergoing a minor boom in this country especially among the “beatniks”: Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums is a novel about Zen’s glories. Zen holds to a passive emptiness (a “being open”) in the face of Reality, which is Unpattern. To impose logic on Reality (Unpattern) is nonsense. Does life have meaning, is Christ God, is history true, is there life after death?—these become nonsense questions. The purpose of Zen training is to shock the student into a realization of this. This satori (roughly, explosion of enlightenment) is produced by various means, such as the koan (roughly, shock-question). And it is not far (if our suggestions are correct) from the koan to the shock-answers given by “beatniks” Ginsberg, Corso, and Orlovsky at a plush Chicago co*cktail party in their honor: “don’t shoot the wart-hog!” or “Fried shoes! Like, it means nothing,” or “my mystical shears snip snip snip” (Time, Feb. 9, 1959). Or, the shock-language used by Ginsberg in a fairly good poem (Howl): “Real holy laughter in the river … the wild eyes! the holy yells!… our own souls airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside.”

SECURITY IN THE SELF

If the Unpattern is seen as wonderful and glorious, the Self may find security in it. If not, the Self must find security in itself. The most consistent exponent of this position is Sartre, who (with his followers) has also had a notable influence on the “beat” group. The Self finds security in itself, for it is alone in the world of Unpattern, the blind world of unfree Being, the threatening world of the Determined. The Self is defined by its non-Being; it is Existence, not Being; it is Free. It must maintain this Freedom at all costs against the world of Being (Unpattern), and conformity to the Group is a threat to this Freedom. Man is condemned—it is the human condition—to the glorious though perhaps illusory attempt to be completely Free, to be God, to deify the Self. All pattern is created by the Self, and the Self cannot be bound by what it creates. We are not bound (for example) by History; it is true (that is, “accepted by the Self”—for only the Self and Unpattern are Real) only if we accept it. (Norman Mailer, a semi-“beat” novelist, defines a hipster [“beat”] as “a man who has divorced himself from history, who does not give a … about the past,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 28, 1960.) Even death is a triumph, for we then escape completely from the power of the world of Being.

The literature of Self and Unpattern, particularly in the anti-Conformity type of post-modern mind, is expanding and indeed going beyond such “elder statesmen” as Sartre and Camus. American “beats” are experimenting with movies (“Don’t Pull My G-String,” with Kerouac and others) and lines like “Is alligators holy, Bishop? Is everything holy? Are we all in heaven now?” (Time, Dec. 14, 1959). In France, the “New Realists” (Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, and others) are writing novels in which, as Robbe-Grillet puts it, “the world is neither significant nor absurd. It simply is” (Commonweal, May 8, 1959). And Andre Gorz’s current The Traitors (with an ecstatic introduction by Sartre) describes the author’s attempt “not to be here; to be only a transparent, ineffable and therefore invulnerable presence” (Time, Jan. 11, 1960).

If only the Self and the Unpattern are Real, and since Truth and Morality in any objective sense are thus obviously nonsense, it follows that any means to “dig” Reality (whether understood as Unpattern or Self) are “true” and “good” so long as they do not limit the Freedom of the Self (in one formulation) or the Openness to Unpattern (in another formulation). Thus, the “beat” will consider it “good” to try narcotics, sex, poetry, or whatever else he wishes in his search for the Unpattern (Self’s Freedom).

The Reverend Pierre DeLattre, who runs a mission to the San Francisco “beats” for the Congregational Church, has made some of the same points in a different context. The “beats,” he says, are “trying to gain a more direct insight into reality through emotional and intuitive forms of experience … through poetry, jazz, various narcotics.… (Their community is) one of the most sexually disinterested places I know and one of the most pacifist communities I have ever lived in.… There is a search here for spiritual vitality …” (New York Times, Jan. 31, 1960). The Reverend Robert Spike, Congregational minister and NCC official, suggests that there are “real affinities between this American type of existentialism and the Christian faith” and that the beat world “is a caricature of Christian society” (Christianity and Crisis, Apr. 8, 1958). And indeed, this we should expect, for the “beats” or the existentialists or the Conformists (if our suggestions are correct) are all adherents of a new view of Reality, and thus in a sense are adherents of a new faith.

Fragmentum

We are a people striving anxiously

and with an unparalleled vigor

for things we neither need

nor want

nor can explain to God.

TERENCE Y. MULLINS

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

- More fromDirk Jellema

Ben Marais

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The first phase of the “storm over Africa” has reached the Union of South Africa. For a long time it was evident that something serious was bound to happen. Then suddenly one afternoon, while the sun was shining as brightly as ever over the Great Karroo and the Highveld of the Transvaal, sad incidents occurred at Sharpeville near van der Byl Park. (Sharpeville is in the heart of the new industrial areas along the Vaal river.) Seventy Africans were shot by policemen and more than 200 were wounded after a vast crowd of Africans congregated and became menacing. A well-planned country-wide “protest” or near-rebellion, led by the Africanist movement, was immediately launched.

Many of the whites oppose the government’s general policies of enforced apartheid or specific measures, but in a national emergency they prefer law and order to anarchy. Christians in other countries probably do not realize that the leaders of African nationalism are with very few exceptions not Christians but enemies of the Church and the Gospel. We who have great sympathy with the Africans and their aspirations and often feel gravely unhappy about some measures taken against them, and about the political status quo in general, fear that if some of the new “leaders” succeeded in their plans the first and the worst sufferer would be Christianity itself. Such is the dilemma many Christians in South Africa, who have a deep interest in the well-being and future of the African masses, face today. We realize that changes must come, that Africans have legitimate grievances, and that their aspirations cannot be suppressed permanently without violent reactions; but we also realize that too much sentimentalism has taken hold on certain personalities and on certain circles of white “sympathizers” in South Africa and overseas. Much in the emerging African nationalism is legitimate and deserves the sympathy of responsible Christians, but much of it is bad and is rooted in paganism, personal ambitions, and hatred. The Church cannot be too sentimental about these movements and their leaders. She must evaluate them with responsible objectivity.

CHURCHES DESTROYED

One of the most disturbing factors that has come to light in South Africa during recent weeks is the number of churches and schools that have been destroyed.

If the destruction amounted only to the churches of a particular denomination, as was the case in the Belgian Congo, it could be explained by political factors. But in South Africa the churches of different denominations were destroyed. Besides the Dutch Reformed churches even Methodist and Anglican churches were set afire, in spite of the fact that Anglican bishops and divines (Reeves, de Blank, and Huddleston) are known to be among the main spokesmen for the Africans!

If we analyze nationalism, we will not be surprised at the situation. The African nationalist, like the nationalist of all ages and all conditions of men, grasps back to his national past and his cultural heritage.

The African past and cultural heritage are a pagan past and a pagan heritage. Christianity itself is part and parcel of that “Western imperialistic burden” of which he must rid his people! I do not imply that there are no Christians among African nationalists, but they are in a small minority.

BIBLE AND RACE

The Bible is not race-conscious; it is not sensitive to race as such. Whether the Bible says anything definite about race at all is doubtful at least in the modern biological sense of the word. The really prominent category in the Old as well as the New Testament is faith. In the Bible the decisive categories are believers and unbelievers, not racial units. Even the injunction to Israel not to intermingle with the surrounding peoples has no racial basis in a biological sense, for all of the surrounding peoples belonged to the same race as the Israelites. They were also Semites, but they served other gods. The injunction was not racial, therefore, but religious.

Through her whole history Israel made proselytes from the ends of the earth. The numbers of other races who accepted the God of Israel in the course of time became true Israelites, and were integrated into Israel. But Israel as the people of the Covenant was forbidden to intermingle with the surrounding pagan people of the same race so that they would not be drawn away from Jehovah to serve other gods. To use Israel as an argument for racial segregation in the modern world makes no sense.

In some quarters much is made of the Tower of Babel and the delusion of tongues whereby the people of the day were divided into different linguistic groups or “nations.” By God’s act, the sinful unity of man was broken, and humanity was divided by the barriers of language. I believe Babel still has significance. It reminds us that humanity, as a result of sin, is a broken humanity. We must, however, guard against the tendency among many Christian people to argue that God at Babel divided humanity into nations and races and that the obligation rests on us to respect these God-given divisions and that even today all race-mixing is against the will of God. The line of argument rests on the misconception that the division was static and not dynamic. Actually the original “nations” which came into being at the division at Babel no longer exist. Out of them has developed through the ages, under God’s guidance, a great diversity of new peoples mostly as a result of racial mixture.

If racial mixture were against God’s will, the development of all modern nations (including my own and that of the United States) must be sinful and against God’s ordinances. All modern nations would then stand under the judgment of God because the original divisions of Babel were not conscientiously adhered to. But such a view does not make sense, and ignores the fact that the diversity is dynamic. There will always be different nations and races; it is part of God’s common grace to control sin and lawlessness. But God takes care of the diversity. New nations or peoples are continually called into being under God’s guidance as the result of the merging of two or more existing national or racial groups.

The Tower of Babel reminds us that God broke a sinful unity through an act in history. But we must not isolate Genesis 11 from the succeeding chapter, the call of Abraham in whom all the generations of the earth would be blessed. Genesis 12 actually points to the real unity of believers in Christ Jesus. Babel was not God’s last word.

BARRIERS DROP AWAY

After Babel many stupendous things happened. God became flesh and dwelt among us. Following his ascent to heaven, there was a day of Pentecost. Later Ephesians 2 was written by the Apostle Paul, and we get deep insight into the meaning of the crucifixion of Christ and of the Church, the people of God, constituted from Jews and heathens. In Christ all barriers fall away. However, in Christ we do not lose differentiation, which is something different from isolation.

In the New Testament all isolation between peoples is in principle broken down forever. Now the basic division in the midst of all diversity is the division between those who are for Christ and those who are against him. Diversity may never erroneously be substituted for division or apartheid, as is too often done in most unexpected circles. The two concepts are widely different. Has the Church any mandate to keep races intact or “pure”? I doubt it. The Church has the clear responsibility to seek and to demonstrate the unity of God’s people in spite of racial or cultural diversity.

The Church as the body of Christ, the communion of the saints, the people of God, is based not on racial or ethnic factors but on faith. Standing in the midst of a world of rich human diversity, she may not neglect or ignore this God-given diversity. On the other hand, the Church, as the break-through of the Kingdom into this present sinful dispensation, must be true to her character and high calling in uniting believers from all nations and races, and in her own life overcome the artificial barriers that divide believer from unbeliever.

Where practical considerations of language and cultural background make it desirable to have separate churches for different groups of believers, the churches may not be exclusive. The moment a Christian church becomes exclusive, and certain groups are refused admission or fellowship in worship on account of race or color, it is sinful.

Any policy of exclusiveness clashes with the very character of the Church of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, in any discussion of the problem, we immediately have to face the fact that we live in a world broken by sin, and every man and every church is part of some concrete situation in this broken world where the human family is divided into nations and races. Although we believe that the diversity has come about under God’s guidance, and that nations and the Bindungen (bonds) they create serve God’s purpose in limiting sins and lawlessness among men, we also realize that nationhood is tainted by sin, and infested by the seeds of disorder, death, and rebellion against God. Christian citizens are often confronted therefore by a clash of loyalties between God (or Church) and nation.

GOD AND NATIONALISM

Frequently Christians are called upon to give their supreme loyalty to the state or nation and not to God. Christian believers of our own century have time and again been called upon to come to a personal decision about the question, “Will my Christian beliefs be determined by my nationalism or will my nationalism be fashioned by my Christian beliefs)” In some countries the issue is as real today as it was for Germany two decades ago. Believers in almost every century in the history of the world have had to face situations where they were denied the right to give their supreme loyalty to God alone.

Any policy of separation based on cultural, linguistic, or color lines calls for utmost vigilance and searching of conscience. Evil motives may easily slip in and take command, so that the formation and continuance of separate churches may spring not from a sense of Christian responsibility and love but from a desire to get rid of the less developed brother on grounds of race and color. Such an atitude can only be a blatant denial of the reality of the Christian Koinonia. Any church placed in a critical racial situation will continually have to guard against evil exclusivist tendencies and educate her members, in the light of our deep and fundamental unity in Christ, to respect and love every one of her household irrespective of race or color. On the other hand, separate churches for different racial groups need not under all circ*mstances be condemned, as they can have beneficial and positive results. I therefore believe that separate churches can exist only on condition that real Christian brotherhood is not denied in theory or in practice.

Some people have made much of the concept of eiesoortigheid (sui generis)—that the different races show different aptitudes and characteristics, and that this diversity is valuable enough to be retained intact.

The point of view constitutes the basic approach of those who look with disfavor on the tendency to leveling and equalization noticeable all over the world and which threatens to destroy the distinctive and unique character of specific peoples and races.

Here there is deep distrust on the part of non-white races of the intentions of the white race, and one of the consequences of the distrust is that any attempt to retain distinctive racial character in education or in any other sphere, and to do so by constraint, is branded as imperialism. The handling of this concept calls for the greatest circ*mspection. “As far as the Christian Church is concerned this eiesoortigheid, this fact of a group being sui generis, is important and may not be ignored.” No sane person even in South Africa would dream of refusing any German or English-speaking person normal or regular admittance to an Afrikaans church, but an Afrikaans-speaking colored person would be refused regular attendance in almost any white Afrikaans church and even occasional attendance in at least most Free State and Transvaal churches. In how many English churches would the same thing happen? Within the Church, as the communion of God’s people, the stress on the differences between the ethnae can be only a relative stress. If the Church fails to realize the fact, and white Christians follow practices of exclusion, the Church has no future in the Africa of tomorrow.

While we thus affirm that the Church transcends every nation, we do not thereby deny that nation and race can have real significance in the practical organization of the visible church. By virtue of her character, the Church is called continually to bear witness to the coming Kingdom, and in her own life to be a manifestation of the Kingdom that is to come as a break-through of the new world into the old. Continually and progressively, therefore, the Church must work towards the elimination of “walls of partition” between believer and believer. It is part of her calling in obedience to Christ her Lord and Master.

Reflection

Our garbage man comes twice a week—

(City law forbids the reek)

In summer, every day.

But, Oh, I ask: does He forgive

That somewhere little ones could live

On what we throw away?

MILDRED R. BENSMILLER

- More fromBen Marais

Gerald A. Larue

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The relationship between Canaanite religion and the religion of the Old Testament is discussed in two articles in earlier issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Cyrus H. Gordon, “Higher Critics and Forbidden Fruit,” Nov. 23, 1959; Oswald T. Allis, “Israel and the Canaanites,” Feb. 1, 1960). There is another dimension to the discussion of Canaanite and Old Testament religion to which this article seeks to address itself. It is concerned with the value of knowledge of the religion of Canaan in providing a background against which the prophetic protest can best be understood.

Because the Hebrew language and the language of the Canaanites were sister tongues, and because the Hebrew people lived in the cultural setting of Canaan, it is not surprising that similar terminology should appear in the religious literature of both groups. Biblical scholarship, having survived the pan-Egyptian and pan-Babylonian theories, should be hesitant to endorse a pan-Canaanite interpretation of the Old Testament. There can be no doubt that Canaanite culture made a deep imprint upon the Hebrew way of life. The Old Testament makes it quite clear that at certain levels Hebrew religion assimilated characteristics of Ba’alism, but it also indicates that this syncretized religion was not considered to be the religion of Yahweh by the prophets. Amos called for a purified Yahwism. (The personal name for God, written YHWH in Hebrew, is believed by many scholars to have been pronounced “Yahweh.” The religion of the Hebrew people who worshipped Yahweh, therefore, may be termed “Yahwism,” to mark a clear contrast from those who worshipped Ba’al.) The treatment he received at Bethel from the hand of the priest Amaziah indicated that his condemnation of the syncretistic religion was not popular (Amos 7:10 ff.). Hosea’s words reveal that for many Yahweh had become identified with Ba’al (2:16), and he, too, called for a rejection of the Canaanite religion.

What was the nature of this religion against which the prophets protested? At this point the science of archeology and the discovery of the texts of the myth of Ba’al provide us with the information we need.

THE DISCOVERY

In 1929 a peasant plowing a field in northern Syria, near an inlet known as Minet al Beida (“White Harbor”), felt his plowpoint strike a rock. He cleared away the earth to remove the obstruction, and found it to be part of a stairway, which, upon further digging, was found to lead to a tomb. When news of the discovery reached the French authorities in the area, a thorough examination was made which indicated that the site was worthy of detailed investigation. In 1929 excavation was begun under the direction of C. F. A. Schaeffer. The site proved to be the ancient city of Ugarit, destroyed in the fourteenth century B.C.

Many artifacts of great importance were discovered, including Hittite and Egyptian materials, which indicated that the area had been controlled by the two nations at different periods in its history. The most significant discovery for Old Testament scholarship was a library, located between two temples—one dedicated to Dagon, a god generally associated with the Philistines in the Bible (cf. Judges 16:23; 1 Sam. 5:2–7; 1 Chron. 10:10); the other to Ba’al, the Canaanite fertility deity. Hundreds of clay tablets written in cuneiform, representing a language hitherto unknown to scholars, were found. When this language was deciphered, it was found to be related to biblical Hebrew in that it often used similar phrases and exhibited, in the poetic passages, the same parallelism so characteristic of Hebrew poetry. The most significant texts for our purposes were those setting forth the myth of Ba’al. According to the most probable arrangement of the tablets, the story of the loves and wars of Ba’al was somewhat as follows:

THE MYTH OF BA’AL

The myth began with the recounting of a violent battle between Ba’al, the storm god, and Yam, the god of the sea, to determine who should be lord of the land. Ba’al’s victory gave him lordship of the earth, while Yam was confined to his proper sphere, the sea. (See Prov. 8:29; Ps. 89:9; 95:5. Yahweh, as creator of the sea, is in control of it. He establishes its boundaries. There is no rival god of the sea.)

The victory feast which followed not only feted Ba’al’s prowess in battle but signalized his role as lord of the land. He was the god who gave fertility by providing rain to sustain life and promote growth. The fecund powers of Ba’al were central in Canaanite religion.

Later Ba’al encountered Mot, the god of aridity and death, and Ba’al was slain in the battle. With Ba’al dead, rain ceased to fall, the stream beds were dry, and Mot’s deathly power began to encroach upon the fertile lands.

Rites of mourning and mortification performed by El, the benign father-god, included the familiar dust and sackcloth. In addition El gashed (actually “plows”) his face, arms, chest and back, until the blood ran. It is quite clear from the texts that Ba’al was dead, and that the loss of his life-sustaining powers endangered all life.

Meanwhile Anat, Ba’al’s sister and mistress, also mourned his passing. Over hill and mountain (the high places) she conducted her rites of weeping and wailing. Ultimately she discovered that Ba’al had been slain by Mot. She met the god of death in battle, defeated him, and in some manner not explained in the texts in our possession, Ba’al was revived. With his return the rains came, the wadies flowed with water, and El, the father-god, was jubilant. Life power had been given to the parched earth.

It is quite obvious that the Ba’al myth was related to the seasonal cycle in Palestine. During the rainy season Ba’al was believed to be regnant. During the dry periods he was dead. The cultic ritual would naturally reflect and dramatize the myth. Because Ba’al and Anat engage in sexual relations in the myth, so did the worshipers of Ba’al promote fertility by imitating the divine pattern. In one scene Ba’al copulates with a heifer, and it is quite probable that bestial*ty formed part of the cult ritual. (See Dr. Allis’ comment in his article.)

While there is no guarantee that the religion of Ugarit was identical with the Ba’alism that confronted the Hebrews when they entered Canaan, certain aspects of the prophetic protest indicate that there may have been a close similarity. Therefore knowledge of the content of the myth is important. The prophets argued that Yahweh and Yahweh alone was both creator and sustainer of life, and that the recognition of Ba’al as the god who sustained life by the gift of rain was apostasy.

Perhaps the most dramatic biblical portrayal of the struggle between the religion of Yahweh and the religion of Ba’al is found in 1 Kings 17–19. According to 17:1 and 18:1–6 a severe drought, extending over several years, threatened the nation with starvation. Ba’al worshipers would naturally explain the lack of rain by references to the death of Ba’al. Elijah knew that the lack of rain was punishment resulting from the forsaking of Yahweh by his people (17:1). The contest on Mount Carmel was to determine which deity provided the rain.

The ritual acts of the prophets of Ba’al are similar to those recorded in the myth of Ba’al. As El gashed himself in mourning for the dead Ba’al, so did the prophets of Ba’al gash themselves (1 Kings 18:28). At noon, when the sun was at its zenith and the heat most severe, Elijah taunted the Ba’alists with their own mythology. Perhaps Ba’al was on a journey? According to the myth Elijah was correct, for Ba’al was in the underworld of death with Mot. Perhaps Ba’al was asleep? Again accurate, for according to the myth Ba’al was asleep in death. (The condition of sleep is often used as a parallel for death, cf. 1 Kings 1:21; 2:10; Ps. 13:3; Jer. 51:39, 57; Dan. 12:2, and so on.) In spite of their efforts the prophets of Ba’al failed. Ba’al was still dead.

After Elijah performed his ritual and Yahweh had answered by fire, the rains came (cf. 1 Kings 18:41–46). The point had been made. Yahweh, not Ba’al, sustained life, and gave or withheld the rains. The Life-Creator was also the Life-Sustainer.

The same emphasis on Yahweh’s gift of rain, fertility, and life appears in the writings of the eighth century prophets. For example, Amos 4:6–13 stresses the fact that Yahweh had demonstrated his control over life and death, his power to give and withhold the rains, but the people had not returned to him. Presumably they continued to attribute these powers to Ba’al. The people are warned to seek Yahweh and live (5:4) but not at Bethel, the site of the golden calf. Sacred prostitution is condemned by Amos (2:8).

The same conflict is reflected in Hosea where the people are accused of following the rituals of Ba’al (7:14–16). In addition the sexual motif of Ba’alism is apparent in some of Hosea’s condemnations (2:10–13; 4:14; 5:4). It is possible that the reference to men kissing calves in Hosea 13:2 refers to the ritual commemorating Ba’al’s association with the heifer.

Nor was the conflict resolved in the eighth century. The writings of Jeremiah, coming from the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth make it quite clear that Ba’alism was flourishing in his day. The sexual motifs of Ba’alism are condemned (2:23 f.; 3:6 f.; 23:13 f). Yahweh’s control of the rain is proclaimed (10:12–16; 14:1–10). The ritual weeping for the dead Ba’al was being observed (3:21). Ba’alism was still the religion of the people, and the prophets of Yahweh were still engaged in a struggle with the leaders of Ba’alism.

Some scholars have emphasized the similarity in terminology of certain Psalms to that found in some of the Ugaritic writings. It is possible that in at least one of the Psalms proclaiming faith in Yahweh an implicit rejection of Ba’alism is to be found. Psalm 121 opens with a statement that the speaker is looking toward the hills. The hilltops were the traditional places for the location of Canaanite shrines or high places. The question is asked: “From whence does my help come?” implying “Is it from the high places that my help comes?”

In the proclamation of faith in the creator God which follows, the author makes it plain that Yahweh never slumbers or sleeps, as Ba’al did. He is not a god who is here today and gone tomorrow, a seasonal god, as Ba’al was. He is an ever-present God, who guards his worshipers day and night from all evil, and sustains their life. It is from Yahweh, not from Ba’al of the high places, that help comes.

If, as I suspect, this Psalm is not only a statement of faith but at the same time a tacit rejection of Ba’alism, we are indebted for this insight to the information obtained from the Canaanite texts coming from the excavation of Ugarit.

- More fromGerald A. Larue

Fred E. Luchs

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Only once have I seen an audience walk out on a dramatic performance. In the second act of Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett (written 1952), there weren’t enough people in Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre to choose sides for a ball game. The question weighing on my mind—“Am I witnessing trash or genius?”—kept me glued to my seat. Alternately sportive and serious, the play keeps faith with our twentieth century feeling of futility over the meaning of life. What do you see?

Your eyes fall upon a bare stage, bare except for a thin leafless tree. As the lights come up, two tramp figures appear—Vladimir and Estragon. They are here to wait for a Mr. Godot. Not being “eggheads,” they spend their time devising ways to fill the passing moments with activity. One removes his shoes with laborious effort. Then the boots are carefully placed at the center of the stage and now strenuously put on again. The other actor removes his hat, examines it carefully, dusts it off, peers inside the hatband, and shakes it. Not finding anything, he replaces the hat on his head.

Desultory conversation goes on amid the action. But the two continually come back to their great aim in life: they’re here to wait for Godot! One suggests this is unfair; they have rights. “Rights?” says the other; “we got rid of them.” One gets an idea. “Suppose we repented?” But nothing affirmative comes of that suggestion. In fact, the line “There’s nothing to be done,” spoken four different times, concludes each thread of conversation. Says one to the other six times, “I’m going,” and he doesn’t move. Says the other five more times, “Let’s go,” but neither man moves off the stage. They are, after all, waiting for someone—Godot!

Suddenly a boy appears and walks over to them. Obviously he wants to say something. The men are hesitant about letting him speak. Finally he blurts out his message: “Mr. Godot can’t come today, but surely tomorrow!” The two derelicts show great distress at the news. Their misery increases when the boy asks, “What shall I tell Mr. Godot?” After a bit of desultory talk, Vladimir instructs him, “Tell him you saw us.”

The two men, remorseful, lament the fact they have no rope with which to hang themselves. The play ends with these lines:

Vladimir: “We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow, unless Godot comes.”

Estragon: “And if he comes?”

Vladimir: “We’ll be saved. Well, shall we go?”

Estragon: “Yes, let’s go.”

And they do not move.

So it’s over. There are few memorable lines, no climactic scenes, only faltering, fruitless, desultory waiting for a person who never comes.

THE MASKED FACE

What does one think about as the play transpires? The presentation reminds one of a modern painting. A theatergoer naturally searches for meaning in a performance. I will say that you get as much in seeing “Waiting for Godot” as you bring to it.

Write your own tragicomedy. Put all you want into it. Take away what you please. Make Godot anyone you choose. He can be a symbol for anything: Kismet, Fate, or what-have-you. It still means all things to all people; to some it is one of the most profound and amusing plays ever written. There is scarcely a metaphysical, political, or social question that can’t be read into ‘Waiting for Godot.” As those two tramps stand there before us, shuffling and sighing and wondering where they are and why, we can easily experience a sense of bleakness. The whole thing is a mystery wrapped in an inexplicable enigma. You hear melancholy truths about the hopeless destiny of the human race. You see Mr. Beckett’s acrid cartoon of the story of mankind.

It has its tantalizing promises that never come. The play is a veil rather than a revelation. It wears a mask rather than a face. But ‘Waiting for Godot” cannot be laughed off. In some elusive fashion it is concerned with the suffering of mankind. But it plays a dirge; it tells us that salvation is not going to come.

Beckett tells us life is a large joke being played on all of us. Reward will arrive on a certain tomorrow which will always be tomorrow. Those who loiter by the withered tree are waiting for salvation, but it never comes. Except for an illusion of faith flickering around the edges of the drama, faith in God has vanished. It is as though Mr. Beckett sees little reason for clutching at that, and yet is unable to relinquish it entirely. The play gropes toward faith but never finds it. Beckett impresses us as being a cynical Saroyan. Whereas the amiable Armenian has genuine affection for people, the sardonic Samuel seems to despise them. His story offers no hope; its central figures want to hang themselves on a semblance of a tree. Is he laughing at us or is he pitying us?

A SPARK OF DIVINITY

What does Godot mean? “Ot” added to God could make the word mean small-sized God. Is this the meaning?—waiting for a small-sized God? Is the author making buffoons of us as we look for a small God when we ought to be looking for a huge God? You name the right interpretation. I played with various ones and finally came up with this. You can find many interpretations.

Samuel Beckett is telling us that man is waiting for a God who isn’t there. Poor gullible man! Man waits for God to save him from his predicament but God won’t do it because God isn’t there. We don’t even have the proof of Kilroy’s footprints. We just wait for God. Having no assurance that he has been here, meeting only with a little boy who comes to tell us that he will be here tomorrow, are we then to base our hope on the message of the little boy? Is the little boy Jesus? Is the author saying that man is a gullible fool waiting for God? Is he telling us that man must sit and wait, rotting in his tracks? Man is just a tramp muttering a plethora of words, basking in indolence, waiting for a God who never will come.

Where have I heard Beckett’s philosophy before?

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more (Ps. 103:15, 16).

Where have I read this?

All flesh is grass, and all the beauty of life is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades.… Surely the people is grass (Isa. 40:6, 7).

And this?

For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away (Jas. 4:14).

And where did I read these words?

Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and is cut down; he flees also as a shadow and continues not (Job 14:1, 2).

Or where does such pessimism as this come from?

There is one fate for both man and beast, the same fate for them; as the one dies so dies the other. Man has no advantage over the beast. For vanity, vanity, all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all return to the dust (Eccles. 3:19, 20).

Beckett is giving us nothing new. The Bible gave us these meaningless philosophies 2500 years ago. Beckett sings the praises of the folly of life and merely echoes the words of philosophers who have gone before him. Did he need to repeat this sort of nihilism? Yes. In a day when religion is popular, as we find it in 1960, and people accept whatever comes to them blindly, we need such plays to shake us out of our lethargies.

TIME OF FULFILLMENT

What shall we say? Are we convinced that “life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing?”

Here the words of Isaiah. Isaiah, in a pessimistic mood, playing the Beckett role, says “Surely the people is grass.” But this same Isaiah in high moments cries out again tidings that have gladdened the hearts of men for 2500 years:

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon (Isa. 55:1, 3, 6, 7).

Now Isaiah tells us why it is difficult for mere man to understand the ways of God.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8, 9).

And to all who follow this way is the promise of God given:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

For he shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands (Isa. 55:10–12).

Isaiah clarifies and augments our hope; he foretells the coming of the Christ:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).

And again,

Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young (Isa. 40:10, 11).

Beckett is right in giving us a picture of men waiting for God, because for 500 years after Isaiah men were still waiting for him to come. Finally, “in the fullness of time, Christ was born.”

The trouble with Beckett’s play is that it does not realize Christ was born. He is the God men “waited for.” But men did not believe God would debase himself by appearing as a human so they labeled the story a Jesus-myth. Others believed the story but they manhandled this Jesus and made him fit their patterns of thinking. Still others divided him into sects and denominations until life went out of him.

Multitudes are still waiting for God. Their waiting is fruitless, for some of us know that that waiting period is ended. Godot appeared 20 centuries ago in the form of a child. Is it not written that

… there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.… For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:8–10).

In our day, many will sit idly by, foolishly waiting for Godot to come. We shall not be waiting. The Book hath revealed that he has come. Let us accept him today.

God’s Unlimited Love

The universe trembled

As a celestial sigh of passion

Echoed from the bosom of its Creator.

Then the almighty hand of God reached down

And with finger dipped in the ink

Of the blood of the sacrificed One,

Wrote out in bold, clear script

The plan of the salvation of man.

Man, bruised, sore and miserable,

Was lifted from his squalor

And self-inflicted death

Into the glorious hallway of heaven.

Though unworthy and not deserving

An ounce of compassion from God,

Man was cleansed in a shower-bath of love

And invited into the chambers of eternal life.

MERLE CROUSE

- More fromFred E. Luchs

Otto A. Piper

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Were one to study church statistics and talk with the administrative leaders of Protestant churches today, he might get the impression that everything is well with American Protestantism. Churches have steadily increased in membership and Sunday School enrollment; the percentage of professing Protestants in the total population of the United States has constantly and uninterruptedly risen during the last 180 years. With more than 60 million members, the Protestant churches form the largest religious body in our country, or about 36 per cent of America’s 170 million people. These figures seem to provide ample reason for gratification and gratitude. They are symptoms of a social and spiritual climate which is obviously favorable to religion in general and Protestantism in particular.

Nevertheless, in striking contrast to this development is the fact that our social and political life increasingly shows less traces of Protestant influence. Most remarkable is the trend in jurisdiction. The Constitution was written with the original intent of building up a country on a Protestant Christian foundation, though not granting a privileged position, let alone establishment, to any one denomination. Today the courts show a general tendency to interpret the relation of the United States government to religious bodies in terms of “separation of religion and state.”

Public life, including education, must now repudiate all Christian features, although antireligious thought is at least by implication granted a privileged position. De-Christianization has also made enormous progress in the fields of literature and entertainment. Life as portrayed in the modern novel, with few exceptions, knows no Christian values: the typical author actually presents crime and vice as a normal and inescapable condition of man.

How does one explain the apparent contradiction? It will hardly do to put all the blame on those who are outside the churches. Not a few writers and makers of film and television shows have gone through Sunday School and places of religious instruction. They are unaware of the inconsistency of their outlook because in their eyes what separates them from their parent generation is only a greater willingness to let the truth become articulate. We proceed, therefore, to seek out the cause of contemporary secularization.

THE VANISHING PROTEST

The outstanding characteristic of American Protestantism from the days of the Pilgrims and the first Quakers to the beginning of this century has been its protest against the world. While Protestants did not withdraw from public life and did enjoy the abundant bounties offered by this continent, they nevertheless were aware of the unbridgeable chasm that separates God’s will for man from man’s indulgence of his own desires. It was not a theoretical distinction for them. Although the contribution American Protestantism has made to ethical theory is hardly conspicuous, there was a clear awareness of the limits they had to set to their own wishes and desires, and the courage resolutely to say ‘No’ to rampant manifestations of sin. Of course, there was violence and fraud and drinking and gambling. But the American people would never have succeeded in transforming a semi-continent into the leading nation of the world in three centuries had it not been for their willingness to let the will of God triumph over inordinate desires.

Protestant life did adapt itself to changing historical conditions, and various ideals were espoused throughout the centuries. But its basic pattern always remained the same. The fight for Prohibition was probably the last occasion in which the protest of faith became articulate. Today, the predominant outlook of church people and non-Christians is amazingly similar, not because outsiders have been persuaded to adopt the Christian view but rather because the members of the churches, like their spiritual leaders, prefer conformity with the nonbelieving world to the protesting spirit of their ancestors. The very life of our churches and denominations bears witness to the state of similarity.

With the result of rapid technological growth based on theories of rationalism and positivism, modern life has become dominated by the idea of technological efficiency and high returns. We see congregations and also many ministers looking to outward success, expressed in exact figures, as the goal to be pursued; and thus the belief is implied that the most elaborate organization is the best guarantee of success. Symptomatic is the role assumed by boards of the various denominations in guiding church bodies. Forms of organization and their methods are being patterned after the executive offices of big business corporations; and whereas the policy of the church had formerly resulted from free organizational activities, today all the leagues, associations, and societies in the church are destined to carry out plans and programs which various board departments have prepared for them. The pastor is expected in this system to be primarily an able administrator and financier. Such new perspective will inevitably have its influence upon the sermon. The pastor will more and more be tempted to preach the sermon that will please the majority in his congregation and increase church attendance than proclaim the things men urgently need for their redemption. The vicious trend, however, should not be interpreted as deliberate apostasy. It has come about quietly but steadily through theology and the Protestant press, and often been intensified by the long periods in which pastors held doctrine in contempt because it was not “practical.” That outlook in itself was a sign of secularization.

But the effect which the trend had upon the congregation was fatal. It mattered not whether the pastor was a liberal or a conservative, an evangelical or a social gospeller; his appeal was not made to the hearer’s heart, nor to incite him to fellowship with Christ. Instead it was more a matter of accepting the preacher’s superiority and joining the group that followed him. I am fully aware of the fact that there has been partisan spirit in earlier days of church life. But it seems to me that there has never been the absence of an objective spiritual basis as there is now. Emphasis is on the social effect, the idea that by the pastor’s words the congregation is to be welded together into a hom*ogeneous community.

THE ROOT OF THE EVIL

A purely sociological explanation for the situation will not suffice. The change was caused by two movements in American Protestantism which seemingly were at loggerheads but which in fact stemmed from the same theological failure. Pietism and rationalistic humanitarianism, opposed as they were to each other in respects, had this in common: for all practical purposes they disregarded the Lordship of the risen Christ. The various revival movements of the last 200 years placed strong emphasis on Christ’s atoning work on the Cross, and minimized his ascent to heaven, and his reign in glory as biblical doctrines lacking practical consequences. What resulted was a piety that concentrated all enthusiasm upon the wonderful Gospel of the remission of sins while the gift of new life in the power of the Holy Spirit was either neglected or interpreted egotistically in terms of personal holiness, peace of mind, and the joy of salvation. Consequently, the Christian had no specific task to perform in this world and thus would act like everybody else.

In the rationalist and humanitarian interpretation of the Christian faith, Christ had been demoted from the role of divine Ruler to that of Teacher or Example. Although the ethical impulse had always been strong in that camp of Christianity, people were content with accomplishing something in their own goodness rather than by the power of Christ. Similarly, in accord with the purely this-worldly outlook brand of Protestantism was the objective of one’s religious activities, namely, the improvement of social conditions rather than transformation in the world. The effects of these two developments, which represented the main currents in modern Protestantism, were not immediately noticeable because the old idea of “calling” (that is, of a life in the service of the risen Lord) still lingered on. But the orthodox renaissance in nineteenth and early twentieth century Calvinism and Lutheranism was itself too much indebted to the spirit of the age to counteract the dominant trend. For the theologians at the time, the Holy Spirit was first of all a teacher who guaranteed the infallible truth of the Bible, but who was not considered the giver of new life. In retrospect, one is amazed to discover the reluctance with which these theologians approached the biblical witness to the power of the Holy Spirit, and their strange contention that His work had come to a close at the end of the Apostolic Age.

THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT

According to the New Testament, believers are in dire need of the Spirit’s powerful gifts, because they have to live in a world under the sway of the devil. Man would be hopelessly defeated by the powers of evil if the risen Lord did not come to his rescue by imparting to him the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. It is pathetic to see how, except for the Pentecostal movements, so many believers failed to realize this fact in modern Protestantism. By assuming that the work of our Lord had reached its goal in the remission of our sins, people overlooked the danger they were in in this world and also the opportunity offered to them in their calling. The result was a fatal sense of security and complacency. Over against these attitudes, the rationalistic or “liberal” Christians saw rightly that the believer is confronted with a task in this world. They were mistaken, however, in assuming that this world provides the neutral raw materials out of which they can build their own brave new world.

No wonder people of that persuasion have held that John had gone to unnecessary extremes when he stated that the whole world “lies in the power of the Evil One” or “is established upon evil” (1 John 5:19). They prefer to interpret his statement as though it applies only to that portion of mankind with which they disagree, or to non-Christians, or as though the apostle had rather said that you cannot expect perfect goodness in this world. It is no wonder that once the clear meaning of the apostolic urging has been diluted, nothing prevents such Christians from reaching a compromise with this world. Inevitably their ethics fall in line with the goals of their government or with the economic practices of the society in which they live, and they derive their standards of action from what people consider the supreme needs in such spheres of human life. The practical result becomes the same in the two principal groups of modern Protestantism. Christians act in conformity with the standards and goals of their environment.

What then do we find to be the will of the risen Lord? In the power which he enjoys since his Resurrection, he continues on a world-wide basis to perform his messianic work which during his earthly ministry he could do only on an individual basis—namely, the making of all things new. For that work he endows his followers with his Spirit; and having overcome the world, he curbs through his power the forces of evil that assail us from all sides. Thus our ethical task appears in a new light. As redeemed ones we are called not to live for our own sake in this world but rather to contribute our share to the renewing of this world. What we are able to do individually and collectively is but little in comparison to the greatness of the goal; and apart from the fact that in the Parousia the risen Lord would himself take things into his hands, our Christian activity might seem futile.

The task assigned to us, however, is not to try and do what the Saviour alone is capable of doing (namely, to redeem this world from the sway of the devil), but to be witnesses of his ascent to heavenly glory and to his transforming purpose through our own renewed lives. Ever since Pentecost, the Church has not lacked men and women who have clearly manifested his redemptive determination and thus the strength of his power in frail human lives. In view of the conditions prevailing in the world, our witness would lack credibility if it failed to present tangible evidence of the activity of the risen Lord who brings about the eschatological consummation. What a pity that Protestants, by repudiating the Catholic view that the lives of the saints have a meritorious effect, have overlooked the evidential role of the true saints, that is, believers, who are manifestations of the fullness of spiritual life!

Jesus reminded his followers that more important than their actions are their lives, that the remission of sins or justification has to be followed by regeneration, and that the tree had to become good before it was able to bear good fruit.

OUR TASK IN THE WORLD

The new life never starts in one as an explosion of good needs but as a vision of what can be accomplished by a man in Christ. The vision is always implemented by the example of the lives of those who have allowed the Spirit to take full possession of them. Even if we should never be able to imitate their example because we are afraid of the revolution that would incur in our practical life, the light of the vision would nonetheless make a great difference in us. Looking at those who have lived the life of faith, we could be certain that conditions as they prevail in this world are not what they are destined to be, but Jesus has come to transform them. By realizing his purpose and power, we adopt the perspective in which the commandments of Jesus are to be interpreted. With references to economic life, sex, and international relations, what is the Christian perspective in our secularized world?

THE TEST WE FACE

In economic life, Christendom is presently divided between those who advocate modern capitalism as its true Christian form, and a minority which holds that socialism or communism is the method of economic life that Jesus would embrace. But we must examine the situation. It is obvious that Jesus’ voluntary poverty, even if universally accepted, would not be the solution of the economic problems of mankind but rather the end of all economic life. Nevertheless, we cannot simply bypass the fact of our Lord’s lack of earthly possessions and the poverty of so many of his followers. Although it is true that money is not evil by itself, his example makes us realize that living in a money economy tends to make men slaves of money. In outage money has become the supreme goal and is held to provide the solution to most of life’s problems. While Jesus does not object to the exercise of foresight and hard work in economic activities, he reminds us constantly of the danger of covetousness, of depending on our possessions, and worrying about them. We learn from him a detachment from economic goods and a generous, compassionate, and joyful sharing with others that is free from miserliness, calculations of success, and bias toward persons.

In the area of sex, Protestantism has repudiated Roman Catholic belief that voluntary celibacy is the shortest way to heaven; yet unfortunately we have lost sight of the ideal of virginity which is represented in monastic vows. The positive attitude which the Reformers took toward sex has in our day succumbed to a naturalistic view.

It is no exaggeration to say that in American life the satisfaction of sexual desire has become an obsession. Catering to it, publishers, writers, and the makers of movies have filled their own pockets, and the subject is presently dominating the minds of our youth down to the junior high school level. Little will be accomplished by censorship. What we need to foster is a new attitude. If for instance the more than 60 million Protestants would express their indignation of the commercialization and profanation of sex by staying away from movies which exploit it, and if in the home children were brought up with the understanding that sex is a sacred personal relationship which demands maturity and a sense of responsibility, then perhaps we might influence for good the unwholesome climate in which we live.

The third area we would mention is international politics. For many persons, war still seems the most natural means of attaining goals in international life when neither persuasion nor economic pressures have succeeded. But Jesus and many of his followers showed by their lives that men’s killing of each other is contrary to the will of God, no matter what material gains may be derived from it. The question is not whether war can be abolished or outlawed but whether Christians are to accept as natural or normal the fact that followers of the same Lord are killing each other. The waging of war and the praise of war makes manifest more than anything else the sway which the devil has over the world. What disturbs us is not the desire of the statesmen to use the threat of war as their main weapon in international politics but that we as Christians should acquiesce in such mentality. Rather, we ought to ask the Lord so to illumine our hearts that we might discern the occasions which make for the development of the war-like spirit, and to make us willing to practice co-operation and reconciliation.

The problem which confronts Christianity today is not whether we should substitute utopian dreams for common sense. We learn from the apostle Paul that it is with fear and trembling that a Christian’s life is to be lived. We are God’s children in a world which is the devil’s, and we have to make this fact articulate.

Christians are living as sheep among wolves. They may prefer to howl with the wolves and let their voices become undiscernible in the general noise. Or they may speak with the still small voice of a faith that believes in the power of the risen Christ. The Christian’s voice may be a lone voice, but like the majestic silence of the Cross it will sound across the centuries and proclaim the victory of the Lamb.

- More fromOtto A. Piper

Addison H. Leitch

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Two books have crossed my desk in recent days. The first is John Murray’s Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty and the other is Emile Cailliet’s The Recovery of Purpose. Both are excellent pieces of work.

John Murray teaches theology at Westminster Seminary and has, in my opinion one of the finest theological minds of our day. As one would guess from his professorship he is orthodox, but more exactly Reformed. Describing a man as orthodox and Reformed does not classify him too exactly in these days when another man’s theological position depends so much on your own viewpoint. We can describe John Murray as orthodox and Reformed in terms of the Calvinism which found expression in the Second Synod of Dort and in the Westminster Confession of Faith. To put it in another way, he is not afraid of propositional theology. In fact, he glories in it. A confession of faith to him means that we are making definite statements about definite beliefs, and he has no trouble agreeing with the statements of the Westminster Confession.

The book has only 71 pages of printed material, and includes just three lectures on the doctrine of Scripture, the authority of Scripture and the sovereignty of God as reflected in the writings of John Calvin. It is a scholarly treatment, brief and penetrating, by a man who believes that Calvin was a Calvinist.

Murray believes in the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. He believes in the inerrancy of the Scriptures as originally communicated, and he believes that Calvin held these views also. He tells us why. In dealing with the authority of Scripture, he takes up the difficult question of the authority of the words of Scripture as against the living Word of Jesus Christ. He recognizes as we all do that people who may have difficulty with verbal inspiration find some easem*nt in saying in effect “the words don’t really matter; what really matters is that we have communicated to us the Living Word.” Murray believes the antithesis to be false and argues that we cannot know the Living Word and have encounter with Him apart from the words in which Lie is made known to us. I quote the author: “To think of the revelation Jesus gave apart from the words He spoke and apart from the words spoken from heaven in witness borne to Him as the beloved Son of the Father is a pure abstraction. The words Jesus spoke were inspired and infallible. On any other assumption we must abandon the infallibility of Jesus as the incarnate Word as well as the centrality and finality of the revelation He was and bore … it would be strange if believers who are shut off from the special kind of privilege enjoyed by the disciples … namely his infallible verbal communication with them, should be placed at the disadvantage of having no infallible verbal revelation” (pp. 41–42). It would mean, Murray argues, that we would be at a great disadvantage in our encounter with the living Word, and there is no reason to believe that we are. I hope I have put my finger at the center of Murray’s argument and urge you to read his entire discussion.

Emile Cailliet’s book is of a different sort with a different kind of purpose. It will be my privilege soon to review the book briefly in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The problem which Cailliet has set for himself is a study of the attitudes of our day apart from the Christian orientation, and the attitudes of our day reflected in the intramural struggles of the Christian Church. He is working toward a common meeting ground where we as Christians, with a better understanding of truth, can enter into conversations with non-Christians if they are willing to re-think their approach to truth. As anyone who has heard Dr. Cailliet or read his previous works might guess, the new book is a rich feast of intellectual delights. The breadth of this man’s mind and his mastery in so many areas of knowledge constantly amaze me.

In working out his thesis Cailliet has had to wrestle with the problem of Scripture, and he does so strenuously. One will find the book worth while if he does no more than cull out Cailliet’s reflections on the one subject. To make one or two quotations on it would hardly be fair to the author. He leans over backwards to make a case for the fundamentalists, their use of Scripture (which he sharply criticizes), and their very evident successes. He is interested, too, in their zeal (pp. 63–64). Having parted company with their obscurantist approach, he nevertheless makes this interesting comment: “Not that the text itself has lost any of its significance. Quite the contrary. It commands higher value than ever before, and this to the last word” (italics mine). As Cailliet’s argument continues, he treats “and this to the last word” his idea quite differently from the way in which Murray would. His argument would allow for considerably more criticism in terms of Form, Mythos, and the like. Where Murray would say that the words of Scripture speak directly to us, I think Cailliet would be careful to say first that the words of Scripture can be understood only in the setting in which they arose, and then they speak to us only in the setting in which we find ourselves, that is, existentialism at both ends of the line.

Many weeks ago I suggested in this column that from the standpoint of theological seminary conversations there are at least three current religious thoughts: the ecumenical movement, the restatement of our confessions and their use, and the doctrine of Scripture. These two books reflect the ongoing debate on Scripture and the end is not yet. Versions, translations, basic documents, archaeological supports, the sweet uses of higher and lower criticism, the virtual reconstruction of “the divine originals”—all of these are a meaty treat for theological theses.

“Review of Current Religious Thought” is contributed in sequency by Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, and Dr. Philip Edgcumb Hughes, scholars alert to the theological tides of our time.

- More fromAddison H. Leitch

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Apologetic For Classical Calvinism

Divine Election, by G. C. Berkouwer (Eerdmans, 1960, 336 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary.

The distinguished theologian from Amsterdam ably expounds and defends the doctrine of Divine Election set forth in classical Calvinism. His touchstone is ever the limit of God’s Word. He begins his apologetic with the revelation in Jesus Christ, not with the hidden counsels of God.

Again and again in the course of this treatment, he delivers Calvinism from the hands of those who would modify the Reformed faith to suit their own preconceptions. The second chapter differs from those who, professing Calvin, are echoing Faustus’ semi-Pelagian scheme: the preaching of the Gospel, decision for Christ, then the Holy Spirit. Instead Berkouwer draws from John 6:37–45 the following: “To hear, to learn, to be drawn, to be given, and then to come.” This is the evangelical order.

For the brethren who in their zeal for logical consistency insist on an equal ultimacy of election and reprobation, Berkouwer holds that this goes beyond Scripture and counter to the Canons of Dort in their assertion that the two are not eodem modo. While salvation is founded solely on God’s mercy in Christ, the cause and matter, the real source and ground of men’s condemnation is in themselves (see Institutes III. xxiii. pp. 8–9). Again, “two persons hear; one despises, the other ascends. Let him who despises impute it to himself; let him who ascends not arrogate it unto himself,” but recognize that faith is given us by the Spirit (Institutes III. ii. p. 35; cf. John 3:3–21).

But the neo-orthodox are perhaps the hardest on Calvin. They insist on ascribing to him a view of God as arbitrary power. According to P. Maury, Predestination (p. 35), in Calvin the liberty with which God loves “is replaced by the arbitrary decision of pure omnipotence.” But Calvin actually said the opposite of this, namely, “the notion of the absolute and arbitrary power of God is profane and deserves our detestation” (Institutes III. xxiii. p. 2; cf. I. xvii. p. 2).

Dr. J. K. S. Reid in The Scottish Journal of Theology (I. p. 12) is another offender. He takes these Latin words gratiam istam Dei praecedit electio out of their context in Institutes III. xxii. i, and uses them to ascribe to Calvin a view directly opposite of that which Calvin sets forth in that very section as well as elsewhere in the Institutes and the commentaries. Calvin does not teach that election precedes grace as Reid erroneously asserts. Rather he says that, “If election precede that grace of God by which we are made fit to obtain the glory of eternal life what then can God Himself find in us by which He is moved to elect us?” This is a rhetorical question in a conditional sentence. The sense thereof is that if election preceded grace, then there could be no election. Here, as in the sentences preceding this one in the same paragraph, the Father must turn his view upon Christ to choose those whom he would admit to his fellowship.

For Calvin, Jesus Christ as God “represents himself as the author of election” (Institutes III. xxii. p. 7), even as Calvin prays that “we may be led to Christ only as the fountain of election” (a prayer made in connection with Calvin’s exposition of Malachi 1:2). For the Geneva Reformer, “it is beyond all controversy, that no man is loved by God but in Christ; he is the beloved Son in whom the love of the Father perpetually rests, and then diffuses itself to us; so that we are accepted in the Beloved” (Institutes III. ii. p. 32; III. xxiv. p. 5; ii. xvi. p. 4; Commentaries on Ephesians 1; on 1 Peter 1, on 2 Timothy 1:9–10, and Calvin Tracts, containing Treatises on the Sacraments, Edinburgh, II. p. 133).

Dr. Berkouwer’s great work is a challenge to those who profess the Reformed faith to understand their own heritage before they undertake to revise it. It is also a challenge to those who differ from this tradition to read about it from the pen of a master before they impugn it.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Early Views Of Christ

The Christ of the Earliest Christians, by William M. Ramsey (John Knox Press, 1959, 163 pp., $3), is reviewed by C. Edward Gammon, Minister of Fairlington Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, Virginia.

Much of the material in this book has been circulated in scholarly New Testament journals representing several schools of interpretation. Dr. Ramsey has contributed a valuable synthesis of the best contributions of each to our understanding of the earliest Christians and the vocabulary of their faith in Christ. His use of the material in the book of Acts as an outline adds immeasurably to the value of his book.

James S. Stewart notes in the foreword that the book is “the substance of an academic dissertation … in a shorter and more popular form.” Dr. Ramsey is capable of rich, exciting language, “Jesus is transcendent, terrible toward sin, worthy of the uncompromising trust and loyalty He demands …” (p. 46). However, much of this first book still has the stiff, occasionally tedious, syntax of a thesis. A valuable aid for pastor and layman alike.

C. EDWARD GAMMON

World Religions

Modern Trends in World Religions, edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa (The Open Court Publishing Co., 1959, 286 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Professor of Missions, Fuller Theological Seminary.

This is a symposium dedicated to the memory of Paul Carus, pioneer in interreligious understanding. The essays include Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Indian religion, and forms of Buddhism. Nothing is included on Shintoism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism. Some of the essays are uneven in quality and scope while others are gems of analysis within the compass of the pages allowed. There is much with which one would be in agreement and much with which one would take issue. Rivkin in his essay on Judaism makes this statement: “The development of Judaism underwrites only one generalization: no doctrine, however divine its claim, can persist intact in a world of change, development and novelty.” However, the Old Testament proclaims the fact that God is and this doctrine has persisted and is still intact. The chapter on modern trends in Christianity is worthwhile.

HAROLD LINDSELL

A Neglected Doctrine

The Witness of the Holy Spirit, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1960, 140 pp., $3), is reviewed by Boyd Hunt, Professor of Systematic Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Bernard Ramm, professor of systematic theology at California Baptist Theological Seminary, has already distinguished himself by his writings in the area of conservative apologetics and theology. This latest volume from his pen is marked by the same qualities of relevance, forthrightness, and insight by which his writings have come to be known so widely.

The Witness of the Holy Spirit is subtitled, “An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of the Testimonium Spiritus Sancti Internum.” The book was written because of Ramm’s conviction that the doctrine of the testimonium has been sorely neglected in current discussions of revelation and authority.

In the first three chapters Ramm treats the historical roots of the testimonium, its theological presuppositions, and its scriptural foundations. The lengthy fourth chapter, the heart of the volume, discusses the theological implications of the doctrine. Here the author treats a series of topics developing the Reformation themes of the union of Word and Spirit and the subordination of church to Word. In a final chapter the interpretations of the testimonium by Rome, liberalism, fundamentalism, Kierkegaard, and Pascal are evaluated.

Broadly speaking Ramm understands the testimonium as the inward and subjective illumination by the Holy Spirit of objective revelation, which for us is inscripturated. Since the Scriptures arc autopistic, the testimonium is merely the means by which the believer is assured of the divinity of the Bible. The testimonium is not the ground of the authority of the Bible. Furthermore, the believer’s certainty of the divinity of Scripture cannot be separated from his certainty of his divine adoption. If these two are divorced, then the form of Scripture is severed from its content, and revelation is severed from salvation. The believer’s certainty through the testimonium is the certainty not of discursive reasoning but of intuition. The testimonium is not the impartation of theological sentences. Its structure cannot be deciphered from the religious consciousness.

This position is distinguished from the Roman Catholic doctrine that it is the church, “the teaching Magisterium,” that confers Christian certainty. In the Roman view the church as persuader remains outside and at a distance from the believer, while in the testimonium the divine barrister, the Holy Spirit as persuader, is in the heart. Ramm also distinguishes his interpretation from fundamentalism. The fundamentalist forgets the instrumental character of Scripture and makes the written Word by itself equal to the Word and the Spirit. Ramm sees this as but little short of a completely ex opere operato doctrine of the printed word.

The author fails to distinguish his own position from neo-orthodoxy. In a passing sentence he complains that the neo-orthodox doctrine of the inspiration “does not render Scripture suitable for use as the instrument of the Spirit,” but he does not amplify his statement. This failure to come to grips with the neo-orthodox doctrine of revelation is a disappointing feature of the book. It is well to remember, however, that the doctrine of the relation of Spirit to spirit is one of the least developed areas of neo-orthodox theology.

This book is an invaluable study and will stimulate fresh interest in a timely and basic topic.

BOYD HUNT

Thought Provoking

Challenge and Response, by Max Warren (Morehouse-Barlow Company, 1959, 148 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Horace L. Fenton, Jr., Associate Director, Latin America Mission.

The basic test of any book on Missions is whether it stimulates thought and action. This book should do both.

Evangelicals will not agree with everything that Canon Warren writes in these chapters. The author, in stressing the fact that God has not left any nation without a witness, seems to go far beyond this basic scriptural principle in his insistence that the religions of the world are a part of that witness, and that therefore the missionary, while stressing the finality of the Christian faith, must be prepared to find traces of God’s revelation in all these other faiths. In doing so, he seems to give little place to the demonic element in the religions of men, or to the delusion which Romans chapter one says has overtaken nations who have rejected the divine revelation.

Nevertheless, there is in a number of these chapters a great deal that evangelicals ought to ponder and think through. Canon Warren’s analysis of the current situation in Asia and Africa is fresh, thought-provoking, and solidly based on his own visits to these fields. His concept of what is involved in evangelism today is replete with helpful insights. The chapter on “Re-minting of the Word ‘Missionary’” should be studied, not only by those who are now talking in terms of “fraternal workers” (a title which Warren rejects), but by all of us who are concerned about the missionary task of the Church. Canon Warren writes well, and his message merits careful attention.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

Meaning Of History

The Christian Doctrine of History, by John McIntyre (Eerdmans, 1957, 118 pp., $2.50) and The Hinge of History, by Carl Michalson (Scribner’s, 1959, 256 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal.

In line with the present desperate search of men for meaning in history, we have here two more works dealing with this problem. Neither claims to provide a full-orbed explanation of history but points rather to a criterion of explanation, in both cases Jesus Christ. To the writers He is central for the understanding of man’s historical situation. One might almost say that Christ is the hard core of history.

However, when one has said this, he must necessarily qualify his statement, for there is by no means entire agreement as to what is meant by Christ or history. McIntyre seems to accept the “historicity” of Christ in the usual sense of the term. Michalson, on the other hand, follows the approach of Rudolf Bultmann, and after finishing his chapters on “The Historicity of Christ” and “The Reality of the Resurrection,” this reviewer is still not sure what he thinks of Christ, nor is he by any means certain that it makes any difference to Michalson whether Christ actually died and rose again in what might be termed “temporal” history.

Along with this difference between the two authors goes another. Michalson, following the demythologizing techniques of Bultmann tends to make a radical separation between “eschatological history” (Heilsgeschichte) and “existential history” (temporal history). In his discussion of both he has many reasonable things to say, but when one puts his whole pattern of thought together one feels that Christ’s connection with the history of man is really very tenuous.

McIntyre, on the other hand, less philosophical and more theological is also more concrete. His exposition of Christ’s position as the nexus of history gives life to historical thought. His chapter on Christ as the fulfillment of history is particularly helpful as is his discussion of the relation of history to Heilsgeschichte in his last chapter.

Both books are useful—Michalson’s as an exposition of the existential point of view set forth by Bultmann, and McIntyre’s as a more theological and more “orthodox” interpretation of the meaning of history.

W. STANFORD REID

A Biblical Ministry

The Growing Minister, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon, 1960, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by Robert Boyd Munger, Minister of First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, California.

It is inevitable that the author who has given us so many choice volumes on the message and method of the ministry should now give attention to the minister himself. The book warrants careful attention not because of its profundity or originality but for the clarity with which it calls the servant of Christ to biblical patterns and provisions. Great themes are sounded in a grand setting—themes which we are in danger of overlooking in this superficial culture where men in pulpits are tempted to get their cue from “do-it-yourself” handbooks and manuals on “Psychology for the Simple.”

Perhaps this book will not be greeted with enthusiasm among some seminarians because its thrust is to the center of one’s being rather than to the “cortex,” to the whole man rather than to the intellect. Yet, if God were to give us a generation of ministers who walked in these ways, we would witness wonders in the church of God.

After outlining the ideals of the ministry and the influence that is exercised by godly personalities, the author directs our attention in Part One to the means of growth. The very chapter titles are both an indictment and an encouragement to the modern churchman. Here are a few of them: “Devotional Reading”; “Intercessory Prayer”; “Intellectual Labor”; “Fatherly Discipline”; “Personal Contact”—holy listening, praying, thinking, living, conversing.

In Part Two obstacles to growth are surveyed and ways of meeting them considered. For example, the other-directed preacher to the lonely crowd is charged to beware of pastoral cowardice, to have the courage “to be different,” “to decline,” or “to delegate.” Final confidence is to be placed in God.

The general orientation of the book tends to face backward instead of outward. For example, illustrative material is drawn heavily from Christ’s servants of the past century rather than from contemporary pulpiteers. It must be acknowledged that there is some reason for this: in former days ministers had power with God and with man. If the ministry of today seems oversimplified in this book-pastoral and peaceful rather than industrial and intense—the author nonetheless brings into clear view the towering summits of exalted ideals that rest on eternal truths.

ROBERT BOYD MUNGER

Social Uncertainty

Outside the Camp, by Charles C. West (Doubleday, 1959, 162 pp., $3), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College.

In this book we are brought face to face with the tension existing between Christianity and the world of the mid-twentieth century. The author is well qualified to describe this as he finds it in many parts of the world. He has served as a missionary in China, as a faculty member of a Chinese university, and at the present time he is the assistant director of the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches in Switzerland. The immediate inspiration for this book came to the author while in a deserted Buddhist temple with other members of the university faculty, awaiting the advancing Communist army. He took stock not only of himself but of the civilizations on trial. In this book he presents the results of such reflections which constitute a challenging and searching analysis of the present dilemma confronting not only the West but much of the East as well. It is his conviction (and the reviewer shares it) that contemporary man is struggling with social changes that have uprooted his past and threaten his present existence, and that he is looking for a new frame of reference and new source of values to give meaning to life in a world of shattered idols. Rich and comfortable America, with its almost unquestioning trust in the permanence of the American way of life and the infallibility of the democratic philosophy, is not immune to the collapse of its own particular idols. Security in this world, for the American as well as for the European, the Asian, and the African, is an illusion.

In the midst of this revolutionary insecurity of our day, Dr. West poses two basic questions: What is God doing, and what is the role of the Church in this age? Unfortunately he is not at his best when attempting to answer these profoundly important questions. He agrees that the Church must at all times preach the gospel message of salvation and that God is confronting the world in Jesus Christ. He pays tribute to what Billy Graham and other evangelists are doing to spread this message, but he also feels that their approach has some basic weaknesses. It is the opinion of this reviewer that his criticisms of evangelistic efforts stem from Dr. West’s failure to comprehend the biblical view of sin, and that he is not so much concerned with the eternal redemption of the souls of men as he is with what Christianity can do to meet the human dilemma here and now. Evangelicals will also be disappointed with his definition of the Church. He seems to deny that she is essentially the fellowship of the redeemed ones, of those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ, and regards her as a vehicle of God’s revelation to mankind (pp. 131–132). The careful reader will soon come to the conclusion that these weaknesses have their origin in a more serious defect—the failure to accept the Scriptures as the infallible rule of faith and practice, and a willingness to regard sections of the Old Testament as being myth. It seems to this reviewer that Dr. West brings to the Church that very uncertainty which holds within its grip the secular age of the twentieth century. However, there is much insight in this short work that is of great value, and evangelicals will be the more thoughtful for having read it.

C. GREGG SINGER

Beliefs Are Basic

Beliefs Have Consequences, by Arnold H. Lowe (T. Y. Crowell Co., 1959, 178 pp., $3), is reviewed by Robert Strong, Minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Montgomery, Alabama.

This is a collection of 21 brief inspirational talks given to his congregation by the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis. The book takes its title from the first essay in the series.

The author’s theological liberalism often does not intrude upon the reader’s notice, for the constant emphasis is on how to deal with the practical problems of life. Dr. Lowe speaks, however, of the temptation and fall of our first parents in terms of the “legendary days of man on earth” and confidently adds, “of course, all this is a religious parable.” He says, “I believe in Christ. I believe him to be more than man,” and then stops there without committing himself on the central issue of the person of Christ. The doctrine of Atonement is never mentioned nor is the new birth.

Here is a preacher with a marked gift for describing modern man in his troubles of mind and heart. He is convinced that it matters supremely what a man believes, and is splendidly firm on the idea that out of convictions come actions. He is also thoroughly familiar with the materials of Scripture. One wishes that beyond the stabbing of consciences and the inspirational appeal, Dr. Lowe had majored in the great evangelical doctrines. These are the beliefs with consequences of true blessing.

ROBERT STRONG

Racial Unity

No Flesh Shall Glory, by C. Herbert Oliver (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1959, 96 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by T. B. Maston, Professor of Christian Ethics, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is another book in the growing number on race and race relations. The author is a Southern-born Negro who is now a Presbyterian pastor in Maine.

The title for the first chapter, “The Unity of the Human Race,” is the underlying, unifying theme of the book. The approach, in the main, is soundly biblical. Possibly the most distinctive material is in the chapter titled, “The Bible and Color.” Not only this chapter but the entire book should be interesting and helpful both to Negroes and whites.

Some will feel that Mr. Oliver labors too long with Shem, Ham, and Japheth. His arguments will not be convincing to rabid segregationists, and others will not particularly need them. There are a few generalizations not entirely justified. This is particularly true in the discussion of “Human Marriage.” He says that the background for opposition to racial intermarriage is a concept of racial solidarity (p. 86), which in turn stems from a sense of superiority. This is the background for much of the opposition to intermarriage, but not for all of it. There are at least some people who oppose intermarriage of those of different races on what they consider sound psychological and sociological grounds.

T. B. MASTON

Christianity Amid Islam

Sandals at the Mosque, by Kenneth Cragg (Oxford University Press, 1959, 160 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Francis R. Steele, Home Secretary, North Africa Mission, Toronto, Ontario.

The concept of “frontier theology” certainly conveys the idea of adventure. But adventure in time of war can involve danger or even disaster, especially if the “adventurer” gets too far away from home base.

In his attempt to avoid the perils, as he sees them, of sticking by the fort and contesting with Islam at a distance, Dr. Cragg urges us to go out and fraternize with the “Indians” in order to discover whatever elements of strategy we might have in common. In so doing, he tends to obscure the fact that the common elements—we both carry guns and use gun powder—are insignificant as compared to those in which we differ. We’re on opposite sides, following contrary battle plans to achieve different objectives!

While Dr. Cragg recognizes the fact that Christianity has distinctive features (pp. 105 f.), he maintains that an effective ministry to Muslims today demands that we recognize the principle of “involvement” and “inter-religion” (p. 20) which assumes, to some degree at least, that there is evidence of God’s truth and God’s working in Islam. A corollary to this assumption suggests that Christianity is simply an outworking of potential truth in rather than a corrective to Islam (pp. 68 f. and 92 f.).

In order to support this thesis Cragg distinguishes between Islam, the present-day practice, and Islam the idealistic original faith (p. 89). But this distinction appears to be achieved by obscuring or else excusing the more objectionable features of Islam (or Islam),both in precept and practice throughout history, in a strained attempt to find a convincing contact point for Christianity.

Basically, however, this whole approach stands or falls on the question of origins and ultimate direction or control. Our answer to the question “Is Islam an inadequate, though sincere, attempt to present Truth or a deliberate scheme to counterfeit Truth?” will settle the matter once for all. If Islam is ultimately another product of the master genius of Satan for the purpose of counterfeiting Christianity, then apparent similarities are seen not as potential but distorted truth, and our ministry must be substitution, not completion. The fact that the Bible is replete with examples of Satanic deceit in both theology and religion, and this deceit contains all the elements seen in the development of Islam—admission of partial truth, vehement denial of basic truth, and emphasis on man’s ability himself to satisfy divine law—makes the answer plain. Our Christian “presence” among Muslims must not rest upon the assumption of common elements that can be exploited but upon a consistent witness to the unique elements of Christianity. This means a witness to the vicarious love manifested in the death of God the Son for the sin of man.

However, this little book contains a remarkable amount of detail concerning Islam, and for this we are grateful. Actually, it is not so much with the data as with the interpretation that we disagree. And books providing reliable current information on Islam for the Christian Church in these crucial days are much needed and most welcome.

FRANCIS R. STEELE

Book Briefs

The Church in the Thought of Jesus, by Joseph B. Clower, Jr. (John Knox Press, 1960, 160 pp., $3.50)—A Survey of the synoptic Gospels to discover aspects of the life and teachings of Christ which are relevant and normative to the Christian Church.

The Sermon on the Mount, by C. E. Colton (Zondervan, 1960, 158 pp., $2.95)—Thirty sermons of spiritual power based on Matthew 5–7.

Faith Is the Victory, by E. M. Blaiklock (Eerdmans, 1959, 64 pp., $2)—Studies in the first epistle of John originally presented at the 1959 British Keswick meetings.

How Churches Grow, by Donald McGavran (World Dominion Press, 1960, 186 pp., 12s 6d)—A survey of modern missions particularly concerned with Church growth of all kinds. It describes and evaluates many patterns used in the propagation of the Gospel. The author holds that true progress must be based on the unshakable ground of God’s revelation in Christ and a valid evangelism.

The Speaker’s Sourcebook, by Eleanor Doan (Zondervan, 1960, 304 pp., $3.95)—A valuable aid for Christian workers containing 4,000 quotations alphabetically arranged under 500 subjects.

The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse, by Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. (John Knox Press, 1960, 99 pp., $1.50)—Volume 6 in a series of Ecumenical Studies in Worship. Especially concerned with traditional observances of the Paschal Season.

The Romance of Lutheranism in California, by Richard T. Du Brau (Concordia, 1960, 280 pp., $2.50)—A regional history of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, profusely illustrated.

As Thy Days So Thy Strength, by Jesse Jai McNeil (Eerdmans, 1960, 167 pp., $3)—Forty-two daily readings centered around the promise of God indicated in the title, and the presence of God in Christ. Helpful to all who need new spiritual strength.

Invitation to Worship, by Clifford Ansgar Nelson (Augustana Press, 1960, 178 pp., $3)—Interpreting Lutheran liturgy to induce “a better appreciation of the lifting up of the heart to God in the worship of the Christian congregation.”

The Power of His Name by Robert E. Lucco*ck (Harper, 1960, 159 pp., $3)—Sermons based on the great themes appropriate to the Church Year, from Advent to Trinity; practical and inspiring, with special relevance to daily living.

Shrines of God, by Kenneth Clinton (Wilde, 1960, 127 pp., $2)—Spiritual insights concerning the Family, the Church, the Bible, Prayer and other “shrines” of the Christian faith.

Shorter Atlas of the Bible, by L. H. Grollenberg (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960, 196 pp., $3.95)—A digest of Nelson’s Atlas of the Bible in a most convenient size.

Relativism, Knowledge and Faith, by Gordon D. Kaufman (University of Chicago Press, 1960, 141 pp., $3.75)—A liberal consideration of the proposition that truths and values are relative to the culture in which they are found.

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John B. Conlan Jr., former Army officer and lecturer in international political relations at the University of Maryland, is a young lawyer residing in Evanston, Illinois. Trained at Northwestern University (B. S.) and Harvard University’s Law School (LL. B.), he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Cologne, Germany. Widely travelled in Europe, Latin America, and the Near East, he has just completed a 20,000-mile, five-month trek through Africa, where he interviewed scores of Christian missionaries and native leaders. Here are his observations:

Toward the end of a beautiful day I strolled along the eastern edge of Africa’s famous Rift Valiey watching a burning sun disappear behind the 9,000-foot White Highlands of Kenya.

My companion, a tall and erect Kikuyu chief, had just shown me the Africa Inland Mission station where during the years of the Mau-Mau insurrection some 60 white missionaries and hundreds of Kikuyu lived behind barbed wire enclosures protected by floodlights and trip-flares. He showed me the scene near Kijabe where 300 of his fellow Kikuyu Christians were slaughtered in a night by other Kikuyus—Mau-Mau intimidators. Then he told of cleavages between pagans and Christians in his own tribe, of his present apprehensions about a resurgence of Mau-Mau and all that is pagan, primitive, and vicious, of local facts behind long-range problems.

Black Africa is in such flux that yesterday’s news is of scant meaning today unless read against long-term problems: 1. the extent of Moslem influence; 2. a growing indication, as recognized by the chief, that the struggle between black and white will be followed by a struggle among blacks—a struggle for reascendancy by pagan elements over westernized and Christian Africans once the restraint of colonial government is withdrawn; 3. the inexperience in government by Africans and the dominating role to be played by the handful of educated ones.

There is little doubt that every territory which is governed by a small official European community will become wholly independent and be governed by nonwhites. It is almost equally certain that this will lead to great upheavals in the territories concerned; and it will be a long time before they are well governed.

After living extensively in the African town locations as well as their shambas and rondavels in the reserves, it appears doubtful to me whether the masses want this. But a handful of political aspirants are bringing it about. Their lack of understanding of economics, government and ordered liberty within a modern society is appalling.

If pagan-oriented elements are able to seize total leadership and liquidate Christian influences, the responsibility for such loss can be traced in large measure to two sources: 1. Colonial Office indifference to and hampering of missionary activity and the propagation of the Gospel—whether by white or black; 2. refusal or failure in the mission schools to educate students intensely enough in biblical concepts of economics, government, and ordered liberty. Africans cry for uhuru (freedom), but missionaries are not teaching the young leaders what true freedom in Christ really means in the total Christian life and society. Consequently, African students thirsting for knowledge and a total philosophy of life that will enable them as present and future leaders of Africa to set the social, economic, political and spiritual goals of their lands in the quest for “democracy’” are prone to turn to Godless systems of socio-politico-economic thought.

Though missionaries have in large measure defaulted on this crucial segment of African society, the opportunity has not been lost. It has shifted here to America. The future of Christianity in Africa and, indeed, in many areas of the world, may well turn on what the response of America’s Christians is to the most productive mission field in the world: the thousands of foreign students within our borders. Every African wants to study in America; and every African who has studied here can name his own price and position on return home.

Dr. Billy Graham has effectively demonstrated the value of mass evangelism in Africa. Will the student-leaders hold open their homeland gates to further evangelization and Christian growth against surges of ignorant and educated pagans? From my conversations with them I believe they will, if Christian laymen and pastors actively seek out these foreign students within our shores, teach them of our church life, our private businesses and economic life, our local government, and, above all, the love of Christ as demonstrated in daily living in our homes. It is here in America that Christ can be brought to the hearts of Africa’s leading minds, and the mission field into the churches and homes.

Foreign Students

There are currently some 50,000 foreign students in the United States, according to the lnstitute of lnternational Education.

In addition, many thousands of foreign citizens are temporarily located in America for other reasons.

All represent what is described in the accompanying article on this page as “the mast productive mission field in the world.”

Here are some key concentrations of foreign students (figures approximate the number at each school):

Dramatizing Missions

What is a “Missionary Conference”?

For an increasing number of evangelical churches in North America, the annual missionary conference is a means of stimulating and creating vital new interest in the witness of the Gospel abroad Missionaries on furlough find such conferences strategic opportunities to share both their victories and their problems with fellow believers at home. The local congregation, in turn, gets a first-hand foreign-field report which lends itself to keener appreciation of the missionary enterprise and to more dedicated financial and prayer support.

Missionary conference programs usually van’ in scope according to the size of the church. Some conferences consist merely of inviting a single missionary for a pair of evening services. Others feature all-day services for a week or more with dozens of guest missionary speakers. Many include costumed marches, appeals for funds, and invitations for dedication of life.

The most ambitious of missionary conferences are those conducted annually by Peoples Church of Toronto and Park Street Church of Boston. Both climaxed their 1960 conferences this month with the prospect of adding, between them, more than a half-million dollars to foreign missionary work.

The four-week conference of the independent Peoples Church virtually assured a total missionary offering approaching $300,000 for the next 12 months (some 340 missionaries draw support from this total). As it has been for 31 years, the conference began under the personal leadership of Dr. Oswald J. Smith, founder and now pastor emeritus. On the third day, Smith was taken seriously ill and underwent emergency surgery. By mid-May he was reported to be off the “critical” list and associates said they were encouraged by his rate of recovery.

Meanwhile in Boston, the Park Street (Congregational) Church ran up total pledges payable within a year of more than $262,000. This was the 21st yearly missionary conference for the historic church located by Boston Common. Nearly $3,000,000 has been invested in the missionary enterprise during these years. The 2,200-member church grants support to 116 missionaries in 50 countries.

More than 50 missionaries participated in this year’s conference at the Park Street Church.

Manifest Unity

It is not enough that the ecumenical movement represents inter-church cooperation, according to Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches.

Visser ’t Hooft told the WCC’s U. S. Conference last month that the council “can by its nature not be satisfied when the churches work together and maintain fraternal contacts.”

“For the question remains,” he said, “and it comes to us in the first place from the Lord Himself and the second place from the world: why are you not fully united in faith and order?”

The WCC leader asserted that the issue is not whether “we can agree about specific doctrinal consensus and the form of order which are required for full unity but whether manifest unity means visible, corporate, local unity.” This must be discussed, he added, so that no church may feel “forced.”

On hand for the three-day, annual meeting at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, were some 200 delegates from 30 U. S. church groups which are WCC members.

The delegates voiced gratitude to Episcopal Bishop Henry Knox Sherill, chairman of the conference, for his leadership of a committee which has raised some $2,000,000 toward a proposed new $2,500,000 WCC headquarters building in Geneva.

Welcoming Salvationists

A reception for its newest member, the 250,000-member Salvation Army of the United States, highlighted the 93rd annual convention of the National Holiness Association in Asheville, North Carolina, last month. More than 2,000 delegates and visitors were on hand. The association, a coordinating agency for Wesleyan-Arminian groups, now has a constituency of some 2,000,000.

In an economy move, delegates voted to dissolve temporarily the office of executive director. Duties will be shared by six elected officers.

Headquarters for the association, formerly in Minneapolis and more recently located in Marion, Indiana, was to be moved late this month to permanent offices in Elkhart, Indiana, in a building belonging to the United Missionary Church, a member organization of the association.

Reporter’s Reward

The Religious Newswriters’ Association bestowed its James O. Supple: Memorial Award for 1960 upon David A. Runge, religion editor of the Milwaukee Journal. The award was presented last month during the RNA’s 12th annual meeting in Denver.

RNA, a fellowship of newspaper religion reporters, grants the award in recognition of outstanding religious reporting, perpetuating the memory of James O. Supple, one of its founders. Supple, former religion editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, was killed while on an overseas assignment during the Korean conflict.

Runge, 48, has been religion editor of the Journal for six years and has been on the newspaper’s staff since 1949. Previously for 20 years he served with the Daily Northwestern of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. For three of those years he was city editor.

Methodist Sidelights

In the course of some 74 hours of oratory, the Methodists heard these items:

• Possible drafting of a plan of merger with the Evangelical United Brethren Church within two years.

• Arrival at a state of quiescence in merger talks with Episcopalians, one delegate speaking out against union on grounds of opposing views on temperance.

• Presentation of a revised book of worship for trial until 1964 when final adoption will be voted on. The trend of the revision is toward more formal and liturgical pattern of worship.

• Citation of retiring Bishop Arthur J. Moore, of Atlanta, Georgia, as “Methodist of the Year” by World Outlook, national Methodist magazine of missions. Moore has been president of the Methodist Board of Missions since its organization in 1940, and a biography of him has just been published.

• Proposal of the Methodist Television, Radio and Film Commission, located in Nashville, Tennessee, to open a branch office in Los Angeles to exert a “constructive influence on mass entertainment.”

Note of Gratification

The Military Chaplains Association is asking U. S. communities to follow the example of the armed forces in achieving peaceful racial integration.

In a resolution adopted at its 35th annual convention last month, the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish chaplains’ fellowship expressed “gratification at the degree of peaceful integration already achieved in the armed forces of our nation.”

“We express the hope,” the resolution adds, “that our American communities will follow the splendid example set by our armed forces.”

This year’s MCA convention was held at the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.

Such Is the Kingdom

The meeting place may be a fashionable split-level in Skokie or a noisy fair booth in Phoenix. It may even be in the open fresh air of an Iowa farm or in the dust of a Harlem playground. In such environs and others, Bible-carrying teachers of Child Evangelism Fellowship provided Christian instruction for more than 1,000,000 U. S. youngsters last year.

This month Child Evangelism Fellowship took a new look at its own scope as 400 delegates, including 30 missionaries from 15 countries, assembled in Memphis for their 13th biennial international conference.

Officials reported that the interdenominational CEF now has some 700 full-time children’s workers from coast to coast, plus some 35,000 volunteers. Much of their witness lies in the more than 18,000 “Good News Clubs,” neighborhood organizations which sponsor well-adapted weekly Bible classes for unchurched children. Abroad, support is provided 146 missionaries and 150 full-time national workers in 60 countries.

Featured at the Memphis conference were the finals of a national Bible knowledge competition among youngsters aged nine to thirteen. Three girls and a boy from Tyrone, Pennsylvania, took top honors.

Endeavor Awards

Top prizes in Christian Endeavor’s 1960 citizenship contest will go to Gloria I. McDonald, 16-year-old high school junior from Texas, and David M. Olson, 19, Christian education major at Wheaton (Illinois) College.

A newly-inaugurated society prize was won by the High School Youth Vespers Group of Trinity Evangelical Congregational Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Individual winners were selected on the basis of an essay on “Christian Citizenship—Unlimited!” as well as by a review of the contestant’s citizenship activities. The Pennsylvania society was cited for a project which stressed the citizenship topic in store window displays, newspaper essays, and interviews with civic leaders.

All winners will be publicly honored at a mass “citizenship rally” scheduled in Ottawa July 2.

Chemist in the Pulpit

The American Chemical Society presented a citation last month to one of its most faithful members, a 75-year-old Ohio resident whose career has included 30 years as a chemist and 20 as a minister.

The Rev. Roysel J. Cowan was given a certificate of appreciation for 50 years of continuous membership in the society.

During his career as a chemist in Toledo, Ohio, Cowan also served as a Sunday School superintendent. At 55, he forsook the laboratory for the pulpit. Now, though ostensibly retired, Cowan still conducts two services each Sunday at a Free Methodist church in Bowling Green, Ohio, and tends to other needs of the parish during the week.

He asserts that there are fundamental relationships between physical laws and spiritual laws and that arguments arise only because the contenders know too little about each other’s fields. He has emphasized that there is a need “for the scientific viewpoint in helping the working man to understand religion.”

Birth Control Code

A Protestant-Jewish clergy committee came up with a birth control code last month. Those who drafted the plan say it is aimed at lessening religious controversy over birth control.

All public programs of birth control information service and research should exempt from participation anyone with ethical objections, said a statement released by the clergymen’s national advisory committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Conversely, the group said, “The objections of some must not be permitted to deprive others of contraceptive assistance which is scientifically authoritative, and which may be required of them when in conscience they believe birth control fulfills the will of God.”

The committee, formed last fall under chairmanship of Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, urged government support for “research to develop improved childspacing methods, including techniques acceptable to those who object to some current methods.”

Inter-faith Safety

Protestant and Catholic clergymen in Youngstown, Ohio, cooperating in a campaign for traffic safety, plan to stress drivers’ moral responsibilities in sermons and literature during the summer months.

A similar “Christian road safety campaign” is under way throughout England with the endorsem*nt of most church groups as well as the British government.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. J. Warren Hastings, 62, minister of the National City Christian Church in Washington, D. C.… Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, 90, noted religious writer.

Retirement: As senior professor and vice president of Union Theological Seminary, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr.

Election: As president of the National Holiness Association, the Rev. Kenneth E. Geiger.

Appointments: As treasurer of the United Church of Christ, Charles H. Lockyear … as president of the Alaska Methodist University, the Rev. Fred P. McGinnis … as professor of sociology of religion at the National Methodist Theological Seminary, Dr. Lawrence Hepple … as managing editor of the Christian Advocate, the Rev. James M. Wall … as director of religious activities of the National Safety Council, Harold J. Holmes.

Resignations: As president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Charles W. Koller … as professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, Dr. Lars Granberg, to assume a professorship in psychology at Hope College … as professor of church history at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Dr. Imri Murden Blackburn, to accept a post as chairman of the Department of Ecclesiastical History at Nashota (Wisconsin) House.

Ordination: As minister of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Rev. Armand Tagoona, first Eskimo ever to be ordained by the denomination.

F.F.

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“Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.” Thus spake John Wesley in the slower-paced eighteenth century. If the 788 delegates to the quadrennial General Conference of The Methodist Church, assembled in Denver April 27-May 7, were in too big a hurry to catch Wesley’s “distinction,” they could blame a troublesome racial problem which hungrily consumed time ticketed for other business.

U. S. Protestantism’s largest church (9,815,459 members) desires unity and its leadership favors racial integration. The coupled goals proved beyond the body this year, with efforts toward the latter creating threats to the former. Friction centered on a report of a 70-member commission which after some four years of study recommended retention, for the time being, of the jurisdictional system embraced by three uniting Methodist bodies in 1939: The Methodist Episcopal Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and The Methodist Protestant Church.

Without such a system it is generally agreed the South would not have entered the Union. The new church was thus divided into six jurisdictions—five of them geographical and one racial. This latter, called the Central Jurisdiction, contains all but 26,000 of the church’s 393,000 Negroes and is administered by four Negro bishops.

The 1956 General Conference adopted an amendment which made it easier for Negro churches and “annual conferences” to transfer from the Central Jurisdiction to regional jurisdictions.

The commission’s report suggested implementation of this amendment toward eventual abolition of the Central Jurisdiction. Its immediate elimination, the report claimed, would be “disastrous to Negro Methodists,” leaving many of them “without full fellowship in local churches or annual conferences.” “Drastic legislation will not accomplish the fully inclusive Church we all desire. We must give ourselves to education and experimentation in the creating of a climate—spiritual and psychological—in which an inclusive Methodist Church will be a reality.” “Unfortunately and erroneously, the jurisdictional system as a whole, mainly because of the Central Jurisdiction, has become for some a symbol of segregation.… Actually, the Central Jurisdiction assures racial integration in the highest echelons of our Church—in the Council of Bishops, the Judicial Council and in all boards, commissions and committees of the Church. Thereis no other denomination in America where this degree of racial integration in the governing bodies of the Church has been achieved.”

The jurisdictional system thus assures the Negro Methodist a higher proportion of leadership and representation than that to which he is entitled on a strictly numerical basis. But this, remarked one Negro delegate, is not satisfactory to the majority of Negroes (Central Jurisdiction office-holders excepted) who see here discrimination in reverse. He granted that immediate abolition of the Central Jurisdiction by the 1960 General Conference would result in chaos, but he was likewise convinced that a target date for abolition should be set, perhaps 1968.

This was attempted by none less than Dr. Harold C. Case, president of Boston University. But he was up against the dominant voice of this year’s conference, that of Charles C. Parlin, Wall Street lawyer and chairman of the study commission, who pointed to the commission’s discovery of Southern emotional reaction to such proposals. Case’s amendment failed, as did a later attempt to cut off financial support from seminaries which refuse to admit Negro students (two of the 12 Methodist seminaries retain color bars: Duke University Divinity School, and Candler School of Theology.

Lawyer Parlin did a masterful job in presenting and defending the commission report. His reasoned arguments and courtroom tones seemed to carry the weight of law itself for the delegates, as he debated the report through Northern opposition, then managed, despite Southern protests, to shepherd through its provisions for drawing the various jurisdictions closer to the General Conference and for moves toward increased interracial fellowship. During particularly emotional debate, he cautioned delegates against frothy arguments designed to catch newspaper headlines, and eventually he brought the report through the conference substantially intact.

Los Angeles’ Bishop Gerald H. Kennedy, new president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, hailed the conference for overcoming the temptations toward bitterness in the long and frank debate. “We came through it marvelously.” He reminded them of the road ahead—toward absolute racial equality and freedom—but voiced relief at the chance for a pause before pressing onward.

Methodist bishops sit on the platform and have no vote in conference business. They speak only by request. But their Episcopal Address to the delegates carries considerable weight. This year, consistent with traditional Methodist emphasis on the ethical and practical, the address sounded a trumpet call against beverage alcohol, “a beast tearing at the vitals of society,” and against the “enslaving habit” of tobacco.

Accordingly, the conference condemned “social drinking,” setting forth the standard of total abstinence for all Methodists, though voting down a proposal making this mandatory for all church officials. Also rejected was a committee report which would have dropped the specific ban on tobacco from rules governing ministers.

While Methodist stress on the ethical is well known, the movement has also been characterized by a minimized theological emphasis. This seemed to create a particularly hospitable environment for “old-fashioned modernism,” for which Methodism and her seminaries are famous.

Coupled one evening with an oratorio (“The Invisible Fire”) “expressing John Wesley’s experience of conversion,” was an address by retiring Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, which seemed far from Aldersgate. The topic “Methodism Faces the Future” elicited from Bishop Oxnam restatement of his conviction that this decade’s “most dramatic event will be The Interplanetary Conference on Religious Faith to be attended by the finest minds of all the planets of the universe.” The challenge to the Methodist seminaries is to prepare their students for such conferences. The “delegates who will represent the religious thought of all the religions of all the planets [italics ours—ED.] are counted on to “make known the revelation of God to all. Fundamentalist dogmatism and papal infallibility will have no place among men who love one another.… How did God make himself known to the inhabitants of Mars?… The sessions will be televised and the universe will come to know the universal truth that frees.” After outlining this mode of revelation, the bishop speculated that God may have revealed himself “to the peoples of other planets in a fashion,” compared to Jesus, “even more intimate, holier, and grander, in a love that not only demands all but gives all.”

But happily the Council of Bishops displayed awareness of other challenges of the future, one being a “reclaiming of our theological heritage.” They pointed to the “solid system of doctrine in Wesley’s ‘Sermons’ and ‘Notes’ and the manuals of Watson, Pope, Summers, and others.” They called for renewed theological study which is “biblical and ecumenical.” For the bishops have seen “ominous signs” that Methodism must change from its present course and root its “evangelism in sound doctrine.”

While still the nation’s largest Protestant church, the Methodist shoulder has felt the breath of the gaining Southern Baptists, a far more conservative body (all U. S. Baptists far outnumber U. S. Methodists). Other important statistics:

—For every four members gained in the last quadrennium, Methodists have lost three.

—During the next four years, 8,000 new ministers will be needed and the supply is far from being assured.

Stewardship is another area of self examination, per capita giving in 1959 (58.8 cents) being less than that of 1939 when measured by the dollar’s actual worth. The church’s Negro colleges are in “precarious condition.” Said Bishop Richard Raines: “In 1926, we had approximately 2,600 missionaries in more than 40 countries. Today we have 1,650. In 1926, the Methodist church gave about the same amount of money for missionary effort as we are giving this year, and the dollar then was worth two or three times what it is worth today.”

A Methodist theological graduate student observed: “One reason Wesley did not want the Methodists to leave the Church of England was that he knew they had no body of doctrine to replace that of the mother church. Subsequent events have vindicated his judgment.”

The bishops warned that their church could “become the same sort of church as that which Wesley and his preachers set out to reform and to revive more than two centuries ago.”

Cried Presbyterian George Buttrick, preacher to Harvard University: “My brethren in the Methodist ministry, I plead with you to accept the Cross. ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy Cross I cling.’” And Bishop Kennedy’s last words at conference end were Charles Wesley’s: “His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me.”

As one gazes upon Denver’s setting in the shadow of the enormous plain’s eruption into the majestic Rockies, the mind’s eye envisions a mighty host of Wesleyans moving westward. So great is it that the vanguard begins the ascent, while the rear is not yet visible on the eastern horizon. But there is tragedy. As some leaders scale the heights, others fall back exhausted and unaccountably penetrate to twisted defiles of lower elevation than the plains they have just crossed. And they retain many of their followers.

The New Testament, no less than John Bunyan, speaks of Christian warfare along with Christian pilgrimage. The world has invaded the Church and there are two opposing views of God, of Christ, of man, and of salvation. Both within Methodism and without, these two views, sometimes covertly, are locked in deadly embrace.

Key Conference Actions

These were among actions which resulted from some half-million words of floor debate at the Methodists’ General Conference:

• Retention of the controversial Central (Negro) Jurisdiction for at least another four years.

• Condemnation of “social drinking” and use of tobacco.

• Approval of formation of a new Board of Christian Social Concerns which is a merger of the Boards of Temperance, World Peace, and Social and Economic Relations. Chief debate was over the new board’s locating in Washington, D. C., the question being raised whether this would appear as a political pressure move. Dr. Ralph Sockman’s opposition to a single chief executive was voted down.

• Toward universal disarmament, urging of permanent cessation of all nuclear tests (with inspection controls), establishment of a United Nations agency for cooperative exploration of outer space, reaffirmation of opposition to peacetime universal military training, and recognition of conscientious objectors, regardless of whether they profess religious grounds for their stand.

• Commendation of the Air Force for the “prompt apology” to the National Council of Churches “for the incredible blunder of allowing … slanderous charges … in a training manual.” Called for any group with charges to make against a Methodist to use the church courts, and expression of regrets that any Methodists contribute money or leadership to such organizations as Circuit Riders, Inc. This mention of a specific organization faced considerable opposition in a wild and woolly committee meeting before reaching the floor.

• Commendation for the “crucial” work of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

• Approval of granting permission to Methodist ministers to remarry divorced persons if there are awareness of factors leading to previous failure and preparation for making the proposed marriage “truly Christian.”

• Limitation of a bishop’s term of assignment to the same residence to 12 years.

• Increase of maximum General Conference membership from 900 to 1,400.

• Establishment of a 35-member commission to act as liaison with the National and World Councils of Churches.

Experiment’s End

Though hailed as a unique ecumenical experiment, the University of Chicago’s Federated Theological Faculty has been beset by tensions from the outset. Never has there been general agreement on distribution of administrative-academic responsibilities among the four seminaries—the University of Chicago Divinity School (American Baptist), the Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregational), Disciples Divinity House, and Meadville Theological School (Unitarian)—which pooled their faculties back in 1943. The seminaries retained their separate identities, but were ruled by a cabinet made up of their four chief executives. Articles of federation were rewritten in 1953 in an effort to straighten out differences. By last month it was apparent that these differences could not be resolved: Plans were announced to dissolve the federation as of May 1, 1963; officials hope to substitute a much more loosely-knit, “bilateral” relationship, details of which still must be worked out.

“The Chicago Theological Seminary’s interpretation of the 1953 articles is unacceptable to the other members of the federation,” said Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton of the University of Chicago. “Furthermore, it is clear that any interpretation acceptable to the other institutions is unacceptable to the Chicago Theological Seminary.”

Dissolution of the federation was prompted by withdrawal requests from “the other members.” CTS favored keeping alive the federation.

“There was a disagreement on the amount of authority the dean’s office should exercise,” observed Dr. Jerald C. Brauer, 39-year-old dean of the federated faculty. It was obvious, however, that the tensions were much more complex. Dean Walter Harrelson of the University of Chicago Divinity School admitted that the problems of the federation influenced somewhat his decision to resign in favor of a post as professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Did the dispute have theological overtones? “It’s hard to say yes or no,” remarked Dr. Howard Schomer, CTS president. “Everything we touch is intonated with theology, but the disagreements were not primarily theological.”

Schomer stressed that the three-year transition period should have no effect upon students. CTS has an enrollment of 120, the Divinity School 185, the Disciples Divinity House 25, and Meadville Theological School, 11.

Protestant Panorama

• Three U. S. missionaries were recalled from Cuba last month by their sponsor, Open Bible Standard Churches, Inc. The move, described as tentatively temporary, was made in view of current anti-American feeling, not because of any persecution. The group’s leaders felt that work could progress better under Cuban national Christians.

• The AFL-CIO presented three stained-glass windows to the Washington (Episcopal) Cathedral this month in memory of three noted labor leaders—William Green, a Protestant, Philip Murray, a Roman Catholic, and Samuel Gompers, a Jew.

• A light airplane belonging to the Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. was badly damaged last month when a charge of dynamite exploded under the engine while the craft was parked at an airstrip in Ometepec, Mexico. The plane is used by missionaries for visits to remote Mexican villages.

• George Beverly Shea and Tedd Smith, musical members of the Billy Graham team who have just completed a 24-concert U. S. tour, now plan a similar series in Canada in the late summer and fall. They also plan to record the concert program, which drew capacity audiences in virtually every city.

• Amish parents near Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, reached an understanding with state authorities this month which will enable them to keep their children out of a newly-opened public high school. Instead of attending the new consolidated school, which the Amish labeled too worldly, the children will be sent to an older school in a neighboring district. However, the parents, nine of whom were jailed for violation of school attendance laws, now must pay tuition for the right to educate children outside their immediate district.

• Newest church in the Congo is a 22,000-member body established by a society of U. S. Mennonites, the Congo Inland Mission. The church will be known as the Evangelical Mennonite Church of the Congo.

• Lutheran professors are setting up a non-profit corporation to publish their books. First volume is due June 1: The Natural Sciences and the Christian Message by Dr. Aldert van der Ziel, engineering professor at the University of Minnesota.

• Bloomfield College and Seminary, United Presbyterian institution in Bloomfield, New Jersey, won accreditation this month from the Middle Atlantic States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

• Ceremonies were scheduled in Bielefeld, Germany, this month to mark the 250th anniversary of the Canstein Bible Society, oldest in the world. The society was established in 1710 by Hildebrandt Freiherr von Canstein and August Hermann Francke, pietists who sought to print popularly-priced Bibles.

• The Church of the Nazarene topped its goal of $14,000,000 for world missions for the 1956–60 quadrennium by some $650,000.

• Baker Book House plans to issue the U. S. counterpart of the European “Modern Thinkers Series,” a group of monographs which critically analyze contemporary philosophers and theologians.

• Refusal of the Raleigh, North Carolina, City Council to approve a zone change to permit construction of a $750,000 motel and restaurant by the state Methodist conference may jeopardize the conference’s plan for a $600,000 office building in the city. The conference had been counting on revenue from the motel-restaurant to defray the cost of erecting the new headquarters.

• A 21-year-old Quaker student was dismissed from a clerical position in the U. S. Senate this month because the Washington Young Friends group of which he is chairman sent letters to 22,000 area high school students calling their attention to provisions in the draft law for conscientious objectors.

• Tunghai University, Christian school in Taiwan, plans to add a college of engineering.

Pieces of Silver

Police in Haifa, Israel, seized thousands of ancient coins this month from a Druze villager who tried to sell them. Some experts who examined the coins, made of silver, said they were minted at about the time of Christ and that they may even be of the same type as the 30 paid to Judas Iscariot. Police said they believed the villager found the coins near the summit of Mount Carmel.

Meanwhile, noted archeologists sifted evidence to determine whether recent discoveries by Dead Sea divers established the site of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Exit the Cross

Heeding pleas of Jewish religious leaders, Premier David Ben-Gurion of Israel ordered alterations made on a planned postage stamp which was to have showed a cross atop a church steeple in Nazareth. The new stamp will not show a cross.

Triumphal Climax

Some 2,000 professions of faith were reported in a Managua, Nicaragua, crusade which climaxed an “evangelism-indepth” series coordinated by the Latin America Mission. In a parade staged the day before the crusade finale May 8, 7,000 marchers wound their way through the streets of the Nicaraguan capital.

Riot at Church Site

A bloody riot followed attempts by state authorities to remove a cross from a proposed Roman Catholic church site in the Polish steel town of Nowa Huta last month. At least 15 policemen and an undetermined number of demonstrators were reported to have been injured.

Buddhism in Burma

An advisory commission appointed by Prime Minister LI Nu of Burma plans to interview religious leaders throughout the country in connection with a proposal to make Buddhism the state religion. Burma is about 85 per cent Buddhist.

Purpose of contacts with non-Buddhists, says the commission chairman, is to enable them to express any fears regarding establishment of a state religion and to suggest how their rights should be safeguarded.

U Nu says the constitution already protects rights of all religious groups. He has pledged, moreover, that “none of these rights will be infringed by any action we take in order to make Buddhism the state religion.”

Some eight years ago the government established a Ministry of Religion, one of whose chief occupations has been the promotion of Buddhism. Under government sponsorship, the Buddhist hierarchy has been reorganized, and countless shrines and pagodas built or refurbished.

The Latest Gibes

In disclosing to the Supreme Soviet the capture of a LI. S. intelligence pilot, Premier Nikita Khrushchev took the West to task for failing to live up to its Christianity.

“As one reads numerous comments and statements by foreign diplomats and journalists about this incident,” he said, “one cannot help wondering what land of morality these men are guided by. For they count themselves as Christians …”

“If such people really believe in God, they would be afraid of hell, where they inevitably would end because, according to the teachings of Christ, they will have to brail in tar in hell eternally for their foul deeds against peace and mankind.”

The Russian army newspaper Red Star also took a swing at U. S. morals in an article about the plane incident. The article made much of the fact that a book with the picture of a half-nude woman on the cover was found in the plane.

“From its age and dirty condition,” the newspaper said, “one can judge that American officers found the book popular reading.”

Pilot Profile

Francis G. Powers, U-2 pilot who fell into Soviet hands while on an aerial intelligence mission, is a graduate of Milligan College, Disciples of Christ school in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Powers enrolled at Milligan, located some 110 miles from his home in Pound, Virginia, as a premedical student in 1946. His grades were slightly above average, but not high enough to pursue medical studies. Upon graduation in 1950 he joined the Air Force.

During his boyhood, the Powers family attended a Baptist Sunday School and church near Grundy, Virginia. Powers did not list any church membership, however, in his records at Milligan. His parents now attend a Church of Christ in Pound.

Powers was married while in service and the couple joined a Methodist church in Georgia, where the bride lived.

Kennedy’s Victory

An important factor In the impressive West Virginia primary victory of Senator John F. Kennedy was his frank renunciation of the more conservative Catholic views on the separation of church and state, according to Paul Blanshard, author of God and Man in Washington.

“He satisfied thousands of non-Catholics,” said Blanshard, “by rejecting those policies of his church which had caused them the most apprehension.”

Latin Concern

U. S. Roman Catholic bishops disclosed plans this month to establish a Latin American bureau as part of their national secretariat in Washington, D. C.

Projected as a unit of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the bureau will be directed by the Rev. John J. Considine, Maryknoll missions priest.

A Catholic press release explained that the bureau was established “in response to an invitation of the Holy See for various nations to cooperate in Christian solidarity to aid the church in Latin America.”

“Although its approximately 170,000,000 Catholics represent a third of the Church’s world membership,” the release said, “the Latin American Church has been plagued with difficulties in recent years, including a shortage of priests, religious indifferentism, poor social and economic conditions and the danger of communism.”

Objectives and responsibilities of the bureau were not spelled out, except to say that its activities will be determined by a committee of bishops.

Charles R. Erdman

Dr. Charles R. Erdman, 93, noted biblical scholar and a former Presbyterian moderator, died May 9 in his home at Princeton, New Jersey.

Erdman, a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, served the seminary as professor of practical theology from 1906 until 1936. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. in 1925, and was president of its Board of Foreign Missions from 1926 until 1940. He wrote many books, mostly New Testament expositions.

Known for his evangelical stand, Erdman was a key figure in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the twenties. Although he disagreed sharply with modernists, he nonetheless sought to avoid church schism.

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