Page 5854 – Christianity Today (2024)

Donald Mcgavran

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (1)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Church-growth thinking is paying off around the world. In country after country it brings hope and effectiveness to those who use it. It introduces new methods, opens up new fields. As they swing into growth thinking, churches in the third world are declaring dividends. They find it profitable.

Can church-growth insights be applied to the American scene? An increasing number of leaders in this country think it can. The articles that follow are presented in the hope that the denominations taking part in Key 73 will apply church-growth thinking to the largest and best-planned evangelistic program ever conducted on this continent. As 200,000 congregations from 150 denominations surge forward in “a coordinated campaign aimed at confronting every person in North America more fully and forcefully with the Gospel of Jesus,” they too will profit by using church-growth thinking. Key 73’s Congregational Resource Book glitters with good ideas. We add church-growth thinking to the other Key ingredients with a prayer that the whole may be blessed by God to bring substantial growth of sound Christian churches.

In the summer issue of United Evangelical Action, Bruce Shelley proclaimed in bold, black letters, “The acid test of evangelism is never numbers of decisions but growth of churches.” He was doing good church-growth thinking. Key 73 must pass that test. The dividends declared a year from now should appear in the form of lasting growth of churches. At the beginning of this fateful year, let us be clear that the goal of Key 73 is that every person in the United States and Canada have a real chance to say “yes” to Jesus Christ and become a dependable member of his Church.

What Is Church-Growth Thinking?

As Methodists, Baptists, Churches of Christ, and other denominations planted 250,000 congregations in North America, they used church-growth thinking. It is the way classical missions thought as they undertook the colossal task of establishing thousands of churches across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. (By God’s grace they have already established more than 300,000.) In recent years, the Fuller Seminary School of World Mission has devoted itself wholeheartedly to discovering what makes churches in the third world grow. What makes them stop growing? What historical and anthropological factors are involved? Where do receptive populations live? What biblical and theological principles apply?

Researchers have made more than a hundred studies to dig out answers. More than fifty books have been published. Church Growth Book Club sold 50,000 volumes last year. More than 10,000 missionaries, ministers, and mission executives read the Church Growth Bulletin six times a year. All this and much more is part of church-growth thinking, a large, complex body of principles and practices.

The following articles set forth principles of effective evangelism; but let none think that they exhaust church-growth thinking. They merely introduce a few practices, principles, books, and researches that are proving valuable in many lands. As Americans and Canadians study church growth, they will make applications that suit their own cities or countrysides.

As they call this continent to Christ, North American Christians can profitably do the following things.

1. Accept the fact that God wants his lost children found, brought into the fold, and fed. Glad acceptance of this truth dispels the debilitating suspicion that church growth is somehow disreputable and evangelism “can easily be overstressed.” When churches really believe that God wants lost men found, they will quit rationalizing decline in membership as “probably good for us,” will stop making excuses for not finding and enfolding God’s children, and will engage in effective evangelism.

2. Dig out the facts about the growth of congregations and denominations. Church-growth research is paying rich dividends in the third world and can do so in America. Even very elementary fact-finding is useful. For example, in two church-growth workshops at Celebration Evangelism West, which convened at historic First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, California, growth patterns of fifteen typical Presbyterian churches in the Synod of the Golden Gate were studied. This was the first time anything like that had been done in a public meeting of the 165 synod congregations. Facing the facts stimulated interest in evangelism and church growth. Research in North American church growth, whether done within a denomination or across the denominations, will yield rich rewards.

3. Recognize the winnability of North Americans. For too long we have deceived ourselves into thinking that Americans are indifferent to Christ’s claims. The fact is that of all the populations on earth, those in North America are among the most winnable. While some Californian denominations had resigned themselves to little or no growth, the Southern Baptists in California between 1937 and 1967 grew from 12 churches to 992. In the last decade the Mormons have been increasing at a steady 5.6 per cent per annum. Christians who believe that theirs is a more reasonable doctrine might do even better!

4. Harness insights of the social sciences to evangelism and church growth. This is already being done in a small way, but in view of the tremendous resources of psychological and sociological insight in North America, much more extensive application is indicated.

5. Pray and plan revival. God is giving many of his people a bright new blessing. What happened at Asbury Seminary can happen on many campuses and in thousands of churches, through prayer and faithful study of God’s Word. Revival releases power. The Holy Spirit will do in a day what of ourselves we cannot do in a year.

6. Multiply lay evangelists—men and women, boys and girls. Tremendous unused evangelistic resources lie all about us. As we study church growth in other lands we see that God has used trained laymen in practically every outburst of effective evangelism. He will use them here, too.

7. Multiply new cells of Christians, in such forms as Bible-study groups, prayer groups, underground churches, house churches, ski-slope and locker-room groups. In these, persons meet Christ and Christians are born. The comfortable fiction that, because in our part of town we have four churches on one crossroads, America has enough churches, should cease to deceive us. The uncomfortable truth is that we need substantial church growth. Some churches should grow bigger. Some should give birth to daughter congregations. At least fifty million Americans are living without knowing Christ. Thousands of new cells are needed in which these millions may start the redeemed life.

8. Expect rich dividends in the Christian life-style. As millions become Christians, we shall see more kindness, more honesty, more justice, more brotherhood, and more beauty. Subcultures will be ever more irradiated with divine light. Churches, since their purpose is to obey Christ and to walk in the light of his revelation, are the most potent originators of the good life known to man. Let us multiply them and improve them.

How To Apply Church-Growth Thinking

The church-growth thinking developed by the community of missionary scholars and associates gathered at Fuller’s School of Mission has been applied chiefly overseas; but a successful recent experiment proves such thinking readily applicable to North American churches.

Professor C. Peter Wagner of the School of Mission enrolled eighteen Los Angeles ministers and lay readers in a class in church-growth principles. It met for eleven weeks from seven to nine Tuesday morning. The men studied two texts thoroughly, Wagner’s Frontiers of Missionary Strategy and my Understanding Church Growth. After brief lectures they discussed the chapters and applied them to their own congregations and situations. Although illustrations in both books were taken from third-world churches, class members had no trouble in applying the principles to this country. The last three sessions were spent in drawing up hard, bold plans for effective evangelism in the congregations represented. One person in the class, Dr. Win Am, an executive for Christian education in the Evangelical Covenant Church and an expert in visual education, produced ten charts and work books to teach growth thinking. These he used to good effect with 150 Covenant leaders in three “VIP Church Growth Seminars.” The class also asked Dr. Am to publish his church-growth kit so that it could be used in Key 73 by interested churchmen around the country.

If Key 73 is to pay the growth dividends God is making available, a hundred thousand congregations all across the land should emphasize church growth. The thinking proving fruitful abroad is available to churches and their leaders in North America.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

    • More fromDonald Mcgavran

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (3)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

The seed of Key 73 was planted in the offices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Following a challenging editorial in this magazine the Key Bridge meetings were held, and out of them developed Key 73.

Last fall when I was in Los Angeles I arranged to have lunch with the faculty members of Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission and Institute of Church Growth. We discussed Key 73 in relation to the church-growth principles these men have enunciated. While some of the principles underlying church-growth strategy are not new, the emphasis has been revitalized. The central person behind this renewed thrust is Donald McGavran, longtime missionary and missions statesman.

One of the results of my visit was the promise of School of World Mission professors to write articles that would suggest principles and strategies useful to all Key 73 participants. In this issue five articles and The Minister’s Workshop are devoted to the subject of Key 73 and church growth. We think that this material merits distribution beyond our own family of subscribers, but time did not permit working out advance arrangements for extended use. If there is sufficient demand we could reprint the articles in this issue in booklet form.

May 1973 be the year of great spiritual awakening!

Harold B. Kuhn

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (5)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Gilbert murray, in his Five Stages of Greek Religion, diagnosed the sickness of later Hellenism as “a failure of nerve.” This was, he suggested, marked by a turning from the classical and the universal, to the narrowly private, the particularistic, and the esoteric. Hellenistic thinkers, formerly creative, began to attempt to shore up their positions by courting the favor of prevailing power and opinion. Retreating from the outer world, they took refuge in the realm of the subjective.

As one considers the conventional wisdom of today’s avant-garde theologians, he is inclined to think that a similar malaise may be gripping today’s thought world. Voices are raised in chorus to declare that the doctrines of historic Christianity are no longer acceptable to Modern Man—that he simply will not tolerate them! Unhappily, some evangelicals are proving to be vulnerable to this type of supine reasoning.

The conventional argument runs thus: belief in scriptural inerrancy died yesterday, and adherence to scriptural infallibility lies gravely ill. Let theologians therefore hasten to formulate a basis for authority that will be acceptable to the “now generation” (particularly of theologians) whose orientation is almost totally humanistic and existential.

Robert S. Alley has given expression to this mood of surrender in his recent volume Revolt Against the Faithful, whose subtitle is “A Biblical Case For Inspiration as Encounter.” Dr. Alley’s approach is pragmatic rather than biblical. His volume is, in general, an echo of writers who have gone before him, notably Schleiermacher, John A. T. Robinson, Altizer, Kasemann, and Ebeling. Recognizing with John Macquarrie that “the belief that the Bible is infallible is one that dies hard in some parts of the Christian world,” he nevertheless sees as inevitable the demise of the historic understanding of revelation.

To Alley, the validity of the contemporary critical-historical approach to Scripture is beyond question. He has no hesitancy about making the Bible speak the language of critical-historical scholars. Basic to his understanding of the encounter-type of revelation is his definition of the term “Word of God.” This he sees as a free-floating force operative in the realm of the human spirit, similar to “Wisdom” in the Book of Proverbs or in the Wisdom of Solomon. It is the Word of God, thus conceived, that he claims to be the source of religious dynamic within the hearts of men, including Jesus.

His key assertion is that the Bible itself is not the Word of God, but a witness to that Word. To this view, the Bible can never be regarded to be more than an anthology of stories of “encounters” between the free-floating Word and selected individuals. Its role is strictly functional, designed to recreate similar encounters in the experience of those who read it.

In this view, the entire creedal structure of Christianity is due to be scrapped. After lying in the night of spiritual darkness for nineteen centuries, the Church is to be liberated from wrong opinions through the method of “revelation as encounter.” Religious men and women are to be released from the alleged bondage of belief in a body of revealed Truth. They are to be guided henceforth by the existential deliverance of their “enlightened” study of the Bible.

At this point one is impelled to ask, What in the stance of the liberal advocates of the critical-historical method has served to intimidate some evangelicals, and to tempt them to surrender convictions central to their faith? The major element seems to be the dogmatism and self-assurance with which the methodology and conclusion of the critical-historical techniques are thrust forward. Typical of this is the series of statements by Ernst Kasemann in his Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, particularly in his section dealing with the issue of “non-objectifiability” in theology (pp. 224 ff.).

Professor Kasemann asserts that the huge majority of the miracle-accounts of Scripture must be reckoned as legends, that his method has definitively deprived the miraculous in Scripture of all objective validity, that the New Testament writers had no conception of “natural and supernatural” as we understand the terms, and that historical criticism has disintegrated most of the miracle accounts of the Gospels, and has proved the problematical quality of the remainder.

It would be difficult to top this as a tour de force, and one cannot wonder that amateurs in theology are impressed by it. But it is doubtless time for evangelicals to cast a more critical eye over the sweeping claims being handed down ex cathedra for the critical-historical method. It goes without saying that every careful biblical scholar pursues his studies with a critical eye, and always in terms of an analytical view of history. But it is a most serious error to equate the current anti-supernatural form of the method with a valid scholarship. Likewise, it is supreme academic arrogance to claim finality for it as a hermeneutical tool.

More important still, the evangelical needs to cast a careful eye over the claim, made on every hand, that we must adapt the Evangel to the climate of the times. Did not the members of the apostolic body proclaim a faith that cut squarely across the mood of the “modern men” of their time? Did the writers of Scripture cast about to see what teachings would enlist social support before they committed their messages to writing?

Had they been mere water-testers, the Christian Church would not have been launched. And in the long run it is seriously to be doubted whether a compromising Church will win anything but contempt in the eyes of the world if it continues to make such a cheap bid for popularity.

Perhaps the time has come for theologians to ask themselves whether the relative impotence of the Church in our time may be due, not to the supposed retarding influence of those who proclaim a high view of biblical inspiration, but to a misbegotten mania for “relevance” that compromises the Church’s message. To put it another way, may it not be time for those in high places to join those of more humble placement in proclaiming a “Thus saith the Lord”?

Somehow I am not greatly impressed by Dr. Alley’s assertion that such a proclamation denies Modern Man’s demand to be free. I recognize, of course, that accepting the message contained in Scriptures as normative does impose limits upon the intellectual and behavioral life of man.

Could it be, however, that much of the purely human quest for freedom is short-sighted and abortive? Perhaps the Christian Church is much too timid in its prophetic role—of announcing that in “captivity to Christ” a generation that is adrift may find a more realistic view and experience of freedom.

    • More fromHarold B. Kuhn

David Kucharsky

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (7)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

In a major effort to bring about ecumenical renewal, churchmen meeting in Dallas in December voted to give a face-lifting to the National Council of Churches. They stamped final approval on a set of constitutional and by-law changes designed to facilitate interchurch cooperation and to make the NCC more attractive to communions which do not now belong.

The meeting was the ninth General Assembly of the NCC, and the adoption of the restructure made it the last, because the new plan abolishes the triennial conclave.

The restructure is not merely so drastic, however, as was envisioned at the chaotic NCC General Assembly in Detroit three years ago. At that assembly, which was repeatedly disrupted by militant radicals, the prevailing sentiment seemed to favor an end to the NCC and the establishment of a more inclusive successor organization. That idea became tempered by the realization that a broader base would jeopardize controversial activities. Insiders want to retain what they regard as the NCC’s “prophetic” dimension. But this is the very factor which more than any other serves as the ecumenical repellent to many evangelicals: the NCC penchant for promoting liberal political causes in utter disregard of conscientiously motivated, contrasting views.

The latest big issues confronted by the NCC are abortion and amnesty. Now under serious study is a policy statement urging repeal of all laws against abortion. Already adopted is a policy statement recommending amnesty for those in legal jeopardy because of the Viet Nam war. The amnesty statement was approved as one of the last actions of the 275-member General Board, which is being replaced by a 347-member Governing Board. The new board is expected to give further consideration to the abortion statement at a four-day meeting in Pittsburgh beginning February 27.

The abortion question may be the most crucial ever faced by the twenty-two-year-old council. It could preclude NCC membership for the Roman Catholic Church and might even drive out Orthodox communions (which now compose ten out of the thirty-three constituent denominations). Father Photius Donahue, an Irish priest representing the Russian Orthodox patriarchal parishes, said that “withdrawal is possible” if the abortion statement is approved, according to Religious News Service. Father Robert Stephanopoulos, inter-church relations director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America was quoted as saying, “We are now at the ecumenical limits that have bound our Orthodox fellowship with the NCC.” Stephanopoulos has been recording secretary of the NCC for the past triennium.

The Viet Nam war has also been a source of continuing controversy, and NCC leaders have been among the most outspoken critics of administration policy. Dr. David R. Hunter, deputy general secretary of the NCC, was one of seven anti-war activists who spent a week in North Viet Nam in November. Upon his return to the United States, Hunter issued a statement saying, “I am convinced that religious people are as free to practice their faith in North Viet Nam as in the United States, with the limitation in both places that when people deviate from the policy of the government they meet opposition on the part of the State and pay a price, and I saw no evidence that this is any more true in the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam than in the United States of America.”

In a last-minute plea, the General Board invited President Nixon to send a high-level representative to the General Assembly to review a proposed resolution on “War Crimes, Military Force, and Foreign Policy.” Roland L. Elliott, a deputy special assistant to the President, wired back regrets, noting that peace negotiations were in progress, and adding: “The President earnestly hopes that the National Council of Churches will support the U. S. government’s initiatives for a just and lasting peace in Southeast Asia and throughout the world, and will join with other Americans in pursuing unity at home as well as abroad.”

All the disputes notwithstanding, ecumenically-minded churchmen hope that the NCC has gotten its second wind. There was some evidence of new life in Dallas, where some 1,400 participants, observers, and reporters turned out for the assembly, held in the comfortable elegance of the Fairmont Hotel. The long-sought-after emphasis on youth, however, failed to materialize, inasmuch as fewer than a dozen of the 800 delegates were under 30.

Officials believe that things may change for the better, now that a spiritual awakening is in the air. “We are in the beginning stages of a great revival of religion,” said Dr. Cynthia Wedel, who has just completed a three-year term as NCC president. Part of the revival, she contends, is “the growing commitment to ecumenism.” She referred to the Key 73 evangelism effort as an example of “a new willingness of main-line churches to join hands with conservative and Pentecostal churches and vice versa.”

Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, who will be retiring as general secretary of the NCC at the end of 1973, observed that “there are many signs that evangelism is beginning to resume its position as a high priority in the NCC member churches, and that this massive task will have to be approached ecumenically if it is to have maximum effect.”

Espy conceded failure in the NCC’s bid, voiced at Detroit, to woo evangelicals. The NCC’s “image,” he said, was a stumbling block to participation. “We can report, however, that confidential conferences of key leaders of some of these churches which we helped to convene served to break the ice and to establish a relationship on the basis of which they were able to plan for further meetings on their own. They convened a conference in St. Louis in March, 1972, which brought together approximately sixty chief executives or other top officers of forty-four communions, of which twenty-four were not members of the NCC. It is not known what follow-up there will be, but the representation at this meeting was unprecedented and the spirit was excellent.”

Assembly delegates got an eloquent discourse on why evangelicals for the most part stay clear of the NCC. Dr. David Hubbard, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and a guest panelist on the program, spoke of the failure in many churches to apply the Bible to individual needs. He called for a “move toward wholeness” in liberal main-line denominations to complement the growing awareness by evangelicals of the social implications of the Gospel.

Perhaps the most explicit manifestation of the NCC’s desire to add to its membership is the theologically improved preamble to its constitution which was adopted as part of the restructure package (see July 7, 1972 issue, p. 33).

The effect of the changes will not be immediately apparent. Whatever they are, those closest to the NCC agree that something had to be done. Financial support has been dwindling for several years, making program and staff reductions increasingly necessary. Espy reported that the elected staff dropped from a total of 168 in 1969 to 105 in October of 1972. The number of appointed staff decreased from 490 in May of 1969 to 303 in October of 1972, he said.

Activists have also felt the pinch, because most donations to the NCC are designated. To get around the problem, the restructure aims to set up a fund to implement important decisions of the Governing Board.

Back To The Frontiers

Christian missions in America may have started to emerge from the trenches. Concerned about the “retrenching” of missions, which roughly began with the Communist takeover of China about twenty years ago, leaders of the Division of Overseas Ministries of the National Council of Churches suggested earlier this year that R. Pierce Beaver, emeritus professor of missions at the University of Chicago, form an ad hoc committee to convene a high level consultation to deal with the issue.

One hundred delegates answered Beaver’s call to a three-day Consultation on Frontier Missions in Chicago last month. Roman Catholics, ecumenists, and conservative evangelicals participated in about equal numbers. Denominational mission boards, independent professors of mission, and parachurch missionary organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators all were represented. About twenty of the delegates were Christian leaders from Third-World nations.

Beaver in his keynote address lamented the fact that so many missions were no longer engaged in “genuine evangelistic outreach” and that so many had withdrawn from the field as younger churches grew to maturity around the world. The consultation was an effort to rekindle that passion, but not as “another adventure in nineteenth-century cultural imperialism,” Beaver warned. “The cultural genius of all people must be honored.”

John Mbiti of East Africa, regarded by some as Africa’s leading Protestant theologian, analyzed the relationship of the Christian mission to culture. “Culture interprets Christianity,” he admitted, but he quickly added that “Christianity progressively transforms culture.” Mbiti sees the balancing of these two dynamic forces as one of the essential tasks of Christian missions.

David Barrett, one of the editors of the World Christian Handbook, brought from his Nairobi office a massive statistical study of more than 400 tribes-within-nations in Africa. A vivid colored map pinpointed the name and location of every tribe in Africa in mid-1972 that was either Muslim or Islamized, responsive and evangelized, or unevangelized in frontier situations. According to Barrett, today’s Christian community in Africa numbers 149,300,000 or 40.6 per cent of Africa’s population. Seven and one-half million new Christians are being added each year, a rate of over 20,000 per day.

A 102-page “Ethnologue,” cataloging the present state of Bible translation in 846 languages of the Western Hemisphere, produced jointly by the Wycliffe Bible Translators and a new organization, FAST, was distributed to delegates by Alan Bergstedt. No statistical survey for Asia comparable to those presented by Barrett and Bergstedt was available at the meeting.

The Consultation reflected a shifting of mission priorities back to more biblical emphases in some denominations. John Buteyn, secretary for world ministries of the Reformed Church of America (RCA), for example, admitted that his church had overemphasized institutional work in recent years, with 70 per cent of its budget allocated to institutions. The tide is now changing. The RCA General Programs Council has now given first priority budget status to “evangelism and church growth.”

Speeches underscoring the Church’s responsibility to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth drew “amens” and “hallelujahs,” a reaction somewhat uncharacteristic of previous NCC-oriented meetings.

C. PETER WAGNER

Those Evolving Textbooks

Both creationists and evolutionists are claiming victory in a California State Board of Education decision involving science textbooks for the state’s three million elementary-school children. Last month in Sacramento the board gave a special committee the gargantuan task of combing 135 approved texts by the end of next month and editing out “dogmatism” in the presentation of evolution.

Ostensibly, evolution—in a toned-down version—will be the only theory of origin discussed. A proposal to give creationism equal billing in the texts was rejected. But the board made it clear that discussion of evolution theory should be “changed to conditional statements where speculation is offered as explanations for origins,” and the new books (to be ready by September, 1974) should “emphasize ‘how’ and not ‘ultimate cause’ for origins.”

Two San Diego housewives who began to press the Board of Education a decade ago about the one-sided evolution presentation have found in recent months they have a monkey by the tail (see December 22 issue, page 35). They saw last month’s downgrading of evolution as a victory for creation forces. “Now we want more,” declared Nell Segraves.

But the confusing action by the board was more a slap at what members feel is “hardened scientific dogmatism” than a blow for equal treatment for creationism.

Feeling the effects of an all-day hearing at the November meeting when fifty scientists, religionists, and others pummeled the board on the issue, members last month had prepared a resolution that they passed without discussion. Later in the day, when most newsmen had left, the members got down to the sticky business of deciding how to implement the resolution, which accepted the texts proposed by the State Curriculum Commission but made them subject to editing.

The approved texts—in present form—do not mention creation. But 1969 guidelines to which the board is bound make room for creation theory.

Will the revised language reflect this? That was not decided, although at a later meeting three board members, Dr. John R. Ford (a Seventh-day Adventist), Eugene Ragle, and Clay Mitchell are expected to make a last-ditch stand (assisted by the Creation Research Center of San Diego) to include creationism alongside evolution.

Board member Dr. David A. Hubbard, president of Fuller Seminary, favors keeping creation out of the textbooks. “Theories of creation do not have a place in scientific teaching,” he said after the meeting. “They are not subject to empirical investigation.”

Hubbard reacted acerbicly to a half dozen or more professional groups that intervened, asking the board to mention evolution only and arguing it is the sole scientific explanation of life’s origin generally accepted worldwide.*

“The problem has not been Christians trying to sneak creation in,” Hubbard asserted, “but over-dogmatism of text-writers, and the fact that the border line between science and what can be tested in the laboratory and philosophy has been violated. There has been a notable absence of humility and repentance in the remonstrances coming to us from the scientific community. Their complicity in the problem they have failed to recognize.”

United Presbyterian executive Robert Bulkley, representing the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the San Francisco Council of Churches, and the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, sided with the scientists at the earlier hearing. Insertion of creationism in science books is based upon a “profound misunderstanding of the respective rules of science and religion” and is unconstitutional, he contended.

Unless the board’s rewrite committee gets more “creative,” amending will be along these lines:

A level-three teacher’s text statement, “Life began in the seas,” would read, “Most scientists believe that life may have begun in the sea.… Thus scientists can only speculate about the character of these early life forms.…”

And, in a fourth-grade pupil’s text, the statement, “The age of the earth is figured in billions of years,” would be changed to, “Most scientists believe that the age of the earth is figured in billions of years.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Canadian Council: Is Anybody Listening?

The Canadian Council of Churches has a problem. Nobody seems to be listening. Representatives of government, business, labor, minority groups, and even member churches have been paying little or no attention to the council’s calls for response and involvement. Nevertheless, it emerged from its three-day triennial meeting in Winnipeg in November with a stiff upper lip, determined to stand by its concepts of social justice.

For many of the 200 delegates from eleven member communions, the meeting’s high point was a series of lectures on “Salvation” by World Council of Churches general secretary Philip Potter. “Salvation means prosperity for people who have suffered and been oppressed,” he declared. He charged that many Christians “spiritualize the cross out of all significance.” The Bible, he said, has a thoroughly political context. “Resurrection means insurrection.”

Whether any insurrection is likely to spring from the meeting is something else. In the last three years, the council has achieved little more than token involvement in relief projects following the wars in Nigeria and Pakistan, and in providing funds and advice to American draft-dodgers.

The council is also plagued by lack of funds. It had difficulty operating within its 1972 budget of $149,000. Plans to open an office in Ottawa had to be scrapped. Some officials fear the present level of support won’t be enough to finance operations.

Delegates passed resolutions on poverty (the government should establish a guaranteed annual income), racism in South Africa, the Indochina war, and pollution, complete with boycott provisions. Member churches were urged to press ahead in French-English relations, and to this end the council will make its constitution and future proceedings bilingual.

Lutheran Norman Berner of Kitchener, the council’s new president, hopes the council can “get on with ecumenical work” as well as deal with its social-action pledges. One way to help alleviate the council’s woes is to broaden its membership; therefore Berner hopes the Catholics will eventually join the “loose federation” of Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, Salvation Army, Lutherans, and United Church of Canada. But has has no such immediate hope for the large body of Canadian evangelicals. With their emphasis on personal salvation, Berner suggests, they might not comfortably adjust to the concerns of the council.

WALLY KROEKER

Super Goals

When the Washington Redskins wrapped up their first football division title in twenty-seven years last month, the first to congratulate head coach George Allen and his players was evangelist Tom Skinner, who prowled the sidelines with them through the entire game. Known as the “forty-first Redskin,” Skinner, a black, travels with the team as unofficial and unpaid chaplain. He speaks at pre-game chapel services and provides spiritual counsel for team members and their families.

He is one of the leaders of a mini-Jesus revolution taking place on the gridiron. Most of the teams that made it into this season’s professional football playoffs have Bible study groups for players and their wives, and only Oakland has no chapel service. Gospel Films president Billy Zeoli, another evangelical active in a ministry to football players, estimates that twenty of the twenty-six pro teams have chapel services and ten have Bible study groups. He speaks at pre-game chapel services for a number of teams, including the Detroit Lions (Zeoli’s a tradition at the annual Thanksgiving Day game), the Baltimore Colts, and his “number one” team, the Dallas Cowboys. (Last month, Miami Dolphins lineman Norm Evans invited Zeoli to address the team during the playoffs. Zeoli, however, had to turn down the invitation because “I’m already committed to the Cowboys for the playoffs.”) The average attendance at morning chapel on game day for the Redskins is thirty to thirty-five members of the forty-man squad. Similar figures are reported for the Cowboys, Colts, Dolphins, and a few other teams.

The spiritual movement has been virtually ignored by the secular media, which tend to focus on the social antics of a few name playboy players. Former pro Bill Glass, now an evangelist, made sports headlines recently when he publicly scorched a few of the latter, including quarterback Joe Namath of the New York Jets, for poor moral influence on the young.

The man who helped organize the first chapel services and who reputedly has led many players to Christ is Ira “Doc” Eshelman, head of Sports World Chaplaincy, Boca Raton, Florida. “I started working with four teams—Miami, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit—getting chapel services and providing speakers.” Five years ago Eshelman spoke at services for the George Allen-coached Los Angeles Rams. When Allen moved to Washington, Eshelman was invited to help set up chapel for that team, too.

Chapel services and Bible studies are voluntary and player-led. Chaplains and guest speakers participate in team functions and services only at the invitation of players and coaches. For the speakers, too, it’s a voluntary program. “It’s part of my personal ministry,” says Skinner, who pays his own expenses when traveling with the Redskins. “I try to show these men God’s concept of a community and how members should be committed to each other.”

Chapel speakers come from all walks of life. They include lawyers, businessmen, and ministers. Zeoli and Eshelman help teams find speakers, with favorite speakers often invited back on a semi-regular basis. The commitment by the pro players is deep, Zeoli said. When Pettis Norman was traded from the Cowboys to San Diego recently, said Zeoli, he considered it a mission opportunity. “San Diego didn’t have a chapel then, but they do now.” Former Baltimore Colt Don Shinnick prayed and counseled with teammate Raymond Berry for two years before Berry accepted Christ. “I’ve seen these guys cry when a teammate they’ve been praying for accepts Christ,” Zeoli remarked. “If only we had as much concern for our fellow men as Christian players have for their team members, we just might reach this world.”

Several weeks ago, placekicker Don Cockroft of the Cleveland Browns telephoned Zeoli at 11 P.M. with a problem that had surfaced during a team Bible study. “They’re intent upon discovering what Christianity means for their lives,” Zeoli commented.

Even as an “unofficial” chaplain, Skinner finds many players coming to him in times of trouble or with problems. “The guys are seeking me out now. They know I’m interested in them.” During a game against the New York Giants early in the season, Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgenson tore an Achilles tendon, benching him for the remainder of the season. “He was really down. He’d worked so hard to come back from last season’s injuries and win the starting quarterback job, only to have that happen,” said Skinner, who stayed in the dressing room with him after the injury, consoling and helping.

Skinner led Redskins running back Charley Harraway to Christ. Harraway in turn has become an evangelist of sorts, proclaiming at youth rallies that having Christ is the only way to win in life.

In Dallas, the faith of pro football players may be exemplified by head coach Tom Landry. Behind a quiet, unemotional facade is a deeply spiritual man, said Zeoli. Landry wrote a chapter on football and faith for Zeoli’s new book, Supergoal, and appeared in a Zeoli film. During the playoffs last season, Landry, as a favor to Zeoli’s six-year-old son, carried a small paper cross the youngster had made. “He returned it to me after they won the Super Bowl and told me to thank my son. He’d had it in every game,” said Zeoli.

Many players and coaches are members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), a Kansas City-based organization founded in 1955. All of the pro teams except the Houston Oilers have players and coaches affiliated with FCA, according to FCA records. During the off-season, many from the pro ranks appear in FCA conferences, sharing their faith and football knowledge with high school and college players. Dallas quarterbach Roger Staubach, a Catholic and avid FCA booster, recently told a national television audience that football was his profession but that Christianity was his life.

Football, said Skinner shortly after the Redskins took their title, is a game of mental and physical anguish. It’s a game of personal trial just as life is. And, he added, for many of the pros, the game—full of violence and the potential for illegal and intentional injury—is also a challenge for them to live their Christian commitment on as well as off the field.

BARRIE DOYLE

De-Catholicizing Ireland

Ireland ended a special constitutional position held for thirty-five years by the Roman Catholic Church when half of the eligible voters overwhelmingly approved constitutional changes last month. The action expunges a section that recognizes the church as “the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.”

The recommendation for revision came from the government of Prime Minister John Lynch and was supported by opposition parties and most of the Catholic Church hierarchy. The action is seen by many as an olive branch to embattled Ulster Protestants, who have flatly rejected merger talks with the republic because of the special position afforded the Catholic Church.

Opposition to the proposed changes, primarily from a few bishops and priests, is believed to have accounted for the low voter turnout. The bishops of Galway and Cork publicly questioned whether revision was not a repudiation “of the faith of our fathers.” Approaches, a Catholic magazine, called the proposals the prelude to bringing to the republic the moral evils of the permissive society “now rampant in England.”

Lynch has also appointed a special committee to consider repeal of the constitutional ban on divorce and other “Catholic” veneers on the constitution. And an interfaith group of lawyers and clerics was appointed by the Irish Theological Association to make recommendations about other laws on the books that “might be discriminating or divisive of the people on religious grounds.”

Religion In Transit

Compulsory chapel attendance is out at the Army, Navy, and Air Force academies. The Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s decision that the practice violates the first amendment. The Pentagon had argued that officers in the armed forces ought to know the nation’s religious and moral heritage. Academy chaplains predict attendance will remain high.

Periods of meditation and silent prayer are now allowed in Pennsylvania public schools under a new state law. They are at the discretion of teachers and school boards, but must not be conducted as religious services.

San Diego Methodist minister Warren Briggs wants clinics where people can commit suicide “in dignity”—an extension of the euthanasia debate.

Eternity magazine chose Dean Kelley’s Why Conservative Churches Are Growing as the most significant religious book of 1972. Meanwhile, Hal Lindsey’s new book, Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, sold out its first two printings (200,000 and 150,000) in November.

“The Changing Image,” an arty Southern Baptist-sponsored television program, was awarded a gold medal at the International Film and TV Festival in New York.

The two white United Methodist conferences in Mississippi voted overwhelmingly to end denominational segregation and will merge with the state’s black Methodists in June.

Orthodox Jews want CBS to drop its TV comedy “Bridget Loves Bernie.” Reason? Bridget, a Catholic, is married to Bernie, a Jew, and that is not kosher, mixed marriages are forbidden by rabbinical law. Inter-marriage will lead to “spiritual genocide” of Jews, say the Orthodox, and young Jewish televiewers should not be subjected to such bad influence as Bernie.

Personalia

A 2,000-acre forest in Israel will be named after Florida governor Reubin Askew, an evangelical Presbyterian, because of his “friendship to the Jewish people,” says the Jewish National Fund. At a new-church dedication service in Florida recently, Askew told the 1,300 assembled, “First I am a Christian, then I am governor.…” He urged the congregation to make the sanctuary a “place for souls, not just membership.”

Following the uproarious two-week meeting of Greek Orthodox bishops, Archbishop Ieronymous, primate of the church, entered an Athens hospital suffering from a heart complaint.

Former Christian Century editor Harold E. Fey this month begins to edit In Common, the bi-monthly newsletter of the Consultation on Church Union.

The Reverend James S. Rausch, 44, moved up from associate secretary to general secretary of the U. S. Catholic bishops, succeeding Bishop Joseph L. Bernardin.

Episcopal bishop C. Kilmer Myers of San Francisco removed Robert Hoggard as pastor of a suburban Episcopal church because he remarried without waiting for his previous marriage, which ended in divorce a year ago, to be ecclesiastically annulled. Hoggard officiated at the remarriage of the late Bishop James A. Pike.

World Scene

A Swedish doctor in a new book says he discovered the human soul weighs twenty-one grams. He placed beds of terminal patients on sensitive scales and saw the needle drop when the patients died, he says.

The Baptist conventions of Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt will send two Arab missionaries each to Morocco, Tunisia, and Syria, mostly to follow up contacts made through missionary radio broadcasts.

Pastor Tom Chipper of Cambridgeshire, England, has stopped the century-old practice of baptizing believers in the River Lark. Pollution.

At the annual meeting of Living Bibles International in Athens, it was announced that Kenneth Taylor’s paraphrase, The Living Bible, has been translated into sixty-nine languages.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian Bible Society received a Catholic imprimatur on its standard New Testament translation by João Ferreira de Almeida. And Catholics approved the Dutch version of Good News for Modern Man; its 30,000-copy first printing was sold out the first week.

Evangelist Billy Graham says that on a recent visit to India he discussed “the missionary situation” with Prime Minister Indira Gandi (a number of missionaries have been expelled and restrictions placed on entry of new ones). Declining to divulge details, he said authorities told him the situation was somewhat improved. He told reporters he will participate in an evangelism conference in South Africa in March but will go “play golf with Gary Player” if segregation is practiced.

The World Council of Churches says that President Zedicias Manganhela, 60, of the Presbyterian Church in Mozambique committed suicide last month in a jail cell after six months of isolation and interrogation by Portuguese officials. He and other Presbyterian leaders rounded up were suspected of supporting a liberation organization.

The National Catholic Reporter, an enterprising independent weekly, jarred the Catholic world with the revelation that Pope Pius XI had in 1938 directed the drafting of an encyclical against anti-Semitism and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The scathing indictment was in the prelate’s possession at the time of his death in 1939 but was never published, the apparent victim of a Vatican political scramble.

The world Jewish population stands at 14.2 million, according to the new edition of the American Jewish Year Book.

Forty Dutch faith missions, including branches of such Anglo-American missions as Sudan Interior Mission and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, formed the Evangelical Missions Alliance of the Netherlands, mostly for cooperative relief purposes. Together they have fielded about 175 Dutch missionaries throughout the world.

Persecution against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the African nation of Malawi rolls on. The sect was outlawed in 1967 but functions underground. Scores of Witnesses have reportedly been killed, and thousands have fled to Zambia. President H. Kamuzu Banda, an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Central Africa, and other government leaders are angry about the Witnesses’ separatist practices.

ON BEHALF OF THE KREMLIN?

A young Soviet churchman, making his American ecumenical debut, used voice and vote to protect his government from an embarrassing condemnation by the National Council of Churches.

Few people at the council’s Dallas assembly seemed to mind a Soviet national’s exerting his influence upon an American church body. So the Most Reverend Svistun Makary, 34, made the most of it. He argued vehemently and successfully on the floor of the assembly against a proposal to cite Communist countries for religious oppression. The incriminating sections were deleted, leaving an innocuous human rights statement.

Makary, a handsome, friendly, somewhat uninhibited Ukrainian from Kiev, came to the United States two years ago. He is “vicar bishop” of several dozen Russian Orthodox churches in the United States that retain ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. This was his first appearance at an NCC meeting. He came as an accredited delegate and even was given a seat on the reference committee, which screened all proposals for resolutions before they came to the floor. (He also got his picture on the front page of the Dallas Times-Herald, placing anthuriums at the Kennedy memorial.)

Makary’s obvious conflict of interest on the proposal went unchallenged. Council representatives are not required to be American citizens, but some delegates wondered whether the Makary parishes qualify as a communion.

In his brief, impassioned speech, Makary denied that the Soviet government persecutes Christians. Speaking in somewhat broken but understandable English, he said there is freedom in his country to proclaim the Gospel to all who want to hear it. He twitted the mostly-over-forty assembly indirectly with a boast that there is now a high percentage of young clergymen in the Soviet Union.

The proposal that drew his ire was initiated by the Reverend Blahoslav Hruby, a Czech-born Presbyterian who is a noted chronicler of religious affairs in Communist countries. A resolution introduced for Hruby, a nonvoting consultant to the assembly, was greatly pared down by the reference committee, and all names of countries were dropped. After a move to restore the deleted material was defeated, the truncated version was adopted.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

    • More fromDavid Kucharsky

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (11)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Dissident Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn says he would like to use his $79,000 in Nobel Prize money—if he ever gets it—to build a church.

Such is the mood these days among an increasing segment of the Soviet Union’s population. After more than fifty years of atheistic indoctrination and outright harassment, religion hasn’t gone away as Lenin predicted it would. Indeed, evidence indicates a recent upsurge in spiritual activity not only in the U.S.S.R. but throughout Eastern Europe. Worried Communist leaders are speaking out more often in reaction, and some are cracking down harder. They allege that religion tends to revive nationalism (the Soviet empire comprises scores of nationalities and language groups, many of whom dislike each other), and is bad for man’s dignity, social awareness, and intellect.

It is difficult to assess the situation. Although the entrenched bureaucracies cling to the status quo, wide-ranging changes are taking place. Conditions differ from nation to nation. Some allow more religious freedom than others—but almost always with strings attached. Most countries allow the printing or importation of Bibles—in severely limited quantities. Poland allows the Catholic Church to flourish but does not permit the construction of badly needed new church buildings or the existence of a Catholic press.

In Hungary, where foreign books are sold openly and Western music is popular, a strong strain of the Jesus movement has emerged among the young. Transient workers have carried it to East Germany, where it has attracted many adherents, according to Bishop Kurt Scharf of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg. Scharf, after a recent visit to East Germany, said that despite much communist repression a number of congregations show “a resurgence of vitality.” The quality of preaching is higher than ever and deeply Bible-centered, he said, and many people are “flocking to the Gospel.” The government’s anti-church policy (advance approval is required for Bible studies and other meetings, young people are warned they will be barred from university if they persist in their faith) is the best witness of the church’s significance, he added.

Interviewed at a political rally in Munich, several youthful Marxists indicated they were frustrated over politics and bothered by a sense of deep emptiness. “Peace must begin in me and spread to the world,” one reflected. “It cannot be imposed.” Spiritually, multitudes of young Marxists like him are at the threshold of a new revolution.

Several informed observers insist that Romania and the U.S.S.R. itself are the two countries in all of Europe where Christianity is making its most spectacular strides. Romanian-American church leader Emmanuel A. D. Deligiannis a few months ago addressed packed-out large churches in Romania where nearly half in the audiences were under thirty. In an interview last month, a retired Baptist pastor from the Ukraine acknowledged that many young people in the Ukraine have been caught up in a spiritual revolution, with numerous conversions and baptisms recorded in the churches. (Youths under eighteen are forbidden by law to be church members or receive religious training. Nevertheless, some get baptized secretly.)

Pravda and the Red Star, an armed forces newspaper, have editorialized against the spiritual movement. The latter has carried several stories on Christian activity in the army, including one about a “Baptist sect” responsible for the conversion of many wives of officers and enlisted men. Another story named soldiers who apparently belonged to the Initsiativniki, or “unregistered” Baptists (many are pacifists). (Some have chosen to be unregistered for separatist reasons, others as a protest against strictures on religious freedom. Also, said the retired Ukrainian pastor, the state refuses to register many simply because it doesn’t want the growth known.)

Reporter Paul Wohl in the Christian Science Monitor said that local newspapers in the southern and eastern soviet republics frequently report the activity of unregistered Baptists, Pentecostals, and Seventh-day Adventists and the sentencing of their leaders to long prison terms.

The unregistered believers do a lot of printing too—of Bibles, hymnbooks, and even a magazine, Fraternal Leaflet—on a clandestine press. A group known as the Council of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives regularly releases letters and documents containing precise information about persecution and imprisonment of believers. (Hundreds of evangelicals are in Russian jails.) These accounts in turn are often picked up and widely disseminated by mission agencies in the West.

One of the most recent of these is about the death of a soldier named Ivan (Vanya) Vasilevich Moiseyev, 20, a member of an unregistered Baptist Church near Moldavia. The army said the youth, an outspoken witness for Christ who kept a tape-recorded journal of his spiritual encounters, had drowned accidently in the Black Sea. But an autopsy ordered by the parents showed he had been beaten and tortured; there were large burns on his chest and deep punctures near the heart (see photo). Witnesses saw an army commander and men in civilian clothes kill the youth, say the parents. They published the report and excerpts from Vanya’s journal in order, they explain, to call the guilty to repentance and summon the Church to increased zeal.

Sergei Kourdakov, 22, knows how tough it must have been for Vanya to stand up for Christ. Kourdakov says that as a Soviet naval cadet he worked for the police, leading drunken hooligans to break up Christian meetings, beat the believers, and bum their Bibles. Once they killed a pastor, he says. But the persistence of a teen-age girl despite repeated beatings and threats, a copy of the Gospel of Luke salvaged from a bonfire, and missionary broadcasts got him thinking. He listened to the broadcasts while serving as a radioman aboard a fishing trawler in the Pacific. (Hundreds of broadcasts are beamed weekly to Iron Curtain countries from six missionary stations.) The youth jumped ship off British Columbia in 1971, was granted refuge by the Canadian government, and on a visit to a Toronto Pentecostal church prayed to receive Christ.

MARRIAGE IN MOSCOW

Baptist writer Denton Lotz of Vienna, Austria, tells of an afternoon wedding he witnessed recently in the Moscow Baptist Church. First there was a two-hour worship service. Then, after a hymn, the young couple emerged from a room behind the pulpit and faced the congregation. Pastor Michael Zhidkov greeted them and gave a short sermon on the significance of Christian marriage. After an anthem by the choir, the couple knelt and prayed spontaneously, with fervor and clarity. Finally, the pastor issued the marriage pronouncement, and the entire congregation broke into a hymn of thanksgiving. The aisles filled with hundreds of well-wishers carrying bouquets of flowers, waiting while the pastors and elders offered their congratulations.

The joy of the occasion was heightened, says Lotz, because the groom had been converted and baptized in the Moscow church only a year ago.

Soviet watcher Michael Bourdeaux of England estimates that the unregistered Baptists have published at least 40,000 Bibles and New Testaments on their illegal press. Thousands more have filtered in from the West, but Bibles are still scarce and are thus hot items in the black market. (The Baptists have about 3 million members, Roman Catholics number 3.5 million, and the Russian Orthodox Church claims 30 million.)

Dozens of mission agencies, including some long-standing ethnic ones, work at getting the Gospel into the U.S.S.R. The shortage of Bibles has spawned a glamorous—and competitive—Bible-smuggling operation among a few agencies. In its December issue, Eternity magazine noted the hostility between L. Joe Bass’s Underground Evangelism and Richard Wurmbrand’s Jesus to the Communist World, examined a few questionable practices, and counseled readers to check carefully before sending dollars. Iron Curtain borders are so tight now that virtually every mission advises tourists not to engage in smuggling attempts, the article says.

Meanwhile, the religious activity and tension is building up in the U.S.S.R. Thousands of Jews have emigrated to Israel to escape the pressure, but the evangelicals have nowhere else to go. All they’re asking is that their government abide by its own constitutional decree of religious freedom and the United Nations article it signed. That article states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom … to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.”

Solzhenitsyn couldn’t have said it any plainer. EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

The Bible In Bangladesh

In recent months about three dozen agencies have administered a multimillion-dollar relief effort in Bangladesh. But in contrast to this infusion of concern for material needs, the number of missionaries has dropped from 160 to fewer than 100, bringing the curtailment of many evangelistic activities.

However, International Christian Fellowship (ICF) last month dedicated a new evangelism center in Dacca. In addition to serving as mission headquarters, it houses the rapidly growing Bangladesh Bible Correspondence School. ICF official Phil Parshall says the school has received thousands of requests for an initial lesson and a copy of the Gospel of Luke, traceable to a vast literature-distribution program by Operation Mobilization.

Return To Cambodia

Less than eight months after he conducted the first evangelistic crusade in Cambodia’s history, World Vision head Stanley Mooneyham returned to Phnom Penh in late November for a second series of meetings. As in the April crusade (see May 26, 1972, issue, page 32), there was spectacular response, with 2,600 professions of faith, many by college students. (In early 1972 there were only about 600 Protestants in the entire land.) At least 100 workers were on hand distributing literature and helping with follow-up—a glaring void in the earlier crusade. Few of the April converts have found their way into the Khmer Evangelical Church, the Protestant body in the land. This time, church members were better prepared, say officials, and converts will be contacted at least twice.

World Vision, which is building a hospital in the Cambodian capital, also announced an evangelistic plan for the Philippines, utilizing some of the manpower potential of the Jesus movement. Fifty volunteers, traveling at their own expense, will spend ten months in the islands in outreach and follow-up work. Co-sponsoring the effort is Duane Pederson’s Jesus People International of Los Angeles.

The Pope’S Accident-Prone Publicity

Pope Paul suffers from an “accident-prone publicity department,” according to a prominent Canadian Catholic bishop. In a special issue of the Catholic Register that dealt with Vatican II and the subsequent decade, Bishop Alexander Carter of Sault Ste. Marie cited the “needless irritation” caused when the Pope’s declaration on the ministries of women was released. The Vatican publicity department, he suggested, seemed “determined to present the wrong image.”

Bishop Carter’s otherwise glowing picture of the state of the Catholic Church in the post-Vatican II era was the lead article in the issue.

Malcolm Muggeridge’s Canadian Catholic daughter-in-law saw things differently. In a blistering article she asked, “What do you do when your Church leaves you?”

Mrs. John Muggeridge contended that the Protestant Reformation had actually triumphed within the Catholic Church. The tragedy, she added, was that the Protestantism toward which the Catholic Church is rushing is itself in “philosophical, ethical, and moral disarray.”

Turning her acerbic pen to the bishop of Sault Ste. Marie, Mrs. Muggeridge notes, “Many bishops are working from within to destroy their church’s unity. They assembled in October, 1971, at the Synod in Rome, these modern Cranmers, Latimers, and Ridleys, winning kudos from a world-full of approving liberals rather than the privilege of martyrdom. No slow fire for the Bishop of Sault Ste. Marie.”

That and other turn of phrases must have warmed the heart of her father-in-law. One wonders, however, whether she would have been permitted to make her withering attack a mere ten years ago. And in the 143-year-old national Catholic weekly?

LESLIE K. TARR

Carl F. H. Henry

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (13)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

KEY 73 CAN BE a time of renewal for the nation no less than for American evangelical Christians. In the aftermath of the Viet Nam war, a new opportunity exists for national unity and stability, and its best guarantee lies in the renewal of moral and spiritual sensitivities. The social drift of recent decades has left little doubt that unregenerate human nature is too immersed in self-interest to generate enduring humanitarian concern; lacking a clear vision of the will of God, it turns even the noblest ideals into questionable theories of social change.

A biblically controlled witness can bring light and life to multitudes of Americans at a time of critical indecision and need. Without fresh awareness of the revelation of God and the vitalities of spiritual regeneration, the nation can only sink deeper into the pursuit of affluence as the main goal of life, into the relativities of social experimentation, and into disenchantment with political solutions. Although it may sound moralistic to many social planners today, the fact remains that nothing is more relevant to a good society than the virtues championed by biblical religion, from public justice to neighbor-love; and for these ideals no more solid support exists than the truth of God’s creation of mankind and his redemption of sinners.

Evangelical Christians are numerically the largest religious segment in American life. While Catholicism is experiencing turmoil and neo-Protestant ecumenism has churned to a standstill, the evangelical movement has made noteworthy gains. Many signs of vitality are evident: the widespread Jesus movement among teen-agers who were generally considered lost to Christianity; interest in evangelical books and literature at a time when the religious book market has a generally poor showing; the ongoing commitment to evangelistic engagement and foreign missions; the growth in evangelical churches while most liberal congregations are grateful if they can avoid serious losses; and the expansion of conservative seminaries while ecumenical campuses are hard pressed.

Neo-Protestant theology and social demonstration have run out of fads. Were evangelicals to rise out of their isolation and competitiveness into a cooperative witness, the blessings of a personal relationship to God and the rewards of a life committed to Christ could now be shared nation-wide in a compelling way.

Key 73 poses a disturbing challenge to evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike. Many ecumenists have wanted larger evangelical participation in organized ecumenism, but the pluralistic theological commitment and primarily socio-political emphasis of the National Council and the World Council of Churches have discouraged evangelicals from seeking this. Within most mainline denominations there survives a significant body of Christian believers who seek rededication to apostolic priorities of doctrine and mission. For them Key 73 presents a long awaited opportunity to stand with evangelicals of all denominations in a spiritual witness.

Some hard-hat ecumenists will probably see Key 73 as an opportunity to sell social activism as an updated form of evangelism. Moreover some evangelicals are now so confused about authentic Christian social ethics that they append not only welfare statism but also an uncritical political commitment (whether Republican or Democratic) to their evangel. For a whole generation evangelical Protestants linked to the National Association of Evangelicals have criticized the NCC because liberal churchmen endorsed political candidates and promoted legislative specifics in the name of Christian sensitivities; the Church, they insisted, ought not thus to meddle in politics. But in the last election several prominent evangelical personalities threw their weight publicly to Mr. Nixon in connection with their enterprises and institutions. In a compensating move, a committee of Evangelicals for McGovern, composed mainly of suburban-league educators and editors, took the other tack. While a professor of Christian ethics joined some politicos in accusing Nixon of being worse than Hitler because he had not stopped the Viet Nam war, a leading evangelist lauded the President as an exceptionally moral man.

It becomes increasingly clear that no one evangelical can be thought to speak for fellow evangelicals in all personal commitments. It becomes similarly clear that at the point of evangelism, and not at the point of politicking, evangelicals today command the respect of their constituencies, unless they are serving in political vocations. What is imperative today is that evangelical churchman show that their political commitments stem logically from the religious categories they espouse—whether revelation or Scripture, or the cross, or the resurrection, or the Church. Unless evangelicals take the lead in doing this, their evangelism will become mere prolegomenon to unrelated socio-political commitments, and radical activism will seem to have equal legitimacy.

Some evangelicals append an uncritical political emphasis or social involvement to their evangelism; on the other hand, some denominational activists uncritically transmute evangelism into social activism. This situation reflects a striking evangelical-ecumenical contrast.

One outcome of the World Congress on Evangelism (Berlin, 1966) was that many evangelicals saw the error, yea, wrongness, of exercising social concern for the purpose of enticing people to spiritual decision. They recognized, in view of God’s creation of all men, that anything relating to human survival and dignity is a legitimate and necessary evangelical concern. At the same time they carefully distinguished between justice and grace; no one was naïve enough to label such social involvement as evangelism. Today a number of denominational activists are commending Key 73 because, they say, it does not restrict evangelism to personal conversion but accommodates the changing of social structures as legitimate evangelism Somebody seems to be woefully confused.

Church-state relations still disconcert large numbers of evangelicals. The temptations of political power are so vast that no evangelical ought ever to sleep too soundly in the White House, and no president ought ever to sleep too soundly in the White House, and no president ought ever to feel wholly comfortable in an evangelical meeting. At the same time, this is no moment for evangelical Christians to cop out of national affairs. Evangelism is not self-propagating, nor is social justice. And the Christian needs to count for something both in the realm of grace and in the world of woe.

    • More fromCarl F. H. Henry

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (15)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

God Help Me—I’m a Parent, by Gordon McLean (Creation House, 1972, 109 pp., $3.95), Help! I’m a Parent, by Bruce Narramore (Zondervan, 1972, 171 pp., $3.95), A Guide to Child Rearing: A Manual For Parents, by Bruce Narramore (Zondervan, 1972, 160 pp., $2.95 pb), and Promises to Peter, by Charlie W. Shedd (Word Books, 1970, 147 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by E. Russell Chandler, journalist, author, and teacher, Sonora, California.

These four books (actually three, because Narramore’s A Guide to Child Rearing is a workbook designed for his Help! I’m a Parent) have caused some real soul-searching at our house. My wife and I sat up till midnight the other night discussing their gems of wisdom. Books that can do that have got to be stimulating.

Some advice and principles are known by every parent already, but they need to be jerked to the surface of our consciousness occassionally. McLean’s God Help MeI’m a Parent fits that category more closely than the other works. Shedd and Narramore break new ground in child rearing—at least for this father of three (aged two, eight, and ten).

All three authors come out loud, clear, and in harmony on several points: Be consistent, parent, when you discipline, and make sure the discipline is for the benefit of your offspring—not you.

Narramore and Shedd differ on spanking (Narramore thinks there is a time to spank; Shedd has sworn off bottom-blistering); pay rewards (Narramore: “The monetary reward system teaches children they deserve payment for routine duties”; Shedd: “Our practice is that we pay for jobs we would have to hire done”), and democracy. “God doesn’t advocate a family democracy; children need adult leadership and discipline,” says Narramore. Shedd would agree with the last half of that sentence but would preface it with:

The more sensible self-government we allow at the right time, the better things will be all the time—better for the children—better for us—better for their future—better for ours!… They care more what their parents think, the more their parents let them think for themselves.

Shedd’s goals for self-government include allowing his children to make all their own rules by the time they are seniors in high school, total financial management (except for food and housing) by their junior year, and a car (paid for 50–50 by parent and child) by driver’s-license age.

The latitude between Narramore and Shedd should be no barrier to the reader of both; responsible parents will tailor what they read to meet their own life-styles and expectations.

McLean’s nine basic character goals are helpful, but his focus is primarily on problem-oriented teens. His experience has been through Campus Life ministry and the juvenile courts. His listings of do’s and don’ts are rather elementary, though the final two chapters on spiritual development (religion should be a holy force, not a hollow farce) would be helpful to parents only nominally Christian.

The greatest value of the Narramore text is the companion guide, a workbook of discussion questions, exercises, and thought-provokers to be completed jointly by parents and children. His development of how power struggles between parent and child, and between siblings, destroy effective discipline was an eye-opener to me:

Practically every clash between parent and child involves a struggle for power. In some way or other the child is saying, “I will show you who’s boss.” Most parents take up this challenge without realizing the results. They try to prove their authority to the child, only to find they never win.

Narramore relates this to parental anger and to temper tantrums: “To eliminate tantrums we must … avoid being brought into the power struggle and we must ignore the tantrum.” If the parent tries to stop it, advises the psychologist, the child “has drawn you into the power struggle and you have lost already!”

His chapters on choosing the right method of discipline and allowing natural and logical consequences of inappropriate behavior to wreak their own inexorable discipline are especially helpful.

Shedd, veteran parent and author of the very popular Letters to Karen and Letters to Philip, is folksy and down-home—but he’s also with it. He knows the mind of youth. His staccato sentences may bother you at first, but pithy proverbs like “mature anger has a long fuse” more than compensate.

The title is a misnomer, probably chosen by the publisher. Rather than a unified exposition (as with Narramore), Promises to Peter is a compilation of fragments left over from earlier works and mellowed with further (and father) perspective. The subtitle is more accurate: “Building a Bridge From Parent to Child.”

Shedd’s thoughts on the importance of father-mother love are excellent: “The greatest thing I could do for my boy was to love his mother well.” I like his two-point program (so does my wife): once a week out together for dinner alone, and fifteen minutes a day visiting in depth. (I can’t help wondering, though, how well some of Shedd’s techniques would work for ghetto families.)

Parents searching for ways out of ruts will find practical ideas for family devotions, family council, family fun-nights, and jobs and allowances. The two chapters on sex education are only teasers from Shedd’s book The Stork Is Dead and would better have been omitted here.

Buy and study Shedd’s and Narramore’s books as preventive maintenance if you have a child two or older. And keep these volumes handy for when you feel like throwing up your hands for help. Or sitting up late with your spouse.

From Luther to Chemnitz on Scripture and the Word, by Eugene F. Klug (Eerdmans, 1972, 261 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Leigh D. Jordahl, associate professor of church history, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

It is good news when a major book is published dealing with such a subject as “from Luther to Chemnitz.” Martin Chemnitz was very possibly the greatest of that long line of Lutheran dogmaticians of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A very productive group they were, creating an extraordinarily influential tradition known to succeeding generations as “Lutheran Orthodoxy.”

Chemnitz himself stood on the bridge between two significant periods in Lutheran history—periods that were less discontinuous than some later interpreters would have us believe. Chemnitz, in all events, saw himself as Luther’s faithful disciple and made it his task to articulate and apply systematically Luther’s evangelical but unsystematized ad hoc theologizing.

The historical situation was such that all theologizing was in the context of sharp controversy. Chemnitz was intensely polemical but also immensely learned and decisively evangelical. As a theological bookkeeper he was scrupulously careful about details (intolerably so to the modern reader) but at the same time a bold innovator. Within the past two years Concordia has made two of his major works available in English: his brilliant Two Natures in Christ and his magnificently detailed Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I.

The old Lutheran dogmaticians have had a bad press lately. For a whole generation of seminary graduates, indiscriminate polemics have managed rather effectively to attach to the word “orthodoxy” an image of scholastic sterility (actually Chemnitz was unencumbered with Aristotelian scholasticism) and a narrowing of the Reformation spirit. Like a ball and chain this misconception hung on. One might grant that the dogmaticians managed to make Reformation theology intelligible to their own “baroque age” by way of an Aristotelian ontology, but even that concession would hardly recommend them to the contemporary theologian. And so it is pleasing when a scholar suggests, as E. F. Klug implicitly does throughout his book, that such a man as Chemnitz might help us also in our theologizing. The prejudices of the liberalism that so emphatically repudiated orthodoxy are, after all, still with us.

It is also good that Klug chose to study Chemnitz’s self-understanding of the Word. We are living in an age in which the entire question of the particularity of the Gospel is up for grabs. It is also an age in which even in the name of the Gospel we confront such clichés as, the world is littered with “anonymous Christians,” or the Gospel is any message or action that brings good news to a bad situation, or an “adequate witness” can be made to Christ without “verbalizing the Gospel.” And it is an age in which a popular theologian can warn us that “people who demand a higher norm of truth than human experience are asking for an idol.” Even those who continue to be “Word oriented” become confused by a new hermeneutic that appears to transform that Word into an obscure puzzle rather than a clear revelation; they become defensively anxious not to appear to be naïve biblicists. In such a situation it is good to be reminded that it was precisely penetration into and confident trust in that “strange world of the Bible” that gave to men like Luther and Chemnitz freedom for liberating proclamation.

Like Karl Barth generations later, the men of the Reformation age had to discover in the context of a crisis that freedom is a gift. For Barth, the crisis was his experience of the bankruptcy of his own liberal origins. For Chemnitz and Luther the crisis came when they had to examine and repudiate the position that placed “tradition” alongside of and even over against Scripture. This view, implicit before the Council of Trent and articulated by it, reversed the God-man relationship, as did later liberalism. Thus, while the historical contexts are different, and while the contemporary theologian must come to grips with a literary, historical criticism unknown to earlier ages, still the sixteenth-century battle for “sola scriptura” and the twentieth-century battle are surprisingly similar. The earlier battle was for Scripture undiluted by tradition; the contemporary one is for Scripture as revelation rather than as one of many expressions of religious experience.

Neither Luther nor Chemnitz had any new doctrine of inspiration. Chemnitz systematically developed Luther’s Christology, but on Scripture, as Klug points out, he made no systematic advance. Both men assumed an inherited position that was already classical Christian doctrine by at least the time of Augustine (writers on fundamentalism to the contrary, verbal inspiration was no nineteenth-century innovation). What was innovative rather and becomes so clear in Chemnitz’s Examination of the Council of Trent was the bold assertion that this inspired Scripture is a word above all experience and at the same time clear, accessible, and finally sufficient as the Word to which faith can point. Man needs no revelation beyond that. Neither can he do with less.

Klug shows an impressive familiarity with the source material, and he is obviously enthusiastic about his subject. Except for a habit, certainly irritating if not also pretentious, of putting untranslated quotations into the body of the text, the book reads well and offers a helpful survey of Luther’s and Chemnitz’s continuous appeal to Scripture.

Unfortunately, the book plows no new ground. What the author demonstrates was already firmly established. If one wants a careful study of Lutheran development regarding Scripture, he has that available to him in Robert Preus’s excellent Inspiration of Scripture or his also helpful Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism. One would hope that Klug, given his concern for his subject, will go on to do one of two other tasks: either confine himself to historical theology and produce a careful analysis of the critique of “tradition” as developed by Chemnitz, or, as a constructive theologian, use his historical material to help develop a tenable doctrine of Scripture for a contemporary Protestantism that is in the midst of a crisis of authority no less severe than that of the sixteenth century. From Luther to Chemnitz promises a good deal more than it delivers, and for that reason is disappointing.

Moses, the Servant of Yahweh, by Dewey Beegle (Eerdmans, 1972, 368 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Carl E. Armerding, assistant professor of Old Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dewey M. Beegle, professor of Old Testament at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., has written a “life” of Moses that combines study of the personality of the man with a running commentary on the Book of Exodus and much of the parallel material in the Pentateuch. The author states his goals in a short preface: (1) to encourage an interest in biblical study in those open-minded persons who have not had a meaningful experience with Scripture, and (2) to instruct all those who have the desire but lack the knowledge to interpret the Bible effectively. The stress on educating the pious but unsophisticated reader is carried through the book.

Beegle brings the combined insights of biblical research (particularly as formulated in the work of his teacher, W. F. Albright) to bear on the question at hand. The book might well be characterized as an application of the work of Albright and his students to the problems related to the study of Exodus. Frequent reference to the work of the great archaeologist and linguist is to be expected in any book of this nature, but (for those familiar with Albright’s positions in scholarly research) the present work seems almost slavishly dependent upon his opinions.

An opening chapter discusses critical battles that have been fought over the Pentateuch and the veracity of its traditions. Beegle concludes, after introducing various real and less-than-real problems, that “there was a Moses”! Reinforced with this knowledge, the reader may go on to appreciate the salient features of the lawgiver’s long and distinguished career.

The book’s strength lies in its helpful application to biblical research of insights gained from the study of the literature, customs, and culture of the Ancient Near East. As an example, the Decalogue, and indeed much of the additional legal material, is set in the context of ancient covenants, a fact within reach of even the lay reader as it is explained in this volume.

The book’s weaknesses lie in at least two directions. First, Beegle, though affirming an evangelical view of the Bible as a revelation from God, seems convinced that dividing the material into the J, E, D, and P strands of tradition is necessary for a proper understanding of the text. To many evangelicals this will be offensive, while to other lay Christians it will seem irrelevant. In other critical matters, Beegle is cautious and generally conservative, often stopping short of endorsing a radical position (e.g., the secondary nature of the murmuring motifs, à la G. W. Coats), though he is generally scrupulously objective in handling an opponent’s position.

Similarly disappointing is the poor quality of practical application. From a wealth of good biblical research has come a paucity of good Old Testament theology. Instead of pursuing the theological meaning of the passage at hand, Beegle treats us to a series of “morals,” some of which seem almost embarrassingly unconnected to the “original” meaning of the text.

In short, Beegle’s book is an attempt to popularize Albright for the contemporary reader of Moses. Since the book is essentially a popularization, he might have done well to eliminate some of the minutiae into which he delves at length. (Incidentally, for such an in-depth treatment of various “problems,” more footnoting would have been in order.) On the other hand, there may be readers who, though not scholars in a technical sense, will appreciate the careful research, the scrupulously objective analyses, and the rather cautious commitments of this gentle pedagogue.

The Delicate Creation: Towards a Theology of the Environment, by Christopher Derrick (Devin-Adair, 1972, 129 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, associate editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Amid the spate of books on the environment are many that speak from a religious or quasi-religious perspective, but their religion is usually some kind of pantheism or pantheistic nature-mysticism. Christopher Derrick is a somewhat unconventional and imaginative but very convinced traditionalist Roman Catholic. Like Francis Schaeffer’s Pollution and the Death of Man, his book is an incisive effort to analyze the environmental crisis from an orthodox Christian perspective.

Derrick sees the modern world, despite its apparent commitment to materialism, as strongly under the influence of what he calls Manichaeanism—the broad stream of dualistic thought that, in one form or another has been with us throughout the history of Christianity. The Manichaean tendency stamps matter as evil and denies that God, as good, could really be the Creator of the material world. Derrick sees evolution, whether “theistic” or not, as playing the role in modern thought of the demiurge in Gnostic or Manichaean thought—that of the “workman” who forms matter into the multitude of existing beings, so that God himself is not contaminated by any creative involvement with matter.

Derrick repudiates the modern tendency to blame the Judaeo-Christian tradition, specifically the command to “subdue the earth … and have dominion” (Gen. 1:28), for the destructive excesses of modern technomania, which instead embodies, he writes, “the Manichaean view of the world that was always Christianity’s chief enemy.” Like Schaeffer, he emphasizes the importance of the doctrine of the Fall into sin, and offers as our only possible escape from the present ecological predicament the development of a kind of “cosmic piety”—not nature-mysticism, but a healthy reverence for nature as the beautiful handiwork of God.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Reshaping Evangelical Higher Education, by Marvin Mayers, Lawrence Richards, and Robert Webber (Zondervan, 215 pp., $6.95). Three Wheaton professors collaborate to discuss evangelical higher education: historical background, contemporary perspective, crosscultural challenge, and future opportunities. A dynamic combination of creativity and scholarship.

The Openness of Being, by E. L. Mascall (Westminster, 278 pp., $9.75). An Anglican Thomist defends theism in this modern version of the cosmological argument. A technical masterpiece in current philosophical argument.

The Social History of the Reformation, edited by Laurence P. Buck and Jonathan W. Zophy (Ohio State, 397 pp., $12.50). A fine collection of seventeen scholarly essays dealing with the effects of the Reformation on social problems, institutions, and legal structures, and upon different groups of people in sixteenth-century Europe, from village peasants to men in cities and university towns.

The Enjoyment of Scripture, by Samuel Sandmel (Oxford, 300 pp., $8.95). This literary appraisal of the Old Testament, though cleverly done, lacks an appreciation of divine inspiration and sovereignty.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, by William S. LaSor (Eerdmans, 281 pp., $3.95 pb). An excellent account of the Qumran discoveries and the light they throw on the New Testament; gives the lie to the fantastic distortions of John Allegro and other sensationalists.

The Quest For Noah’s Ark, by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 335 pp., $6.95). First, there are five excerpts from other writers on the Genesis Flood. Next is a series of heavily footnoted accounts of more than 2,000 years of claimed sightings of the ark. The author then relates with great enthusiasm his own expeditions and reflections (published in abridged form in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 2, 1971, and January 7, 1972). Illustrations and index.

Haunted by God, by James McBride Dabbs (John Knox, $6.95, 255 pp.). A Southern writer discusses the paradoxical elements in his culture. He is sympathetic with, yet critical of, the South’s traditions as they have shaped its religion.

Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, by Arthur Darby Nock (Harvard, 2 volumes, 1,029 pp., $35). An important collection of fifty-eight papers and reviews by a man generally regarded during his lifetime (1902–63) to be the world’s leading authority on the religion of late antiquity. Five indexes. A must for every theological library!

Theologians Today Series, edited by Martin Redfern (Sheed and Ward, 8 vols., c. 125 pp. each, each $3.95, $1.95 pb). A useful collection of representative extracts from eight influential, contemporary Roman Catholic theologians (each in a separate volume): Sheed, von Balthasar, Küng, Durrwell, Rahner, Congar, de Lubac, Schillebeeckx.

Managing Our Work, by John W. Alexander (Inter-Varsity, 71 pp., $1.50 pb). The president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship gives us a manual for wise planning that combines sound principles of business management and Christian stewardship. A very helpful book for budgeting time effectively and organizing groups.

Scripture Animals, by Jonathan Fischer (Pyne Press [Nassau St., Princeton, N. J. 08540], 347 pp., $10). A charming reprint of an 1834 book in which the author’s woodcuts and poetry embellish a description of each animal mentioned in the Bible. Needs supplementing for accuracy in some cases by more recent books.

Donne at Sermons, by Gale H. Carithers, Jr. (State University of New York, 319 pp., $10). Tries to force Donner’s sermons in an existential, relativistic mode. While Carithers displays little understanding of seventeenth-century Anglican theology in this expanded doctrinal dissertation, he does raise critical points that need further study. Donne’s sermons have been inadequately studied, and Carrithers’s treatment is only a beginning.

The Historical Jesus: A Continuing Quest, by Charles C. Anderson (Eerdmans, 271 pp., $3.95 pb). In an earlier book the author surveyed what many others (such as Renan, Schweitzer, and Bultmann) had said on the life of Christ. Here he presents his own positive, well-thought-through evangelical position on such matters as the place of miracles, the Resurrection, and the accuracy of the Gospels.

George Whitefield and the Great Awakening, by John Pollock (Doubleday, 272 pp., $6.95). The moving biography of a Church of England evangelist who carried his zeal to the American colonies. While still in his twenties he became one of the best-known men along the Atlantic seaboard.

Bible Guidebook, by William N. McElrath (Broadman, 144 pp., $4.50). A missionary offers a simple, easy-to-understand volume on how to read the Bible, with information about each of its books, dates of biblical events, maps, and a guide for daily Bible study. Useful for young and new Christians.

The Apostles’ Creed: In the Light of Today’s Questions, by Wolfhart Pannenberg (Westminster, 178 pp., $5.95). A prominent German theologian interprets for the layman the meaning of each statement in the creed. The Resurrection is emphasized as the most important belief, that from which other phrases of the creed derive their significance; but other miracles are improperly weakened.

First Corinthians For Today, by Robert J. Dean (Broadman, 160 pp., $2.95 pb). Lively introductory application of First Corinthians to problems of the contemporary world. Avoids in-depth exposition.

The Christian Home in a Changing World, by Gene Getz (Moody, 107 pp., $1.95 pb). A good elementary study guide designed to introduce parents to the problems and biblical perspectives of the Christ-centered home.

Mediums and Spirit-Rappers and Roaring Radicals, by Howard Kerr (University of Illinois, 261 pp., $8.95), and The Christian and the Occult, by Roger C. Palms (Judson, 125 pp., $2.50 pb). Kerr offers an interesting overview of spiritualism in American literature. Mediums and spirits have invaded our society more deeply than many of us realize. Palms reinforces this, though his survey of various forms of spiritualism is shallow.

Stories of the Hindus: An Introduction Through Texts and Interpretation (Macmillan, 269 pp., $6.95, $2.95 pb). Fascinating stories, legends, and meditations to lead the reader in understanding Hindu thought and outlook from the inside. Includes commentaries and a bibliography.

The Way They Should Go, by D. Bruce Lockerbie (Oxford, 174 pp., $5.95). The head of the English department at Stony Brook School writes about Christian education as an alternative to public education, drawing heavily on the Stony Brook success story. A book to be read by all Christian parents and educators.

The Ministering Congregation, by Browne Barr and Mary Eakin (Pilgrim, 127 pp., $4.95). A United Church of Christ minister and his associate relate ideas on church vitality taken from experiences in their own congregation.

Unsecular Man, by Andrew M. Greeley (Schocken, 280 pp., $7.95). A Roman Catholic sociologist challenges the prevailing platitude of academicians and their counterparts in the media that modern man is religiously indifferent. Offers ample argument and doctrination to show that religious interest is as widespread as ever, though it often takes bizarre forms. Takes no stand on the objective validity of any religion.

The Black Preacher in America, by Charles V. Hamilton (Morrow, 246 pp., $7.95). An analysis by a Columbia University political scientist of the role of the black preacher as a leader in his culture yesterday and today. By the co-author of Black Power.

The Consciousness of Jesus, by Jacques Guillet (Newman, 216 pp., $6.95, pb). A scholarly and reverent treatment of the subject by a French Roman Catholic writer. Provides the serious student with a useful introduction to the theology of the Gospels.

Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends, by Howard H. Brinton (Pendle Hill Publications [Wallingford, Pa. 19086], 130 pp., $4.75). A collection from the diaries of Quakers in ordinary walks of life, written primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Arranged according to categories of experience, with exposition and commentary by the author. Interesting and illuminating.

Born to Serve, by Manford George Gutzke (Regal, 137 pp., $.95 pb). A brief, simply written discussion of the Christian as God’s servant. Good for beginning study on the subject.

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (17)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (19)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

A New Year’S Prayer

If we had 1972 to live over, what would we do differently?

Perhaps that question is not worth much discussion time, for the calendar cannot be set back. But a closely related question deserves hard thought: How will we think and act in 1973 in light of our ’72 failures and successes?

Our potential Christians may be greater in the new year than we have ever before experienced. As Director Norman B. Rohrer of Evangelical Press News Service has put it, “Never have the people of God enjoyed so broad an opportunity to speak the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. Will they catch the tide? Or will they lose it through bickering, apathy, worldliness, a lack of strategy, or excessive legalism?”

It is depressing to review the good things we could have done in 1972 and didn’t. Or to ponder the attempts we botched up. To the extent that we were at fault, we should repent. But the challenge then is to thank God for what was accomplished and to press ahead prayerfully, with the aim of making 1973 the greatest.

Goodbye, Moon

Earth men had hardly begun to get acquainted with the moon. Now, already, we have bid farewell, at least for the time being.

Our visits to the moon began at Christmastime four years ago, when the Apollo 8 astronauts conducted their now famous Bible-reading telecast from space. The Apollo missions also ended at Christmas time. And despite all the discussion about national priorities, there was a note of sadness when Apollo 17 closed out the current space program.

Maybe the price was too high, considering all the world’s pressing social needs. But lunar travel has undoubtedly expanded man’s consciousness and, we believe, given him a greater appreciation for God’s creation.

It is now up to Christians to build on this, and not let secular minds exploit the findings for materialistic ends.

Faking It

“How real, how startingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree; poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist,” wrote J. R. R. Tolkien in his first-rate essay “On Fairy-Stories.” He points up the problem of an age that has sacrificed creation to machinery. Our society, so often characterized as alienated, no longer understands or sees birds, stones, and trees; simulation of the real has replaced reality. Perhaps, then, we are not so much alienated from one another as from the joy of creation.

We surround ourselves with fake flowers, plastic plants, simulated wood-grain cabinets, and laminated furniture. The vibrance and warmth of wood glowing with life is pragmatically replaced; plastic is easier to clean and laminated furniture won’t scratch. We see simulation on film and stage; simulated sex brings men and women empty of meaning to participate vicariously in erotic error. And experimentation with test-tube embryos reminds us that a brave new world is at hand. Television, which has a unique opportunity to present life as it is, leans heavily on tape rather than life.

Language, too, reflects a mechanistic outlook. Prose lacks the pulse and heartbeat of life, and poetry no longer pleases with the vision and rhythm found in God’s creation. We have forsaken elemental speech for abstraction; imaginations fail from disuse. Tolkien speaks of the “desire to visit, free as a fish, the deep sea; or the longing for the noiseless, gracious, ecumenical flight of a bird, that longing which the aeroplane cheats, except in rare moments, seen high and by wind and distance noiseless, turning in the sun: that is, precisely when imagined and not used. There are profounder wishes: such as the desire to converse with other living things.” But man has broken off relations with the universe and sees little hope for reintegration.

Christians, however, know reintegration through the Incarnation. We see elm trees, birds, and fish with an imagination freed for flight in Christ. The joy of life, the Eucatastrophe (the happy ending) of existence, lives. “The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy,” concludes Tolkien. And it is joy so real that we cannot simulate it.

On Church Cooperation

We do not hold out much hope that the recently approved restructure of the National Council of Churches will mean much for evangelicals. Most of the program of the ninth and last General Assembly of the NCC, held in Dallas in December, perpetuated the preoccupation of American ecumenism with selected social issues to the neglect of theological priorities. The organizational changes are not substantial enough to warrant optimism that the leopard has changed his spots.

A non-organizational change may be of some significance, however. The Reverend W. Sterling Cary now begins a three-year term as president, and we wish him well. The challenge is great. Although he was one of the signers of the Black Manifesto demanding reparations from white churches, Cary assumed office on a note of reconciliation, which certainly is to his credit. He is the NCC’s first black president. During 1973 he will undoubtedly be called on to help with the selection of a new general secretary to replace Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, who will retire in another year.

Cary says he will use his term of office to enable the NCC constituency to conduct “meaningful programs, not to moralize about problems.” “The day of proclamations and resolutions is pretty much ended. We’ve said all we could and we’ve had a significant influence through the pronouncement route. But the church itself must begin to reflect what it has said in its own life.”

Actually, the NCC has not said all that much. True, it has pontificated on a number of social issues, and has caused division among Christians by taking a hard line on political matters, stressing means instead of ends. But on the things that really matter in the long run, in the theological realm, in eternal values, American ecumenism is exceedingly wobbly and quite nonspecific.

We agree with Cary’s call for deeds insofar as these truly reflect the biblical concepts of justice and responsibility. Unfortunately, among the many disparate kinds of special-interest groups caucusing at the Dallas assembly, not one represented an evangelical theological view. That is hardly Christian ecumenism.

The Making Of A Revolutionary?

Perhaps the most widely known American Negro woman in the world today is Angela Davis. When she was under indictment on charges of murder and kidnapping in California (she was subsequently acquitted), her name and picture were blazoned on billboards all around the world: she was portrayed as a victim of fascistic white racism. In a forthcoming biography, J. A. Parker chronicles her step-by-step development from a middle-class home in Birmingham, Alabama, to Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York, then Brandeis University near Boston, where she met Herbert Marcuse, on to the Universities of Paris and Frankfurt, and finally to her current status as one of the most prominent spokesmen for totalitarian Communism in America today. Her way was paved—and to a large extent paid—by white political liberals who recognized her intellectual potential and saw to it that she received every opportunity to learn and adopt radical social and political theories.

Evangelical Christians are quick to denounce the views Miss Davis now proclaims. But how much are they doing for other talented young blacks, to provide them with exposure to better ideas, specifically, to the best in the biblical, Christian tradition at evangelical colleges and seminaries? Unless we are willing to show some foresight and work to make high-quality evangelical teaching as available to young Negroes as radical indoctrination was made available to Miss Davis, we are likely to wait in vain for the appearance of any evangelical counterweight to the Marxist miss from Birmingham.

The Death Of ‘Life’

The main point to be learned from the demise of Life is that magazines should no longer try to be all things to all people. So-called general magazines are falling by the wayside. But despite postal rate increases and lack of adequate advertising income, many specialized magazines, large and small, are thriving. Take Sunset (“The Magazine of Western Living”), for an example. It claims a steady gain in revenue, though it does not run tobacco or hard-liquor advertising. Obviously, Sunset knows its role and plays it well. After the novelty of photo journalism waned, Life never really found a new niche.

A White-Collar Church?

Some years ago Eric Fife could speak of the “unevangelized tribes of the American campus.” In the intervening years, some of the more familiar forms of church and denominational ministry have become virtually moribund: the Student Christian Movement in this country voted itself out of existence. But at the same time, the evangelical outreach has been expanded and intensified, involving both the well-known evangelical student movements and also some new groups and fellowships; where a student witness does exist, it is likely to be evangelical. Across the country the picture is uneven, with some campuses well-served and others relatively neglected. On the whole, however, it can be said that evangelical Christianity is mounting a significant and rewarding outreach in the colleges.

At the same time, a very significant portion—about twenty per cent—of each year’s high school graduating class remains virtually untouched as a group: those who enroll in technical or vocational training schools. Pastor John L. Swanson of Alexandria, Minnesota, a pioneer in ministry to tech students, reports that in Minnesota alone there are thirty-two state supported technical-vocational schools, with an enrollment in 1971–72 of 17,000. Within two months of course completion the vast majority of the students in these schools enter jobs for which they have been trained, a rate far better than that of college students.

Vocational and technical students typically experience little of “campus life”; most of them live at home or in rented rooms and work hard on what amounts to a crash program, often of less than a year’s duration. It is more difficult in many respects to minister to them than to college students; they are less accessible, more scattered, and more strongly motivated in a practical rather than theoretical direction. And churches with a suburban and bourgeois orientation often find it hard to relate to people who are so intent on getting down to doing the world’s work.

It is often lamented that Americans, even Christians, are losing their awareness of the value of honest, productive human work. By developing a ministry to the neglected class of vocational students, who will be doing much of the nation’s manual and technical work in the years to come, evangelicals could not only begin to reach a large and virtually untouched group but also recover for themselves a feeling for the universality of the Gospel that is in danger of being lost if the Church ignores the “mechanics” and becomes an ingrown, middle-class, white-collar club.

Bottled Death

Death no longer rides a pale horse. Instead he careens drunkenly down the highway, driving one person every twenty minutes to a grave of twisted metal and shattered glass. But warnings and wailings do no good unless action is taken.

It is still too difficult in this country to prove drunken driving. Even when such a case reaches the courtroom, judges and juries seem reluctant to convict the defendants (perhaps an attitude of “that could have been me” prevails over conscience). To stop highway manslaughter—and the need for perennial holiday editorials on the issue—we need stricter laws and stricter enforcement. In several European countries a mandatory jail sentence for inebriated drivers—whether involved in an accident or not—has curbed the number of drunk-driving incidents.

This holiday season, Christians should give themselves and their fellow human beings a livesaving gift by supporting with money and time various organizations, such as the Alcohol Safety Actions Projects, founded to get drunk drivers off the highways. Or perhaps evangelical churches should start their own local alcohol safety projects. That would be a good way to combine a positive Christian witness with practical social concern.

In His Own Image

The start of a new year, traditionally a time for resolving to make a fresh start, is an apt time to reflect on the real Beginning, and especially on our own origin, which tells us much about what we can and cannot hope to be.

The first remark that the Bible makes about man is that God determined to create man “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). Philosophers and theologians have long pondered the implications of those mysterious words, and probably no explanation can exhaust their meaning. Yet surely one of the most important facets of being made in God’s image is this: man, like his Maker, is personal. Significantly, it was among people with a biblical heritage that the reality and importance of individual human personhood was first grasped. Development of the concept of the person as an individual center of continuing consciousness followed the development of the Christian understanding of God in the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

In other words, the biblical revelation led Christians to confess that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not merely transitory modes or aspects of God’s Being but are distinct, abiding Persons. Each of the divine Persons has individually and continually communicated with the others in fellowship and love. This realization has led Christians to see that each human being, made in God’s image, is also a distinct person with a unique character and destiny. Most of the world’s great religions believe that the human personality is a painful illusion; for them “salvation” means the loss of individuality in the infinity of God. But the biblical teaching indicates that the saved will experience eternal life as individuals, as persons. It will mean fellowship with the personal God, not absorption into a universal spirit.

In recent decades a terrible shift has been taking place in “Western Christendom.” Large segments of “Christian” populations have lost all awareness of the reality of the personal God. And as a result millions are finding the consciousness of their own unique human personhood, so charged with responsibility and crowded with possibilities of guilt, estrangement, and failure, too much to bear. So multitudes seek to escape from it. Their devices are many, ranging from self-surrender to a collectivistic ideology or to a political messiah, to self-destruction by drugs. Only a tiny minority of those who have repudiated belief in God—Faustian intellectuals such as Ayn Rand or the late Bertrand Russell—seem to have the courage to try to assert their individuality in the face of an impersonal universe. But such egocentric attempts to be the center of one’s own universe ultimately end, like those of Goethe’s Faust, in pitiful self-deception.

Unless the individual personality is supported and sustained by fellowship with the personal God, individuality is a burden, not a blessing. This is why Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts can know no rest until they rest in Thee.”

Page 5854 – Christianity Today (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Fr. Dewey Fisher

Last Updated:

Views: 5439

Rating: 4.1 / 5 (42 voted)

Reviews: 89% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Fr. Dewey Fisher

Birthday: 1993-03-26

Address: 917 Hyun Views, Rogahnmouth, KY 91013-8827

Phone: +5938540192553

Job: Administration Developer

Hobby: Embroidery, Horseback riding, Juggling, Urban exploration, Skiing, Cycling, Handball

Introduction: My name is Fr. Dewey Fisher, I am a powerful, open, faithful, combative, spotless, faithful, fair person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.