Page 6099 – Christianity Today (2024)

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The minister in “The Canterbury Tales” was diligent in teaching—and in following—Christ’s “lore”

The picture of the Parson in the “Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales is remarkably candid. Chaucer understood the pressures under which a parson must work. He respected the balance of human and godly attributes that must be found in the character of the minister, and he was sensitive to the parson’s relation with his fellow Christians.

Most people remember Chaucer as the author of Middle English prose and verse who wrote the passage beginning “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote …” that they had to memorize in English class. If they have read some of the Canterbury Tales in translation, they might also remember Chaucer as a racy and down-to-earth sort of man.

Some might think that a writer who lived from 1340 to 1400 could hardly be expected to say anything with much value for the modern Christian. And the man who gave us the earthy picture of the Wife of Bath or made no bones about adultery in the “Miller’s Tale” and the “Shipman’s Tale” would not seem to have much to tell us about the ministry in our times.

Such a judgment, however, is superficial. Chaucer’s understanding of human nature is not dated. Although he wrote realistically about human depravity (but without the self-conscious morbidity of many a modern writer), his perspective also included love and romance, philosophy and religion.

In their leisurely travel to Canterbury, the pilgrims are urged by the Host to tell stories to enliven the trip. As they share fables, tragedies, exhortations, and narratives of mischief, of knights and chivalry, and of cheating in love and trickery, some of the pilgrims typify their calling and station in life, while others stand out as real persons. In the fascinating interplay of bickering and discussion, insinuation and rebuttal that Chaucer gives, the setting of the tales comes alive.

Much of Chaucer’s genius lay in catching and communicating genuine feeling and thought and motive. He understood the give and take of personal relationships. He had a sharp insight into the balance of good and evil, wit and stubbornness, maturity and immaturity that may exist in a person. He was a storyteller and poet of superb ability who was excited and delighted by all sorts of people.

The Parson, although not so vivid and lively a character as others, such as the Wife of Bath, is nevertheless a likable, approachable man of integrity.

A good man was there of religion,

Who was a poor Parson of a town

But rich he was in holy thought and work.

He was a learned man also, a clerk,

Who Christ’s own gospel truly sought to preach;

Devoutly his parishioners would he teach.

Benign he was and wondrous diligent.…

At once Chaucer balances the spiritual riches of his Parson against his material poverty. Today, six hundred years later, the image of the “poor parson of a town” has lost a bit of its force. But the companion picture—of a man “rich … in holy thought and work”—has not. A pastor “who Christ’s own gospel” seeks to preach is indeed rich in thought and work. Chaucer’s Parson was also devoutly earnest in teaching and “wondrous diligent.”

He was right loath to curse [excommunicate] to get a tithe,

But rather would he give, in case of doubt,

To those poor parishioners about,

Part of his income, even of his substance.

He could in little things have sufficience.

Has the pastoral image changed? As cynical as Chaucer could be about his earthier characters, he was sensitive to the pastor’s reluctance to demand money. In that day a man could be excommunicated for failing to pay his tithe. It was not the parson’s duty to pronounce the excommunication, but he could exclude the offender from the sacraments and declare him “liable to the excommunication,” which would be pronounced by the bishop.

Scholarship indicates that Chaucer was probably echoing Wycliffe in his protests against the abuse of such practices. The ideal pastor was reluctant to use excommunication to extract offerings. Rather he would be inclined to be a Good Samaritan himself. No doubt Chaucer knew of cases in which the parson had confronted real need and responded with his own goods.

The summary line, “He could in little things have sufficience,” is expressed by one translator, “Enough with little, coloured all his moods.” Chaucer must have regarded it a fit motto.

What of the Parson’s parish practices? Surely he had nothing in common with the modern minister.

Wide was his parish, houses far asunder,

But never did he fail, for rain or thunder,

In sickness or mischief [sin], to visit

The farthest in his parish, small and great,

Going afoot, and in his hand a stave.

The modern pastor who averages twenty to fifty calls a week would be quite hampered (though perhaps hardier) if he had to visit on foot with stave in hand. Yet he can share the feeling of Chaucer’s parson that his parish is wide and that some houses are “far asunder.” Still the best ministers fail not “for rain or thunder” to visit the farthest in their parishes, great or small. And “in sickness or in sin” is still accurate and oddly inclusive.

What of the Parson’s preaching?

This fine example to his flock he gave,

That first he wrought and afterwards he taught;

Out of the gospel then that text he caught,

And this figure he added thereunto—

That, if gold rust, what shall poor iron do?

For if the priest be foul, in whom we trust,

What wonder if a layman yield to lust?

The Parson—who “first wrought and afterwards taught”—thus serves as a good example of Matthew 5:19b, “He who does them [these commandments] and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

The Parson was a “learned man,” the introductory lines tell us, but his most effective sermon seemed to be his life itself. He did not exhort on one level and live on another, as did the Monk in the “Shipman’s Tale” and the Friar in the “Summoner’s Tale.”

When the Host presses him for a story, the Parson says he will not tell a fable or idle story but will speak of “moralitee and vertuous mateere”—which is exactly what he does. He gives a long philosophical treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins, much in the manner of solemn writers of his day.

That the Parson introduces his sermon as a “merry tale” has caused speculation as to whether Chaucer meant the introduction to apply to some other tale. Yet it may merely indicate the Parson’s or Chaucer’s sense of humor. Although the Host tells him to hasten or “the sonne woll adoun,” the meditation covers thirty pages in one version of the tales and seventy in another! Surely only a captive audience would listen to such a long discourse. The travelers were, in a sense, a captive audience. And perhaps parishioners of the fourteenth century were able to concentrate on serious matters longer, being unaccustomed to learning via television, radio, picture magazines, and twenty-minute sermons.

The next observation Chaucer makes is that the Parson does not do a lot of running around looking for a better job:

He never let his benefice for hire,

And left his sheep encumbered in the mire,

And ran to London unto Saint Paul’s

To seek himself a chantry there for souls,

Nor in some brotherhood did he withhold;

But dwelt at home, and kept so well his folk

That never wolf could make his plans miscarry;

He was a shepherd and not a mercenary.…

A “mercenary” was a priest who made a living by saying masses for a soul. This service was called a “chantry” or “chaunterie.” This life, Chaucer implies, was a softer one than that of being a parish shepherd who stayed home and tended the sheep. The line about the “brotherhood” refers to the practice of being engaged by a guild as a chaplain.

Chaucer describes how the fourteenth-century pastor treated other human beings:

And though he holy were and virtuous

He was to sinful man not contemptuous,

Nor of his speech arrogant or too divine [haughty],

But in his teaching discreet and benign.

To draw folk to heaven by fairness [the good life],

By good example, this was his busyness.

In the 1300s it was commendable, as it is today, not to be pharisaical. Neither pastor nor layman could establish communication with another of less virtuous character if he were “haughty.”

But if any person were obstinate,

Whatsoever he were, of high or low estate,

Him would he reprimand sharply for the occasion.

The Parson was no fence-sitter. If necessary he could utter pointed and courageous reproof.

The final accolade indicates why Chaucer respected a parson like this:

A better priest I trust there nowhere is.

He sought after no pomp or reverence

Nor made himself a spiced [overscrupulous] conscience,

But Christ’s own lore and his apostles twelve

He taught, but first he followed it himself.

“Spiced” meant “seasoned,” in the sense of overly refined. The Parson was not overly sophisticated or overly concerned with the letter of the law. He was most diligent in teaching Christ’s “lore”—that is, Christ’s instructions and doctrine, and that of the apostles.

That he taught Christianity was important, but that he followed Christ himself was better. To Chaucer this was the practical test of religion, and it is a test no more dated than Christ’s word in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Note: The lines from the “Prologue” used in this essay are freely combined from these sources:

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by F. N. Robinson (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933); used by permission.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Periods of meditation can also provide a time for voluntary prayer

At the end of 1965, three and one-half years after the “Prayer Decision” (Engel v. Vitale), the United States Supreme Court added an exclamation point to that decision by refusing to review a lower-court case banning classroom prayer (Stein v. Oshinsky). However, a correct reading of the court’s intentions shows that not all prayer in the public school is illegal.

Within weeks after the 1962 prayer case, Mr. Justice Clark indicated that he and his colleagues did not intend to ban all prayer. Speaking in San Francisco, he quoted approvingly these words: “Most commentators suggested that the court had outlawed religious observance in public schools when, in fact, the court did nothing of the kind” and also remarked, “As one commentator said, the trouble is that the court like the complaint of the wife ‘is never understood.’”

Moreover, the office of the United States Attorney General, in attempting to interpret the court action to citizens on behalf of the President, has repeatedly made such statements as, “You will note that the decision in the Engel case in no way restricts the right of individuals to pray,” or, “These decisions do not in any way restrict the right of private individuals or groups to pray, but are aimed at the use of the power of government to channel religious observances into prescribed official forms” (letters from Norbert A. Schlei, Assistant United States Attorney General, Oct. 4, 1962, and July 13, 1963).

Among the questions regarding prayer in the public school that need more complete answers are these: (1) What is permissible? (2) Why is it permissible? (3) When is it permissible?

Prayer must be classified before one attempts to decide which kinds are permissible in public education. One simple classification separates silent from oral prayer. Repeatedly the Supreme Court has emphasized the distinction between the freedom to believe and the freedom to act. The freedom to believe, it has said, is absolute, but in the very nature of things the freedom to act cannot be. Following this logic, we may say that oral prayer comes under the freedom to act and must of necessity carry some limitations, whereas silent prayer comes under the freedom to believe and should not—in fact cannot—carry any limitations. As Paul W. Bruton of the University of Pennsylvania Law School has said, “No one has been forbidden to engage in prayer in a public school if he wishes to do so as a purely individual activity” (“The Law of Church and State,” speech at Pennsylvania Conference on Church and State, Oct. 13, 1965). Silent prayer is permissible.

Moreover, it may be that under certain circ*mstances even oral prayer is permissible. Robert Matthews, Attorney General of Kentucky, declared in an official opinion, “In our opinion, nothing objectionable would be found in a student, during a period of meditation, voluntarily or spontaneously saying a prayer, silent or vocal” (Kentucky Attorney General’s Opinion, OAG 64–111, Feb. 7, 1964).

During the many days of hearings on school prayers before the Committee on Judiciary of the House of Representatives, Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler pointed out, “I say that the teacher, consistent with this decision, could say to the children, ‘You are now permitted for a period of two minutes to recite to yourselves if you wish, a prayer.’ They could do it out loud or they could do it meditatively without saying a word” (United States, Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings on Proposed Amendments to the Constitution Relating to Prayers and Bible reading in the Public School, 88th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1964, p. 2050).

To one recognized authority on church-state relations, Leo Pfeffer, it is obvious that prayer has not been forbidden. He noted, “There is not one word in any decision of the Supreme Court including Murray, Engel, Zorach, or McCollum, or any state court decision which can, to any extent, be interpreted as forbidding children to pray or to read the Bible in the public schools” (ibid., p. 923).

“Voluntary Prayer”

Another way to classify prayer in this context is through the subtle distinction between “voluntary prayer” and “prayer that is voluntary.” This distinction, though it may seem strained, is really the heart of the matter. By “voluntary prayer” is meant prayer in which the student determines what is said, when it is said, where it is said, and how it is said. By “prayer that is voluntary” is meant prayer determined by the state, acting through the school; the “voluntary” aspect is that the student can choose whether to participate. Repeatedly the Supreme Court has ruled that the second type, “prayer that is voluntary,” is illegal. However, it has never ruled on the first type, “voluntary prayer.”

In the New York case, Stein v. Oshinsky, that the Supreme Court refused to review last year, two prayers suggested as voluntary were barred: “God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for our food; Amen,” and “Thank you for the world so sweet; thank you for the food we eat; thank you for the birds that sing; thank you, God, for everything.”

That the court did not in Engel v. Vitale rule on “voluntary prayer” seems to be borne out by a statement from the United States Attorney General’s office on behalf of the President concerning school prayers, “The court did not rule on the question of whether the practice of saying school prayers which are not officially sanctioned by public school officials, violates the Constitution” (letter from Norbert A. Schlei, Assistant United States Attorney General, Oct. 4, 1962).

During hearings on the Bible-reading decision, Mr. Justice Black noted, “Students have the right to practice prayer and read the Bible. They do not have the right to the aid of the state in that exercise” (United States Supreme Court, Considerations, Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 [1963]). The first part of his statement indicates that he would approve “voluntary prayer,” and the second part that he disapproves of the state’s organizing “voluntary prayer” so as to change it to a “prayer that is voluntary.”

The views of this distinguished jurist have support among professors of law and attorneys general. James C. Kirby, professor of law at Vanderbilt University, when asked if non-prescribed prayers should be permitted in public schools, answered, “It is my opinion from the narrow holdings of these cases dealing with law compelling official forms for religious ceremonies, that that which originates from the individual … is not affected. And it is permissible” (United States, Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, op. cit., p. 2136). Attorney General Walter E. Alessandroni of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said, “… nor is there any restraint upon unorganized, private, personal prayer or Bible reading by pupils during the free moments of the day which is not a part of the school program and does not interfere with the school schedule” (Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Opinion, No. 260, Aug. 26, 1963).

It is just as unconstitutional to stop a “voluntary prayer” as it is to start a “prayer that is voluntary.” Leo Pfeffer says it most effectively: “The First Amendment has two parts. One part says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion and the other says no law prohibiting its free exercise. If a child felt it necessary to say a prayer before partaking of bread or milk or cookies and the state says you can’t do that, that would be a violation of the free exercise clause and just as unconstitutional as the Supreme Court says in Murray it is for the teacher to say to the children that you will now say grace or read from the Bible” (United States, Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, op. cit., p. 924). And Professor Kirby comments, “… some laws compel certain conduct, some laws forbid certain conduct. The great bulk of human activity is not touched upon by the law. It is neither compelled nor prohibited. The effect of the Supreme Court decision was to place prayer in the public schools in this third category where the law is neutral” (ibid., p. 2136).

State Purely Neutral

The Constitution limits the state but not the individual. In interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court has limited state-prescribed prayer (“prayer that is voluntary”), not student prayer (“voluntary prayer”).

Assuming that the question of what prayers are permissible has been clarified, the next question is, “Why is prayer permissible in the classroom?” One good reason for permitting classroom prayer is that the denial of such permission inhibits religion. On this point Professor Paul G. Kauper of the University of Michigan Law School notes, “There is merit to the argument that if the public schools are indifferent to the religious factor in the life of the Nation, they are thereby contributing to an official philosophy of secularism and, therefore, are not really neutral in religious matters” (ibid., p. 1692).

Inhibiting religion is denied the state by the test set down by the Supreme Court in the Schempp case: “The test may be stated as follows: what are the purpose and primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactments exceed the scope of legislative power as circ*mscribed by the Constitution” (United States Supreme Court, Abington v. Schempp, 374, U. S. 203 [1963]).

In a separate opinion in that case, Mr. Justice Stewart observed, “For a compulsory state educational system so structures a child’s life that if religious exercises are held to be an impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed at an artificial and state-created disadvantage. Viewed in this light, permission of such exercises for those who want them is necessary if the schools are truly to be neutral in the matter of religion” (ibid.).

The report of the Commission on Religion in the Public Schools of the American Association of School Administrators charges schools “with the responsibility to provide an environment in which the practices and values that are rooted in the homes and churches can flourish” (Religion in the Public Schools, Harper & Row, 1964, p. 28).

It is clear, therefore, that the student who values and practices prayer must be permitted the opportunity to pray in the classroom. But when?

Meditation Period

The idea of a period of meditation is emerging as a real possibility. George LaNoue, of the Center of Advanced Study of Brookings Institution and the Department of Religious Liberty of the National Council of Churches, points out the reason for using the word “meditation”: “… meditation is a neutral act to be defined by the dictates of one’s personal conscience, while prayer is specifically religious even if silent” (United States, Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, op. cit., p. 1656).

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America has expressed favor toward the idea of a period of meditation: “We would deem it appropriate and consistent with the first Amendment to afford the pupils of public schools the opportunity to set out on their day’s tasks with a moment of devotion. We therefore see no objection if the school day were to start with a period of meditation” (Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, 1963 National Convention Resolution No. 18). A period of meditation is not unconstitutional, says T. M. Cooley: “It was never intended by the Constitution that the government should be prohibited from recognizing religion—where it might be done without drawing any invidious distinction between different religious beliefs, organizations, or sects” (Principles of Constitutional Law, pp. 224, 225).

A multitude of comments from many lawyers indicates that a classroom period of meditation is not only legal but also desirable. In making recommendations about what could be done in view of the court’s decision, Professor Paul A. Freund of the Harvard University Law School suggested, “The first, closest to the prayer itself, is the brief period of silent reverence or meditation, during which each pupil will recite to himself what his heart or his upbringing will prompt” (United States, Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, op. cit., p. 1656).

Professor Willard Heckel, dean of the Rutgers University Law School, said, “Now, I think clearly there is nothing unconstitutional about giving young people the opportunity, the time for silent prayer or meditation because here, again, this is part of the free exercise side of the coin” (ibid., p. 1990).

And Professor Paul G. Kauper of the University of Michigan Law School has declared, “The Supreme Court, it should be emphasized, has not held that there can be no prayer in the public schools. Nothing in the court’s decision precludes school authorities from designating a period of silence for prayer and meditation or even for devotional reading of the Bible or any other book during this period” (ibid., p. 1692).

The saluting of the flag and the provision of chapels on government property have elements in common with classroom prayer. In a 1943 decision (West Virginia v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624), the United States Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision (Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U. S. 586, [1940]) and ruled that students could not be compelled to salute the flag. But in protecting the personal right of a student not to repeat the pledge, the court neither excused him from the exercise nor abolished the exercise itself.

A soldier and a student have at least one thing in common: they are compelled to be at a place not of their choosing. The state, recognizing that the compulsion it exerts upon a soldier limits his opportunity for worship, provides both chapels and chaplains. In their separate opinions in the Schempp case, both Justice Brennan and Justice Stewart touched on this point. Said Mr. Justice Brennan, “Hostility, not neutrality would characterize the refusal to provide chaplains in places of worship for prisoners and soldiers cut off by the state from all civilian opportunities for public communion … (United States Supreme Court, Abington v. Schempp, 384 U.S. 203 [1963]). And Mr. Justice Stewart said, “A lonely soldier stationed at some far away outpost could surely complain that a government which did not provide him the opportunity for pastoral guidance was affirmatively prohibiting the free exercise of his religion” (ibid.).

Because the amount of compulsion exerted on a student is far less than that exerted on a soldier, the remedy need not be as dramatic. Therefore, it is certainly not necessary for every classroom to have a chapel. Yet a period of meditation surely seems justifiable. There is a meditation room in the United Nations Building and a prayer chapel in the nation’s Capitol. The supposed users of each of these have less of a need for such a provision than the immature student confined to the classroom. Although schedules would prevent an efficient use of a meditation room, a period of meditation does seem workable.

Opposition

What little opposition there is to a period of meditation comes from two sources—those who say it is “too little” and those who say it is “too much.” Those who say that it would be too limited an opportunity for religious expression suggest that any limitation is an infringement of the free-exercise clause. However, even the church has found it necessary to limit the scheduled time of prayer for the orderly conducting of its affairs. (When is the last time you heard a prayer offered during the middle of the sermon?) Those holding the “too little” view also convey the idea that the school should compel students to pray, or at least make it uncomfortable for those who choose not to pray.

Those who say that a period of meditation would give “too much” opportunity for religious expression suggest that education should provide no such opportunity. But according to the Educational Policies Commission of the National Education Association: “Development of moral and spiritual values is basic to all other educational objectives.” (Moral and Spiritual Values in the Public Schools, National Education Association, 1954, p. 6). On the point of establishment, Harold E. Achor, judge, Supreme Court of Indiana, made the following observation about the Regents Prayer, “To me it was no more logical to prohibit the children in New York from repeating this reverent but simple prayer because it contained the seeds of a state church than it would be to argue that no man be permitted to start a business in his garage because of the possibility he might monopolize the industry” (letter in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, June, 1964).

Early in 1966, Governor John A. Volpe of Massachusetts signed into law Senate Bill No. 734, which states in part, “At the commencement of the first class each day in all grades in all public schools the teacher in charge of the room in which such class is held shall announce that a period of silence not to exceed one minute in duration shall be observed for meditation, and during any such period silence shall be maintained and no activities engaged in” (Massachusetts, Senate Bill No. 734, 1966). Before signing the bill, Governor Volpe requested and received an official opinion on its legality from Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke. Mr. Brooke, now a candidate for the United States Senate, said in part, “It is my opinion that Senate Bill No. 734 does not conflict with the provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States …” (Massachusetts Attorney General’s Opinion, April 4, 1966).

The period of meditation is indeed a way to pray, and it may well be on its way to general use in our public schools.

The prevalent philosophy of collegiate morality was expressed to me recently by the student-body president of one of the largest, most influential campuses in America. “Jim,” he said, “last summer I met this girl, and it wasn’t long before we were having an affair.”

I had not asked him any personal questions; he simply volunteered information about his intimate relations: “I see nothing wrong with sexual relations prior to marriage as long as we’re mature enough to accept the responsibility, and it’s in love, and no one is hurt.”

This is the philosophy of the campus. Hugh Hefner, editor of Playboy, popularized it, gave it an air of sophistication, clothed it in intellectual garb; and many students today practice it as truth.

Miscellany

Roman Catholic churches that want to join traditionally Protestant-Orthodox councils have gotten guidelines from the National Council of Churches and the Catholic bishops’ ecumenical commission. A year or two of cooperation is suggested “outside the structure of any existing organization until the wisdom of closer ties is indicated.…” Some Catholic parishes already belong to councils, but the only council-aligned diocese so far is the one serving Santa Fe, New Mexico.

National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, D. C., drew 25,000 people to sixteen nights of free summer cultural events outdoors on the cathedral grounds. Believed to be the most lavish free series on religious arts ever seen in America, it included the Congolese Missa Luba and other masses and liturgical music, a cycle of medieval plays, and Menotti’s ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore.

Two Roman Catholic bishops in Argentina criticized the military regime that seized power June 28. An episcopal letter said “this Government has no claim on the faithful, nor can the church depend on it.”

Patriarch Kyrillos VI of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt said his institute is training nationals to replace “foreign, politically aligned” missionaries in Africa.

Construction began on a $1 million Presbyterian Historical Society museum in Philadelphia, located three blocks from Independence Hall.

Church World Service “reluctantly” quit welfare for the needy in Nigeria because the government failed to provide tariff-free import and means of distribution.

As successor to sit-ins and teach-ins, Chinese For Christ Inc. sponsored a “Christ-In” in downtown Los Angeles—a march of 200 international students to show “God is not dead.”

California’s retiring Bishop James A. Pike will teach part-time at the University of California Law School along with previously announced work at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

The National Catholic Reporter, newsy independent weekly, named Lutheran Martin E. Marty of the Christian Century to its board.

At noon on August 24, workers at the $150,000 chapel for the Atlanta Area Methodist Church heard something snap. Nine hours later the 120-ton structure tumbled down through two underground parking decks with a crash heard throughout the downtown area. No one was injured.

Former Congressman Walter Judd is honorary chairman of the Paul Carlson Foundation, named for the medical missionary slain in the Congo in 1964, which plans rehabilitation and medical services in that nation.

Gideons International plans to distribute five million Bibles for the first time in 1966–67, members were told at their annual convention.

The National Council of Churches’ Mississippi Delta Ministry was given $11,150 by the Netherlands Reformed Church.

Personalia

Lars Granberg, acting vice president of Hope College, is the new president of Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa. Both are Reformed Church schools.

Keith A. Bell, dean of students at Malone College, moves to the same post at Seattle Pacific College.

Charles E. Cobb, minister of St. John’s Congregational Church, New York City, was appointed executive coordinator of the Committee for Racial Justice Now, United Church of Christ.

Andrew E. Newcomer, United Presbyterian evangelism director for fifteen Midwestern states, was elected to the long-vacant post of vice-president at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

The Rev. Joseph S. Willis, a United Presbyterian, will teach Protestant theology at the University of Albuquerque, a Roman Catholic school.

Henry B. Clark II, director of urban affairs for the National Council of Churches, becomes a religion professor at Duke University next year.

On Campus

A new Methodist college opens this month in Norfolk, Virginia. The coeducational liberal arts school, to be known as Virginia Wesleyan College, is beginning operation with a small class of freshmen. An eventual enrollment of 1,200 is expected.

Dedication services were held Labor Day at Lucerne (California) Hotel, formerly a plush gambling casino and now the property of San Francisco Baptist Seminary. The small fundamentalist school purchased the 140-room hotel with a seven-acre tract of land for $125,000. Present plans call for using the property as a spiritual retreat and conference grounds. Seminary classes will continue to meet in a San Francisco church.

The Iowa Synod of the United Presbyterian Church is severing all ties with Parsons College. A resolution adopted by the synod charges that the college “has chosen to take a direction not compatible with the Church’s concept of higher education in a church-related context.”

Next January 5, the Rev. Amos B. Barton will be inaugurated president of Judson College, an American Baptist school in Elgin, Illinois. Barton will succeed Benjamin P. Browne, who will assume a newly created post of chancellor.

Ground was broken on a 562-acre tract which will be the campus for the proposed new Atlanta Baptist College. It is located some twelve miles from downtown Atlanta. A 2.2-million-dollar building program has been launched. Officials hope to enroll a freshman class possibly as early as next September.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Contrasting climates in China, Soviet Union reflect their ideological rift

The split between the Soviet Union and Communist China, which brought bitter new recriminations this month, has its counterpart in their religious climates.

In the Soviet Union, there is just enough freedom that members of the two largest religious groups—Orthodox and Baptist—dare to challenge the government and government-approved religious leaders and call publicly for true liberty.

In paranoid, increasingly militant China, persecution of Christians is reaching new heights, threatening to drive completely underground the faith that claimed five million adherents before the 1949 Red take-over.

As if to underscore the relation of the two trends, the same super-Communist youth element that demonstrated against Soviet policies late last month also attacked the major Roman Catholic and Protestant churches remaining in Peking.

At South Cathedral, center of Catholicism in the capital city, rioters brushed black over paintings of Jesus and various saints, broke windows and statuary, and pasted anti-bourgeois slogans on the walls. Along with similar posters and banners at the Protestant church, the youths rearranged the sanctuary to center on a bigger-than-life bust of Communist Party chief Mao Tse-tung, Reuters reported.

Excerpt From Soviet Baptist Petition

“It is not an accident that [Article 124 of the Constitution of the U.S.S.R.] is powerless, because it was purposely made that way. It was not such at the beginning but, having been amended twice, its democratic character was degraded and it came to us already degraded and powerless.…

“The amendment of the provision, insignificant at first, gave the opportunity to carry out the program of mass repression. In the effect, thousands of believers perished. They died in masses in prisons and camps. In vain did their children, wives, and relatives wait; they will never know where their dear ones’ ashes lay to rest. Only God knows where their brotherly mass graves are.

“Could one say that all these horrors have passed? No. The crime has not ended. It continues. And here is a living evidence of it: At this time, as you are reading our petition, at the very same time, hundreds of the believers, illegally deprived of their liberties, are in prisons, camps and places of deportation, and several died as martyrs. Children have been taken away from the believing mothers; thousands of Evangelical Christian Baptist communities are outlawed; their meetings take place in private homes which have room for some 25 to 30 per cent of the community members; in addition, and under such conditions, the believers cannot peacefully assemble, because, very often, the meetings of the believers are broken up by the militia and members of brigades, and the houses are taken away.…”

(Translation by the Library of Congress)

The attacks by so-called Red Guards, apparently with official blessing, were part of the new campaign to purge China of any vestige of foreign influence (see editorial, page 29).

Reports that the government had ordered the closing of all churches coincided with the sacking of the major Catholic church in Canton. Police also shut Peking’s Sacred Heart Academy, the last Christian school in the nation, which instructed diplomats’ children. This month eight aged nuns who taught there crossed the border into Hong Kong, accompanied by taunts from a mob of 800 Red Guards. One of the nuns died soon after reaching freedom.

Hopes for moderation are dimmed by the apparent rise of Defense Minister Lin Piao to the number-two position behind Mao. He wrote the 18,000-word military manifesto last year, considered the major blueprint for Chinese world conquest.

The current Soviet scene is similar, on the surface. A teachers’ magazine last month revealed the jailing of six Baptists for baptizing forty youths in the River Don near Rostov the day after May Day, including a girl convert from the Young Communist League. They were also convicted of running a Sunday school, which is illegal under a new law designed to hinder Baptists.

Vladimir Kuroyedov, chairman of the Commission on Religious Affairs, denied there is persecution but criticized the Rostov group, which has broken from the officially sanctioned All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. The council represents more than half a million members from its handsome headquarters in Moscow. The Rev. Alexander Karev, general secretary of the official Baptist Union, admitted existence of a splinter group but said that it was small and fanatical, and that his Baptists disapprove of it.

This confirmed other reports of a Baptist underground. This week the National Council of Churches’ Religion in Communist Dominated Areas (a biweekly newsletter) will reprint an Izvestia report on dissident Baptists in Mtsensk, 125 miles south of Moscow, who were persecuted because a member committed murder.

The Red reporter defends the Baptists against charges that they practice ritual mass murder, an old wives’ tale also aimed at Soviet Jews. But he laments local authorities’ “strange and unforgivable inertia” in handling the Baptists.

The Mtsensk group, identified with those who broke with the Baptist Union, petitioned authorities to call a national congress to depose current Baptist leaders and to stop school and government from interfering with religious education.

A similar appeal for civil liberties appears in a letter from two officials of the “Organizing Committee of Evangelical Christian Baptists” to officials revising the Soviet constitution. The remarkable letter, printed in New York’s Russian-language daily Novoye Russkoye Slovo last month, was written in April, 1965, eight months before a similar, previously publicized letter from Orthodox priests unhappy with their hierarchy (see previous issue, pages 56, 57).

The Baptists open by quoting Isaiah 10:1–2, then build a legal case for church-state separation based on writings of Lenin, the original Red Constitution and early Bolshevik policies (during years when evangelicalism achieved great growth in the U.S.S.R.), and the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was signed by the Soviet Union. The Baptists charge continuing persecution (see text below).

Reports on persecution in China differ. The August 28 Christian Century carries a glowing news report of a 1964 trip to China when Anglican Bishop Ting Kuan-Hsun told a guest, “All religious bodies enjoy complete freedom in running their own affairs.”

But the National Council of Churches’ Asia expert, Religious News Service, and the Scottish Episcopal journal SCAN provide extensive reports on severe limitations on the estimated 700,000 Chinese Protestants, including imprisonments, church and school closings, and a tight ban on Christian education and evangelistic preaching.

Norway: Church-State Shift?

This fall, Norway’s Storting (parliament) considers a new law that would change church-state relations for the first time since 1891.

The proposal would change the age at which a person—with or without parental consent—may transfer membership from the Lutheran state church. It also would grant national tax money to every officially registered denomination, based on the number of members over 18.

The proposal, which is causing great discussion among Norwegian churchmen, also would allow non-Lutherans to teach religion in public schools if their churches hold the same major doctrines as the state church. The proposal would void the present requirement that public school administrators be Lutherans.

Under the 1891 law, still in effect, persons under 15 may not leave the state church. The new law would permit persons 14 to 18 to leave the state church with the consent of one parent and persons under 14 to change with the consent of both parents.

Free-church leaders think 18 is too high a minimum age for transfer without permission, while Lutheran leaders generally favor the proposal.

Still Settling World War Ii

The United States government has paid religious and other non-profit organizations $60 million since 1963 for property destroyed or nationalized by foreign governments during World War II.

Claims from U. S. citizens are decided by the three-member Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, formed from out of two other agencies back in 1954.

First Baptist Jail

Lonnie Shull, Jr., a South Carolina pastor, will feel right at home if he lands behind bars. Now that his First Baptist Church has decided to sell its outgrown building to the town government, the old sanctuary will become the new jail. The rest of the centrally located building will serve as city hall and fire station.

Baptist Press reports Police Chief Herman Curtis hopes to see the preacher come back a lot—“to visit and counsel with the prisoners, of course.”

Oh yes—the town is Liberty, South Carolina.

The $60 million involves forty-two claims from large American groups, including losses to numerous individual missionaries and some damage to mission hospitals and schools. Payments have been almost evenly divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic organizations.

In all, the commission has processed 600,000 claims, and has approved two-thirds of them for total payments exceeding half a billion dollars. The money comes from war claims paid to the United States by foreign countries and from foreign assets in the United States seized by the federal government during the war.

Pointing The Way. Churches And Other Institutions In Washington, D. C., Are Entitled To Directional Signs Such As The One Above For $30 Each With A Limit Of Two Per Customer. They Are Uniformly Green And White, Similar To Street Signs, And Serve To Reduce Roadside Clutter (No Other Kind Of Sign Is Permitted On Public Space).

Warning On Church Homes

From the floor of the U. S. Senate last month came a word of caution to churches that get mixed up with homes for the aged. Republican Senator John J. Williams of Delaware said many churches become victims of promoters who chalk up big profits by making the congregations think they are providing homes for senior citizens. The promoters induce churches to accept 100 per cent financing from the federal government, collect a fat fee for setting up a home, then pull out without worrying about who will pay back the money.

Unfair Competition?

Churches and other tax-exempt organizations are buying more and more businesses these days, and Uncle Sam proposes to put a stop to the practice. The U. S. Treasury is backing bipartisan legislation to end the tax advantage in the sale of businesses to tax-exempt groups.

A Treasury official told the House Ways and Means Committee last month that unless corrective legislation is enacted, there may be a “substantial shift” of ownership of income-producing property to tax-exempt organizations. He warned that some tax-free groups are in fact advertising that they are in the market to buy up business enterprises.

Experts trace the pattern to a loophole cited by a 1965 Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that under present law a non-profit group can buy a business and run it and both the buyer and the previous owner can benefit from the special tax advantage afforded the tax-exempt buyer.

No Religious Census

Questions on religion are unlikely in the 1970 U. S. census, according to Religious News Service.

Census director A. Ross Eckler was quoted as saying that opposition has been strong. He told a House subcommittee last month that opponents of religious questioning had warned that it constituted invasion of religious freedom.

Bishop Paul F. Tanner, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, told the subcommittee that information obtained on religion would “serve a valuable purpose.” He recommended that replies to questions on religion be made voluntary.

Tanner’s testimony disputed Eckler’s in that the churchman said a public-opinion poll agency had found practically no resentment toward census religious questions.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Editors of nine major Protestant journals will meet in Philadelphia September 30 as part of a significant ecumenical turn in the church press.

So far, the journals have traded advance information on upcoming articles, have shared articles when others are interested, and have joined to commission several articles. Plans are in the hopper to form inter-staff teams for special reporting assignments.

Their informal cooperative venture, called Interchurch Features, is the brainchild of Robert Cadigan, veteran editor of America’s biggest denominational magazine, Presbyterian Life (United Presbyterian Church).

The development is a natural result of the ecumenical movement and the Consultation on Church Union. The group consists of the general-circulation magazines of the COCU denominations, minus those of the two Negro bodies, which have much smaller budgets, plus the Lutheran (Lutheran Church in America) and the United Church Observer (United Church of Canada). Presbyterian Survey was added last spring after the Presbyterian Church U. S. (Southern) joined COCU.

Cooperation is also a way the leaders can counter the lethargy in denominational journalism. Many church journals are just managing to hold their own in circulation and advertising lineage. Some are slipping noticeably.

Interchurch Features Circulation

“It’s because we’re raising tough issues, which get people irritated,” says the Episcopalian’s Henry McCorkle. But he points out another problem: the big, rich secular magazines are increasingly getting into religion and competing with church journals. They are pouring money into major feature stories on Christianity and moral issues, and so the average church member says, “I saw an article by so-and-so in the Saturday Evening Post. Why wasn’t it in the Episcopalian?”

The reason is usually money. McCorkle says, “the big slicks spend more on editorial promotion in a year than our entire budget.” Financial realities started cooperative ventures such as the Interfaith Group in advertising prior to editorial sharing.

If denominational magazines pool their resources, they can move from what Cadigan calls “tipping the writer” to lining up top professionals and paying them $1,000 plus expenses. And if the piece runs in all nine publications, the potential audience will be 3.6 million, which compares favorably with that of the secular giants.

So far, the copy-sharing has been more limited, mainly bilateral agreements. The biggest project in print so far was a spring series on COCU in advance of the annual meeting. Not all the journals carried the series, and some that did dropped part of it.

To Cadigan, the significance of the arrangement is that “nine editors have concluded that they are not in competition with each other, and have no reason to hold back on one another and every reason to share.” There is very little overlap in their circulations.

The sharing dates back to 1960, when McCorkle left as managing editor of Presbyterian Life to become the first editor of the Episcopalian. The ties between the two Philadelphia-based magazines were natural and soon another local editor, G. Elson Ruff of the Lutheran, became part of the circle.

In summer, 1965, Cadigan realized “we all had to say something about church union” and hosted editors from the six COCU denominations, plus A. C. Forrest of the Observer from Canada, and Ruff. The result was Inter-church Features, a syndicate without any bank or bylaws. The same group met at the Associated Church Press convention in St. Louis and two other times prior to this month’s get-together.

Editors send lists of what they plan to publish to one another, and can ask to see photocopies of items they are interested in. They can then arrange for simultaneous or later printing, with payment determined by the magazine that developed the article. An example was Presbyterian Life’s series on Vatican II by Robert McAfee Brown.

In a variation on this, the Episcopalian arranged with the publisher for excerpts from the new book Letters of C. S. Lewis. The magazine then offered the idea to the eight other members, and some proceeded to make their own reprint arrangements.

Interchurch Features has two other commissioned projects now in process. William Lee Miller of Yale Divinity School is doing a roundup of church involvement in anti-poverty programs. A second feature will deal with abortion laws. Most of the magazines contributed to the pool on these, but each will decide on its own whether to use the copy. A future possibility is writer-photographer teams drawn from several magazine staffs to take a thorough look at an ecumenical inner-city project.

Asked what other magazines might be joining, Cadigan said, “We haven’t nominated anybody else. It should not be so large that it’s unwieldly.”

McCorkle said the three Philadelphia magazines had more flexibility than the nine. But he hopes the editors will increasingly get together through conference telephone calls for unified efforts to cover, for instance, fast-breaking racial developments.

Speed is becoming less important for some editors, however, such as J. Martin Bailey of the United Church Herald (United Church of Christ), which switched from biweekly to monthly publication this month. Bailey said that since radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers are improving their coverage of religion, “we are no longer the first purveyors of significant religious news.” Also, he says, people need church-in-the-world stories rather than old-style news of “ecclesiastical happenings.” Bailey will put the money saved by producing half as many issues into color and other design elements. (The Christian of the Disciples of Christ is the only weekly in the magazine group.)

The 37-year-old editor, who holds two journalism degrees, emphasized that the change will not affect his desire to produce “a forthright journal of liberal opinion.” He said some may hear of the format switch and think, “Well, they finally clamped down on Bailey.”

Church and Home, the Evangelical United Brethren biweekly, is the newest of the magazines in the group and is in the process of moving its offices from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Dayton, Ohio. But once it moves there, the magazine may disappear, since its denomination is on the verge of merger with The Methodist Church, whose big-circulation Together is a fellow member of Interchurch Features.

Cadigan believes that “the church press could be an advance agent of union rather than follow the churches.” But instead of merger and disappearance, he talks about having “some percentage of the magazines in common,” with the rest of the material prepared by denominational editors. Such improvements as instant delivery of written matter on tape will “make this mechanically easy within years,” he said.

McCorkle, at the risk of shudders from some of his colleagues, is willing to dream aloud about “a Christian newsweekly on the order of Time and Newsweek” that would incorporate the resources of various denominations merging into a union church. “There might even be a market for that prior to union,” he thinks.

The idea isn’t new. Cadigan recalled pipe dreams about a Protestant World two decades ago and, because of that experience, doubts such a magazine will appear. Stephen Rose has suggested an independent, non-denominational news-weekly in his Chicago journal, Renewal.

McCorkle doesn’t think a united church magazine would be a handmaiden to the denominational headquarters. “We are far more independent today than was the case ten or fifteen years ago.” He believes most church publications have gone beyond the “house organ” stage and are “specialized magazines,” serving a particular audience.

But the magazines’ economic dependence on church headquarters still presents a journalistic handicap. Commitment to COCU, for instance, is likely to make objective coverage of this preeminent story particularly difficult.

Church Beats E.U.B. In Court

When a local church quits its denomination, courts almost invariably hand property rights over to the denomination. The pattern was broken August 25 in the case of Faith Church in Santa Ana, California, which left the Evangelical United Brethren this year over ecumenical issues and went into the Evangelical Free Church.

EUB’s schismatic history includes lots of property suits, but the national denomination has always won, either at first or on appeal. This time Superior (county) Court Judge Lester Van Tatenhove ruled that EUB officials waited too long to assert their rights to the $200,000 Santa Ana property.

The EUB Discipline states that under trust provisions, the denomination owns the property, even when the actual deed is only in the name of the local church, as is the case with many EUB congregations.

Van Tatenhove, a Presbyterian, noted that the EUB made no move to enforce its rights until Faith Church had paid off all its mortgages. He said EUB officials should have known the congregation “did not, and did not intend to, submit their property to control by the denomination.”

District Superintendent O. E. Schafer said, “I am amazed that the judge overlooked all the church law involved.” He considers the ruling a “purely technical matter.” An appeal attempt is likely to be launched by California Conference executives this month. Lawyer John Moody, an EUB member in San Diego, is confident the Van Tatenhove decision, which “totally ignored what we fought out in court for five weeks,” will be overruled.

Most cases involve a majority vote for pull-out, while a minority asserts its rights to hold the property and remain loyal to the denomination. Even in congregational systems, the courts side with the denomination. (For a followup on the classic Wichita Baptist case, see July 30, 1965, issue, page 47.)

But Faith Church claims that 100 per cent of its members—active and inactive—wanted to quit the EUB. The rationale was set forth in thirty-nine whereases addressed to the state conference in March, 1965. The church listed complaints about modernism, said it had opposed the 1946 merger of its parent denomination (United Brethren in Christ) into the EUB, attacked the National Council of Churches, and shuddered over the pending merger with The Methodist Church, on which the EUB national conference votes this November.

Schafer says the latter argument is “beside the point,” since the EUB-Methodist merger hasn’t been “consummated.” In fact, the California Conference is fighting the merger.

The state conference decided to turn down Faith Church’s petition for withdrawal and replaced the church’s pastor of ten years, Paul Alleman, with loyalist Ehrhardt Lang. After the ceremony in which Schafer and Moody presented Lang to the congregation, lay officials stood up and announced they were no longer EUBs. Faith Church eventually moved intact into the Evangelical Free Church.

After the lawsuit was launched this July, Alleman left for Denver, where he is candidating for a new pulpit. On September 25, the embattled church’s pulpit will be taken over by the Rev. Warren Wedan, a Free Churcher.

Despite the gain of 200 new members, Free Church District Superintendent Wallace Norling admits “we feel very awkward” and stresses that his denomination does not practice churchstealing. But if an independent congregation comes to the Free Church seeking a “broader fellowship” and agrees with its beliefs, he says, “we have no policy for excluding them.”

No matter what might happen to Lang et al. v. Faith Evangelical United Brethren Church et al. in the district Court of Appeals, the case has brought new attention to a big, silent ecumenical issue—legal rights to property. Despite discussion and dialogue, it is likely that many congregations in the Consultation on Church Union would prefer to stay outside if they wouldn’t lose their buildings. Organic union may be made, not by words, but by deeds.

An Interchurch Bible

A Bible designed for Protestants as well as Roman Catholics will be released this fall by Oxford University Press. The Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, originally produced for Protestants alone, will hereafter be published in an “ecumenical edition” with the imprimatur of Richard Cardinal Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston. It will probably be as close as Roman Catholic and Protestants have ever come to a common Bible.

The text of the Bible is that of the Revised Standard Version, which has been left intact. A paragraph has been incorporated into the foreword indicating that Cushing has granted an imprimatur (there will be no imprimatur page as such). Fourteen changes have been made in annotations to indicate Catholic options. They were drawn up in consultation with Catholic scholars. The Apocrypha appears as a virtual appendix following the New Testament.

J. D. Douglas

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Methodist theologian Albert Outler treated the eleventh World Methodist Conference in London last month to a satirical romp through “current theologizing and its vogue-ishness.” Included in his survey was what he called “the old orthodoxy,” which, far from vanishing, was growing and becoming increasingly articulate and reflective. “This is a world come of age, as every sophisticate knows,” exclaimed Outler in mock surprise. “Supernaturalism has had it, modern man is radically secular and has jettisoned his cargo of overbelief.… And yet the fundamentalists and conservatives refuse to roll over and play dead … insufferable cheek! Billy Graham makes at least as much of a dent in London as the Bishop of Woolwich has made.”

The Southern Methodist University scholar then gave a quizzical glance at the old neo-orthodoxy and decided it was doing well, before giving a zany account of “the noisiest beach-party on our stretch of it”—the new humanists who were having a ball, fascinating the journalists, and upsetting “the ecclesiastical lifeguards.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer came in for some rare criticism here as “that fortunate martyr who secularized the distinction the fundamentalists have always made between religion (n.g.!) and Christianity (O.K.!) and did not live to discover that real secularists … can dispense with Christianity as readily as religion (or rather more so).”

Bishop Fred Pierce Corson of Philadelphia, who as president of the World Methodist Council had earlier arrived in London for council and conference meetings, found heated discussion about a press report that attributed to him a prediction that Methodists and Roman Catholics would be considering a “definite” union plan by 1971. Corson said there had obviously been a “misunderstanding” over his remarks.

Speaking at the inaugural joint meeting, John Cardinal Heenan expressed joy that “no Christian body now feels happy to celebrate its great occasions in isolation.” Nevertheless, he made it clear that he did not consider most international conferences important, and suggested the danger that their multiplication might lead to “a neglect of pastoral action.”

One of the perils of ecumenism, continued Britain’s ranking Roman Catholic, was that “if too much time is spent in speculation there will be too little spent in preaching the Word of God.” People should be the first concern. “Christ gave the messengers of John the Baptist the formula for recognizing his church, ‘The poor have the Gospel preached to them’ (Matt. 11:5).” Dr. Heenan suggested that the conference theme, “God in Our World,” “should, of course, be ‘God in His World.’”

Dr. Harold Roberts, chairman of the Methodist committee negotiating with the Anglicans, echoed a note of uncritical enthusiasm about the progress of unity talks. He admitted that there were difficulties, although he was persuaded that these would be resolved in time if too much were not attempted at once. (The joint Anglican-Methodist negotiating committee is expected to publish an official report within the next few months.)

American delegates expressed privately to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter their misgivings about these current talks. They felt that British Methodism might be swallowed up in the larger Anglican body and lose its worldwide Methodist affiliations and its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers. But the delegates to the Methodist Youth Conference, meeting in Bath a week earlier, viewed things differently: they want future youth conferences to be ecumenical. “We as Methodists,” said a resolution they adopted, “are not interested in self-preservation of Methodism but in sharing our heritage with the whole Church of Christ.”

Is The Bishop A Swinger?

From last month’s world assembly of Methodists came the selection of a ten-member commission to meet in a dialogue with Roman Catholics. Bishop Corson’s presidential address warned, however, against plunging “headlong into a unity which is not fully comprehended.”

A curious sidelight on the meeting was the delivery by a postman of a small parcel that in large print was addressed to “The President, World Methodist Conference, Central Hall, Westminster, London (Swinging) England.” On the other side of the package was written, “Jesus Was Dynamic.”

The 3,000 delegates from more than fifty countries saw inducted as the new president of the World Methodist Council 61-year-old Bishop Odd Hagen. Now a Swedish citizen, Bishop Hagen was born in Norway and served several churches there before joining the faculty at Gothenburg’s Union Scandinavian School of Theology, where later he was principal till he became bishop in 1953.

A Right To Be Heard On Tongues

“If any voice has the right to be heard on glossolalia, it should be America’s oldest Pentecostal church,” stated Wade H. Horton, general executive of the Cleveland, Tennessee-based Church of God. Alarmed by the rise of “variant and immature voices,” the eighty-year-old denomination released its newest book on The Glossolalia Phenomenon at its biennial General Assembly in Memphis, August 10–15.

Introducing the book to the 15,000 delegates, Horton made reference to neo-Pentecostals with “perverted concepts concerning the operation and usage of glossolalia” and to older extremists within the movement “who are continually riding on the crest of a miracle … whose sensibilities are attuned to the sensational.”

“The purpose of this divine effusion is to propagate, prophesy, and preach the Gospel,” he contended.

Later General Secretary Ralph E. Williams reported, “We now have 727,000 members in all fifty states and seventy-two foreign countries.” During the past biennium 588 new churches were organized, bringing the total to 8,434.” Membership in the United States now totals 221,000 members in 3,464 churches, making it the nation’s third-largest Pentecostal body.

The assembly learned that a new “Metropolitan Evangelism Program” had achieved signal success in Boston, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities. “In eighteen months we have organized five new churches in Philadelphia, and two are already self-supporting. Previously, we had only one struggling church in that city,” said Walter R. Pettitt, director of home missions and evangelism.

Other reports of progress were that a new Indian school was planned for Gallup, New Mexico; that churches in the New England states had grown sufficiently to be divided and placed under the supervision of two overseers; and that seventy college students had been commissioned for summer-volunteer service in door-to-door evangelism in new areas.

G. A. Swanson, European servicemen’s director, told of nearly thirty local fellowships meeting on military bases, of the new Servicemen’s Center in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and of plans for centers to open soon in Japan and South Viet Nam.

In business sessions, the General Council, which is composed only of ordained ministers, struck down forty years of segregation in the denomination by dissolving the separate administration of its 166 Negro churches, eliminating Negro state superintendents, and removing all mentions of the word “colored” in its minutes and by-laws.

The new ruling stated, “Any reference to the separation of ethnic or racial groups in the Church of God is incongruent with the resolution on human rights passed at the 1964 General Assembly” in Dallas. The 1964 resolution defined integration as “the right to worship, vote, rest, eat, sleep, be educated, live and work on the same basis as other citizens.”

Other council sessions revealed an increased emphasis on education in the fast-growing church. Two years ago, Dr. R. Leonard Carroll was elected as an assistant general overseer—the first person with an earned doctorate to serve in that capacity. Now three of the four elected executive overseers have doctorates.

James L. Slay, field representative for world missions, remarked, “As a member of Pentecost for fifty-four years, I am glad that we have found that education and spirituality are not mutually exclusive.”

The council also authorized Lee College, largest Pentecostal college in the United States, to accept federal aid, if necessary, to finance a new $350,000 dormitory for its Cleveland campus. Nearly 1,000 students were enrolled last year.

And for the first time in the church’s history, an amendment reached the council floor urging that graduation from an accredited seminary be an alternative route to ordination, bypassing present age (twenty-five years) and experience (eight years) requirements. A strong minority spoke on behalf of the defeated proposal.

A National Laymen’s Board was created, with the power to make recommendations directly to the Executive Committee. Permission was given for the laity to attend General Council meetings as observers, and for the first time women were granted the right to vote in elections of local church councilmen and clerks.

“The majority of those attending this convention are laymen. I intend to accelerate the role of the laymen during my two years,” stated Dr. Charles W. Conn, 46, newly elected head of the denomination.

JAMES S. TINNEY

Programming Priorities

A five-year “Spiritual Advance” program was approved last month by delegates to the annual session of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in Redlands, California. It will focus the first year on personal evangelism, tithing, Bible reading, and interpretation of Sabbath (Saturday) observance. The conference, representing about 5,000 members, also reaffirmed a neutral policy on conscientious objection.

Trumpeting Christian Endeavor

A trumpet sounding no uncertain note echoed over Belfast Harbor as the liner “Devonia” sailed in. The trumpeter was a nineteen-year-old German nurse, and she was welcoming 1,000 of her compatriots to the fifteenth World Christian Endeavor Conference.

The conference, probably the greatest international religious gathering the Northern Ireland capital has ever known, attracted 3,000 delegates representing seventy-five countries.

The international youth movement, which began over fifty years ago in Portland, Maine, has been described by its president as “a vital display of ecumenicity at a level that makes an impact on people in the various churches.”

The five-day program included civic and governmental receptions, a pageant of the Youth of the Nations, a communion service in King’s Hall, and music from a 500-voice choir.

Prime Minister Terence O’Neill attended some of the conference meetings, and the Northern Ireland government helped convention planners by providing free bus transportation in the city for delegates.

Speakers for the services included Bishop Hanns Lilje of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany, author of In the Valley of the Shadow. The book tells of the horrors and hardships of imprisonment under the Nazi regime.

“The ideal church,” Lilje said, “does not exist and never has existed. Some day here or elsewhere it may exist; meanwhile, its members are members of the world also.… We ought not to speak of the failure of the Church; we should speak of the failure of Christians,” he said.

Clyde W. Meadows, one of two bishops in the small Church of the United Brethren in Christ, was re-elected president of the organization.

- More fromJ. D. Douglas

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, prime minister of the Republic of South Africa, rose from his desk in Parliament September 6 at 2 p.m., as corridor bells announced the opening of another session. At that instant, a man wearing a parliamentary messenger’s uniform emerged from the crowd and suddenly began stabbing Verwoerd with a six-inch blade. Before legislators could drag the assailant away, wounds that would prove fatal within minutes had been inflicted.

The immorality of Verwoerd’s death, most shocking assassination since that of President John F. Kennedy nearly three years ago, was almost overshadowed by the moral issue of racism which so characterized his life. Yet Dimitri Stafendis, the man accused as the assassin, was not part of South Africa’s oppressed black majority, but an immigrant of Greek descent from Portuguese Mozambique.

Early reports said Stafendis had complained that Verwoerd was doing too much for non-whites and not enough for “poor whites.” The 45-year-old bachelor was described as an avid Bible reader who repeatedly sought interpretation of divinely-sanctioned slayings in the Old Testament.

Verwoerd, who would have been 65 two days after the stabbing, was the son of a Dutch Reformed missionary who worshipped regularly at a Reformed church in Rondebosch, a suburb of the parliamentary city of Cape Town. He received significant support from the nine Reformed denominations, even though three of them belong to the World Council of Churches which has long opposed the apartheid (racial segregation) laws of the nation. His most visible antagonists were Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

The nation’s new leader will be chosen by Verwoerd’s Nationalist Party, which has a 3-to-1 majority in Parliament. A leading prospect was Justice Minister J. B. Vorster, 50, a man imprisoned for two years for pro-Nazi activities in World War II who implements the dizzying collection of segregation laws.

Verwoerd himself first achieved prominence as editor of Die Transvaler, organ of the then-minority Nationalists, as he backed Hitler to a degree and opposed South Africa’s participation in World War II.

The Nationalists assumed power in 1948, with Verwoerd as “minister of native affairs” and thus chief architect of apartheid.

The succeeding years made Verwoerd a symbol of political success through racism. His ideal was friendly but absolute separation of populations by race. The 12 million blacks would live on reservations that encompass 14 per cent of the nation’s land, while the 3.5 million whites held the rest. As part of this theory, he welcomed Chief Leabua Jonathan of Basutoland, all-black British protectorate within South Africa’s borders, four days before the assassination.

Under Verwoerd’s racial paternalism, millions were spent to make blacks stay apart. But economics tended to overcome this. Africa’s richest economy and need for low-priced labor caused thousands of blacks to pour into major cities.

Life for blacks under the policies Verwoerd created is hemmed in at all sides. Under the passbook system, a black needs various stamps to hold jobs, maintain residence, travel, or even live with his wife and children. Racial distinctions are based on as much geneology as can be mustered, plus superficial bases like kinkiness of hair or nose shape. Japanese (whose country is a major economic customer) are classed as “white” while East Indians are “Asians.” Stafendis might have heard that a Greek was recently refused entrance to the country because he had a deep sun tan.

In an August 26 cover story, Time characterized Verwoerd as “one of the ablest white leaders that Africa has ever produced. He has a photographic memory, an analytical mind and an endless capacity for work. He is a brilliant diplomat and an inventive politician.”

The full results of such abilities invested in the anachronistic cause of racial separation will only be known at the end of the current worldwide racial revolution.

Test For Voluntary Housing

Southerners returned to the U.S. Senate after Labor Day ready to filibuster the House-passed civil rights bill which includes federal compulsion for fair housing for Negroes.

For non-segregationists who have long given lip service to local, voluntary approaches to open housing, a key test begins this month in Chicago as churchmen, politicians, and businessmen implement a new racial accord.

The test is courtesy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 37, the charismatic Baptist clergymen who got city leaders to join a ten-point racial program August 26 after threatening to lead a march into the hostile, all-white suburb of Cicero. Some more militant than King marched anyway September 4; the day was ugly, but not bloody.

“To King, it’s religion. To a lot of others in the movement, religion doesn’t mean a darn thing,” said a reporter who has covered the Nobel Prize winner in the South and Chicago. Some spout strategy, the observer said, “but you need religion to get them into the streets.” And King got the ghetto, even though some conservative Negro pastors sat on their hands.

Many credit religious leaders as being the third force which brought King’s coalition and the city establishment together. Since 1963, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews have cooperated in the Conference on Religion and Race, chaired by Episcopal Bishop James Montgomery. Prominent in the daily diplomacy last month was sunglasses-wearing Catholic Archbishop John Patrick Cody, who was tempered by years in the New Orleans maelstrom.

Under the accord, the Conference is now responsible for education and direct action on Negro housing. Specifically, it will set up housing centers by the end of this month where suburban realtors and homeowners can come into the ghettos and meet Negro customers. In a 2½-month pilot version this spring, only seven families were placed, but conference housing director Howard Smith, 36, a United Church of Christ minister, thinks even that is significant. The new centers, unlike the earlier versions, will have paid staff, not volunteers.

Graham Daughter Weds

Anne Morrow Graham became the bride of dentist Daniel Milton Lotz in an evening ceremony September 2 at Gaither Chapel of Montreat, North Carolina, College. The wedding was performed by the fathers of the bridal couple. Anne is the nineteen-year-old daughter of evangelist Billy Graham. Lotz’s father is a Baptist pastor on Long Island.

The bride wore a gown of candlelight peau de soie with a portrait neckline, long sleeves, and chapel train. Her full length mantilla was of Alencon lace. She carried a bouquet of white spray orchids and stephanotis.

The couple plans to live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Lotz, 29, is a six-foot-six-inch former basketball star at the University of North Carolina.

VIRGINIA SOMERVILLE

‘Minister Of Community Outreach’

A pair of Roman Catholic priests joined Protestant clergymen of five denominations to lay hands on American Baptist Ted Adams in Oakland, California, last month. Adams, 26, is a white member of the predominantly Negro Church of the Good Shepherd, affiliated with the American Baptist Convention. His first assignment will be as “minister of community outreach” for the new-this-year North Oakland Christian Parish.

The parish is an interdenominational, socially oriented effort operating out of a rented storefront. Its ministry is described as dealing in education of the poor, police-community relations, anti-poverty programs, welfare rights, minority employment, and low-income housing. Adams is given the role of “troubleshooter” in community social crises, as well as investigator of social complaints, group-action organizer, and ecumenical liaison man.

Parish spokesmen list among parish accomplishments so far the establishment of a “North Oakland Service Center” to draw federal funds through the anti-poverty program. The center’s announced aim is to look after fair city housing code enforcement and adjustment within parish boundaries.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Is Cassius A Clergyman?

A New York lawyer who fought for hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses seeking draft deferments as conscientious objectors during World War II is now masterminding a similar legal battle in behalf of boxer Cassius Clay. While Clay was preparing to defend his heavyweight championship against Karl Mildenberger September 10 in Frankfurt, Germany, lawyer Hayden Covington announced a new strategy: Clay would ask to be excused from military service on grounds that he is a Black Muslim minister.

“This man has pursued the ministry of the Black Muslim faith since 1964,” said Covington.

He asserted that Clay, whose religious name is Muhammad Ali, was “appointed a field minister of the Muslim faith by Elijah Muhammad in 1964. He wasn’t ordained, as such, because that isn’t part of his faith.”

Clay has also sought deferment as a conscientious objector. But getting a deferment on those grounds would mean a two-year stint in service as a noncombatant or two years in civilian humanitarian employment. If Clay wins deferment as a clergyman he will be exempt from all obligations—and free to continue his lucrative boxing career uninterrupted.

Joseph Richard Sizoo

Joseph Richard Sizoo, one of America’s best-known clergymen and a highly acclaimed preacher, died last month at the age of 81.

Since 1952 Sizoo had occupied the chair of religion at George Washington University in Washington, D. C. He achieved prominence before that, first as pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in the capital, then of the Collegiate Reformed Church of St. Nicholas in New York City.

Sizoo was stricken with a heart attack in the vestry of Manhattan’s Brick Presbyterian Church moments after he had finished a guest sermon there on “How to Handle Doubt.” A doctor was summoned from the congregation, but the clergyman was pronounced dead on arrival at Doctors Hospital.

The Holland-born Sizoo also served for a time as president of New Brunswick (New Jersey) Theological Seminary and as a vice-president of the old Federal Council of Churches.

Other Deaths

ELMER T. CLARK, 79, World War I correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune who became 14-year editor of World Outlook and secretary of the World Methodist Council; credited with helping raise more than $100 million for Methodism; in Birmingham, Alabama, of a coronary attack.

LIONEL A. HUNT, 62, Canadian electrical engineer who led children’s evangelistic rallies part-time for 22 years, and full-time since 1956; in Toronto.

LEYMON W. KETCHAM, 51, director of development for Gordon College and Divinity School; in Boston, of cancer.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The Church In American Society

Religion and Society in Tension, by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (Rand McNally, 1965, 316 pp. $6), is reviewed by $. Richey Kamm, professor of history and social science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

If a book can be both valuable and ambiguous, this volume is just that. It is valuable for its studied attempt to revive the scientific study of religion as a social phenomenon in American society. Viewed from this perspective, the early chapters dealing with conceptual problems in the social-science approach to religion as a social phenomenon are invaluable.

The ambiguities of the volume arise out of this studied attempt to follow a behavioral approach to scientific study. The use of the term “religion” suggests a concept of universal cognition. Actually, the authors indicate near the close of the volume that they have been concerned primarily with Christianity as practiced in America, an admission amply borne out by the data presented throughout the fifteen chapters of the study. The title is ambiguous in that it suggests a study of conflict between religion and social institutions. The entire thrust of the study is to show that, contrary to expectation, little tension exists between the organized church and American society.

The general reader will be most interested in Parts II, III, and IV, in which the authors seek to describe: 1) the role that the Church plays in American society and the internal tensions that characterize its institutional existence; 2) the role of the Church in social and political change in Western society; and 3) the tension between those committed to a religious framework of thought and those devoted to scientific inquiry in American communities.

Evangelical Protestants will not be surprised to learn that the major denominations are “undergoing a transformation of their theology towards an increasingly less orthodox and more secularized faith” (p. 84). Some evangelicals may be surprised to be informed that articulate groups of orthodox believers continue to remain in most of the major denominations. They will find their observations about the growing decline of Christian values in American culture increasingly confirmed by these studies. They will be forced to admit, however, that they share with their less orthodox brethren common problems concerning the role of the parish church and the work of its pastor.

The wide spectrum of theological belief now tolerated within most of the major denominations raises serious questions about the future of Protestant Christianity in America. The “New Denominationalism,” as the authors term it, fragments the very core of the Christian perspective. The pattern of belief is so diverse that to use the term “Protestant” as indicative of a unified religious viewpoint is to “spin statistical fiction.” The implications of such findings for the current ecumenical movement are intensely provocative.

The prophetic role of the Christian Church in society, conclude the authors, has largely given way to one of peacekeeping. This shift of institutional role from transforming agent to conserving institution has made it necessary for advocates of change to renounce church affiliation and to embrace one or more of the modern ideologies that seek to implement change. The evidence cited in this study in support of this generalization is the least acceptable of any given in support of pertinent findings. The strongest support for the contention that leadership in social reform has passed from the organized church is more clearly inferred from the concluding observation of chapter 14, which identifies the scientific scholar as the cultural hero—“the presiding genius of progress.”

Evangelical Protestants will be inclined to reject the general thesis laid down in this study; that religious experience is socially conditioned. They are too well schooled in the importance of historical forces and group tradition to accept the environmental explanation without qualification. Yet informed evangelicals will welcome the effort of Professors Glock and Stark to enlarge the theory of deprivation as the basis of religious group origins to include philosophical and doctrinal issues.

The concluding observation—that the growth of the scientific outlook, both natural and social, tends to restrict the role of organized religion—may be alarming at first reading. Religious leaders will do well, however, to recognize this state of mind in American society and plan their program of evangelization and church extension in the light of it. The authors of this study decline to be pessimistic about the future role of the Church. For, say they, if social science seems to narrow the role of free will in the life of a man or a woman, the very challenge that this presents to the Christian Church opens the way for a clearer understanding of the work of God in the life of men.

S. RICHEY KAMM

Catholic Scholarship’S New Look

Introduction to the New Testament, edited by A. Robert and A. Feuillet (Desclee, 1965, 912 pp., $15.75), is reviewed by Charles B. Cousar, professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

Protestants are naturally interested in the revival of biblical studies going on within the Roman Catholic Church, a revival that is an exciting feature of the “new look” of that communion. Are Catholic biblical scholars taking seriously the work of their Protestant counterparts? What relation do they have to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and its pronouncements? What do Protestants have to learn from them? Some answers are offered in this translation from the French of Introduction to the New Testament, which was edited by A. Robert and A. Feuillet and represents the best scholars of the French-speaking Catholic world (such as A. Tricot, X. Leon-Dufour, L. Cerfaux, J. Cambier, M. E. Boismard, and J. Bonsirven).

The book follows the usual format of New Testament introductions, with the added feature of a 150-page “conclusion,” which in effect turns out to be a rather full statement of New Testament theology (though the authors disclaim such a grand description). Each section of the book is preceded by a brief but helpful bibliography covering a wide area of concern, nationally, theologically, and ecclesiastically.

Leon-Dufour’s work on the Synoptic Gospels shows an amazing breadth and depth. A master at surveying varying positions, he deals appreciatively but discerningly with the work of the form critics and those seeking to solve the problem of literary dependence. He himself, however, offers a via media to the extremes of “everything is the effect of oral tradition” and “it is all the result of literary dependence.” He suggests that there was first a crystallized oral tradition that was systematized into written form as Aramaic Matthew. The authors of Greek Matthew (not a translation but an “adaptation of an Aramaic original”), Mark, and Luke had access to this source, which accounts for their similarities. Yet each also gleaned from oral traditions that had been modified in the various communities of origin, a fact accounting for the Gospels’ differences.

Such a position tends to downplay literary dependence and to emphasize the place of the community in transmitting and interpreting the data. Leon-Dufour has obviously learned his lesson well from the form critics. For him, however, the community turns out to be the holy Mother Church, which prevents any serious deformation of the original traditions.

Despite the clumsiness of the translation at times, the survey of the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds by A. Tricot, the study of Hebrews by J. Cambier, and the work on John by A. Feuillet and M. E. Boismard make this a book to stand beside Wiken-hauser’s as a major contribution to New Testament history and criticism.

CHARLES B. COUSAR

Jungle Church Planting

The Condor of the Jungle, by C. Peter Wagner and Joseph S. McCullough (Revell, 1966, 158 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Donald McGavran, dean, School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This highly readable story tells of Walter Herron, an effective and colorful missionary who first went to Bolivia in 1933, lived a life packed with adventure, service, and achievement, was awarded “The Condor of the Andes” medal by the Government of Bolivia for his untiring humanitarian services, and in 1964 died in the line of duty. He worked in El Beni, the Amazon jungle that comprises the northeast quarter of Bolivia. Here this church planter and evangelist also established a leprosy colony and commended Christ to the leaders of the land.

The authors have written with enough detail to make their characters live. Circ*mstances of evangelical mission work in the frontier lands of Latin America, clashes of personality, and dangers of fire and wild beast, flood and fanaticism, are related vividly. Yet frustration, routine, and defeats provide the contrasting background needed to present a true picture.

Walter Herron, a dedicated Christian who trusted God, and loved the Word, wrote, “To reach these people of the Beni means suffering and sacrifice, but we who are soldiers of the King of Kings, must get to them with the Word of God.” He learned to see a fatherly providence in reversals and delays, tragedies and death. He won hundreds of souls to Christ and planted eight churches.

Herron was a pioneer and expert flyer whose planes added stature to his service. His courage and kindliness, his selflessness and good sense shine through the whole story. Here is a moving saga of missions. Read it with pleasure and give it to young men deciding how to invest their lives. It will kindle a responsive flame in many readers.

DONALD MCGAVRAN

Does Morality Require Autonomy?

A Defence of Theological Ethics, by G. F. Woods (Cambridge, 1966, 136 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The author, professor of divinity at the University of London, addresses himself to a carefully restricted aim. Without going into metaphysics or theology, he considers only the moral challenge to Christianity. The challenge is that morality requires the autonomy of ethics, the autonomy of the moral agent, and is therefore inconsistent with the existence of God, or at least with the ideas of grace and immortality.

Toward the end of the book Mr. Woods makes the excellent point that secular ethics cannot explain the disappearance of autonomy in those cases where we know what we ought to do but have not the power to do it. Autonomy is also curtailed when we are unable to discover what we ought to do. These facts of experience are secularism’s great weakness.

Furthermore, the author defends ethics against the charge that the reward of a future life is immoral. Unfortunately, this section is a bit awkward, because Woods seems to agree with the secularists that morality must have no reward. He does a little better with the idea of grace as the creative, recreative, perfecting will of God.

By way of criticism: determination to keep the discussion within narrow limits allows the author to waste seventy-five pages warning us of the dangers of analogical language—a moral standard is neither a standing flagpole nor a literal yardstick. All this is as useless as it is obviously true. The same narrow limits prevent him from doing more than suggesting that theism is a more promising thesis than secularism. The main issues are not substantially considered.

GORDON H. CLARK

The Reality Of The Resurrection

Easter Faith and History, by Daniel P. Fuller (Eerdmans, 1965, 279 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John H. Rodgers, Jr., assistant professor of systematic theology, Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, Alexandria.

This book is difficult to review because of its comprehensiveness. First, there is an original study on the purpose of Luke in writing Acts. Since this book was also a doctoral dissertation in the field of New Testament, the reader can be assured that here he will find serious and significant New Testament exegesis (see chapter 7).

Second, Dr. Fuller presents a long section on the exegetical-dogmatic treatment of the role of historical evidence in theological argumentation as it has centered in the resurrection of Jesus. This covers the period from the Enlightenment to the most recent theological writings (see chapters 1–7) and shows an almost incredible amount of research by the author.

Third, there is the author’s overarching purpose, which is present in his critical and constructive remarks throughout the book and which comes to fulfillment and summary statement in the last chapter (8). The thesis of the book is that by starting with the historical evidence supplied by Luke in Acts, one can provide a logically compelling argument for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus by God the Father that only a fool or one in the grips of sinful blindness could refuse, and only at the price of irrationality. This is ultimately an apologetic concern.

Thus the author has put us in his debt in three areas: New Testament exegesis, theological methodology, and apologetics. I will attempt to make a few remarks about each of these areas.

First, in his exegetical work in Luke, the author contends that the five major emphases of Acts disclosed by both older and modern scholarship need to be related to one basic purpose in the mind of Luke, and that precisely here most recent interpretations of Luke fail, especially with regard to the purpose of chapters 20 to 28. The author believes that his interpretation of Luke explains his purpose better than any other yet advanced. What is this purpose? It is to give later Christians assurance of the resurrection of Jesus by showing that the Gentile mission as carried out by Paul, a Pharisee, and agreed to by Peter (both were good Jews) could not be explained by any other factor than the actual resurrection of Jesus and the presence in the Spirit of the Risen Lord. Thus the ongoing Gentile mission is the fulfillment of the resurrection and leads to “certainty” of Jesus’ resurrection. A careful reading of the prologue to Luke’s Gospel substantiates this in the mind of the author.

Whether or not the reader is convinced by all of Fuller’s position, he will have to admit that the author has shed great light on Luke’s use of the resurrection in Acts 20 to 28. I feel that Fuller’s position is somewhat restrictive and anachronistic. I wonder whether for Luke, who did not yet face Lessing’s “ugly ditch,” the certainty of which he spoke in the prologue did not refer to a firm, accurate account of the historical events of the ministry, life and death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and to the events of God’s working in the early Church, more than to a proof of the resurrection. Did Luke even feel he needed to prove the resurrection of Jesus? Resurrection was not the problem then that it is in our naturalistic age. Also, I would like to see a fuller study of the Lukan use of the word “faith” to see whether it will bear the definition of resting in the rational evidences. A revised edition of this book might well include such a study.

Second, we can only be grateful to the author for his careful and well-presented survey of the theological, historical treatment of the resurrection of Jesus since the Enlightenment. This section alone is worth the price of the book.

However, I have two minor questions. First, why were the significant works of Adolph Schlatter, J. Gresham Machen, James Orr, and Walter Künneth omitted? If one is going to use historical investigation to justify the heavenly origin of Paul’s theology, who is more pertinent than Machen? And Orr’s study, The Resurrection of Jesus, is still of first importance, perhaps even more than ever now that naturalism is so strong.

My other question is whether the author is not too restrictive in his use of the phrase “no historical support.” Often the men considered allow historical evidence as part of the pattern of revelation, much like circ*mstantial evidence in a court of law. What the author should say to this is that they allow historical support but not compulsive proof. For example, two lawyers can argue from the same evidence in the light of different convictions or hypotheses about the guilt of the defendant. Each one seeks to “reveal” the truth.

Finally, while I agree with the author that the Christian reading of the biblical testimony to the resurrection of Jesus is literally true, I do not agree that faith rests solely upon empirical evidence. The empirical, historical data is part of a larger whole, of the Old and New Testament proclamation of the revelation of God that illuminates the evidence from a particular point of view. In my opinion, the historical evidence is a “sign” that points to and finds its true interpretation in Christian faith but does not rationally “compel” assent. Oliver Quick, in his book Doctrines of the Creed, has shown how a man can admit the adequacy of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and still not be a Christian nor even a theist.

I feel that Fuller moves toward this more broad epistemological basis for faith in God in Christ in the last part of chapter 7, when he discusses Barnabas. It was the changed life of Barnabas that gave credence to his Gospel. But this is no longer simple historical evidence. It implies some internal awareness on the part of those that saw Barnabas, and also a willingness not to let the disgraceful lives of some of those who professed faith in Christ destroy their faith in God’s revelation in Christ. (Please note that I have not attempted to reproduce the author’s arguments in these remarks.)

I consider this book a most significant study. It discloses the dogmatic air that so often accompanies a rejection of the resurrection of Jesus; it shows that much that claims to be new and advanced in contemporary theological skepticism is really “old hat,” repeated many times over; it shows that only a supernatural theism can do justice to the New Testament interpretation of the resurrection of Jesus; and it shows a new strand in the already strong historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

Yes, the evidence can be denied, but only by a dogmatic presupposition that “It couldn’t have happened.” And if the resurrection is accepted and interpreted in the light of the Old and New Testament testimony, cannot any man in repentant faith claim the promise that He will come and dwell within as Lord and Saviour? In the light of the Christ who indwells in the Spirit, the evidences glow as tokens and signs of God’s love and care, given at a cost beyond measure.

To read this book is to be refreshed and provoked to deeper thoughts. I recommend it highly.

JOHN H. RODGERS, JR.

No Concentric Circles

Circles of Faith: A Preface to the Study of the World’s Religions, by David G. Bradley (Abingdon, 1966, 240 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Leonard T. Wolcott, professor of missions, Scarritt College for Christian Workers, Nashville, Tennessee.

Are different religions merely different paths to the same ultimate truth? Can they be harmonized?

Many books on world religions are being published, and not a few of them are superficial “collections of ethnological curios.” Some lay a sentimental stress on apparent similarities in religions. In Circles of Faith Dr. David Bradley, professor of religion at Duke University, looks at the differences in world religions. Trained in biblical theology, Dr. Bradley ponders the basic concepts of his and other religions. Each religion has unique teachings whose uniqueness grows out of the presuppositions that are peculiar to each religion. “The basic axioms for each of these world views,” Bradley writes, “are irreconcilable with those of others.”

His thesis is that a person who tries to understand a religion other than his own tends to interpret it from his own “circle of faith,” to identify its concepts from the point of view of his own religion’s basic assumptions about God, man, the cosmos, salvation and so on. To correct this tendency, the author suggests that we attempt to understand the teachings of each religion in terms of that religion’s own “self-evident presuppositions.” In this “preface to the study of religion,” Bradley examines each major religion’s assumptions about God, salvation, ethics, and human destiny, as well as the “founders” and outreach of each religion. The “circles of faith” of different religions may partially overlap but they never coincide, since their centers differ widely. The larger overlappings are within the three groups: religions from biblical lands, religions of India, those native to China and Japan.

Such a brief study as this unavoidably oversimplifies its description of religious beliefs. This the author readily acknowledges. He does not examine the ramifications of basic religious ideas, nor the tendency among adherents of all religions to cling to primitive religious holdovers. He does not discuss the influence of modern secularism and syncretism on the circles of faith. Nor does he consider the possibility that many people’s basic religious assumptions may actually be closer to the normative circle of faith of some other religion than to the classic expressions of the religion with which the people are associated.

As a “preface to the study of religion,” however, the book is to be recommended as a companion to any textbook on world religions. It will serve as a useful corrective to the popular presentations of world religions as assorted pathways to one God. It will also stimulate a more careful evaluation by the reader of his own religious assumptions and of the true nature of each world religion.

Intercommunication with other religions can be found only, the author reminds us, as we honestly examine the deep differences that separate us from them and the presuppositions that make for these differences.

LEONARD T. WOLCOTT

The Pressures Of Confinement

Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, by Langdon Gilkey (Harper & Row, 1966, 242 pp., $4.95) is reviewed by Ernest Gordon, dean of the chapel, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

In this book Langdon Gilkey, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School, tells of his experiences in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. For 2½ years he lived in this prison compound along with 2,000 others—men, women, and children. Compared with Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, this compound was almost ideal. The administration was relaxed; the guards were not brutal; the rations, though meager by American standards, were adequate by most others; housing was crowded but not impossible; and tortures, enforced slave labor, and segregation of the sexes were not practiced. In so many ways it could have been the scene of a developing Christian community.

What marked this compound society as different from that of Main Street, U. S. A.? It was the awareness of confinement. Men are all confined, controlled, and circ*mscribed, but they seldom realize it. The author, in a quiet, reflective way, sees this particular circ*mstance of confinement as a laboratory for the study of human behavior. During his confinement he was able to keep a journal out of which he has constructed this book.

The way of life of the 2,000 internees was the way of life of all men, give a little and take a little. They acted in ways that were not particularly bad, yet not particularly good. They did what men do daily in prosperous society and think nothing of. The difference was that there and then in the Shantung Compound the evil was more noticeably evil and the good more noticeably good. The psychological avenues of escape were more limited. The situation was more consciously constant, and the conditions of confinement more evident. The question was thus more obvious: “How do men live in their confinement, their prisonhouse of freedom?”

The young American teacher who had been nourished on a diet of nineteenth-century liberalism and academic abstractions soon lost his faith in man as a reasonable, rational, and nearly divine being. He had to live with people as they are, and not as they appear to be in the mind of a dreaming idealist. He found his colleagues to be full of contradictions. They chose to do what suited their self-interest; yet at the same time they went to great lengths to justify the rightness of their deeds. The believer and the unbeliever were equally guilty. “Me first, at all times, and at all costs” was the unspoken slogan that controlled the compound, causing jealousy, hatred, and division.

The reader may well find himself asking what he would have done had he been there. What would he have done, for example, if his country had sent a large consignment of food parcels for U. S. citizens? Would he have urged that they be shared with those of other nationalities, or insisted that they be kept by the U. S. citizens for purely legal and moral reasons?

Young Gilkey learned that men have an enormous capacity for doing the wrong things for what they presume to be the right reasons. They lack, however, the capacity to do what they know to be right. Of this discovery St. Paul had already written with searching insight in Romans 7:7–25.

The understanding of the true nature of men indicated the wisdom of the rule of law, for by this rule men were saved from themselves and their own demonic freedom. Law democratically conceived and executed seemed to suggest part of the answer to the human contradiction. By the democratic process, men are reminded that those they blame for society’s ill are their elected men, representing them for what they are, both good and evil.

The compound, despite its need of law, was not without the signs of grace, grace that came illogically through unlikely agents. Along with the mysterious working of grace was the working of Providence—God present in creative power at unexpected times in strange situations to redeem the moments of human folly.

Perhaps Professor Gilkey could have told us a little more of the sacraments of grace and the distinction between the believer’s and the unbeliever’s understanding of them, or of the ways in which the missionaries witnessed redemptively to the leadership of Jesus Christ, or of the new understanding of sin and grace granted by the Gospel that in turn demonstrated the relevance of the Gospel to the human circ*mstance. But at least he has told us enough to help us realize that the Church must always be reforming and always relevant. The arrant individualism of Protestantism may have contributed greatly to the rise of economic affluence in the good old U. S. A., but it was conspicuously ineffective in the Shantung Compound. The Roman Catholic missionaries had more to offer the inmates of the compound in the matter of how to live as sinful people with sinful people. The communal discipline of the monks and their understanding of the life in common had a distinctly more Christian ring.

Professor Gilkey’s book is yet another dealing realistically with the authentic human situation as it is experienced in a compound of confinement. Perhaps one of these days our theologians will take such literature seriously and consider the claim of the transcendent God, who enables the prisoners of life to transcend the limitations of their imprisoning environment.

ERNEST GORDON

Inside The Religious Press

Across the Editor’s Desk: The Story of the State Baptist Papers, by Erwin L. McDonald (Broadman, 1966, 128 pp., $1.50), is reviewed by David E. Mason, associate director, Laubach Literacy, Inc., Syracuse, New York.

Erwin L. McDonald, able editor of the Arkansas Baptist Newsmagazine, opens the door and admits the reader to the inner circle of those who know the ins and outs of the religious press. Intimately, informally, and with gentle humor, the editor chats frankly about the joys and frustrations of his ministry.

Although Across the Editor’s Desk is specifically the story of the Southern Baptist state papers and magazines, its contents can be applied to the religious press as a whole. Beginning with the answer to “What does an editor do, anyhow?” the author proceeds to discuss criticism, readers’ expectations, and the past and future of the press.

Since there is a dearth of books on the religious press, this little volume is particularly welcome. The world is becoming smaller. Everyone’s concerns reach far beyond his local community, and so the function of the press is constantly expanding. Reaching beyond the limits of a local pulpit, the printed word can inspire, inform, and persuade a constantly growing “congregation.” In this informative book the author takes a subject that ordinarily would have limited reader interest and presents it in an interesting and inspiring manner. It can help both minister and layman respect and appreciate the press.

McDonald speaks forthrightly on a number of significant issues—particularly in his chapter “In Glass Houses,” where he discusses the handling of controversy. His style is fresh, light, and fast-moving. He has done an excellent job of selecting brief and pointed anecdotes to liven the text. The pace of the book slackens only in the latter chapters when he quotes freely from other editors and somewhat dilutes the force of his own stream of thought.

Across the Editor’s Desk is one of a series of books in the Broadman Readers Plan—a “book-of-the-month” type of program initiated by Broadman Press two years ago.

DAVID E. MASON

An Act Of God

The Meaning of Salvation, by E. M. B. Green (Westminster, 1966, 256 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by E. Earle Ellis, guest professor of New Testament, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

With the general Christian public in mind, the author examines a number of terms used to express the biblical writers’ views of salvation. He devotes two chapters to the Old Testament, two to the first-century world, and six to the New Testament. The volume concludes with an application of the biblical data to three current issues: spiritual healing, universalism, and the perseverance of the saints.

Michael Green, tutor and registrar of the London College of Divinity, is not only a writer but quite clearly a preacher as well. His competent and lucid survey is not infrequently combined with edifying commentary designed to make the biblical message come alive in modern idiom and practical application. Although Calvinists will question some of the theological presuppositions (e.g., pp. 234 ff.), one can heartily agree with the major thrust of the book. Salvation is the act of God in the context of history, dependent on neither works nor cult. Thus, also, there is “no justification whatever for the disjunction between the physical and the spiritual … that has long typified the Church doctrine of salvation” (p. 120).

Yet it is just here that the reader wonders whether these insights are always properly applied. Two examples of this may suffice.

First, Green rightly avoids a radical dichotomy between prophetic and apocalyptic strains in the Jewish hope of salvation. Nevertheless, following the schema of T. C. Vriezen, he at times associates future eschatology with a transcendental goal, a “life beyond,” divorced from time and history (pp. 102, 182 ff.). This leads him to the conclusion that for Paul “nakedness” (2 Cor. 5:3) was a disembodied existence from which he shrank but was, at the same time, “far better” (Phil. 1:23).

A second example may be found in the engaging topic, salvation and healing. Green has some good cautions to raise about the practice of healing in the Church today. Certainly he is correct in opposing the unthinking and unbiblical view that abstinence from medicine is an evidence of faith (p. 223). Certainly, too, Christ gives one Christian to be a “sign of the Cross” in sickness even as he gives another to be a “sign of the Resurrection” in healing: no Christian can choose either sign as his right. However, the author’s theme would have been better served had he accentuated the positive, the meaning of the Holy Spirit’s healing activity, e.g., as “the proleptic deliverance of the body” (Cullmann).

Despite such questions, however, this well-documented volume will be an informative addition to the library of pastor or student.

E. EARLE ELLIS

Work Or Vocation?

Theology of Work, by Edwin G. Kaiser, C.PP.S. (Newman, 1966, 522 pp., $10.50), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, editor, ‘Decision,’ Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This careful piece of scholarship, written within the framework of the Roman Catholic Church, provides a solid groundwork for a study of man’s work. The author distinguishes between work and labor and presents generally a Catholic picture of work as a virtuous undertaking of man, ordained by God, for the blessing of the social order.

There are some well-documented discussions of slavery, ancient and modern. The slave-owners’ total subordination of human considerations to economic necessity is starkly brought out. There are also important treatments of the strike problem, of automation, and of featherbedding. No easy solutions are offered, but heavy emphasis is placed upon the teaching of the papal encyclicals.

As a son of the Reformation, I am amazed that such a thoroughgoing study of the nature of man’s work could so completely ignore the concept of vocation. I realize that the vocatio in classic Roman theology is limited to the “religious,” but surely in recent years there has been a loosening of this rigid application.

The Reformation took the concept of God’s call to a life mission out of the monastery and released it to provide joy in a man’s daily stint, because in that stint the worker is called to serve and glorify God. There are a good many theological questions connected with the linking of work with vocatio, and there is need for a fresh restatement of the problem. But as long as work and vocation are separated, our understanding as Christians of the nature of man’s work remains impoverished.

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

Book Briefs

Facts and Faith, Volume 1: Reason, Science and Faith, by J. D. Thomas (Biblical Research Press, 1965, 302 pp., $4.95). A popular presentation prepared particularly for students.

A Comparative Study of the Old Testament Text in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament, by J. De Waard (E. J. Brill, 1965, 101 pp., 25 guilders, also Eerdmans, $10).

Preaching and Community, by Rudolf Bohren, translated by David E. Green (John Knox, 1965, 238 pp., $4.95). A stimulating and hard-hitting discussion of the nature and purpose of preaching.

God Beyond Doubt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion, by Geddes MacGregor (Lippincott, 1966, 240 pp., $3.95). An apologetic discussion of the reality of our experience of God; not always biblical but always provocative.

A Jew in Christian America, by Rabbi Arthur Gilbert (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 235 pp., $4.95). A warm, kindly, and eminently irenic discussion of Jewish and Christian beliefs and relationships.

A History of Christian Thought, Volume II, by Otto W. Heick (Fortress, 1966, 517 pp., $7.75). This extensive revision of J. L. Neve’s book will be of value to students of theology, especially Lutheran ones. Some readers will react to the “Christ died for all men reading of the Canons of Dort,” and T. F. Torrance will probably react to the book’s assertion that he died in 1913.

The Old Testament in Modern Research, by Herbert F. Hahn, with a Survey of Recent Literature, by Horace D. Hummel (Fortress, 1966, 332 pp., $2.75). An attempt to suggest the main trends of Old Testament research in order to show the effect of each approach upon the interpretation of Old Testament religious history.

A History of Early Christian Literature, by Edgar J. Goodspeed, revised and enlarged by Robert M. Grant (University of Chicago, 1966, 214 pp., $5.95). Recent discoveries and fresh studies of older works are used to advantage in this study of writings from the time of the New Testament through the early fourth-century Fathers.

Paperbacks

Composition and Corroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies, by Edwin Yamauchi (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 38 pp., $.75). An expanded revision of a paper read at the twentieth Annual Convention of the American Scientific Affiliation.

Take Hold of God and Pull: Moments in a College Chapel, by Calvin Seerveld (Trinity Pennyasheet Press, 1966, 173 pp., $2.50). Fresh and colorful devotional essays.

The Christian Confrontation with Shinto Nationalism, by Kun Sam Lee (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 270 pp., $3.75). An analysis of the history of Shintoism and its confrontation with Christianity.

Biblical Separation Defended: A Biblical Critique of Ten New Evangelical Arguments, by Gary C. Cohen (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 83 pp., $1.50). A critique of “cooperative evangelism,” specifically as defended in Robert O. Ferm’s Cooperative Evangelism: Is Billy Graham Right or Wrong?

A Manual of Simple Burial (Third Edition), by Ernest Morgan (Celo Press, 1966, 64 pp., $1). A discussion of the needs and problems of families at the time of death.

Charles Williams: A Critical Essay, by Mary McDermott Shideler (Eerdmans, 1966, 48 pp., $.85). A competent author deals with the extraordinary Williams.

Herbert W. Armstrong and the Radio Church of God, by Walter R. Martin (Christian Research Press, 1966, 31 pp., $.60). A critique of the theology of H. W. Armstrong’s Anglo-Israelite theology and an exposé of its errors and heresies.

God’s Truth Made Simple, by Mrs. Paul Friederichsen (Moody, 1966, 256 pp., $.89). Just what the title claims.

Marriage and Family Among Negroes, by Jessie Bernard (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 160 pp., $1.95). A study of the Negro family that will help to correct some current and widespread misconceptions about Negro family life.

Christianity and African Education: The Papers of a Conference at the University of Chicago, edited by R. Pierce Beaver (Eerdmans, 1966, 233 pp., $2.65).

Reprints

Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (Oxford, 1966, 412 pp., $7). A fine scholarly edition of John Bunyan’s two greatest works with a brief but enlightening introduction. Especially helpful are its indexes to the contents of these two enduring Christian classics. Its publication this year, the tercentenary of the first edition of Grace Abounding, is appropriate.