Page 5891 – Christianity Today (2024)

Trumpeting Some Good News

Listen to the Green, by Luci Shaw (Harold Shaw, 1971, 96 pp., paperback, $1.95), Six Days: An Anthology of Canadian Christian Poetry, edited by H. Houtman (Wedge [Box 10, Station L, Toronto 10, Ontario], 1971, 144 pp., paperback, $2.50), and Adam Among the Television Trees: An Anthology of Verse by Contemporary Christian Poets, edited by Virginia R. Mollenkott (Word, 1971, 218 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Elva McAllaster, poet-in-residence, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Good news. Good news. Good news for people who love poetry and love God—and for people who up to now have loved one but not the other. Books are appearing that Christians who like to use mind and imagination will be glad to know about.

Luci Shaw’s Listen to the Green is a tactile and visual delight even before one reads a line of its poetry: the graceful typography, clean spacing on a good quality of paper, and sensitively chosen photographs proclaim this to be a book to savor and keep, or to savor and give away, or both.

The poem titles announce a lithe, eclectic mind. The poems themselves reveal a close knowledge of Scripture, a wide-ranging responsiveness to human experience, a gleeful zest in wordcraft. Awkward touches are not totally absent, but a lovely precision of diction and careful authenticity of emotion are prevailingly present. The poem “Circles” alone is easily worth the price of the book: “I sing of circles, rounded things,/ apples and wreaths and wedding rings,/ and domes and spheres,/ and falling tears …”

Six Days seldom touches the excellence that Listen to the Green sustains, but it contains moments of ecstasy and affirmation and excitement in using words. It also contains creativity not yet under harness and rein: prosiness, murky meanings, distorted syntax trying to stand as profundity, capricious enjambment.

The eight contributors to Six Days speak with very different voices. Among them, clearly young David Toews (Goshen College, ’71) is a writer to listen for in the future. His writing is spare, experimental, compassionate, earnest. His tiny poem, “A Prophet, Maybe,” is worth pages of expository prose. Mat Cupido’s attractive black-and-white line drawings enhance both Canadian and Christian accents of Six Days’ voices.

Adam Among the Television Trees is a far more important anthology. Upon opening it, my first reaction was vexation with myself, that after seeing a published invitation to contributors, I never did find the minutes to ship Mrs. Mollenkott some of my own poems to consider. My second reaction: glee that I didn’t do so. Now, quite impartially, I can blow some trumpet fanfares for her book.

Here is a landmark among publishing events in the evangelical world. Here is a book that ought to be on coffee tables and in conversations in alert Christian homes all over America. (And why stop with the borders of America?)

Carefully defining her project as poems by self-affirmed Christian writers, Mrs. Mollenkott has brought together 201 poems she appreciates, by forty-one contemporary poets: older and younger, from many employments, and from many denominational labels, or none. To each writer, poetry is a genuinely important mode of expression for moments of experience that are genuinely important to him. Although the same might be said for hundreds of equally effective writers who are not represented here, it’s still true of these forty-one.

Some of the poems included are flawed, even badly flawed, but as a whole Adam Among the Television Trees is a book certainly worthy of Mrs. Mollenkott’s vigorous, well-trained, and experienced intellect. (She teaches English at Paterson, New Jersey, State College.) Deciding precisely what one dislikes about the weaker poems will be an immensely valuable exercise for readers at any level of poetic inexperience or poetic sophistication. Deciding precisely what one likes about the stronger poems: well, bring out the trumpets and sound the fanfares.

From The Crucible

Faith on Trial in Russia, by Michael Bourdeaux (Harper & Row, 1971, 192 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Paul D. Steeves, Ph.D. candidate in Russian history, University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Ten years have passed since the opening of a deep schism in the evangelical movement in Russia. This division has proven to be one of the most significant events of the sixties in Soviet society, for what began as a church reform movement has led, by direct and indirect influences, to a widespread civil-rights movement that reaches well beyond the confines of the believing population. Michael Bourdeaux tells the story of the reform movement in this splendid book.

In August, 1961, three Baptist believers, two of them laymen, organized an “Action Group” in a revolt against the national leadership of the so-called Baptist movement. (“Baptist” is a shorthand designation for the evangelicals of Russia, encompassing Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, Baptists, and Mennonites.) No substantive doctrinal matters were at issue; the Baptists of Russia are thoroughly committed to biblical orthodoxy. The question that divided the evangelicals was one of political relationships. The official Baptist leadership has consistently followed a policy of co-operation with the civil government. The Action Group rejected this policy and the men who represented it. Very quickly, support for the Action Group came from all over the U.S.S.R. Its adherents began to practice flagrant civil disobedience, for which many were arrested and sentenced.

The ordeals of the Baptist dissidents are detailed in a veritable flood of illegal documents that have poured into the West. Professor Bourdeaux has ably distilled these materials to produce a lucid, reliable account of a drama that has by no means concluded. The account includes verbatim court records, texts of dissenters’ petitions, and extracts from their literature. This material is the stuff of which sensational books are easily made. It must be said to his credit that Bourdeaux resists that temptation.

Unfortunately, Bourdeaux presents a tendentious picture of the tensions among Russia’s evangelicals. His sympathies obviously lie with the dissidents, and he shows too little sensitivity to the position of the legal Baptist leaders. He unfairly depicts them as dupes of the Communists. In his description of the formation of the legal Baptist council, Bourdeaux wrongly implies that the Communists found some faceless Baptists and turned them by fiat into executives of the church. He faults these leaders for not resisting the pressures placed on them by the Khrushchev anti-religious campaign, without facing realistically the alternatives confronting them. He prejudices the case against them by repeatedly asking of them an explanation for actions which he himself admits they took under duress and of which they have publicly repented.

It is lamentable that Bourdeaux makes no attempt to discuss the complex ethical questions of political collaboration by church leaders in the Soviet setting. He simply assumes that collaboration is cowardly and worthy of censure. It is the non-collaborators who are “brave” and “dedicated.” He has failed to explore the kind of courage and moral suffering entailed in the decision, evidently taken by the legal Baptists, that obedience is the proper expression of submission to established authority, even when that authority is aggressively atheist. The moral issues here are profound; Bourdeaux’s book provides many data with which to begin exploring them.

In the final analysis, one can hardly find a better statement of the worth of this book than the author’s own concluding sentence: “From the crucible of their experience, Russian Christians have—and will continue to have—much to teach us.” Will we learn?

Let’S Be Consistent

The Beginnings of the Church in the New Testament, by Ferdinand Hahn, August Strobel, and Eduard Schweizer (Augsburg, 1970, 104 pp., $2.25), is reviewed by Daniel P. Fuller, dean of faculty and associate professor of hermeneutics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Here three German theologians attempt to show by “up-to-date theological research”—as post-Bultmannians, it would seem—how the early Church is inextricably bound up with the nucleus of disciples that the historical Jesus gathered around himself. Bultmann found nothing about Jesus’ teaching or life style to be essential for Christian faith. By contrast these men affirm that the recollection that Jesus had summoned men to be his disciples was essential to the post-Easter faith shared by the New Testament authors. This summons possessed an authority so absolute that men believed that in Jesus “was God’s act of grace, the event in which the reign of God came upon men, made them whole, and called them to obedience.”

Hahn’s essay spells out the terms of discipleship laid down by the historical Jesus. Strobel argues that in the death of Christ, God gave full authority to these terms of discipleship that Jesus had taught. What was primary in the Easter event, according to Strobel, was that God’s confirmation of Jesus’ life style and teaching somehow came to the disciples objectively in “a personal encounter with the living Christ and his Word.” Schweizer then proceeds beyond Easter to show that the authoritative grace of God, so evident in the earthly Jesus’ call to discipleship, is at the base of the varied ways in which the New Testament writers witness to Christ.

The primary emphasis of each of these essayists is that the unique authority by which the historical Jesus called men to discipleship is the indispensable kernel of the New Testament and of all Christian faith. As post-Bultmannians, however, they want to preserve this New Testament emphasis on Jesus’ unequaled authority while bypassing its teaching about Jesus’ person. Hahn, for example, says, “It would be a mistake to attempt to explain [how Jesus could make such a radical demand on men] with the help of the titles [Christ, Lord, Son of Man, Son of God] which were given to Jesus by the early church.” But according to Hahn, Jesus’ unique authority in calling and gathering disciples is to be fundamentally explained by “the fact that God had acted in Jesus.” Easter brought this fact home to the disciples, so that thereafter “a different and stronger emphasis than previously is now placed upon the Person of Jesus Christ.”

According to the post-Bultmannians, this early Christian emphasis on the person of Christ was and is not essential to faith. But how is it possible to conceive of God acting finally and absolutely in affirming the life style and teaching of one who (according to post-Bultmannians) could be of no different quality than other men? The early Christians did not find it possible to be indifferent to Jesus’ person while stressing that God had made him authoritative. If one wants to affirm God’s absolute authority in Jesus, it would seem more consistent to declare, as did the New Testament writers, that he has this authority because he is God’s only Son.

The Price Of ‘Relevance’

The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism, by James Hitchco*ck (Herder and Herder, 1971, 228 pp., $6.50), and Authority and Rebellion, by Charles E. Rice (Doubleday, 1971, 252 pp., $5.95), are reviewed by James P. Degnan, associate professor of English, University of Santa Clara, California.

Both these books make essentially the same point: The reforms—radical and not so radical—that started in the Roman Catholic Church during the early 1960s have proved disastrous for the church. James Hitchco*ck, who identifies himself as a church progressive (as that term was understood in the fifties), makes the point succinctly. Even though conservative critics of church progressives and radicals have during the past decade often been “mean-spirited and fanatical,” he writes, they nevertheless have been “correct in virtually every particular [my italics] of their criticism of reform and in their prediction of the effects it would have on the Church.”

There is, Hitchco*ck writes in partial illustration of his point, “scarcely a single traditional doctrine of the Church which is not seriously questioned by some prominent [Catholic] theologians, not excluding the existence of God.” Thomism, he continues, “has disappeared almost without a trace.” The sacraments are largely ignored; the Virgin Birth is denied; the “Eucharist is regarded as at best a symbolic meal”; and “not only is papal infallibility repudiated, but often episcopal and priestly authority as well.…”

All this, Hitchco*ck points out, was supposed to result into a “renewed,” a revitalized, a “freer” church—one that would attract dramatically increased numbers of lay converts and of candidates for the religious orders. But the precise opposite has happened. Vocations to the religious orders are at an all-time low, and Catholic laymen are leaving the church in droves. At this stage, Hitchco*ck contends, “no one can predict with any certainty that the Church will have a visible existence by the end of this century.”

Of the two books Hitchco*ck’s is clearly the more readable and convincing. Rice’s book, though filled with interesting, often fascinating detail, (his chapter on the chaos and idiocy that church radicals have introduced into certain Catholic universities is especially fine), emerges more as a hodge-podge of unsubordinated notes than as a tightly sustained argument. And his optimistic conclusion—that the Church, by somehow returning to a clearly defined orthodoxy, will again flourish—seems, on the basis of the inadequate evidence he adduces, nothing more than wishful thinking.

Some years ago, in an article for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I remarked that when various leading Catholic liberals and publications—e.g., Leslie Dewart, Father Gregory Baum, Father Eugene Shallart, Michael Novak, Daniel Callahan, Father Robert Adolfs, Commonweal, The National Catholic Reporter—succeeded in persuading people that concern about matters of faith (such questions as, Is there a world of the spirit?, Is there a heaven and hell?, Was Christ truly divine?, Is the soul immortal?) is “irrelevant” or “childish,” and that the Church at its most “relevant” and desirable is really nothing more than an international social-welfare agency, then people of good sense were simply going to demand in justified disgust: Who needs the Roman Catholic Church? Why not simply beef up UNESCO?

It seems to me that these two books amply document what I said.

Newly Published

Is Your Family Turned On?, by Charlie W. Shedd (Word, 148 pp., $4.95). The result of an essay contest, “Why I Don’t Use Drugs,” is now a book. Creative and imaginative, with good layout. Deserves a wide circulation, among both users and nonusers.

Despair: A Moment or a Way of Life?, by C. Stephen Evans (Inter-Varsity, 135 pp., paperback, $1.50). Hope has disappeared for twentieth-century man. We see this in literature, painting, and films. Evans, concentrating on specific works of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus, and Heller, explores the development of despair in a search for hope. Intellectually gripping and spiritually exciting.

Truth and Expression, by Edward MacKinnon (Newman, 212 pp., $7.50), and Words and the Word, by Kenneth Hamilton (Eerdmans, 120 pp., paperback, $2.95). These two books are both about words and the search for truth. But Hamilton’s is concrete, defined, and directed, while MacKinnon’s is a rambling study in useless verbosity and frustrating abstractions.

The Future of Our Religious Past, edited by James M. Robinson (Harper & Row, 372 pp., $18.95). English translation of fifteen essays selected from the Festschrift to Bultmann in 1964. Most of the “big names” in academic theology are represented.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality, by André Dumas (Macmillan, 306 pp., $7.95). English translation of a well-received, comprehensive study.

Church and Cinema, by James M. Wall (Eerdmans, 135 pp., $4.50). The Christian Advocate managing editor (a movie connoisseur) builds a convincing case for the cinema’s importance to Christians. He asserts that films offer a presentation of reality that can enrich our lives—a film need not be inherently religious to benefit the Christian viewer. A valid and long overdue discussion.

The Gospel and Authority: A P. T. Forsyth Reader, edited by Marvin W. Anderson (Augsburg, 199 pp., $5.95). Eight journal articles published 1899–1911 by a leading British evangelical theologian.

How to Talk to God When You Aren’t Feeling Religious, by Charles Merrill Smith (Word, 223 pp., $4.95). Points out the incongruities in every Christian’s life with wit, sensitivity, and humility. Those who read this book should expect to be seared by Smith’s branding iron.

Toward a Theology for the Future, edited by Clark H. Pinnock and David F. Wells (Creation House, 329 pp., $4.95). Eleven evangelicals write on such topics as “The Outlook for Biblical Theology,” “A Discussion with Hans Küng,” “The Future of the Church,” and “Ethics in the Theology of Hope.”

The Pilgrim Way, by Robert M. Bartlett (Pilgrim, 371 pp., $12). A well-illustrated, lively, yet scholarly account of the settlers of Plymouth colony, focusing on the years before 1620 and on the Pilgrims’ pastor, John Robinson.

Herbert W. Armstrong and His Worldwide Church of God: A Bibliography, by John D. Pearson (Pearson Publishers [2698 Fessey Ct., Nashville, Tenn. 37204], 10 pp., $1). Useful for those combating this growing heretical movement.

Early Christians Speak, by Everett Ferguson (Sweet, 258 pp., $7.95). A scholar in the Church of Christ (non-instrumental) looks chiefly at second-century practices of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church organization, and style of living. Many brief extracts from ancient authors preface each chapter.

Biblical Theology, Volume One: Old Testament, by Chester K. Lehman (Herald Press, 480 pp., $15.95). The long-time head of the Bible department at Eastern Mennonite presents an introductory survey text.

Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States 1876–1918, by Henry Warner Bowden (University of North Carolina, 269 pp., $10). Since the issues within the historical profession of several generations ago are still unresolved, this is a timely collection of essays.

Pulpit Speech, by Jay E. Adams (Presbyterian and Reformed, 169 pp., paperback, $3.50). Designed as a classroom text but adaptable for home study by the preaching teacher at Westminster Seminary.

Scientific Studies in Special Creation, edited by Walter E. Lammerts (Presbyterian and Reformed, 343 pp., $6.95). Another selection of articles first published in Creation Research Society Quarterly, 1964–68.

Wisdom the Principal Thing, by Kenneth L. Jensen (Pacific Meridian [13540 39th Ave., N.E., Seattle, Wash. 98125], 167 pp., paperback, $2.95). Sermons on Proverbs reflecting the style of the widely known expositor Robert Thieme.

Man in Transition: The Psychology of Human Development, by Gary R. Collins (Creation House, 203 pp., $4.95), and The Christian’s Handbook of Psychiatry, by O. Quentin Hyder (Revell, 192 pp., $4.95). Introductions by evangelical practitioners to their respective approaches to understanding and helping men, especially Christians. Simple without being simplistic.

Herod the Great, by Michael Grant (American Heritage, 272 pp., $12.95). Fascinating account of the crafty politician who ruled Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth. The interesting photographs add to the book’s value. But the author considers the biblical account of Herod’s massacre of the children to be myth, not history.

Historiography: Secular and Religious, by Gordon H. Clark (Craig, 381 pp., paperback, $7.50). The well-known Christian philosopher interacts with various secular and religious views of the meaning of human events.

The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul, by David L. Dungan (Fortress, 180 pp., $6.95), and Mark—Traditions in Conflict, by Theodore J. Weeden (Fortress, 182 pp., $6.95). Two technical studies of the first-century Church. The one on Mark is highly speculative, but the study of Paul shows his continuity with the Synoptics.

A Body of Divinity, by John Gill (Sovereign Grace, 994 pp., $10.95). A 200-year-old comprehensive systematic theology by one of the leading Calvinistic Baptists.

Bible, Archaeology, and Faith, by Harry Thomas Frank (Abingdon, 352 pp., $12.50). A well-illustrated, large-size introductory survey of ancient Palestine and its neighbors to the time of Paul.

The Infallibility Debate, edited by John J. Kirvan (Paulist, 154 pp., paperback, $1.95). Three Catholics and a Protestant reflect on Küng’s well-known book questioning papal infallibility.

No Man Is Alien: Essays on the Unity of Mankind, edited by J. Robert Nelson (Brill, 334 pp., 48 guilders). Thirteen essays, mostly by Americans, honoring W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, long-time leader of the World Council of Churches. Sample titles: “Signs of Mankind’s Solidarity,” “Mohammed and All Men.”

New Trends in Moral Theology, by George M. Regan (Newman, 213 pp., paperback, $3.75). A good introduction to recent Catholic ethical thought.

CHAPTER V THE CARE AND FEEDING OF MINISTERS

In the previous chapter we dealt with the relatively tranquil thirties. We now come to the anxious forties. Forty is an age of great fears. Those who have to care for the forty-year-old should have some idea of the stresses that will plague him during this period. He will probably become subject to one or more of the following traumas.

Retreating goals. The greatness for which he felt destined suddenly seems unlikely rather than inevitable. That call to the large urban ministry that was to thrust him in the forefront of the work of the kingdom now seems highly doubtful. For some, goals that occupied their fantasies during the ambitious twenties have become extinct. The missionary-statesman is now as dead as the dodo bird. Coming to terms with these changes in his world can cause a great deal of strain on our charge.

Redefinition of roles. The forty-year-old has to adjust to changes in his role. He is no longer the sex symbol of the parish—he is becoming instead a father figure. In addition, his own children may be old enough to put grand-fatherhood within sight. At home, instead of being a towering, fearsome figure, he is becoming a slightly eccentric fixture to whom the children refer in such kindly but patronizing terms as “poor old dad.”

Increasing responsibilities. While his goals have become more elusive and his role has begun eroding, the forty-year-old’s responsibilities have grown.

Making a change in pastorates (a simple matter a few years ago) is now all complications. His children are old enough to be attached to their surroundings and to resist moving. He must also consider such questions as: If we move to a new state will my son be eligible to attend state college at resident tuition rates?

The forty-year-old sees money flowing out of the checking account as a cascade. The outflow is beginning to exceed the inflow by an alarming margin. The child who was content with an electric train just yesterday now asks Santa for an eight-speaker stereo tape player for his car. And reading the estimated expenses outlined in the church college’s catalogue may be enough to precipitate nervous prostration.

As a result of such stresses, the forty-year-old may suffer a change in personality. His confident, easy-going youthfulness may give way to insecure, indecisive, somewhat irritable middle age.

In handling the minister during this period those around him should take care to remove all unnecessary stress. His wife should avoid reminding him of the successes of his friends and seminary classmates. Major monetary transactions should be treated as lightly as possible and completed as quickly as possible. Minor indiscretions of his children should be kept from him for everyone’s good.

If the proper care is taken, the minister may successfully negotiate this painful part of his development and even be good for another twenty or so productive years.

TEACHER’S AID

[Let me express] my personal appreciation for the ministry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I cannot recommend it too highly to my students, especially those studying theology. In a day when the “winds of change” have meant not only “fresh air” but sometimes “foul breezes,” it is a help in my teaching ministry to have a lucid and reliable source of religious news and evangelical conviction to commend to my students.

Associate Professor of History

Capital University

Columbus, Ohio

ONLY HALF TRUTHS

It was with real sorrow that I read the subtly biased and occasionally distorted article by Michael Cassidy, “A South African Christian Confronts Apartheid” (Nov. 19). Although native to that country, it is obvious that the author does not know the inner feelings of his black countrymen, even black evangelical Christians, and that he does not sense the intense frustration and even physical danger that they constantly undergo.…

One of the worst accusations to be made against the article is that it is deceptive. Listed first among the “encouraging factors” is the “authentic concern in the country … and a developing sense of conscience.…” The sole evidence given is the split in the Nationalist party, implying that voices for positive change are becoming powerful. Yet the split really indicates just the opposite: the new party, the “Verkramptes,” is even more extreme than the ruling Nationalists! It is in opposition to even the most symbolic loosening of the apartheid noose. In the Natal election, where the Nationalists were “soundly defeated,” it is left unstated that they were defeated by the United Party, certainly the right of our own George Wallace—a move toward freedom and equality?

It is correctly stated that 75 per cent of the people are given 13 per cent of the land. Incredible figures in themselves! Yet it is not mentioned that the Africans, Coloreds, and Indians are given none of the cities, none of the harbors, none of the land containing gold, diamonds, or uranium, and that much of their land is barely suitable even for agriculture. The theory of self-governing “Bantustans,” or African areas, is given, yet we are not told that these “governments” have no power whatsoever in the areas of international relations, taxation, police, or even the laws governing the movement of persons (in some places Africans may not be outside the fence after 11:00 P.M.). He never even mentions the hated passbooks that all nonwhites must carry at all times! To use the term “unfair” to describe this malapportionment of land and power is incredibly naïve. This is not unfairness—it is gross immorality and exploitation.…

Lastly, because it is most important, I must note the ease with which accommodation has been reached with something admitted to be “unscriptural” and “sinful.” Can you imagine an article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY discussing adultery in the church which accepted as an encouraging factor that there is an “authentic concern for what is going on and a developing sense of conscience about it”? I can only agree with the author that many have not really dared to put political realism to one side and embrace their Christian faith in a life-risking commitment.

Evangelical Committee for Urban Ministries

Boston, Mass.

WHAT EDITORS SHOULD KNOW

Thank you for your excellent report on the prayer amendment (“Prayer Bill Hasn’t One,” Dec. 3). It is the best we have seen with the most comprehensive analysis in terms of what people want to know. The all-out effort of Baptist Fred Schwengel netted him only nine other Baptist votes against the amendment while twenty-seven Baptists voted for it. The merits of the amendment are also reflected in the fact that the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Lutheran congressmen all supported it by a ratio of almost three to one.

This is why we were surprised to see your editorial (“Making No Amends for Prayer”) in which you state: “Even school authorities, congressmen, and clergymen—most of whom should know better—persistently believe that the U. S. Supreme Court decisions of 1962 and 1963 banned prayer and Bible reading from public classrooms. That is simply untrue.” Without wanting to be unkind it seems to us that editors should also know better.

The only issue before the high court in those decisions was voluntary prayer and Bible reading in the classroom, and both were banned. Under the “Facts in Each Case” the Court said: “Participation in the opening exercises (at issue) … is voluntary.” And these “exercises” were banned. For you to say “That is simply untrue” and skirt the real issue not only begs the question but is contrary to fact.

Private prayer and the other types of activities outside the classroom which you discuss were not an issue before the Court and are not germane to the prayer amendment. The proponents of the prayer amendment seek to restore what has been banned, namely: the right to have voluntary corporate prayer in the classroom.

The vote on the prayer amendment was impressive and encouraging even though it failed. Notwithstanding your implied opinion to the contrary, we think the 240 congressmen who voted for it were probably as well informed as the 162 who voted against it. And the public polls tell us that more than 80 per cent of the population still believe that what you refer to as mini-worship (which you and Tom Clark want outlawed) served the public schools far better than the maxi-secularism which has prevailed since voluntary corporate prayer and Bible reading were banned from the public classroom.

Assistant to the General Director

National Association of Evangelicals

Washington, D. C.

The [news story] says that “the stated position of the United Methodist Church was against the amendment.” I wonder where you secured this information. No one officially speaks for United Methodism excepting General Conference, which doesn’t meet until 1972. No bishop, board, or commission has the authority to represent that he or they speak for the whole church.

The United Methodist Church

East Springfield, Ohio

• The stated position was actually that of the United Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns.—ED.

A GOOD IDEA

The brief editorial, “Settling Educational Priorities” (Oct. 22), contained a gem of an idea, extremely worthy of implementation. I refer to the expressed need to hold an Evangelical Education Congress. It would be laudable if CHRISTIANITY TODAY, with its well-deserved prestige, would take the initiative and convene such a congress. I’m sure that several associations such as the National Union of Christian Schools would participate meaningfully if a congress were called.

Director

National Union of Christian Schools

Grand Rapids, Mich.

NEITHER ADULTS NOR YOUTH

It appears to me that Addison Leitch (Current Religious Thought, “Accent on Youth,” Dec. 3) has not searched the Scriptures very diligently in quest of a precedent for youth emphasis. If he had he surely would have cited Mark 10:13–16 or 1 Tim. 4:12. He might have taken a more positive view toward young people’s less-than-professional contribution to worship had he consulted the words of our Lord Jesus or David (Matt. 21:15–16; Psalm 8:2). I agree with Leitch that there is a cliché attitude toward youth in the church today, but I don’t like his solution. The real heresy of this youth consciousness is that it asserts that “the future of our church depends on our youth.” The future of the church depends only on Jesus Christ. As I read Leitch’s column, he is saying that the future of the church really depends on adults—and that is just as bad.

Ringoes, N. J.

What is so “current” about Addison Leitch’s “Current Religious Thought” (Dec. 3)? It seems amazing to me that Leitch is attacking youth work on the sole basis that it is not scripturally specified. (“If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you might want to look in the Bible for a youth program. I search in vain …”). But he fails to mention that the list of unspecifieds in the Bible also include such things as church buildings, Sunday schools, morning worship services, and Christian news magazines.

Simply because “we know nothing about the youth of Christ” does not license us to deny that he ever had one. The article appears to me to be simply another attempt by evangelical Christianity to eliminate its inadequacies by just sweeping them under the rug. What Mr. Leitch doesn’t know is that he picked up his broom about twenty-five years too late.

Youth Specialties

San Diego, Calif.

FROM TRICKLE TO TORRENT

It is deeply rewarding to observe how many Jewish youth are turning on to Jesus (“Turning On to Jeshua,” Dec. 17). Although they have … been doing this for many years, what was once only a trickle is now a torrent.

(The Rev.) VICTOR BUKSBAZEN, JR. Capital City Greater Gospel Association

Washington, D. C.

One of the great enigmas of our time is the Communist state of East Germany, known officially as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). On the one hand significant economic progress is everywhere evident, and the population enjoys a standard of living higher than that in any other country in the Communist bloc. Yet a harsh totalitarian regime continues in power, virtually untouched by the winds of change blowing in other Eastern European countries.

Few Westerners have any understanding of East Germany other than highly impressionistic opinions gained through brief visits to Berlin, but for several reasons interest in this country has been increasing. Some of these are: the direct negotiations between the two German states that the Brandt government in West Germany initiated as part of the new Ostpolitik (Eastern policy), the accelerating pace of the four-power talks over the status of Berlin, and the decision of Walter Ulbricht last May to step down as chief of the Eastern German Communist party. Equally important to evangelical Christians, most of the major events of the Lutheran Reformation occurred in this area. The following report seeks to give some idea of the current mood of the country and how East German Christians are bearing up under the latest pressures.

Politically, no one is expecting any significant change of direction, at least not in the immediate future. The official banners now contain a new face, that of Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor as party boss, but no East German with whom we spoke believed he would try to follow a more independent line.

Everywhere we turned we experienced the monotonous sloganeering and propaganda of a totalitarian state, and we saw no indication that the rigorous police controls over inhabitants and visitors alike had been relaxed.

The contrast between economic prosperity and the virtual absence of personal freedom is more striking than ever. The rubble in such major cities as Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and Karl-Marx-Stadt has been cleared away, and new high-rise structures are springing up like mushrooms. Large industrial complexes are to be found in many places. The collective farms that dominate East German agriculture are faring appreciably better than a few years ago. Automobiles, few though they may be, are newer and flashier than those in other Soviet-bloc countries. Nobody seems to be starving, and most people have adequate housing. Yet one frequently senses he is being watched, and nearly everybody speaks in low tones when in public places. Since internal police checks are a regular occurrence, one is never without his identity papers. However, one seldom runs afoul of the authorities if he does what he is told and does not step out of line. Most East Germans have long since learned to survive by adopting this very practical philosophy.

The overwhelming presence of men in uniform, both Russian and German, offers ample proof that militarism in East Germany is far from dead. In a square in Eisleben only a few steps from Luther’s birthplace we witnessed the induction ceremony for a crop of 1971 draftees into the East German army. The small children of the Young Pioneers (the youth arm of the Communist party) delivered a bouquet of flowers to each soldier at the conclusion of the rite in a glorification of the fatherland, the party, and the military reminiscent of Nazi Germany. As the new recruits goosestepped away, we had an eerie feeling that all this had happened before. We noticed the expressionless faces of a number of elderly women beside us and realized that they must have stood on this very same square and watched their husbands in 1914 and their sons in 1939 march off to war. Now their grandsons were doing it, in the same enthusiastic manner.

Christians find themselves in a peculiarly awkward situation in the GDR. Although the regime is Marxist-Leninist, the state officially is neutral in matters of religion and actually grants freedom of worship. The 1968 constitution affirms clearly that all citizens of the German Democratic Republic have the same rights and duties, “irrespective of philosophy or religious confession,” and “freedom of conscience and freedom of belief are guaranteed.” Furthermore, every citizen “has the right to profess a religious creed, and to carry out religious activities.” In accordance with this, churches are allowed to hold public worship services, give religious instruction to the young, operate a few kindergartens and rest homes, and publish newspapers and books. The East German successor to the Berlin Bible Society, the Evangelisches Haupt-Bibel-gesellschaft, continues to publish and distribute Bibles and Scripture portions. The state even supports theological faculties at some of the universities and permits churches to maintain schools for training ministerial candidates.

Nevertheless the East German regime is fundamentally inimical to Christianity. Although it apparently does not wish an open confrontation with the church, it tries to undermine the influence of religion in the country. Individual believers often experience subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of discrimination. For example, we heard of a recent case of a Christian girl who completed her high-school work with exceptionally high grades but was denied admission to the university because she had not been involved enough politically—that is, she had not participated sufficiently in the activities of the Free German Youth, the Communist organization for older young people. Our informant assured us this was not an unusual instance of discrimination.

Another tactic is the substitution of pseudosacral rites for the traditional Christian ceremonies of baptism, confirmation, and marriage. Best known of these is the “youth dedication” (Jugendweihe), a form of confirmation rite. It is administered to young people at age thirteen or fourteen after a period of formal instruction in the principles of dialectical materialism, the historical evolution of socialism, and the nature of the present class struggle. In this ceremony the teen-agers pledge to devote their entire energy to the building of socialism, the struggle for world peace, and the welfare of the German Democratic Republic. A person may still be confirmed, but only after he has gone through the youth dedication.

The Christian who is a citizen of the GDR lives in a distinct state of tension. Naturally he desires to fulfill his responsibilities as a citizen and to make his country a better place in which to live. He will justifiably take pride in his nation’s achievements, which are most remarkable, considering the devastation of the Second World War, the harshness of the Soviet occupation, and the almost complete lack of foreign economic aid. At the same time he wishes to uphold an uncompromised Gospel and bear a meaningful witness for Christ. Evangelicals in the West need to be more understanding and appreciative of the efforts of their brothers in the East. The Christian there must weigh the consequences of his actions in a manner that is almost incomprehensible to us who live outside the Communist bloc.

What we found encouraging is the vitality that is evident in East German Christianity despite the obstacles placed before believers. Although some have chosen to flee the country, others feel called of God to stay and serve. The following experiences of three typical East Germans are indicative of the problems faced by Christians in this Marxist land. Although they are personal acquaintances of ours, for obvious reasons we have concealed their true identities and are using fictitious names.

Professor Dr. Georg Schmidt of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig is a Christian scholar in the humanities with a distinguished academic career. Some of his works are quite well known in the West. For him the most difficult aspect of life in East Germany is the deprivation of the three freedoms that mean the most to a professor: the freedom to speak, read, and travel. He is not allowed to lecture on many topics that lie among his principal concerns; he can no longer obtain books and periodicals from the West in his field, which means he is cut off from current developments in his discipline; and he may not travel outside the Soviet bloc even though the information for his research is largely unavailable in East Germany and he has received many invitations to speak at Western universities. As he said to us in his study: “Life here is like living in a prison.”

Pastor Wilhelm Eisner ministers to a medium-sized congregation in East Berlin. He told us that the principal problem for him is converting over to a free church economy. Now that the ancient tradition of depending on funds derived from the state (especially the church tax) to maintain the ecclesiastical establishment has come to an end, his parishioners must be re-educated to support the church through their own contributions. According to him, church attendance is lower than it used to be, and because of the youth dedication the number of confirmands has dropped off. Nevertheless, the depth of faith of those who remain is greater than before. In his ministry Pastor Eisner has been emphasizing the lordship of Christ and the necessity for the full commitment of one’s life and goods to him. Official pressures have not emptied his church, but the built-in disabilities for believers have made life more difficult for Pastor Eisner’s flock, and for his family as well. His spirit and courage in standing for the integrity of the Gospel in the face of hostility from the regime were most impressive.

Ernst Vohsen is a highly trained chemist who works for a large, state-owned pharmaceutical concern in Dresden. He and his wife, Erika, and their three school-age children live in a comfortable apartment in a new development, and with an annual salary of $4,000 he is prosperous by East German standards. He is also a Christian layman and is wrestling with the problems of living a Christian life in the contemporary world. Herr Vohsen has turned to theology in his search for answers. In the last few months he has been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth as well as the Bible. Some day he intends to write some articles applying philosophy and theology to human problems, but he doubts that he will be allowed to publish them. He is convinced that Christianity, not Marxism-Leninism, offers hope for mankind. In their home the Vohsens maintain regular family devotions, but he confided to us his concern for his children’s future, especially since they are outstanding students in their classes in school.

All three are Christians in a society that is basically anti-Christian. Like thousands of others, they find they must accept things as they are, not as they might wish them to be. Despite the obvious personal disadvantages, they have chosen to take a stand for Christ. At the same time they are trying to be “good” citizens of the country that is their home. It is not an easy existence, but this is the life to which God has called believers in East Germany.

Many Christians in the West find it easy to criticize such persons, to observe blithely that they ought to offer resistance to this “godless” Communist regime. However, given the apparatus of total police control in the GDR and the presence of 200,000 or more Soviet troops garrisoned in a territory half the area of Kansas, this is not really an option for them. Their duty is to bear a witness to Christ in the midst of adverse circ*mstances. □

Richard V. Pierard is associate professor of history at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, and Robert D. Linder is associate professor of history at Kansas State University, Manhattan. Both received the Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Dr. Pierard’s fields of specialty are modern German history and religious and political conservatism. Dr. Linder’s are the Reformation and the history of religious and political ideas and movements. In mid-1971 they traveled to East Germany to gain some idea of conditions of life in this Communist land. Dr. Pierard had visited East Germany several times previously, and Dr. Linder has traveled in most of the Communist-bloc states of Eastern Europe.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHRISTIANS: PART 5

The number of English-language commentaries available on any given book of the Bible is legion, and it is especially important to spend your dollar wisely. The value of certain multi-volume sets has already been indicated (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 6, 1970); you can hardly go wrong buying a good multi-volume commentary if the price is right.

In addition to the series noted (e.g., International Critical Commentary [ICC], Westminster Commentary [WC], Interpreter’s Bible [IB], Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges [CB], Tyndale Commentary on the Old Testament [TCOT], and the Anchor Bible [AB], other contemporary collections should be considered for Old Testament helps. The Torch Bible Commentaries are popular in style and varied in theological outlook but generally cheap and useful. The Old Testament Library (OTL), edited by G. E. Wright, J. Bright, J. Barr, and P. Ackroyd (Westminster), already includes fourteen volumes on individual books plus assorted studies in Old Testament history and theology. Designed for the educated interpreter with or without Hebrew, this commentary features translations of much material formerly available only in German dress. A third set, under the editorial hands of F. M. Cross, K. Baltzer, P. Hanson, S. D. McBride, and W. L. Moran (Fortress’s new “Hermeneia” series), promises a more technical level of scholarship and is due to begin soon. A preview of the caliber intended is available in the German prototype of several proffered volumes (each from the form-critical Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament [BKAT]); maintenance of the original level of scholarship will ensure this commentary a permanent place in English-language biblical studies.

From a Reformed perspective, the forthcoming volumes of the New International Commentary: Old Testament (NICOT), now edited by R. K. Harrison, will fill a definite void. The only volumes available thus far are the three on Isaiah by E. J. Young; however, after a slow start, it seems that the production wheels are now turning, and a number of additional volumes are expected for the not-too-distant future.

Apart from the series mentioned, various single volumes are available both in the exegetical tradition of the multi-volume works already cited and in the devotional tradition so well known to many readers. If generally I avoid the latter category it is only because the commentary should always be primarily a means for elucidating the text by the presentation of historical, cultural, philological, theological, and critical data, rather than a forum for homily on the passage. This may help to explain why I have ignored many of the older works. Calvin, Luther, Matthew Henry, and G. Campbell Morgan, to say nothing of such ancient divines as John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, can and should be read for their insight and Christian devotion; but most of the exegetical plums available in the better works of antiquity are caught up in the contemporary works cited. Even the great exegetical work of Johann Keil and Franz Delitzsch—despite its unquestioned value for the Hebraist—is now nearly a century out of date and needs to be supplemented by more recent commentaries that reflect the advances in modern philological science. (Note: all twenty-five volumes of this work have recently been reissued to six at a bargain price.) In short, while one should not ignore the divines of the past, especially Calvin and Luther, he should go to them only after working through the biblical text itself in a thorough exegetical study using the best of available tools.

THE PENTATEUCH For the student with special interest in traditional Pentateuchal criticism, a plethora of material is available. Oswald T. Allis’s The Five Books of Moses (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1949) is a painstakingly detailed critique of Wellhausen and S. R. Driver. Two volumes by Jewish scholars, The Documentary Hypothesis by U. Cassuto (Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, translation 1961) and The Pentateuch (Magnes, 1967) by M. H. Segal, though not concerned with traditional Protestant controversies, have much to say to that debate. We must stop with the mention of just two more works, both slim Tyndale Monographs: W. J. Martin, Stylistic Criteria and the Analysis of the Pentateuch (in which still current arguments for stylistic criteria are compared to the same questions in Homeric studies), and J. A. Motyer, The Revelation of the Divine Name (both from Tyndale Press, 1955 and 1959 respectively).

GENESIS For those with Hebrew there is still nothing in English to match J. Skinner’s volume in the ICC (1925), but U. Cassuto’s two-volume Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Magnes Press, 1961–4), though rendered incomplete by the death of its author, combines the philological detail of the ICC with the reverence of a conservative Jewish approach to sacred Torah. For historical and linguistic background, the AB volume by E. A. Speiser (1964), though a classic in its own right, is upstaged by a lesser-known work, Understanding Genesis (Schocken/MacMillan, 1966) from the pen of N. Sarna. By documenting a wealth of Ancient Near Eastern detail and creatively applying it to the problems of Genesis, Sarna has illuminated the text at many points, without recourse to the vagaries of traditional documentary hypotheses. Representing conservative Christian thought in a format designed for a popular audience is D. Kidner’s small book in the TCOT series (1967), useful despite its brevity. In the same tradition, but longer, is Exposition of Genesis (Baker, 1949) by the Lutheran scholar H. C. Leupold.

Special questions concerning Creation and the Flood are dealt with in the commentaries already cited, but a few titles of supplementary value may be helpful. For contrast and comparison between biblical and Mesopotamian cosmogonies there is still nothing to match A. Heidel’s The Babylonian Genesis (University of Chicago, 1951). An interesting thesis, hinted at in the title, is presented by P. J. Wiseman in Creation Revealed in Six Days (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1948). A modern evangelical summary is to be found in D. F. Payne’s monograph Genesis One Reconsidered (Tyndale Press, 1964), while traditional questions concerning both Creation and Flood are discussed in detail in B. Ramm’s foundational work, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Eerdmans, 1955). In a theologically inspiring work, C. Westermann opts for setting Genesis one and two in the context of Israel’s praise literature in his The Genesis Accounts of Creation (Fortress, 1964). Similarly committed to a plurality of narratives in Genesis and also designed for the preacher is T. E. Fretheim’s Creation, Fall, and Flood (Augsburg, 1969). Although both the latter books assume the J and P origin for the material (too facilely, perhaps), each in its own way is successful in proclaiming the great truths contained in the biblical account.

For specifically Flood-centered discussion see Ramm (supra) and the discussion in J. C. Whitcomb and H. M. Morris’s The Genesis Flood (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961). The latter symposium opts for the so-called flood geology, a view widely accepted by fundamentalists. The student should be aware, however, that the majority of Christians who are geologists regard the conclusions of the authors as tenuous in the extreme. Finally, for the question of Ancient Near Eastern parallels to the Genesis narrative, nothing rivals The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (University of Chicago, 1949) by A. Heidel. (Note: Almost all the literature cited in this section is available in paperback and can economically form a good base for your library on Genesis.)

EXODUS The fare in English is more limited. Exodus (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1963) by U. Cassuto is probably the best for literary and philological detail but lacks the depth of his work on Genesis. In the OTL series Martin Noth has contributed a commentary (translation, 1962) that begins with the cultic professions of faith in the central theme of Sinai, framed by the themes of Passover and Conquest and bound together by the tradition of the wilderness wandering. Literary analysis is valuable, but precise help in exegesis of the text is lacking. A popularized form of Noth with special reference to Christian interpretation is given by the Roman Catholic J. Plastaras in The God of Exodus (Bruce, 1966), but here too the help required for the serious student is lacking. On specialized subjects a couple of monographs are worthwhile. Full competence in handling the sources is evident in D. W. Gooding’s The Account of the Tabernacle (Cambridge, 1959), though his primary purpose of explaining the divergent texts in the Hebrew and Greek accounts will render the book too technical for most. A more popular treatment is found in C. deWit, The Date and Route of the Exodus (Tyndale, 1960).

LEVITICUS Apart from the OTL volume of M. Noth (translation 1965), the weaknesses of which are similar to those described for his Exodus volume, there is really nothing available except the older work of A. T. Chapman and A. W. Streane in the CB (1914). Until a new volume in the NICOT or the ICC comes along, you will have to depend on shorter treatments in one-volume commentaries.

NUMBERS For work in the Hebrew text use the ICC (1903) of G. B. Gray. The continuing Pentateuchal work by M. Noth in the OTL (translation 1968) is valuable, though he sees little unity in Numbers, a book that “participates only marginally in the great themes of the Pentateuchal tradition.” A conservative Jewish view is given by J. G. Greenstone in an extensive treatment entitled Numbers With Commentary (Jewish Publications Society, 1939).

DEUTERONOMY Since the work of the German DeWette (1805), Deuteronomy has generally been considered literarily separate from the other four books of the Pentateuch, a thesis that will be assumed by most technical works recommended. In a conservative counterattack, M. Kline in Treaty of the Great King (Eerdmans, 1963) argues that the form of the book is that of a second-millennium covenant and therefore must represent a period much earlier than Josiah’s reformation. A less extensive work by G. T. Manley, The Book of the Law (Tyndale Press, 1957), also studies the sources of the book and argues for acceptance of the book’s own claims, but neither his nor Kline’s work has stimulated the debate the question deserves. Still the best technical commentary is that of S. R. Driver in the ICC (1895). G. von Rad’s offering in the OTL series (translation 1966) contains interesting analyses of parallels between Deuteronomy and other Pentateuchal books while its theological discussion benefits from the author’s perspicuity in that field. Finally, the older work by G. A. Smith (CB, 1918) is still useful.

JOSHUA The work of J. Garstang, Joshua-Judges (Constable, 1931), though badly out of date, is still helpful. Other than that, J. Bright’s treatment in the IB and another dated volume by G. A. Cooke in CB (1918) are all that is available in English.

JUDGES On a popular level, A. Cundall’s short volume in the new TCOT (1968) meets a real need. For the Hebrew text, and a mixture of still current and now outdated interpretative theories, C. F. Burney’s The Book of Judges and Notes on the Books of Kings (a composite volume) has just been reprinted by KTAV (1970) with a prolegomenon by W. F. Albright but a price that limits its availability. The older volumes by G. F. Moore (ICC, 1895) for the Hebraist and G. A. Cooke (CB, 1913) for the layman can be profitably used. Garstang’s book (see Joshua) also provides historical guidance but suffers from the same need for revision applicable to each of these works.

RUTH Ruth is often treated with Judges, to which in certain early canonical arrangements it was an addition. Both the CB and the TCOT handle the material this way, though in the later volume L. Morris takes over the task from A. E. Cundall. A short book, useful as a theological supplement to the commentaries available, is R. M. Hals’s Theology of the Book of Ruth (Fortress, 1969), in which the unseen hand of God guiding history is seen as the dominant theme of the book.

I and II SAMUEL First-rate help is available for the student who seeks to understand the somewhat confused Hebrew text in S. R. Driver’s Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel (Oxford, 1890), a work that, together with the volume by H. P. Smith (ICC, 1899), provides ample technical resource. Theological themes are beautifully illuminated in the OTL contribution by H. W. Hertzberg (translation 1964); and as a short study of Second Samuel 9–First Kings 2, R. N. Whybray’s The Succession Narrative (Allenson, 1968) is basic. Finally, a brief laymen’s study focusing on archaeological and historical background through the period of Solomon has been contributed recently by J. J. Davis: The Birth of a Kingdom (Baker, 1970).

I and II KINGS Most up to date on the text and cognate linguistic material is J. Gray’s volume in the OTL (revision 1970), though the writer tends to get bogged down in traditional literary criticism. The ICC (1951) offers a solid commentary on these books by J. A. Montgomery and H. S. Gehman, while C. F. Burney’s Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Book of Kings (reprint KTAV, 1970) has been noted earlier under Judges. Various studies are available on the lives of Elijah and Elisha, two prophets whose activities dominate parts of both books. Noteworthy among them are R. S. Wallace’s Elijah and Elisha (Oliver and Boyd, 1957) and the two devotional volumes by F. W. Krummacher (reprint Zondervan, n.d.).

I and II CHRONICLES A fresh look at the Chronicler in light of contemporary historical and linguistic data (often confirming the work of these much maligned books) is given by J. M. Myers in his two-volume set in the AB (1965). The first volume contains a valuable introduction spelling out the Chronicler’s theological position and interest, while the second volume has particularly useful appendices on genealogical and onomastic (pertaining to names) data. More technical and less theological is the treatment by E. L. Curtis and A. A. Madsen in ICC (1910).

EZRA-NEHEMIAH Myers’s work is continued in the AB (1965) for both these books. Although not all will like his rearrangement of material (Ezra follows Nehemiah and writes about 400 B.C.—for an alternative argument cf. J. S. Wright, The Date of Ezra’s Coming to Jerusalem, Tyndale Press, 1947), the volume will be helpful for sorting out the problems inherent in the memoirs of these post-exilic figures. Similarly directed to the general reader is H. E. Ryle’s volume in CB (1893), while for Hebrew exegetical help the ICC volume by L. W. Batten (1913) is again recommended.

ESTHER Beside the commentary in the ICC (1908) by L. B. Paton and the one in the CB (1907) by A. W. Streane, there is only the older, but exegetically valuable, work, The Book of Esther (Clark, 1888) by P. Cassel.

JOB Of books on Job there is no shortage (see the bibliography listed in IDB or NBD for a sampling). The AB volume by M. H. Pope is a good place to start, while a second inexpensive volume with practical relevance is From Tragedy to Triumph (Zondervan, 1958) by H. L. Ellison. Plumbing the exegetical depths will, however, require use of a volume such as S. R. Driver and G. B. Gray’s ICC offering (two volumes, 1921) or its contemporary, the extensive work of E. Dhorme, The Book of Job (Nelson, translation 1967). Modern Jewish scholarship in all its diversity is seen in the work of N. H. Tur-Sinai (The Book of Job, Kiryath Sepher, Jerusalem, 1957) and R. Gordis (The Book of God and Man, University of Chicago, 1966). The former treatise is marked by its author’s ingenuity in the field of lexicography, while the latter is more a study of various problems in Job than a commentary proper. Finally, the volume by H. H. Rowley in the New Century Bible (Oliphants, 1970) provides a wealth of bibliographic information and detailed discussion of the text.

Carl E. Armerding teaches Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver. He received the B.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Brandeis. He spent a year in Israel doing post-doctoral study.

Most Christians today suspect that both the life and the thought of the institutional church are running at a low ebb. Instead of forming or transforming Western culture, the Church is often reduced to defensive reaction and isolation, or else to mindless echoing of the world’s naturalistic humanism.

The misfunctioning of the seminary stands out as one of the major sources of this decline. The seminaries affect all the lifeblood of the Church, by sending out its pastors and administrators, and weakness or infection there will hurt every part. But it follows also that healing and strengthening the seminaries will have a powerful restorative effect on the whole body. The thrust of this essay is that while our seminaries have been seriously involved in the Church’s deterioration in the past century, they are also a probable source of its renewal today.

The ambivalent potential of the Protestant seminary is rooted in the origins of reformed Christianity. The Reformation grew out of a delicate interaction between biblical scholarship and a form of Renaissance humanism. The Reformers promoted a Christianity that emphasized a balance of scriptural doctrine, depth of piety, and breadth of learning. This integration of goals, however, was difficult to maintain for long, especially in the academic heart of the Church. In 1678, in his Pia Desideria, Philip Jacob Spener complained:

Although by God’s grace we still have pure doctrine derived from the Word of God, we cannot deny that much that is alien, useless, and reminiscent of the world’s wisdom has here and there been introduced gradually into theology.… Compare the writings of our dear Luther, in which he expounds the Word of God or treats articles of the Christian faith … with a majority of the books being published today. To speak candidly, in the former one will assuredly encounter and experience great spiritual power, together with wisdom presented with the utmost simplicity, while the latter will seem to be quite empty in contrast [Fortress, 1964, p. 51].

As Spener saw it, the training given to pastors and teachers was not geared to prepare them for the practical demands they would meet in seeking to edify the body of Christ, because it was designed mainly to delight the imagination and advance the reputations of the teachers. It may have been orthodox, but it was spiritually fruitless.

This kind of training can lead in one generation to a second stage: heterodoxy divorced from the biblical base. Piety is lost; the real biblical essence is lost, nothing remains but scholarship. The beginnings of this process can be seen in a powerless but intellectually contentious orthodoxy that delights in doctrinal oneupmanship. Spener continues:

They succeed in giving those of their hearers who have ready minds a fair knowledge of religious controversies, and these hearers regard it as the greatest honor to dispute with others.… The consequence is that true theologia practica (that is, the teaching of faith, love, and hope) is relegated to a secondary place, and the way is again paved for a theologia spinosa (that is, a prickly, thorny teaching) which scratches and irritates hearts and souls, as used to happen before Luther’s time [pp. 56, 53].

But it is obvious from history that an unbalanced stress on piety and practicality can break up the Reformation synthesis and empty seminary training of biblical focus and theological depth. This is clearly visible in the later, much less balanced critique of seminary education given by Charles Finney, the nineteenth-century American evangelist. Finney’s principal objection to the ministerial education of his time was that it did not prepare men to speak the Word of God plainly to men in terms relevant to their situation. It prepared men to be orators, or showmen, or scholars, but not to be prophets, keenly in touch with the Word of God and aware of its application to the world of men.

Education ought to be such, as to prepare young men for the peculiar work to which they are destined. But instead of this, they are educated for anything else.… I have known young men come out after what they call “a thorough course,” who were not fit to take charge of a prayer meeting … so as to make it profitable or interesting [Lectures on Revivals of Religion, Revell, 1868, p. 178].

Many an intelligent pastor can be heard today echoing Finney’s complaint that seminary graduates must thaw out for five years before they are any earthly good. Why, they ask, must the schools be spiritual refrigerators, intellectual cloud-chambers?

Finney’s antidote for bad seminary education is blunt and simple:

Ministers should be educated to know what the Bible is, and what the human mind is, and know how to bring one to bear on the other. They should be brought into contact with mind, and made familiar with all the aspects of society. They should have the Bible in one hand, and the map of the human mind in the other, and know how to use the truth for the salvation of men [ibid.].

Piety, for Finney, is a function of relevance. The seminary is an instrument for disseminating truth: but if that truth is not focused and applied to the real conditions in men and society, its scriptural and scholarly virtues will not prevent it from ringing false.

Clearly Finney’s pietism, unlike Spener’s, is attached to a dangerous pragmatism, the partial root of the activist, anti-intellectual bent that has crippled American evangelicalism since his time. But the remarkable thing is that, despite his weaknesses, God made use of this man in reaching thousands during the middle period of his century. And it may be no accident that the other great American evangelist in the nineteenth century, D. L. Moody, whose formative stamp is still visible in every quarter of the evangelical community, was also an untrained layman. It almost seems that God risked a detour of the seminaries in using these men, in order to correct an imbalance that the schools had created. Today, however, in a century when education and information have exploded, and when even a comedian must have a college diploma, there is a pressing need for seminaries to stand once more at the center of God’s renewing action, to balance the defects of a century of lay evangelicalism.

But can the seminary function as a source of spiritual renewal? Is this even part of its intended task? It might be argued that the seminary is simply an institution for enlarging the Church’s theoretical understanding of theological matters, with little regard for their practical application. But the New Testament indicates that the gifts of teachers, along with all other gifts within the church, are “for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood” (Eph. 4:12, 13). It could be urged that some organs within the body might specialize in the theoretical, in a kind of intellectual comprehension divorced from practice and from spiritual life, but the metaphors in this passage are much too vitalistic for this interpretation to stand. Knowledge, in biblical parlance, is always too deeply implicated in religious experience to be confused with mere comprehension. Paul’s vision of that education which can make us “no longer … children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,” is rooted in total spiritual growth, in which, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:15, 16).

This is not to deny that much in genuine Christian higher learning must forever remain impractical in that it will not directly aid in stimulating the student toward mission. But even this will be oriented toward leading the student to worship God with his mind. There will be nothing in it unrelated to that most practical of all Christian concerns: knowing—and equipping others to know—the mind of Christ in all things.

Therefore we must not regret the development that fused the better elements of rabbinical and pagan academic training with biblical scholarship to form the modern seminary pattern. There is no reason to prescribe a return to the undeveloped academic situation in the first century. History has left us examples of Christian academies that served as tremendous sources for spiritual renewal. To cite a few examples since the Reformation: what else was Luther’s Wittenberg? And Calvin’s “perfect school of Christ” in Geneva? Emmanuel College in Cambridge seeded England with Puritan spirituality in the early eighteenth century. Francke’s Halle, with its balance of academic purism and spiritual aspiration, transformed great areas within German Lutheranism and left an amazing heritage of social and missionary achievement. The best example on the American scene is the Log College of William Tennent, which forged the foundations of Presbyterianism in America with a training that combined academic rigor, spiritual depth, and practical relevance, and was the vehicle for awakening in all the middle colonies.

If institutions like these have been sources of renewal in past centuries, there is no reason to doubt that the Church could be renewed again from its teaching centers today. But what kind of seminary can fulfill this role?

Above all, such a seminary must recapture the balance of Reformation humanism. The vital amalgam of scholarship, piety, and biblical faith, which so easily breaks down, must be recreated.

The Reformers valued humanistic learning as a great gift of God to the human spirit. For them, there was no antithesis between simple Christian faith and the full use of the powers of the mind. Academic excellence was simply a mandate of Christian stewardship. Today’s renovating seminary must overcome the American antithesis between anti-intellectual pietism on the one hand and sophisticated heterodoxy on the other. The next generation of seminary students must be led to recognize that there is another alternative besides pious innocence and learned heresy. Their instructors must therefore have a penetrating comprehension of modern culture, including the social crises that are shaking our times. The seminary must approach the disciplines of secular learning carefully, recognizing the distortions these can introduce through the operation of fallen human reason, but with confidence that there is gold in this ore, discovered truth that can be correlated with revealed truth and made to yield tribute to the redeemed mind. It must recognize the validity of what Machen said:

We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.… Instead of stifling the pleasures afforded by the acquisition of knowledge or by the appreciation of what is beautiful, let us accept these pleasures as the gifts of a heavenly Father. Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically, to make the world subject to God [quoted by N. B. Stonehouse in J. Gresham Machen, Eerdmans, 1954, p. 187].

The new seminary must regain something else that the Reformers clearly had: a vision of the primacy of spiritual growth in the learning process. It has become an unconscious assumption in nearly all circles of Christian higher education that theological understanding and piety are separable, that somehow one can “know” religious truth through a kind of technical skill, and that afterwards “devotion” can be sprayed on or frosted over the personality of the student on his own initiative.

This conception of spirituality as an add-on attribute is at variance with the whole treatment of religious knowledge in the Bible, from the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament to the Pauline contrast between the world’s wisdom and that hidden wisdom which can be taught only by the Spirit. Academicism identifies spirituality with emotional tone or intensity of feeling—something that at best only supplies motivational force to correct convictions, and at worst gets in the way of objectivity. Biblical spirituality, however, is not primarily concerned with emotions at all: it is a by-product of the operation of the Holy Spirit, applying truth to men’s hearts. It results from the transformation of the human personality in the process of sanctification, in which the remnants of sin are gradually put away, and Christ’s dominion in the life is progressively strengthened.

Although much of the practice of seminary teaching, if not its theory, proceeds on the assumption that theological learning is unrelated to spiritual growth in teacher and student, Scripture shows that the effectiveness of the whole teaching process pivots upon sanctification. To be properly prepared for his ministry, the student must be open to radical transformation in the teaching process, as well as the reception of information. The teacher, on the other hand, must have digested his material spiritually and intellectually and be able to see its application; he must understand its relevance to the glory of God and the edification of the body of Christ; and he should project it in a form that is intended to edify the student and, through him, the whole of Christ’s Church.

Ideally, then, the seminary that is to be a source of renewal must exercise a pastoral function over the student. The Seminary is not a “church,” in the sense of a local congregation; but it is an organ within the Church, an organ charged with equipping pastors and teachers to edify the body of Christ. Since it is impossible to carry on genuinely Christian education without effecting spiritual transformation, the seminary’s work will either supplement the pastoral labors of local churches or make up for their lack of adequate pastoral supervision. A seminary that is to be a primary means of renewing local congregations surely cannot be satisfied with handing over the total pastoral responsibility to those same congregations. This practice is enough to explain the state of spiritual shock in which many seminary graduates issue from the institutions that have supposedly prepared them for ministry. A college, John Ciardi has said, becomes a university when its faculty ceases to care for its students. The prevalence of this condition in secular circles is bringing large sectors of American education to a grinding halt today. Its existence in Christian circles is hard to understand. Often the seminary bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the multiversity described by Clark Kerr as an aggregation of faculty soloists united by a common need for parking space.

It is too much to expect that all seminary teachers are called to be pastors. But they are all called to be saints. If they have given attention to the dynamics of growth in their own lives, they will be able to contribute as effective amateurs to the spiritual life of students. In addition, some of the members of the seminary community should be called and experienced pastors. The cycle of specialization that frequently prevails in seminary circles, in which the sons of the sons of professors enter the teaching vocation with no pastoral experience, is not necessarily destructive of the vitality of an institution; but it must not be allowed to prevail entirely. And yet the heredity of a teacher is less important than his motives. To the degree to which his real (if unconscious) goal is to achieve an academic career rather than to fulfill a ministry in building up the body of Christ, he will be unable to project life into the seminary community.

The main attribute of any seminary that is to be a center of renewal in the Church is, of course, fidelity to biblical truth. This is assumed. Our point here is simply to insist that adherence to Scripture must mean more in the seminary’s life than commitment to a doctrine of inspiration, or even a whole complex of doctrines carefully derived from Scripture. It should not mean less. But the seminary that is to be a catalyst for renewal must be biblical in the sense that it is committed to the transformation of its whole inner life and outer life until these approximate scriptural standards. If the full force of the whole counsel of God is focused upon the minds and lives of teachers and students, upon cultural views and social outlook as well as doctrinal understanding, upon the secret places of the heart as well as matters that are open for common discussion, the impact upon Church and world cannot help being profound and, surprisingly, utterly new.

Richard Lovelace is associate professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He has the B.A. from Yale, B.D. from Westminster Seminary, and Th.D. from Princeton Seminary.

Two articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY have expressed doubt about the possibility of teaching about religion in the public schools in a manner acceptable to evangelicals. Two other items in this magazine have supported such teaching. Evangelicals seem to be divided on this increasingly important subject. Is there any hope of consensus? What are the issues?

The following four questions seem to be the crucial ones for evangelicals:

1. Should the Bible be taught at all if it cannot be presented as the Word of God?

2. Is it possible to teach objectively about religion?

3. Will the evangelical point of view be given a fair hearing?

4. Are evangelicals prepared to have non-evangelicals (and non-Christians) teach about the Bible and the Christian faith?

What follows is an attempt to resolve each of these issues positively, so as to support the current beginnings of experimentation in teaching about religion in public schools.

Clearly the Bible cannot be taught in public schools as “the word of God.” Should we then teach it merely as the words of men? One evangelical has said, “The Bible with authority has no place in the schools, but the Bible minus its claim to divine authority is welcome in the classroom.” But this isn’t quite precise. It is not the Bible’s claim to authority that is taboo; rather it is any external claim to the Bible’s authority that is forbidden—as is any external denial of the Bible’s authority. The public school does not teach that the Bible is God’s Word; nor does it teach that the Bible is merely men’s words. The public school is neither authorized nor qualified to settle such issues. The public school teaches the literary and historical content of the Bible, letting the theological chips fall where they may.

Thus the Nebraska schools’ junior-high literature unit tells the teacher to “enter into” the literature, to hold up the vision of the writings and not “to censor them by making them say what we want them to.” The students are instructed about the school’s limited function: “It is not the place of the school to ask you to live by what they speak or in opposition to it. That is the place of other institutions” (The God and Man Narratives, University of Nebraska Press).

If the intrinsic authority of the Bible does not convince the reader, nothing said from outside is going to turn the trick. After all, in our age—and probably in every age—a book or idea is held in authority only as it is consistent with the realities of everyday life. Surely evangelicals, of all people, do not feel that the Bible needs human support to survive.

Isn’t the reading of the Bible without comment what was being done and found unconstitutional? No, not quite. While it is true that the Bible was read without comment, it is important to realize that the reading was part of a school-sponsored religious exercise. It is the school’s sponsorship of religious devotional programs that was declared unconstitutional. For such sponsorship amounts to official endorsem*nt of a form of religion. Lack of comment was a comment: an endorsem*nt. The Supreme Court was very careful to point out that both endorsem*nt and denouncement were forbidden to public schools. They must teach in such a way that they are trying not to “advance or inhibit” religion.

This brings us to our second point: Is it possible to teach objectively about religion? Some would argue that by not declaring the Bible to be the Word of God, one declares it not to be.

But this argument overlooks two crucial factors. First, there is a tremendous cultural heritage that connects the Bible with God’s Word. Surely the majority of young people regard the Bible “religiously.” Perhaps one could argue that there would be bias if one did not explicitly declare the Bible not to be divine. Second, the Bible’s status as God’s Word is not based on our declaring it to be such; the Church only recognizes the fact that the Bible is God’s Word. In other words, the authority resides in the text, the same text that the student will study. The Bible will still speak authoritatively even if men deny its divine origin, call it only a human book, or even deride it.

But of course there is no reason to believe that such an unsympathetic view of the Bible will prevail. A negative approach would clearly violate the criterion of objectivity, and the Court declared that teaching must be objective.

In some discussions of objectivity, there is endless repetition of such obvious facts as the impossibility that any human being can achieve perfect objectivity, and the seeming impossibility that some can obtain any objectivity. But after conceding such points one can still point out that there is a practical objectivity that can be expected in the study of religion or any other controversial matter. There are, after all, only four possible approaches to an issue, whether religious, political, or other. First, one might choose one position as the only right one and teach that, hardly a possibility in anything but a hom*ogeneous community. Second, one might try to develop a consensus or common core of shared beliefs about the issue. This will work with some issues, but overwhelmingly the most influential factors are those that divide. In politics it is much more important to see the differences between President Nixon and Senator Muskie than to recognize that they both believe in, say, democracy. In religions, some positions are exclusivist, and to adopt an inclusivist position is really to take sides and teach one view over another.

Third, one might choose to ignore the issue. But surely this too is a bias. Certainly a textbook purporting to study American history that never mentioned slavery and segregation would be as biased as one that advocated them. So, too, to ignore the role of religion in history (for good and for bad) is to give a distorted view of history.

Fourth, one might choose to study the representative views on a controversial issue, to examine them sympathetically for their strong and weak points without attempting to prove anyone right. Is there any reason to believe that religion cannot be treated as honestly and objectively as political history, economic theory, or military history, all of which involve controversy, partisan sources, warring factions? One outstanding success in this regard is the series of units on “Religion in American Culture” produced through the Florida Religion-Social Studies Project, housed at Florida State University. These units, soon to be available from the Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (Reading, Massachusetts 01867), demonstrate the historical honesty and the study of divergent points of view that we call objectivity.

Granted, some teachers will never be capable of such objectivity, and all will suffer certain distortions caused by their own limited experience. But all teachers can attempt to present the diverse possibilities, the multiple patterns of interpretation. This is all we ask in the study of politics. We can ask it also in the study of religion.

It is possible to teach objectively about religion, but will the teachers do so? Will the evangelical point of view be given a fair hearing?

How can we answer such a question in advance? Perhaps on the basis of past experience. Perhaps the fundamentalist’s unhappy experience with evolution should serve as our model. And yet there are differences. That controversy flourished in another day, before the stringent demands of objectivity and neutrality were clear. And there are indications that some amends will be made to the fundamentalists—the new California practice of studying both creationist and naturalist views of origins, and Mr. Justice Black’s weighty concurring opinion in the Epperson evolution case, to name two.

Furthermore, who can say what might have happened had the fundamentalists been involved in developing objective material from the beginning, rather than passing laws establishing their own orthodoxy? Who can predict what will happen if evangelicals become involved in producing, evaluating, and revising curricula on religion instead of hiding their heads in the sand and wondering why their views are not heard? (More than one project has, in desperation, called our office for names of conservative scholars to assist in their curriculum development and revision.)

The Pennsylvania Project has given some evangelicals good cause to wonder if their views will be considered. The original material conformed quite closely to Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s evaluation of the average college course on the Bible: “On the whole calculated to turn a fundamentalist into a liberal.” The Pennsylvania project was attacked by such diverse groups as the American Council of Christian Churches and the American Civil Liberties Union. It was, in other words, somewhat less than adequate.

But if we see only its inadequacy, we miss the main point. More important is the fact that it was seen to be inadequate and that steps have been taken to revise it, including consultations with conservative scholars. I will leave it to others to decide whether this revision has been sufficient; my point is only the readiness to revise unacceptable material that Pennsylvania has shown. The conservative position will be included if conservatives will avail themselves of the opportunity. (This material has been published under the title Religious Literature of the West by Augsburg Publishing House.)

But should evangelicals support such teaching when they know that often the teachers will be non-evangelicals and even non-Christians? This involves two other questions. First, can we trust the honesty of the teacher to present his material, rather than do “evangelism”? We must, and in fact do, exercise such trust already. This is not a question peculiar to religion study. A bad teacher is a bad teacher, regardless of his faith-stance or his curriculum material. Second, and more basic, can faith be understood, let alone taught, from the outside?

No, certainly not fully. But what are the options? Avoid studying religion? Impose a religious test? The former is unacceptable, the latter unconstitutional.

And yet Scripture declares: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.” What are we to do?

For one thing, lower our sights. No one is proposing that the public school be made the end-all of religious education. It is only a very modest beginning.

For another thing, we can clarify what we expect the school to teach: not the “things of the Spirit of God” but rather the facts of history and the literary and historic aspects of the Bible. One need not be filled with the Spirit to know there are four gospels or to recognize that there was some friction between liberals and conservatives in the early decades of this century. This can be taught by anyone. Maybe his account will be incomplete, by evangelical standards, but it will certainly be better than the prevailing ignorance.

For in the last resort ignorance and partial understanding are our only two options. In my more optimistic moments I see tremendous potential as the church builds a more perfect understanding on this lowly foundation. At the least, every Sunday-school class would not have to start from zero if we could assume that our students had some general idea of the overall chronology, say, of the Bible. In addition, a general knowledge of Christianity (and of other religions) could prove most helpful in “creating a climate for evangelism” or “pre-evangelism,” as Dr. Francis Schaeffer calls it. If a person understands what the issues are, it will be much easier to help him confront those issues in personal decision.

In closing I would like to plagiarize a kind of clever overgeneralization that might make my point. The basic idea was advanced by an evangelical author.

Only two people need be afraid to let the school study the Bible: those who say the Bible is not the Word of God but are afraid it might be, and want to be there to hinder it, and those who say the Bible is the Word of God but are afraid it might not be, and want to be there to defend it.

The Court has forbidden both. We may neither “advance or inhibit.” But we may study.

David L. Barr is a university graduate fellow at Florida State University, Tallahassee, from which he has the M.A. He previously was a consultant on religion in education for the Religious Instruction Association.

This year it was Christmas in Boston for my wife and me and our whole family, including two grandchildren. As everyone knows, little children add a special delight to Christmas.

Our assistant editor Edward Plowman recently wrote a book called The Jesus Movement in America, published in paperback by David C. Cook. It has already been reprinted twice, and more than 150,000 copies are in print; 100,000 more will go out through secular channels via Pyramid Publications. Time called Plowman the historian of the Jesus movement. His accounts of what’s going on appear regularly in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Kudos to Mr. Plowman.

According to figures in Advertising Age, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S advertising linage for 1971 rose so substantially that we were number three in percentage increase for all magazines. Our hearty thanks to our persuasive young advertising manager, Charles Wright. Approximately 80 per cent of our operating revenue is derived from circulation and advertising. The rest is made up by gifts from people interested in our outreach. We say thank you to all who have sent in contributions (and take the opportunity to point out that such gifts are income tax deductible). Incidentally, our paid circulation is now about 130,000.

A recent New Yorker cartoon shows a bearded, robed figure ascending a mountain. Halfway up he encounters a sign: “Think.” The final drawing shows him reversing course and descending! Should this be the posture of those addicted to what I have called “Ark fever” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 2, 1971)? Is there enough evidence for the thinking person to believe that Noah’s ship or a substantial vestige of it remains on Greater Ararat in Turkey?

Literary detection has yielded some negative, together with a considerable quantity of positive, evidence. On the negative side, I have been able to establish that the March 29, 1953, Chicago Sunday Tribune article on the 1916 Russian expedition to Ararat contained serious misinformation—misinformation that has conditioned more than one subsequent writing on the Ark’s survival. The author, Paris correspondent Henry Wales, who died in 1960, claimed that “information relating to the existence of remains of the Ark … is contained in documents presented to the library of the University of Geneva by Gen. Dmitri Osnobichine, an aide to the Grand Duke Cyril in Czarist days.”

A year’s research has exploded this claim. After thoroughly checking the books Osnobichine gave to the University of Geneva library and finding nothing, I located Grand Duke Cyril’s surviving son Vladimir, who sent me the following note: “I have never come across the report in question among my father’s archives.”

Vladimir promised to make every effort to locate Osnobichine’s living relatives, and several months later I received a letter from Mme. Alexandre Iordanow-Osnobichine of Rome. The general was her husband’s uncle, and she stated that “no report, no document or notes” concerning the Russian expedition of 1916 could be found “amongst the personal or family papers that came to my husband after the general’s death in 1956”; moreover, General Osnobichine had been in the Caucasus only from 1892 to 1894 and had never been aide-de-camp to Grand Duke Cyril.

Now it should be strongly emphasized that these facts do not put the Russian expedition sighting of 1916 in question (we have sworn testimonies from the families of now deceased soldiers who were on the expedition; and I myself conversed with White Russian colonel Alexander Koor shortly before his death a few months ago concerning his contacts with officers who had reliable data on the expedition and its sighting of what was unquestionably a ship on Ararat).

Positively, a year’s work with the literary sources has powerfully reinforced my conviction that the continued existence of the Ark on Ararat is one of the strongest traditions relating to biblical history—a tradition far stronger than those successfully used by modern Palestinian archaeologists as keys to their great discoveries attesting the accuracy of biblical accounts. Here is but a sampling of important post-Josephus references to the Ark’s survival on Ararat: Theophilus of Antioch (second century A.D.); Elmacin or Ibn-Amid (thirteenth century), author of the great Historia saracenica; Haithon of Gorhigos (fourteenth century) and his contemporaries Odoric of Pordenone and merchant traveler Pegolotti; seventeenth-century Dutch traveler J. J. Struys, who, in assisting a hermit with a broken leg, climbed for a week on Ararat and obtained a sworn statement from this twenty-five-year inhabitant of the mountain as to the Ark’s survival and saw pieces that the hermit had taken from it; the seventeenth-century German merchant traveler Oelschlager (Olearius), who notes that “time hath so hardned the remainders of the Ark, that they seem absolutely petrify’d”; and nineteenth-century ecumenical prelate Archdeacon Nouri, who, after three unsuccessful attempts, scaled Ararat to find “the ark wedged in the rocks and half filled with snow and ice.” Such literary traditions, taken in conjunction with twentieth-century sightings by a Russian expedition, mining engineer George Greene, and French amateur explorer Navarra, give the best of reasons for continuing up Ararat after meeting the pensive warning sign!

This is precisely what my son David and I again did in 1971. Immediately after our return from Turkey in September of 1970, we began seeking government permissions for the next year. When we were nicely in motion and the possibilities looked bright, the government changed (March, 1971)! Since ministry personnel in Ankara were replaced, we had to start over. By June, although high offices in Turkey had assured us we could proceed, the general situation still remained in doubt. During the first week of July it was decided that our chief compatriot, Mr. Eryl Cummings of Farmington, New Mexico, would go immediately to Turkey to deal with the permissions problem in depth and would meet us on the mountain when we arrived the week of August 9.

As it turned out, because of continuing tensions within the Turkish bureaucracy between those who favored our cause and those who did not, Mr. Cummings allowed discretion to serve as the better part of valor and personally forewent exploration; he wisely saw that to press the permissions too far might have created grave problems for the future.

David and I, however, were able to operate in terms of the limited permissions secured and were thus the only Americans on the restricted north face of Ararat in the summer of 1971. We flew to Erzurum, and then drove the northern road to Idgir. There we hired a tractor to take us over a virtually impassable route through swollen streams to the mud-hut village of Ahora, where we slept on the floor of the mayor’s one-room home (with mayor and family!). Securing horses for ourselves and donkeys for the supplies, we proceeded to the 3,600-meter level of Lake Kop—the focal center of past sightings. Treacherous climbing with crampons and ice axes brought us to 4,150 meters, a bit above the location of Navarra’s discoveries. Although we were not able to add a personal sighting to past accounts, we staked out the area in preparation for detailed work by our full crew another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cummings, below in the foothills, took overlapping telescopic photographs of the entire area at the relevant altitude. This will help greatly in analyzing one particularly tantalizing color slide that seems to show a huge object wedged in a crevasse—an object perhaps “absolutely petrify’d”!

Further work now awaits another August and the grace of the Turkish authorities. Reinhold Niebuhr once said that the Church is like the Ark: you couldn’t stand the stench within if it weren’t for the storm without. Our investigation is also like that: we couldn’t stand the strain of Ararat if the winds of unbelief in the authority of God’s Holy Word didn’t impel us to do all that is possible to confirm its entire trustworthiness.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

The U. S. Supreme Court will soon rule on two important church-state disputes.

In one case, the issue is the extent to which churches must pay real-estate taxes on income-producing property. The Central Baptist Church in Miami is contesting the right of local authorities to demand a levy on its parking lot. But the court’s decision could affect as well the future of church suppers, bazaars, book sales, and even the widespread custom among synagogues of “renting” seats at High Holiday services.

Arguments were heard by the court in December, and a decision can be expected within several months.

The justices also listened to arguments on whether Amish parents must send their children to school beyond the eighth grade; a ruling is promised before long (see also editorial, page 26).

The Miami church insists that its parking lot is as essential as its roof. When the Roman Catholic lawyer-priest defending the church made this point, Justice Thurgood Marshall interjected: “I know churches without a parking lot, but none without a roof. I wonder if you aren’t pushing necessity a little far?”

Arguing for the church was Father Charles M. Whelan, a Fordham University professor and an associate editor of the Jesuit weekly America. Whelan wore lay clothes for the occasion, believed to be the first time a Roman Catholic priest has ever orally presented a case before the nation’s highest tribunal.

Religious News Service reported that the brief for the church was prepared in part by William R. Consedine, General Counsel for the U. S. Catholic Conference. “The Miami appeal is seen as pivotal in the entire church tax-exemption debate,” said an RNS dispatch.

In this as well as the Amish case, there has been considerable crossing of ecclesiastical lines. Whelan serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union and has challenged a number of ACLU officials who favor curtailment of church tax exemptions. The plaintiffs in the case are two Miami taxpayers, Florence Diffenderfer and Nishan Paul, who have been represented by the Miami branch of the ACLU.

The Central Baptist Church, on the other hand, is a member of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has filed an amicus curiae brief in the case taking a stand against the church. Americans United has consistently campaigned against tax exemptions for church-owned commercial enterprises.

The case has been hotly contested in Florida. Some say it lies behind the state’s sweeping new tax law that seeks to reduce substantially the tax-exempt rolls. The furor reportedly began in 1967 when a Florida lawmaker looked out his window on the fourteenth floor of the DuPont Plaza building in Miami. He saw car owners paying parking fees to the church, and he determined then and there to make the congregation pay a tax on the lot. The church parks 290 cars on the lot; churchgoers use it evenings and Sundays and paying customers park there on weekdays.

Important cases have also been shaping up in Tennessee and Minnesota, where local authorities are trying to collect real-estate taxes from religious publishing houses. Property-tax exemptions for churches per se were upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court in the 1970 Walz case (see May 22, 1970, issue, page 32). But the federal government has begun to collect income taxes from church-owned businesses, and a growing number of communities see profit-making religious enterprises as a prime target for property-tax assessments.

Last month, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that any property of the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville used simultaneously for religious and non-religious activities must be taxed. Moreover, the judges expressed doubt “that any property used in printing, sales or distribution can be shown to be exclusively associated with sectarian religious objectives.…” The ruling, unless eventually overturned at a higher level, can have a substantial effect because a number of religious groups—denominational as well as independent—do their printing in Nashville.

The Minneapolis tax assessor wants the Augsburg Publishing House of the American Lutheran Church to begin paying regular taxes on its real estate and equipment. The denomination, which has its headquarters and publishing house in downtown Minneapolis, has been giving the city $10,000 annually in lieu of taxes. But the assessor says Augsburg is a competitive, profit-making entity and should pay a full share. That would come to more than $115,000 a year. But Albert E. Anderson, Augsburg general manager, contends:

“The basic issue is, does the state have the power to define for the church how it disseminates the Gospel? If it does, it will limit the church merely to its worship function. This is contrary to all of American history.”

The Amish case, while not of great significance directly, nonetheless could lay down new precedents for government recognition of parochial education.¹The case originated in Wisconsin, where the state legislature has not yet acceded to concerted efforts to enact parochaid. A noted Catholic lawyer (a layman) argued eloquently for the Amish before the U. S. Supreme Court, and a number of religious groups filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the Amish. The defense is being financed by the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom, an interfaith group whose chairman, the Reverend William C. Lindholm, is pastor of a Lutheran church in a Detroit suburb.

“We are hoping and praying,” he says, “that the Supreme Court will stop the suffering of these people and their tender children who have been fined, harassed, chased, and frightened too long by those who don’t understand.”

Black Power Struggle

Disinterest and disunity are dogging the steps of black leaders these days. In November the five-year-old, 1,000-member National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC) attracted fewer than 200 registrants—a considerably smaller number than in previous years—to its annual meeting in Chicago. And last month a deep rift opened between leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), resulting in permanent cleavage.

A hint of the long-simmering SCLC feud may have been dropped at the NCBC meeting when SCLC’s Chicago leader Jesse L. Jackson, 30, was forced to cancel his NCBC speech. SCLC’s aging head, Ralph David Abernathy, according to NCBC sources, ordered Jackson to Florida on SCLC business and addressed the NCBC himself.

Last month Abernathy announced a sixty-day suspension of Jackson from his post as national director of SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. Abernathy cited “administrative impropriety”: Jackson had set up a separate corporation to run this year’s Black Expo trade fair in Chicago in October, normally the SCLC’s biggest money-making event. Abernathy said the SCLC national office had not received its customary percentage of Black Expo income, despite profits listed at $176,141—a figure Newsweek said “seemed low in view of the teeming crowds that Expo drew.”

Jackson in turn resigned, along with Operation Breadbasket’s directors and most of SCLC’s Chicago board members, and announced to 2,000 cheering supporters he would form a new organization intended to wield political and economic clout. The SCLC rejected his resignation, apparently not wanting to see the “bread” spill out of the basket.

The rift may run deeper. It’s no secret that many in the SCLC preferred the dashing, charismatic Jackson as a successor to Martin Luther King rather than the plodding, uneloquent Abernathy. Some observers predict that Jackson’s new organization will supplant the SCLC as the nation’s leading civil-rights group, and that Jackson himself will emerge in the forefront of black political leadership.

Meanwhile, the NCBC was also in disarray, but for different reasons. Officials announced that the NCBC was “broke.” Since its origin the NCBC has received more than $500,000, mostly from predominantly white denominations, but income this year fell sharply.

NCBC executive Metz Rollins blamed the financial crisis in part on denominational backlash over the Angela Davis fund, competition from denominational black caucuses, and sagging NCBC membership. Indeed, many luminaries formerly more active in the NCBC are now top-echelon administrators in their denominations. Thus, in a sense, by achieving its goal of asserting black power in the mainline denominations, the NCBC may have sealed its own demise.

Canadian Union Drive: Down Shifting?

The drive for union of the Anglican, United, and Christian (Disciples) Churches in Canada has undergone a “shift in emphasis” that outside observers regard as a sharp setback for union enthusiasts. Anglican opposition and United Church indifference toward the merger are causing serious second thoughts in both churches.

The previous stress on implementation of the Plan of Union had led to some optimistic forecasts of union by 1973. The General Commission on Church Union, charged with laying the groundwork for the merger, held its ninth meeting in Windsor last month. It concurred with the Anglican resolution to “place greater emphasis upon processes which would enable the churches to grow together, rather than focusing almost total emphasis upon the preparation of a plan.”

The commission contended that the new emphasis “need in no way compromise the final decisions regarding organic union.”

The Reverend D. R. G. Owen, provost of Trinity College (Anglican), expressed his concern in a public letter to commission members and called for an abandonment of the Plan of Union. He described the plan as “a lifeless, depressing, and heart-chilling document” that “represents an ineffective, unacceptable, and … obsolete method of dealing with the problem.”

Owen called on the three churches to recognize one another’s ministries and sacraments. “Having done this,” he added, “let us devote our time, energies, and money to the real problem—the renewal of the Church of Christ in worship, life, and action.”

One faint ray of ecumenical light in what must be Canada’s longest-running news story—since 1943—came at the end of the Windsor meetings: a unanimously adopted resolution that the three churches recognize one another’s ministries and authorize intercommunion.

LESLIE K. TARR

Film Firm Faces Financial Failure

Court-appointed administrators are trying to untangle a web of high finance that recently collapsed into a jumble of financial confusion—and one of the biggest bankruptcy actions in evangelical history. The case involves the Dick Ross and Associates (DRA) firm and its two motion pictures: The Cross and the Switchblade (see October 10, 1969, issue, page 52, and June 19, 1970, issue, page 34) and The Late Liz (see October 22 issue, page 34).

It also involves, according to a court-appointed official, a thirty-page list of creditors and investors worried about more than $2 million they say is due them.

Two years ago film producer-promoter Ross garnered an investment combine to make evangelist David Wilkerson’s best-selling book (more than eight million in circulation) The Cross and the Switchblade into a motion picture. Major investors in the partnership included evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, who put up $100,000, a Grand Rapids group headed by dentist Robert Plekker ($100,000), the American Baptist Convention ($100,000), private sources within the ABC ($200,000), and others, with a grand total of investments in excess of $1 million. The American Baptist Funds were channeled through a unit set up within the ABC, the American Baptist Communication Corporation (ABCC).

Production and distribution costs were about $600,000 each, according to ABCC spokesman Dean Goodwin.

The film was released in mid-1970 and became a box-office success, grossing $5.49 million through August of 1971, according to a report issued by the DRA firm. Variety highlighted its Chicago stand, where it led all other movies in town at the same time in gross receipts. In one week, reports a Chicago advertising executive, the Wilkerson movie grossed $65,000, while the nearest secular competition grossed $17,000.

By agreement, a major percentage of gross receipts went to the theaters. Even so, says Goodwin, the picture netted about $2.5 million for DRA. Contributing to the success was a well-financed, highly polished promotion campaign among churches by DRA staffers working out of regional offices throughout the nation.

Meanwhile, production proceeded on The Late Liz, and it was officially released in September. It was produced largely on credit, says Ross; creditors were lenient in light of the first film’s success. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for one, provided $100,000 worth of goods and services, according to an ABC source.

Disputes among principals and pressure from creditors, however, mounted during the year.

Ross says he bought film rights to Wilkerson’s book from the copyright owner, Bernard Geis Associates of New York City, for $100,000 (half went to Geis, the other half went to Wilkerson and John Sherrill, who did the actual writing of Wilkerson’s book) to cover a five-month “limited engagement” period. Beyond that, during the following “general release” period, Ross said he agreed to pay royalties of 10 per cent, with the authors receiving three-fourths of that amount and Geis the remainder.

When Ross extended the limited-engagement period another six months—without increasing the rights fee or paying royalties—the Wilkerson camp objected. A Wilkerson aide insisted last month that the DRA owed Wilkerson and Sherrill “at least $200,000.”

(In a related sidelight, Wilkerson pressed both Geis and Pyramid Publications—a paperback publisher under contract to Geis—for payment of royalties past due. Pyramid, says the Wilkerson spokesman, sent $17,000 to Geis to be forwarded, but Geis kept the funds and filed bankruptcy last month. As a result Wilkerson now owns the copyright to his book. Pyramid meanwhile issued a report in November stating it had sold only 600,000 copies of the 1.3 million distributed to outlets, causing raised eyebrows in some publishing circles—and at Wilkerson’s headquarters in Dallas.)

A major crisis arose in August, Ross says, when his “bank guarantor”—film and shipping magnate Spiros Skouros—died. “I ran out of time trying to replace him,” he explains.

Pedaling Politics

A Catholic priest and a Communist carpenter who live in the same Italian village kept getting into political arguments. Many clamorous debates failed to settle anything.

But Father Erlado Armosino and Communist Peopoldo Trichero decided on a Don Camillo type of solution: a four-mile bicycle race. The loser had to promise not to mention politics to the winner for a full year.

Some 1,300 churchmen turned out to spur their priest to a two-minute victory over his Red opponent.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

A month’s payroll checks for the DRA bounced, he says. Creditors clamored to be paid and investors asked for their money. MGM slapped a lien on The Late Liz. The Internal Revenue Service and the state of California demanded payment of payroll and other taxes withheld from DRA salaries but not sent in. Ross and ABCC officials confirmed these developments in interviews last month.

In October, Ross says, he signed the DRA partnership over to the ABCC, and he now contends he has no personal responsibility. Goodwin, however, insists that Ross’s claim of transfer is “technically incorrect, because the ABCC board never voted to accept it.” He does concede that Ross could have left the ABC’s Valley Forge headquarters thinking in good faith that the transaction had been completed.

A few days later the IRS seized the DRA’s Hollywood headquarters and auctioned furnishings and equipment. At that, confided an American Baptist executive in an interview, “the IRS netted only $1,600 against an outstanding payroll tax bill of $60,000.” Ross claims the IRS “lost” a DRA payment of $11,000 in a computer and later found it, and that only $20,000 is outstanding.

In the face of gathering legal storms and threats to ownership of the two films, American Baptist officials filed under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act on behalf of the DRA, and a Los Angeles court concurred.

The action grants the ABCC the authority to reorganize the venture, along with time and freedom from legal hassles to get the movies moving again in an attempt to regain solvency. The ABCC in turn last month appointed a five-member panel to administer the project.

Goodwin admits the way will be difficult, especially since there are no funds at present for promotion of The Late Liz, which has been shown in only a handful of theaters so far. As for the Wilkerson film, he and other ABCC members believe it still has a long and useful life ahead. “It has been shown in less than 400 theaters,” one of them points out. “There are many more that want it, and it has 170 bookings through February.”

Ross attributes his troubles to “being undercapitalized in a tight-money market; thus I could be guilty of management error.”

Meanwhile he continues to run Dick Ross Productions (no relationship to Dick Ross and Associates), handling such accounts as the Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts telecasts.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Spanish Radio: ‘The Friendly Voice’

For the first time, Spanish Protestants will have a nationwide evangelistic radio program, produced and transmitted within their own country. “La Voz Amiga” (“The Friendly Voice”) will be broadcast simultaneously on eighteen Spanish commercial and ten FM stations.

The announcement was made in late November after a Barcelona meeting of the directors of Eurovangelism, a Swiss-based European missionary service organization, and Spain’s own interdenominational Evangelism-in-Action. An initial six-month contract was signed; it is expected this will be extended indefinitely if funds are available. The first program was scheduled for mid-December.

“This gives complete coverage of the country,” explained Juan Gili, who will be in charge of production. “It will communicate with many areas where there is no evangelical church.”

Spain has made considerable progress in the past few years. Successful economic plans have resulted in a yearly growth rate averaging 6.4 per cent over the past four years (forecast to rise to 7 per cent). In the past ten years Spain has had the fastest growth rate of per capita income (from $290 to $900) in Western Europe.

By 1980, Spaniards will have double their present income, three times as many automobiles, six times as many television sets, more schools and universities, cleaner air, and less unemployment, according to a New York Times Madrid correspondent.

On the religious scene, the Protestant minority (30,000 in a total population of 34 million) has been enjoying a steady increase of eased restrictions since the Second Vatican Council. No longer denied the outward expression of their faith, they have opened Christian bookstores, rented auditoriums for evangelistic meetings, and taken over theaters for the showing of Billy Graham films. Literature distribution is now possible, and hundreds are signing up for Bible-study correspondence courses.

(Meanwhile, a major shakeup in the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Spain was announced in Madrid and at the Vatican. The changes, favoring moderates and progressives, have been the subject of secret negotiations between the Vatican and Generalissimo Franco’s regime, the Washington Post reported.

(The emerging reformists’ movement in the Catholic Church in Spain received strong papal backing with the appointment of Vicente Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon to direct the nation’s largest archdiocese, Madrid-Alcala. He is regarded as an outspoken champion of church and state separation.

(The new appointments, sources said, reflect the Franco regime’s desire to improve its sagging relations with the Vatican and the progressives in the Spanish church.)

Limited, localized radio outreach has been possible for Spanish evangelicals in the past two years. Evangelism-in-Action sponsored six fifteen-minute broadcasts on Radio Barcelona in 1970; these were stopped when Spanish authorities feared the limited concession could encourage further requests and petitions from various denominations. Recent authorization for the same organization to have nationwide coverage reflects a recognition of its broad interdenominational representation.

DAVE FOSTER

British Baptists Divided

Although British Baptists have held aloof from the controversy that unity negotiations have brought to other churches, the denomination is currently involved in a domestic crisis on a doctrinal issue.

Principal Michael Taylor of Northern Baptist College, a graduate of Union Seminary, New York, gave an address at last summer’s annual assembly, and was promptly criticized by many for throwing doubt on the full deity of Christ. When attempts failed to obtain official dissociation from Taylor’s position, numerous letters of protest poured into the church’s London headquarters.

Eminent evangelical scholar Dr. G. R. Beasley-Murray, principal of historic Spurgeon’s College, has announced his resignation from the chairmanship of the Baptist Union Council because of that body’s handling of the affair. It should, he said, have repudiated Taylor’s views as contrary to New Testament teaching and to his denomination’s own Declaration of Principle. Following a further protest from the Baptist Revival Fellowship, it was suggested that up to thirty ministers may resign from the union’s accredited list. The Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (the latter regarded ecclesiastically as undivided) has a membership of about 275,000.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Impersonal Giving

Agencies that encourage people to sponsor individual under-privileged children overseas were described as “cruel and un-Christian” by an official of the World Council of Churches. The Reverend Alan Brash, director of the council’s commission on inter-church aid, refugees, and world service, made the charge at the annual meeting of the Canadian Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Kitchener, Ontario.

The sponsorship of individual children overseas only contributes to dividing families, he contended. He said Canadians should give their money to local churches that will pass it on to national or world councils of churches for equitable distribution to family units.

And Still It Rankles

The Church of England is an “affluent, middle class church,” but its members gave to it an average of less than seventy-five cents each per week—much less than other churches in Britain. So said the Right Reverend Basil Guy, bishop of Gloucester, at last month’s general synod meeting at Westminster, when it was disclosed that the average incumbent earns no more than $3,600 a year basic stipend (a figure substantially augmented, however, by various fees and by the Easter offering, which goes entirely to him).

The synod by a vote of 199 to 143 rejected a motion expressing regret at World Council of Churches grants “to groups openly committed to violence.” Perhaps surprisingly because of his known strong views, the archbishop of Canterbury abstained from voting. Two weeks earlier the British Council of Churches, while commending the WCC appeal for funds for the same purpose, was left in no doubt that the issue had been embarrassing and divisive in some member churches.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A Church In Kabul

Afghanistan, a country the size of Texas that until 1947 had been closed to the Gospel for 100 years, now has a church. The Community Christian Church of Kabul, begun after permission was obtained in 1965 by the late former President Eisenhower, is just now finished. Seventy tons of steel for the A-frame edifice were brought through the Khyber Pass; the turquoise steel roof came from San Francisco.

A week after the dedication of the building on May 17, 1970, work was temporarily suspended because of government intervention. There are ten to fifteen million persons in Afghanistan, which has 1,000 miles of common border with the Soviet Union. Leaders of the church say Christ himself is the cornerstone of the stone-walled building because “the prayers of God’s people opened the door a crack into this country” and made possible the completion of this strategic outpost.

Meanwhile, Jesus people have taken over the top two stories of the mediocre Ulfat Hotel is downtown Kabul. The top floor has been made into a well-equipped pad known as the “Way Out” where free tea and snacks are served to addicts and wanderers who congregate there to rap or “crash” for the night. The floor below has rooms for as little as twelve cents’ rent a night.

As many as 4,000 travelers, hippies, and freaks may be found cruising through Afghanistan during any of the warm summer months. Many are on a spiritual quest. Jesus leaders at the Way Out report conversions as they preach the Gospel to those nearing the dead end of hard drugs.

Radical Departure

A simmering dispute over three allegedly radical, independent but church-related agencies within the Canadian Christian Reformed Church constituency has contributed to plans of a Toronto congregation to withdraw from the denomination.

The Reverend J. J. Byker, pastor of Second Christian Reformed Church in suburban Rexdale, charged that the activities of the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, the Institute for Christian Studies, and the Christian Labor Association²The Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship engages in various activities, including sponsorship of the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate-level institution with ninety students located in an old mansion near the University of Toronto. The Christian Labor Association acts as a labor union for about 3,500 members. There is personnel overlap between all three agencies and an estimated 80 per cent of the total constituency belongs to the Canadian Christian Reformed Church. were “not in harmony with the historic traditions of the Christian Reformed Church.”

Members of the three agencies have called themselves “radical Christians.” Byker and his church charge that the organizations seek to “change the world before they change men’s hearts.” He claims the majority of his congregation is on his side and has announced that the church will withdraw from the denomination.

The Toronto pastor announced his move after the Toronto Classis of the denomination suspended him and his consistory of elders and deacons from leadership in the congregation. The classis (area council) said Byker had consistently refused to submit the difference to arbitration.

LESLIE K. TARR

Conscientious Exemption

Four Ontario workers successfully applied to the Ontario Labor Relations Board for exemption from supporting a union with whose secular aims and objectives they disagree. The three men and one woman maintain that their Christian faith kept them from joining or contributing dues to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), one of the country’s largest unions.

Twenty-one other workers had presented a similar case by mid-December and were awaiting the labor board’s decision.

Infuriated CUPE president Stanley Little charged that the Christian Labor Association of Canada, which has loomed large in the legislation and the labor-board hearings, was “a right-wing reactionary association which, if permitted, will destroy industrial unions in Canada.” And, for good measure, he added that the CLAC had links with “the racist apartheid movement in South Africa.” (Presumably the South Africa mention was prompted by the fact that the four who successfully appealed are members of Christian Reformed or Canadian Reformed churches, and Little confused those churches with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.)

The real issue, according to CLAC executive secretary Gerald Vandezande, is freedom. “No union should lord it over a bargaining unit,” he contends, “but the worker should be free to identify himself with the labor movement that best reflects his view of man, life, labor, work-community, business, income, responsibility, authority, and justice.”

The Christian Labor Association of Canada intends to step up its campaign to acquaint Ontario workers with their right to opt out of secular unions on conscientious grounds.

LESLIE K. TARR

Religion In Transit

Representatives of forty national educational and religious bodies voted unanimously to form the National Council on Religion and Public Education last month to coordinate efforts to encourage study about religion in the classroom.

Eighty religious or quasi-religious groups were among the nearly 350 organizations having an interest in the problems of the elderly at the White House Conference on Aging last month.

Family Stations has bought a sixth station for its Christian Family Radio Network: WXTC (FM), Annapolis, Maryland. The station, to be assigned new call letters this month, will serve the Baltimore-Washington area.

Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, a charismatic renewal ministry headquartered in San Diego, has been named to membership in the National Association of Evangelicals.

The Presbyterian Layman, produced by the conservative Presbyterian Lay Committee, will be circulated free, beginning this month, to United Presbyterians and others; circulation is now 279,000 on a paid basis … Prospects look dim for the Southern Presbyterian publication This Week, designed to get fast news and sympathetic agency interpretations to local leaders. In its early weeks, 5,000 copies sent free to ministers and others netted only 287 subscribers.

Oral Roberts has great faith in God’s healing power—and in his Tulsa university’s basketball team. The ORU Titans beat Hofstra 83–74 in a Madison Square Garden game before 7,800 fans. Roberts says his team—hitting the big leagues last month after only six seasons—will be competing for the NCAA national championship by 1975.

Congress has passed a bill to extend for seventy-five years the copyright of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures (see editorial, December 17 issue, page 23); in mid-December the bill awaited presidential approval. Senators sponsoring the controversial bill (its constitutionality has been questioned by the New York City Bar Association) included Mark O. Hatfield (R.) of Oregon.

Personalia

Billy Graham, special ambassador and grand marshal, will receive two honors this year: he was appointed a member of the U. S. delegation to the inauguration of Liberian president William R. Tolbert, Jr., this month, and he will lead the forty-fifth Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia, May 5 and 6.

Mrs. James D. Wyker of Berea, Kentucky, last month became the first woman to open the U. S. House of Representatives with an invocation. She is a Christian Church (Disciples) minister.

The Reverend Earl Albert Neil, 35, black rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, has been quietly elected to the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of California, the denomination’s highest governing board in the state. Neil is known as the “Black Panther pastor” and attracted national attention as the spiritual advisor of Huey Newton and the officiant at the funeral of George Jackson, according to syndicated religion columnist Lester Kinsolving.

Assembly of God clergyman John Gordon of San Jose, California, clambered into the bell tower of his church and vowed he wouldn’t come down until 1,000 people were at services below. Only 500 attended at last count so Gordon was living high with electric blanket, TV, and food by basket.

The Reverend David J. Draewell was inaugurated the ninth president of the North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota … Stanley E. McCafferty, president of the San Francisco Bay Area Council and former vice-president of the University of California, has been named president of United Methodist-related University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Church of God (Seventh-day) pastor and public-school teacher Terril D. Littrell of Nevada, Missouri, has been elected to a two-year term as president of the undenominational Bible Sabbath Association, with headquarters in Fair-view, Oklahoma.

Representative William P. Curlin (D.-Ky.), a Presbyterian, has replaced U. S. congressman John C. Watts, a Christian (Disciples of Christ), who died in office in September, 1971.

Veteran Southern Baptist journalist Theo E. Sommerkamp, Jr., formerly director of the European Baptist Press Service in Switzerland, is now associate director of public relations for the Southern Baptist Annuity Board in Dallas.

World Scene

Twenty-one traveling Baptist evangelists died in tidal waves that swept Onissa State in India, according to news from the Baptist World Alliance. The men, who had permits to distribute tracts but not to preach on the streets, were working with the Seventh-day Baptist Conference of India. Some 30,000 persons perished in the disaster.

A sociological survey of English-speaking Roman Catholic priests in Canada revealed that 91 per cent would give confessional absolution to a person who, “with a responsibly formed conscience,” was taking birth-control pills.

Trans World Radio’s Cantonese broadcast to the Chinese people of Europe now includes Mandarin … Radio Ceylon reports heavy demands for time from religious groups; it has opened up time for religious broadcasters in the Hindi, Tamil, and Telegu tongues for its India and Pakistan coverage.

A special offering to assist East Pakistan refugees fleeing into India will be received January 9 throughout the 10.5-million-member United Methodist Church. The minimum goal is $1 million.

All members of the American Lutheran Church have been asked to engage in special prayer concerning the new relationships between the United States and the people of China.

The cornerstone of a new Armenian church atop Mount Zion (just outside the southern wall of old Jerusalem) was consecrated by Patriarch Elisha II in special rites.

Why Do You Have A Poor Memory?

A noted publisher in Chicago reports there is a simple technique for acquiring a powerful memory which can pay you real dividends in both business and social advancement and works like magic to give you added poise, necessary self-confidence and greater popularity.

According to this publisher, many people do not realize how much they could influence others simply by remembering accurately everything they see, hear, or read. Whether in business, at social functions or even in casual conversations with new acquaintances, there are ways in which you can dominate every situation by your ability to remember.

To acquaint the readers of this publication with the easy-to-follow rules for developing skill in remembering anything you choose to remember, the publishers have printed full details of their self-training method in a new booklet, “Adventures in Memory,” which will be mailed free to anyone who requests it. No obligation. Send your name, address, and zip code to: Memory Studies, 555 E. Lange Street, Dept. F401, Mundelein, Ill. 60060. A postcard will do.

NEWS

The year 1971 started out with a vigorous display of evangelical witness: Christianity was much in evidence at the nationally televised New Year’s parades and bowl games. Billy Graham, grand marshal of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, remarked that it was “like a revival meeting.”

That capsule description, magnified many times, could be considered an apt commentary on the entire year. For religious revival swept across North America and overseas during 1971. And religious headlines blared news of the colorful Jesus revolution, the exploding charismatic renewal among Roman Catholics, and an unprecedented interest among converted Jews for evangelizing their own with the Gospel.

Major denominations appeared to be stirring to the throb of renewed concern for personal evangelism, and mass crusades and organized cooperative thrusts crested in new highs of popularity.

Church and state interests intersected, and Supreme Court decisions interpreted the law of the land on government aid to private schools.

Missions and Christian higher education also made headlines in 1971 religious circles, as did denominational tensions in the Presbyterian and Lutheran households. Overall church attendance was up slightly, but membership was down. The financial pinch was felt keenly in most denominations, with more money contributed locally but less turned over to headquarters for national programs.

The ubiquitous Jesus movement picked up steam in the early months of the year in the Pacific Northwest; thousands of teens—most of them outside the institutional churches—made decisions for Christ and turned from drugs and revolution to a vast underground evangelistic movement called the “Jesus People’s Army,” founded in 1969.

Soon, impelled by gospel rock, Jesus rapping, and tabloid-type Jesus newspapers, revival was sweeping across the country. Communes and Bible-study groups were springing up in hamlets and metropolitan areas alike. Media attention swung to the religious awakening, and soon mass baptisms in the ocean and in lakes were viewed on millions of TV screens and seen in thousands of secular and religious publications.

But the seeds of division also sprouted, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where the Jesus movement was torn asunder by the impact of the militantly fundamentalistic, separatist offshoot called the Children of God. That movement also spread rapidly during the summer and fall months, causing suspicion and heartbreak between generations—and eviction of COG colonies from half a dozen properties where they had settled. At year’s end, the Children were making a major sweep into Europe (especially Germany).

Revival fires of a more orthodox nature were blazing across Canada. Sparked by two brothers who held a series of evangelistic rallies in Saskatoon, revival soon made quantum leaps from Vancouver to Toronto.

Spiritual interest and what appeared to be genuine Spirit-inspired revival also pulsated in unlikely places: nightclubs, secular book markets, locker rooms, and high-school auditoriums. Some cynics, viewing the brisk sale of items from the sublime to the ridiculous bearing Jesus insignia, were heard to sniff: “Jesus sells.”

Firm foundations for ongoing evangelism were solidified in 1971. A detailed program was announced for Key 73, the first joint evangelistic effort ever undertaken by North America’s leading churches. At the European Congress on Evangelism in Amsterdam in early September, European evangelicals came together on a scale never before attained; good vibrations assured future gatherings of equal significance spanning denominational and geographical boundaries. Campus Crusade for Christ tooled up for Explo 72 next June in Dallas, and the all-Mennonite evangelism conference, Probe 72, was firmed up for April in Minneapolis.

Billy Graham, going stronger than ever at 52, held successful crusades in Lexington (Kentucky), Chicago, and Dallas, and was honored by a plaque unveiled by President Nixon in Charlotte. His northern California crusade, held in Oakland in late July, was perhaps the peak crusade of his career. More people swarmed onto the infield to receive Christ than at any previous Graham crusade in America over the past twenty-five years.

United Methodists plunged into the evangelism swim in a new way through an evangelism congress in New Orleans, and through a national convocation of evangelicals in Cincinnati where leaders vowed to make their voice heard at the highest levels of Methodism.

Presbyterians also dove into an evangelism celebration of love and foot-washing in Cincinnati, where 3,150 persons from five Presbyterian-Reformed denominations assembled.

Presbyterians made other news in 1971: the United Presbyterian Church rhubarb over a grant of $10,000 to the Angela Davis Defense Fund; and the Southern Presbyterian restructure issue that split the denomination along liberal and moderate-conservative lines. When four independent groups within the conservative wing took a path that seemed certain to lead to division, Dr. L. Nelson Bell resigned his editorial position with the Presbyterian Journal.

The Southern Baptists also had their problems, with suspected liberalism infecting the Broadman Commentary Sunday-school curriculum, and later, disagreement over the propriety of illustrating a youth curriculum piece with a photo showing two white coeds standing a yard or so from a black male student.

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod plodded through a cantankerous biennial convention. Friction developed around biblical inspiration and authority. Although a large number of delegates appeared unhappy with the Synod’s stand in Milwaukee, a splinter group called Federation for Authentic Lutheranism, formed in November, attracted only a handful of dissident congregations by year’s end.

On the church-state front, a majority of U. S. congressmen in the House felt voluntary prayer and meditation should be specifically allowed in a proposed amendment to the Constitution. But the vote lacked the necessary two-thirds, and—perhaps because of aggressive religious lobbying against the measure—the bill was scuttled. Proponents vowed to try again this year.

The U. S. Supreme Court laid down major new lines of church-state separation in June. By voiding parochaid legislation in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the Court barred the spending of public funds in sectarian schools, even if the money is used only for instruction in “secular” subjects. But the court did give qualified approval to a federal law that subsidizes building construction at religious colleges. Several other pivotal church-state issues were pending in the Supreme Court at the beginning of 1972 (see page 42).

The budding youth revival that stirred so much of the religious world this past year lended impetus to a meeting of 12,000 Christian students held in the opening moments of 1971 in Champaign-Urbana. Undoubtedly the largest student missions convention ever, the Urbana Inter-Varsity meeting set the tone in evangelical circles for missions emphasis throughout the year.

In October, Dr. George Peters of Dallas Seminary told a joint retreat of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association at Green Lake, Wisconsin: “I believe this is the greatest time of world evangelism in history.” But leaders there cautioned that the great diversity of missions situations necessitated better communication between mission boards and overseas churches.

Missionaries, like church executives, were feeling the financial pinch in the churches, especially because of the changing role of the United States in the world economy during 1971. Still, severe hardships seemed rare, although several denominations reported cutbacks in missionary appointments in the last quarter of the year.

Christian colleges and educational enterprises also reported they were in trouble: Gordon-Conwell was far behind in its budget expectations, and so was Trinity College in Illinois. But at least half a dozen new colleges were formed in 1971, and innovative institutions like Satellite Christian Institute in San Diego experienced rapid growth and tidy resources for initial capital funding. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry reported that the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies was under its goal of $75,000 for 1971 by $30,000, thus jeopardizing a Lilly Endowment matching grant. The IACS, acting as a catalyst, saw the first major cooperative venture among U. S. evangelical colleges last year: ten schools formed a consortium to share academic resources.

The church press faced troubles; liberal journals had a rougher go than most conservative periodicals. The evangelical book market flourished, however, with titles on the Jesus movement and prophecy meeting needs of the spiritually hungry masses.

Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches fended off attacks (two articles in the Readers Digest were prime examples) by those critical of the council’s repeated funding of racism-fighting groups, some associated with arms and violence; the National Council of Churches mulled over a major reorganization plan while resources dwindled; and Women’s Lib made inroads into church hierarchies. Women were elected as top officers in the United Presbyterian and American Baptist churches, and two women were ordained to the full priesthood in the Anglican diocese of Hong Kong. The worldwide Synod of Bishops in Rome debated priestly celibacy (but didn’t persuade the Pope to favor it), and world justice, a topic on almost every church’s agenda.

The theme of world revival, sparked by exuberant disciples in an assortment of dress, hair styles, and vocabulary, stands as the top story of the year. And since it is God’s story, it is likely to endure for eternity.

Dacca Departure: Most Missionaries Flee

As Indian artillery opened fire upon the besieged capital of war-torn East Pakistan, only a handful of North American missionaries remained behind in Dacca. One hundred sixty-five Americans were reported still in the city on December 15, the day after the initial shelling and the day before East Pakistan surrendered.

Those Americans who stayed did so voluntarily, according to reports from the U. S. State Department. It was not immediately known which missions agencies were still represented in Dacca, because communications between the missionaries and the sending agencies were almost nonexistent. What messages were transmitted went via embassies, said Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, general secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Eight Southern Baptists (and their seven children) and some Roman Catholic missionaries elected to remain in Dacca, according to Southern Baptist officials in Richmond, Virginia. “Most are without re-entry visas, so they wouldn’t be allowed to return under West Pakistan control,” noted Dr. J. D. Hughey of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

Donald Hunter, associate secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, said two SDA couples were still in Dacca on December 15 (their children were no longer there, however). Hunter added that four other families had been evacuated by air. “They felt it was only a question of time until India takes over,” he said in an interview.

Both he and Taylor stressed that the missionaries remaining in East Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani war were there by choice. Hunter said the two Adventist couples stayed on to secure the church’s property and give assistance to Seventh-day members there.

Early in December, a number of missionaries left West Pakistan. Twenty-six SDA workers and their families from the SDA hospital in Karachi were airlifted to Teheran, although the hospital was kept open, according to Hunter. United Methodist officials reported that one of their missionary wives and her four children were among 378 Americans evacuated from Karachi on December 5. Three other missionaries remained in the city.

While twenty-eight Christian agencies in the North American Protestant Ministries Overseas Directory are listed as having missions personnel in Pakistan, the bulk of that number is assigned to West Pakistan. There are about twenty missionaries in Pakistan—all in West Pakistan—belonging to the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. They were reported “safe and well” December 7.

East Pakistan, divided from West Pakistan by India, is a land the size of Illinois, criss-crossed by rivers. Its population of 77 million is predominantly Muslim, with less than 1 per cent Christian and about 10 per cent Hindu.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Taking It On The Chin

Dr. Paul B. Smith, minister of the evangelical Peoples Church in Toronto, found himself in hot water after he stated over the radio that, in an election, he would choose Adolf Hitler over Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. The radio station, receiving complaints about the church broadcast, granted time to Senator Keith Davey to reply.

Describing the minister’s remarks as “in unbelievably bad taste,” Davey contended that they were part of a well-organized, well-financed U.S.-based campaign to discredit Trudeau. But, added the senator. “Dr. Smith’s attack was more vicious than most.” The Peoples Church then severed a five-year relationship with radio station CHIN, and a United Church of Canada congregation took over the air time.