Page 6321 – Christianity Today (2025)

ESTES IN THE PILPIT—Billie Sol Estes, Churches of Christ lay preacher, appeared before a small Negro congregation in Indianapolis last month. He delivered a 35-minute sermon, then passed the collection basket in behalf of a proposed missionary church in Nigeria. Estes, convicted of fraud by a Texas court, still faces federal action in connection with the collapse of his financial empire. He is free on bond pending an appeal.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—Southern Baptists are working on a revised confession of faith to be presented to their annual sessions in Kansas City in May. A draft prepared by a special committee is being studied by Southern Baptist seminary faculties.

The Evangelistic Association of New England, supported by some 600 evangelical churches, marked its 75th anniversary with a dinner meeting in Boston.

The Methodist Church in the West Indies, Central America, and British Guiana will become an antonomous conference in 1965 but will maintain close ties with the British Conference and will continue to seek ministers from the United Kingdom.

The General Council of the Ameircan Baptist Convention will hold its winter meeting, February 6–7, where Baptist work in the New World had its beginnings. The First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams, and the United Baptist Church of Newport, founded by John Clarke, are the oldest Baptist churches in America. Both list 1638 as their founding date.

An appeal to labor and management leaders involved in the New York newspaper strike was issued by the Protestant Council of the City of New York. The statement urged both parties “to comprehend, in addition to the self-interest of the contending parties, the vast public interest and concern and your responsibility to them.”

MISCELLANY—Boston College will bring together two leading figures of the Roman Catholic reform movement next month, Augustin Cardinal Bea, head of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and Father Hans Küng, a young theologian from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

The World Vision Korean Orphan Choir is winning recognition as one of the finest children’s musical groups in the world. The choir, directed by Soo Chul Chang, is now on a tour of North America.

Missionary News Service reports establishment of an office in Nairobi, Kenya, to coordinate evangelical efforts in Africa. The office, a joint project of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, will operate under the Rev. Kenneth Downing, former general field director of the Africa Inland Mission.

A new suburban campus for the Tokyo Bible Seminary of the Oriental Missionary Society will include a classroom building, six homes for national teachers, five missionary homes, and a four-unit guest house. Construction is already under way.

Soviet Zone Communists, after a period of relative restraint, launched a heavy attack against what they called the West German “military” church. Their specific targets were the 11th German Evangelical Church Day (DEKT) Congress, to be held at Dortmund, July 24–28, and Dr. Kurt Scharf, chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID).

Congress is again being asked to consider the problem of Old Order Amish who have religious objections to participation in the Social Security program. Republican Representative Paul B. Dague of Pennsylvania introduced a measure to exempt from the compulsory insurance program those “who are opposed to participation in such program on grounds of conscience or religious belief.”

PERSONALIA—Dr. Langdon B. Gilkey, now professor and chairman of the department of theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School, appointed Professor of Systematic Theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Robert Clyde Johnson, professor of systematic theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, named dean of Yale Divinity School. He succeeds Dr. Liston Pope, who resigned in 1961.

Dr. Colin W. Williams, Australian evangelist, named executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Central Department of Evangelism.

The Rev. J. B. Toews will resign as general secretary of the Board of Missions of the Mennonite Brethren Church to become a professor at the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California. Toews will be succeeded by the Rev. H. R. Wiens.

The Rev. Ross S. Rhoads appointed a field evangelist of the Gospel Broadcasting Association headed by Dr. Charles E. Fuller. Rhoads will hold evangelistic campaigns throughout the country and will periodically share in the preaching ministry of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour radio broadcast.

Dr. Roy C. McClung named president of Wayland Baptist College.

Dr. H. L. Puxley named director of the Canadian School of Missions and Ecumenical Institute.

The Rev. Tommy L. Duncan elected president of the American Protestant Correctional Chaplains Association.

The Rev. Luther K. Hannum, Jr., Protestant chaplain at Sing Sing Prison, presented “Chaplain of the Year Award” by the Salvation Army.

Frank J. Crawford, Jr., Post Office Department illustrator who designed the 1962 Christmas stamp, presented with one of the department’s top career service awards.

Ernest Woodhouse appointed superintendent of McAuley Water Street Mission, New York, oldest rescue mission in America.

Dr. William H. Schechter, president of Tarkio College, elected president of the National Council of United Presbyterian Men.

The Rev. William D. Moyers, Southern Baptist minister, nominated to be deputy director of the Peace Corps. Moyers, former aide to Vice President Johnson, has been associate director of public affairs for the Peace Corps.

The Rev. S. Carson Wasson assumed the presidency of Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund, oldest chartered life insurance company in the world.

Eerdmans publishers announced that F. F. Bruce has succeeded the late Ned B. Stonehouse as editor of its monumental New International Commentary.

WORTH QUOTING—“Religious beliefs have nothing to do with the legal profession.”—Maurice Brooks, president of Abilene (Texas) Bar Association, in expressing disapproval of the Christian Legal Society, newly organized fellowship of evangelical lawyers.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the Pope is the number one public relations man for the church in the world today.”—Bishop Fred P. Corson, president of the World Methodist Council.

Deaths

THE RT. REV. NORMAN BURDETT NASH, 74, retired Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts; in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

DR. ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN, 106, who served for 34 years as secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions; in New York. Brown was the oldest living person listed in Who’s Who in America, and the only surviving member of Andrew Carnegie’s original Church Peace Union.

DR. GEORGE P. MICHAELIDES, 70, director emeritus of the Shauffler Division of Christian Education at the Oberlin College Graduate School of Theology; in Oberlin, Ohio.

DR. C. H. WATSON, 86, former president of the General Conference of the Seventh day Adventist Church; in Sydney, Australia.

PROFESSOR JAMES PITT-WATSON, 69, former moderator of the Church of Scotland; in Glasgow.

DR. ANDREW VANCE MCCRACKEN, 65, editor of the United Church Herald, biweekly magazine of the United Church of Christ; in Bronxville, New York.

In a meeting without precedent in U. S. history, Jewish rabbis, Roman Catholic priests, and Protestant clergymen, with leading laymen of their faiths, gathered to discuss ways to rid America of racialism.

The National Conference on Religion and Race convened in Chicago, “home of Lincoln,” January 14–17, 100 years to the month after the Emancipation Proclamation freed the Negro from slavery. Convinced that racial discrimination is a moral problem that cannot be solved by legal and economic pressures alone, delegates issued “An Appeal to the Conscience of the American People” with the prayer that it would effect a new emancipation. Purpose of the appeal is to sensitize the conscience of the American people to the moral evil of racism in its many forms.

Admitting that the U. S. government had again shown the way in the recent Supreme Court decisions, delegates spoke frequently of their sinful failure to follow the example of the government and the moral imperatives of their own religious faiths. Discrimination in housing, employment, schooling, transportation, and the use of public facilities in American life, plus various forms of discrimination within their own organizations, were identified as failures of church and synagogue.

Among many practical resolutions was selection of ten large “target cities” as areas in which inter-faith groups will attempt to deal concretely with racial problems on the local, grass root level.

The cities chosen were Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Oakland, San Antonio, New Orleans, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and St. Louis.

Dr. Franklin H. Littell of Chicago Theological Seminary told the more than 650 delegates and 300 observers that America is only now shedding its heathenism and becoming Christian. “Racialism,” he said, “has precisely the same relation to our church life as polygamy in Africa,” a carry over of “pre-baptismal practice” into our church life. He asserted that while racialism is America’s greatest social problem, it is not the church’s most basic issue. Racialism, he declared, is our churches’ “moment of truth” in which they can discover whether they are truly the Church of Christ.

With the touch of the thunder and passion of Old Testament propheticism, Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel decried racism as “satanic,” a “blasphemy,” an “eye-disease, a cancer of the soul.” He found redemption in a justice “charged with the omnipotence of God,” and concluded exultantly, “What ought to be, shall be!”

In the panel which followed Heschel’s impassioned speech, New York attorney William Stringfellow, an Episcopal layman, shook delegates by asserting “this conference is too little, too late, and too lily white.” He described the very idea of the conference’s declaration of conscience as “absurd” since the initiative in racial matters has already almost wholly passed to minority groups. He said present religious structures are pervaded with “demonic” powers.

Praising the high quality of Negro leadership, Stringfellow said he was thankful that the initiative and leadership “is not in hands of a black General Walker.” He denounced Heschel’s humanism and called for a candid recognition that society’s only hope for unity and reconciliation lies in the unity achieved in Christian baptism. Looking at Heschel at his immediate right, he declared that reconciliation is “not by man” but by God in the Christ of the Cross. Heschel responded to Stringfellow by saying, “Despair of man’s power for goodness is the greatest heresy.” If man has not such power, he asserted, “God has spoken in vain.” He added, “Fortunately, Moses did not study theology under Mr. Stringfellow. If he had, he would still be working in Egypt.” Stringfellow later declared that he did not regard the conference as without value, but feared its possibilities would be superficially over-estimated.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

‘AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’

We have met as members of the great Jewish and Christian faiths held by the majority of the American people, to counsel together concerning the tragic fact of racial prejudice, discrimination and segregation in our society. Coming as we do out of varous religious backgrounds, each of us has more to say than can be said here. But this statement is what we as religious people are moved to say together.

I

Racism is our most serious domestic evil. We must eradicate it with all diligence and speed. For this purpose we appeal to the consciences of the American people.

This evil has deep roots; it will not be easily eradicated. While the Declaration of Independence did declare “that all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” slavery was permitted for almost a century. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, compulsory racial segregation and its degrading badge of racial inequality received judicial sanction until our own time.

We rejoice in such recent evidences of greater wisdom and courage in our national life as the Supreme Court decisions against segregation and the heroic, non-violent protests of thousands of Americans. However, we mourn the fact that patterns of segregation remain entrenched everywhere—North and South, East and West. The spirit and the letter of our laws are mocked and violated.

Our primary concern is for the law’s of God. We Americans of all religious faiths have been slow to recognize that racial discrimination and segregation are an insult to God, the Giver of human dignity and human rights. Even worse, we all have participated in perpetuating racial discrimination and segregation in civil, political, industrial, social, and private life. And worse still, in our houses of worship, our religious schools, hospitals, welfare institutions, and fraternal organizations we have often failed our own religious commitments. With few exceptions we have evaded the mandates and rejected the promises of the faiths we represent.

We repent our failures and ask the forgiveness of God. We ask also the forgiveness of our brothers, whose rights we have ignored and whose dignity we have offended. We call for a renewed religious conscience on this basically moral evil.

II

Our appeal to the American people is this:

SEEK a reign of justice in which voting rights and equal protection of the law will everywhere be enjoyed; public facilities and private ones serving a public purpose will be accessible to all; equal education and cultural opportunities, hiring and promotion, medical and hospital care, open occupancy in housing will be available to all.

SEEK a reign of love in which the wounds of past injustices will not be used as excuses for new ones; racial barriers will be eliminated; the stranger will be sought and welcomed; any man will be received as brother—his rights, your rights; his pain your pain; his prison, your prison.

SEEK a reign of courage in which the people of God will make their faith their binding commitment; in which men willingly suffer for justice and love; in which churches and synagogues lead, not follow.

SEEK a reign of prayer in which God is praised and worshiped as the Lord of the universe, before Whom all racial idols fall, Who makes us one family and to Whom we are all responsible.

In making this appeal we affirm our common religious commitment to the essential dignity and equality of all men under God. We dedicate ourselves to work together to make this commitment a vital factor in our total life.

We call upon all the American people to work, to pray and to act courageously in the cause of human equality and dignity while there is still time, to eliminate racism permanently and decisively, to seize the historic opportunity the Lord has given us for healing an ancient rupture in the human family, to do this for the glory of God.

Another panelist, Sheed & Ward editor Philip Scharper, agreed that “racism is an intolerable heresy,” but saw its resolution only in a theology of the Incarnation. Discrimination will not be resolved, he contended, until men recognize that the Negro no less than the white has been redeemed “by the blood of Christ,” and that Christ’s blood alone can wash away our “ethnic pride and cultural superiority … blotting out forever those … cherished distinctions which set us off from the lesser breeds without the law.”

Various delegates declared in discussion groups that they rarely if ever heard sermons on the evil nature of racial discrimination from the pulpits. Sargent Shriver, Director of the Peace Corps, addressing a full meeting of the conference, asked: “I wonder why I can go to church fifty-two times a year and not hear one sermon on the practical problems of race relations?” He challenged delegates to tithe a tenth of their time to the achievement of social justice. Many delegates confessed that the embarrassment of their own personal failures, and that of their churches, kept them from speaking out against the segregation of their civic communities.

In the conference’s closing address Martin Luther King declared that segregation is “morally wrong and sinful,” for every man’s creation in the image of God means that there “is no graded scale of essential worth. Only a Negro,” he declared, “understands the social leprosy that segregation inflicts upon him. Like a nagging hell, it follows his every activity, leaving him tormented by day and haunted by night.”

Many voices, both lay and cleric, asserted that the clergy often fail to speak against racism in concrete terms for fear of loss of status, or even position.

The conference was called by the Department of Racial and Cultural Relations of the National Council of Churches; the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference; and the Social Action Commission of the Synagogue Council of America. The Rev. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse College, Atlanta, was chairman. Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, was the conference’s Secretariat. More than 70 religious groups participated.

Several invited Negro organizations declined to attend. Most conspicuous was the absence of the president of the 5,000,000-member National Baptist Convention, the Rev. J. H. Jackson. According to the Rev. Phale D. Hale, executive secretary of the Social Action Commission of the Ohio Baptist General Association, close friend of both Jackson and Martin Luther King, “personal relationships arising out of past experiences” in the World Council of Churches and in the formation of the conference, led to his rejection of the invitation.

The theological basis on which the three major U. S. faiths met was the common confession that one God created all men in his own image and each man has therefore rights and dignities which all others are obliged to honor. Appeal was made to the words of Malachi (2:10), “Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?” This was accepted as a basis for the conference without any debate. This basis indeed allowed for the hoped for amelioration of racism through resolutions and united programs of concrete social action. It did not, however, deliver the conference from basic ambiguity and contradiction on a deeper level. Within the accepted limitations of their coming together, delegates could not appeal to that grace of God in Christ which can alone cleanse evil from the human heart. Delegates repeatedly admitted that everyone knows what is right, but continually asked for the source of the power and courage to do the right. NCC President J. Irwin Miller put the matter in sharp relief when he told the assembly, “We often find ourselves unable to practice what we preach.”

The conference did represent, however, an anguished and determined effort toward conquering America’s greatest and most dangerous social problem.

At times emotions rose to the point of breaking—not into anger but tears.

Church And Politics

The implications of a “Christian Social Relations Committee” proved too much for the vestry of St. Michael and All Angels Church, Los Angeles.

The vestry set up a committee to study the proposal of the Los Angeles Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church “to foster the formation in every parish and mission of the Diocese of a local Christian Social Relations Committee.” The committee probed the pros and cons for six months, then returned with a 22-page report which instead proposed establishment of a “Good Works Committee.”

The report was adopted by the vestry by a vote of 11 to 0, with the rector, the Rev. R. K. Riebs, abstaining.

A resolution of the vestry concluded that “the proposed Christian Social Relations Committee is not in the best interest of this Parish Church.”

The resolution noted that “the establishment of the proposed Christian Social Relations Committee, whatever else it might serve to do, would commit our Parish Church to a program of political action and that this kind of controversial activity and its natural and consequent by-products would seriously jeopardize and impair our ability to carry out the valid and important purposes for which we have joined together in this church.”

Announcing A Reprint

Bethany Press, publishing house of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), says it is reprinting The Message of Genesis, the book which created a major theological furor in the Southern Baptist Convention last year.

The book will be out this month as the first in a new line of paperbacks, according to Darrell K. Wolfe, director of Bethany Press. Both Wolfe and Dr. Ralph H. Elliott, the author, said corrections of spelling and typographical errors will be the only changes from the first edition.

Broadman Press, the Southern Baptist publishing agency which first issued the book then decided not to reprint it after 5,000 copies had been sold out, reportedly loaned the type to Bethany Press.

Elliott, at first defended by trustees of Midwestern Baptist Theological School, eventually lost his teaching position at the Southern Baptist school when he would not agree to withhold the book from a second publication.

The theological viewpoint of the book was sharply criticized by Southern Baptist conservatives.

Wolfe, in announcing the reprint plan, was somewhat condescending:

“It is well written from the point of view of style. While it is not a major scholarly work, we believe that it will fit the Bethany line without discredit.”

Had officials of Bethany Press considered that in reprinting the book they might fan the flames of theological controversy in a sister denomination? Wolfe did not say.

“Our directors notified me to go ahead if I thought the book was of sufficient quality,” he declared, “and my publication committee told me to go ahead for this reason:

“They thought the book warranted being published because of the way it had been handled in the past. In other words, they felt that no man ought to lose his job just because he had a book on the Bible published that did not happen to appeal to all of the constituents.”

A Ransom For The Siberians?

Is there still hope for the 32 Siberian peasants who sought refuge from religious persecution? Could their fellow Christians in the more fortunate free world find a way to help them?

These questions echoed in the mind and heart of many an evangelical believer this week, kept alive by the memory of a plaintive cry:

“Those who believe in God and Christ, help us!”

The plea had been uttered by one of the peasants herded into a Soviet bus for removal from the U. S. Embassy in Moscow. Around the world evangelical Christians shared an uneasy conscience because it remained unanswered.

Perhaps the most dramatic proposal for helping the peasants, who presumably were back in their home town of Chernogorsk, was this:

Why not raise a ransom fund and offer Khrushchev the money for release of the 32 from Russia?

James B. Donovan, New York attorney involved in the return both of U-2 pilot Gary Powers and the Cuban Bay of Pigs invaders, was pessimistic.

“I’m sure it would be rejected out of hand,” he said. “Russia would have no idea of permitting them to leave.”

Donovan, a Roman Catholic layman, did not shut the door on the possibility that he might be willing to negotiate for release of the Siberian Christians if interest from the Kremlin were forthcoming. He said he would make that decision in the light of circumstances.

[A complete report on the plea for refuge by the Siberians appeared in the news section of the January 18, 1963, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. In the same issue, an editorial voiced disappointment that “no church or church organization seized the opportunity to ransom the ill-fated Cuban freedom fighters from Castro’s island prison.”]

[Richard Cardinal Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, belatedly revealed that there had indeed been a church organization involved; Cushing himself had raised $1,000,000 to help liberate the Cubans. The funds he raised, Cushing said, came from small contributions of $1,000 or less from persons of all religious beliefs. Some $200,000 was already on hand, he said. The cardinal told newsmen he agreed to raise the sum when informed by U. S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that the money was needed. Cushing’s involvement reportedly raised some Protestant concern.]

Observers were quick to point out that an offer of money for the Siberians would be a situation quite different from the one which brought back the Cubans.

Gordon Shantz of Harrisonburg, Virginia, director of Russian-language Mennonite radio broadcasts beamed to the Soviet Union, declared that although there is not much parallel with the return of the Cuban invaders, the idea of a ransom for the Siberians is due “some exploration.” “It might be worth following up,” he said.

Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, whose “Lutheran Hour” radio broadcast is also heard in Russia, lamented the fact that the State Department and the U. S. Embassy in Moscow “failed to get more mileage” out of the incident. But he added that “I don’t see much purpose in this ransom procedure. There isn’t a ghost of a chance. It would be a pure propaganda move.”

Neither the World Council of Churches nor the National Council of Churches had a comment on the Moscow incident.

Leaders of the Baptist World Alliance called on the Russian government to permit an impartial international commission to investigate the complaint of the Siberians. They made the plea in a personal letter to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin delivered to the Russian Embassy in Washington.

State Department Press Officer Lincoln White, asked if Protestant churches could expect any encouragement from the U. S. government if they sought to ransom the Siberians, said he did not know one way or another.

Timely Accident

The Rev. Earl Kelly, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Holly Springs, Mississippi, was preaching on the second coming of Christ.

He had just quoted Matthew 24:27, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

At this point, a large light bulb fell from its socket in the ceiling and shattered on the floor in front of the pulpit.

As reported by Baptist Press, Kelly was equal to the occasion. He told the startled worshipers, “His coming will be just as sudden, and unexpected, and devastating to the dreams that are not Christ-centered.”

Most generous offer in behalf of the Siberians came from the National Association of Evangelicals. A cablegram signed by Dr. Robert A. Cook, NAE president, and Bishop C. N. Hostetter, Jr., chairman of its World Relief Commission, urged Khrushchev to grant the 32 believers permission to leave the Soviet Union.

An NAE spokesman said the offer of help could be interpreted as willingness to sponsor the Siberians as refugees.

Dr. Carl McIntire, president of the International Council of Christian Churches, also wired an appeal to Moscow as well as to the U. S. State Department asking for release of the Siberians.

“But under no circumstances would we consider a ransom,” he said. “That would be immoral. God can deliver these people without our committing an immoral act.”

Meanwhile, Religious News Service reported from Moscow that the Siberians had presented written petitions at the embassy but that American authorities were unwilling to release the texts. Embassy spokesmen said the petitions were forwarded to the State Department for “detailed study.” They added that no copy of the pleas had been provided to the Soviet foreign ministry.

According to the one report, “there were many pages” in the petitions, “handwritten and signed by many names.”

Some observers saw in the phrase “many names” the possibility that the Christians who appeared at the U. S. Embassy may have carried petitions signed by a large number of believers from Siberian areas.

If so, Christians signing the petition—in entrusting it to the group which journeyed some 2,400 miles to Moscow—took a great risk. Had the petitions been intercepted by Soviet authorities before reaching the U. S. Embassy, the Communist regime could have placed charges.

A complete news blackout on the incident still existed throughout Russia two weeks afterward. The only announcement from the government was distributed by a news agency, Novosti, and consisted of an English-language detailing of “crimes” committed by “Evangelical Christians.” Designed strictly for Western consumption, it listed a series of “criminal” activities attributed to an “unregistered” sect.

Cruelty to children constituted the major charge. Indirectly, by noting that children had been taken from sect members because of alleged cruelty, the Soviet agency supports the peasants’ charge, shouted out at the U. S. Embassy, that their children would be taken from them.

A New Encounter

Study of the Holy Spirit brought together two ends of the ecclesiastical spectrum—the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Assemblies of God—in two closed-door meetings last year “to find out what we might be able to learn from each other about Christian faith and life.”

Specifically, much of the conversation centered on the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church today. Both sides discounted any aims toward doctrinal agreement or ecclesiastical negotiations.

A joint statement issued January 16 reported that “there emerged a deep sense of Christian understanding and mutual trust. We found ourselves a fellowship, open to the leading of the Holy Spirit to a degree which we had hardly dared to expect.”

There was no explanation of why the talks had been a closely guarded secret.

Conferences between officials of the two churches were held at the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, and at the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. The first meeting was held February 16–17, 1962, in Springfield and the second November 8–9, 1962, in Kansas City.

The idea originated in a letter written by Carl G. Conner, public relations representative of the Assemblies of God, to Peter Day, editor of The Living Church, an Episcopal weekly. Conner commented on an article in The Living Church relating to the charismatic movement in the Episcopal Church and suggested the possibility of further discussion. Day received the proposal enthusiastically and took it up with church officials, who appointed an official committee.

Attending the meetings, in addition to Day, who was chairman of the Episcopal delegation, were the Rt. Rev. Edward R. Welles, Bishop of Western Missouri; the Very Rev. Ned Cole, Jr., dean of Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis; and the Rev. William N. Beachy, M. D., chaplain of St. Luke’s Hospital, Kansas City.

Included in the Assemblies of God delegation were the Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, general superintendent; the Rev. Howard Bush; the Rev. Charles W. H. Scott; the Rev. Gayle F. Lewis; the Rev. Bert Webb; the Rev. J. Philip Hogan; and the Rev. M. B. Netzel.

Sources identified with the current charismatic revival say that a number of Episcopal churches are experiencing its manifestations. The Protestant Episcopal Church became the first of the old-line denominations to utter an official reaction when its House of Bishops issued a statement last fall. The statement said, in effect, that the movement must not get out of hand. Here is the complete text:

“Since, from time to time, new movements rise within the life of the Church, we, your bishops, share two observations.

“(a) When a new movement rises, which may stress some aspect of the richness of Christ, it is the duty of the whole Church to view it with sympathy, to work to keep it within the great fellowship, and to discern what in the movement is of God that we all may learn from it. Our attitude must be generous, and charitably critical. If, for example, a movement rises concerned with the fact of the Holy Spirit, the proper response is for all of us to consider anew the divine promises and divine gifts, trying the spirits by their fruits. We must bear always in mind that souls differ, that God’s Spirit is ever moving in new ways, and that new movements have in history enriched the Body of Christ. We observe further that we are a Church, and not a sect, and that our spiritual home is, and should be, spacious.

Overseas Move

Westminster College, a United Presbyterian school in Fulton, Missouri, plans to import a 285-year-old war-damaged church from London as a memorial to Winston Churchill.

Dr. Robert L. D. Davidson, college president, says moving St. Mary the Virgin Church from Aldermanbury to the Missouri campus and its reconstruction should be completed by June.

Plans to move the church had been ridiculed earlier by Pravda, Communist daily in Moscow, which brought the comment from Davidson: “We couldn’t be more complimented.”

Westminster College was the scene in 1946 of Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech in which he called for a strong American-British alliance against Communism. The address was belittled by Pravda as “one in which the Cold War was declared and which legalized the sad role of the junior partner of the U. S.”

Christopher Wren, noted British architect, designed the church, which was completed about 1677.

“(b) Having said that to the whole Church, we observe that the danger of all new movements is self-righteousness, divisiveness, one-sidedness, and exaggeration. We call, therefore, upon all new movements to remain in the full, rich, balanced life of the historic Church, and thereby protect themselves against these dangers; and we remind all clergy of their solemn vow to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this Church. The Church, transcending in its life both the generations and the nations, is by its nature more comprehensive than any special groups within it; and the Church, therefore, is both enriched by, and balances the insights of all particular movements.”

An Episcopal Record

A record membership of 3,591,853 in 7,735 parishes and missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church—a gain of 2.5 per cent over the previous year—is reported in the 1963 Episcopal Church Annual published by Morehouse-Barlow in New York.

Of the total, 3,334,253 are members of congregations and missions in the United States and 247,600 belong to 16 missionary districts outside the country.

The members are served by 9,811 ministers—a five per cent increase—and 15,510 lay readers.

Commenting on these and other statistics in the yearbook, Clifford P. Morehouse, editor of the annual, wrote that this is “probably not more than the normal population growth” of the country.

Citing a 1.62 per cent decrease in church school pupils and a 12 per cent decrease in ministerial candidates, Morehouse said:

“The question naturally arises: Is the Episcopal Church doing its full share in the religious life of America, or is it losing ground to other religious bodies and to the prevailing secularism?”

Morehouse, president of the church’s House of Deputies, observed that “fortunately statistics do not tell the whole story.”

He pointed to a “new awakening of lay activity in the Church” and a “growth of vision and of sound planning both in the home areas and in work overseas.”

‘You Can Call Me Red’

Since 1931 Britain has had four monarchs, eleven governments, and four primates in Anglicanism’s mother see, but amid all the changes and chances of this mortal scene the Dean of Canterbury has remained unmoved. Whoever conjures up an idyllic tale of cloistered seclusion in the ancient cathedral city (population 30,376) would be so wrong, for this onetime $2-a-week engineering apprentice caused uproar after uproar by tireless championship of Communist states and Marxist policies.

Born of capitalist parents in 1874, Hewlett Johnson did welfare work in the Manchester slums and was a strong advocate of Social Credit in his earlier days. Appointed to Canterbury by Labor Premier J. Ramsay MacDonald, he visited Russia in 1938 and thereafter published The Socialist Sixth of the World (now 22 editions, 25 languages). “I cannot lay claim to too much respectability,” he said once. “Underneath my skin I am a bit of a barbarian.” Though never a member of the Communist party, he journeyed far to world peace rallies, was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951, and in support of Red China charged the Americans with germ warfare during the Korean War. This led to a debate in the Houses of Parliament during which Dr. Geoffrey F. Fisher, then the archbishop, said the dean had “abused and compromised his office” (from which he could not legally be removed). Johnson never shunned publicity, and caused another furor when the Russians suppressed the 1956 revolution in Hungary.

Since he obstinately resolved never to quit his historic post while his health was good, the announcement of his resignation, effective May 31, has sparked off considerable speculation, for his wife claims he is “in perfect health.” Quizzed if pressure had been put on him, Johnson said: “I would rather not answer that. But that would not decide me at all because pressure has always been brought to bear upon me to retire by archbishops and by canons.” To Fisher, the distinguished-looking “Red Dean” was “a nuisance to be endured with such patience as we can command.” Fisher’s successor, Dr. Arthur M. Ramsey, is more equivocal; asked about the dean at the National Press Club in Washington last year, he replied: “Well, the dean is a very, very old man.”

Discussing the resignation, the Church Times first curiously suggested that his predilection for Russia was useful because it prevented anyone from maintaining “that the Church of England was entirely committed to an anti-Communist crusade,” but elsewhere dryly concluded: “Dr. Johnson expresses his intention of doing more important work than that of being Dean of Canterbury, namely the writing of his autobiography. Perhaps that is sufficient comment on his occupancy of this important position for more than three decades.”

J. D. D.

Agonize, Not Organize

Bishops wearing copes and mitres unwittingly encourage a person to think that he is “all right for eternity,” suggested the Rev. A. G. Pouncy, Rector of Bebington, at last month’s Islington Clerical Conference. This annual gathering of evangelicals in the Church of England (established by Bishop Daniel Wilson in 1829) could boast the presence of six bishops, but never a cope or mitre was to be seen. Alluding to the “appalling wastage” found in Anglicanism (75 per cent of those confirmed in England do not attend even one Communion a year), Mr. Pouncy said “indiscriminate baptism is the mother of insincere confirmation.”

In his presidential address the Rev. R. Peter Johnston, Vicar of Islington, said: “It is the constant danger of the Church to find in ecclesiasticism a form of escapism from her primary task of evangelism.” For evangelicals not less than for others it was a question of priorities, he continued. “Attendance at that committee meeting is deemed essential; the Prayer Meeting takes second place. We pride ourselves on our ability to organize. Our forefathers, like the Apostle Paul, knew what it was to agonize in prayer.” For the individual, suggested Mr. Johnston, the greatest need is for personal holiness; for the Church the greatest need is for spiritual revival.

Canon J. F. Hickinbotham, Principal of St. John’s College, Durham, pointed out that baptism witnesses to the New Testament truth that Christ’s salvation is decisive and complete (“you cannot have more or less [quantitatively] of the Holy Spirit indwelling your heart”)—a single salvation is expressed by a single sacrament. It cannot be affirmed that confirmation is theologically necessary to receiving the fullness of salvation. Pursuing the conference theme, “The Theology and Practice of Confirmation,” was Dr. Philip E. Hughes, editor of The Churchman, who expressed regret that the Church had mislaid the biblical doctrine of baptism, rooted in covenant theology. He urged that baptism should be withheld from the children of those who were not practicing Christians, and that such children could receive baptism and confirmation later as a joint rite. Canon James Atkinson of Hull University, one of the 32 theologians who signed last year’s “Open Letter to the Archbishops,” said that baptism is the whole rite of initiation. Confirmation, he added, is the ratification before the church of baptismal promises, not an objective purveying of the Holy Spirit.

J. D. D.

Violent March

Angry mobs marched down Jerusalem’s Street of the Prophets one night last month. They smashed windows, assaulted a Protestant missionary, and overturned the car of another.

Authorities blamed Yeshiva (Jewish Talmudic school) students and arrested seven of them. The students, characterized by black gabardine apparel, belong to an ultra-orthodox school. They were said to have been angered by Protestant missionaries who allegedly took advantage of poverty conditions.

One of the targets of attack was the Finnish Lutheran Mission’s Shalheveyah boarding school, which was stoned by from 50 to 100 young people who carried posters denouncing missionary activities in general and those of the nearby Hebrew Evangelization Society in particular.

A center operated by this society was stoned less than two weeks before. The director, Yaacov Goren, had invited neighborhood children to what was described as Chanukah celebration. Some parents said they had not given their consent, and this led to some stone-throwing in which Goren’s wife was slightly injured.

In the later violence, the Rev. Rysto Santala, director of the Shalheveyah school, was beaten when he tried to protect his wife from being harmed by the demonstrators, according to police. The Zion Christian Mission also was damaged, and a car owned by the missionary pastor of the Israel Messianic Assembly was overturned.

The Israeli Cabinet voted unanimously to apologize to the Finnish government for the attack. Santala asked police not to prosecute the students who were arrested.

What Is Error?

Augustin Cardinal Bea announced in Rome that when the Second Vatican Council reconvenes in September, the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity which he heads will present a schema, or decree, proclaiming the right of all men to freedom of conscience.

He made the announcement before some 200 representatives of 21 religious bodies, including Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews, gathered for an agape sponsored by the Catholic International Pro Deo University in Rome and modeled along the lines of the feasts of brotherly love common in early Christian times.

Participants hailed the cardinal’s announcement as “extremely important” and said the speech could be regarded as the “Magna Charta” of a new orientation given to the Catholic Church by Pope John XXIII.

Bea declared that, like the Second Vatican Council, the agape was inspired by a spirit of universal charity. He went on to warn against identifying truth with one’s own beliefs and stressed the need to understand other men’s convictions and respect their freedom to follow their own consciences.

Among others taking part in the agape, besides Jews and Latin and Eastern Rite Catholics, were Eastern Orthodox, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Waldensians, and Moslems.

Cardinal Bea told the participants, who shared a symbolic meal consisting of fish and simple pies similar to those prepared by Jews 2,000 years ago, that “an authentic love for truth demands that we recognize it wherever encountered.”

“To those objecting that error has not the right to exist,” he said, “we must answer that error is something abstract. The past’s so-called wars of religion were aberrations of a misunderstood love for truth. They were waged by men who forgot that not less important than truth is man’s right to follow his own conscience and to have his independence respected by all.”

Graham Greene, leading Catholic novelist of the English-speaking world, is an artist provocative and provoking in his apologetics. The Power and the Glory is one of his best novels. Although first published in 1940 (as The Labyrinthine Ways), it still finds a ready market and is widely discussed. Protestant theologians who turn their attention to the modern novelist discover in Greene’s work a vivid story of the paradox of grace (cf. R.W.B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint, 1959; Horton Davies, A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels, 1959; Gabriel Vahanian. The Death of God, 1961). The novel raises certain crucial problems concerning the dimensions of power—the causes of the Mexican persecution in relation to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church.

Power and Glory of Simplicity

Greene picked up the incident for The Power and the Glory when he traveled in Mexico in the 1930s. He recorded impressions in The Lawless Roads (1939). He mentions a solitary priest fleeing from persecution in the southern state of Tabasco. As he trod the “labyrinthine ways” of Mexico in revolution, Greene found Tabasco a “godless state” void of “forgiveness.”

With this setting in mind, he wrote a poignant tale. The reader may taste, feel, and smell the dusty, dank, dreary Mexican southland. Because of the “obscure, personal neurosis” of Tabasco’s governor, the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church was especially severe. The governor ordered all priests to leave his jurisdiction or face extinction. The chief character of Greene’s tale is a nameless priest, anonymous except as a sometime drunkard who sired a bastard child, who defies the governor in spite of his drive for self-preservation. He is haunted by the compulsion to fulfill the priestly function as long as there are faithful who call for those sacramental services which he alone can perform. He is hounded by the state, represented particularly by a lieutenant who turns gradually in some sympathy toward the creature he must exterminate. Finally, the priest is betrayed by his “Judas”—a corrupt Catholic peasant out for a peso—when he abandons an opportunity to flee in order to administer rites to a dying gringo, a criminal wounded by the authorities. After execution, the cleric crumbles, a “routine heap beside the wall—something unimportant which had to be cleared away.” He himself denies his martyrdom; Greene, however, contrives this possibility by skillfully weaving into the drama of the chase a quiet bedtime story about a Mexican martyr-priest read by a Catholic mother to her children. While it might be too much to see in the priest a Christ-figure, he appears compassionate in his remorse and as one of those “least” mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel who are fed when hungry, refreshed when thirsty, clothed when naked, nursed when sick, visited when in prison—a benediction to those who minister to him.

So potent is Greene’s writing that it may appear insensitive to descend from the near poetry of his prose to consider political and theological problems. But while the novel is a work of art, it is no less a work of subtle propaganda. Those sharing some of Greene’s presuppositions see God, whose glory human contrivance cannot diminish, which may be expressed through the meanness of this earthly vessel. These are those impressed by the heroism of a man who insists upon doing his duty as he sees it in the face of overwhelming odds. Preoccupation with such glory clouds certain aspects of power.

About Possessions and Priests

Greene creates the impression that the machinery of a “godless” state has conspired to crush this wretched, insignificant cleric. By setting his scene in Tabasco, governed as it was by a neurotic, he tends to obscure the problem of persecution of the Roman Catholic Church which was, while not so relentless, Mexico-wide during the 1920s and 1930s.

Persecution was a delayed reaction. The revolutions of 1910 and 1917 were marked by an anti-clericalism which produced some of the harshest constitutional provisions against the church in contemporary political history, e.g., nationalization of property, limitations on the number of priests, strict regulation of ecclesiastical activities. Persecution does not arise in vacuo. The padre of this novel is not persecuted because he is a whiskey priest with a bastard child, the sins which are a personal burden to him. His crime was one of association with power representing the chief vested interest of his country. Since the conquest of Mexico in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and at least until the 1930s (in spite of the challenges of the nineteenth century), the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful force with continuity of existence in the life of the Mexican people. It was intimately linked with Spanish imperialism, coveting always to preserve and protect patronato and fueros. Through the centuries the church accumulated vast wealth; no one is certain of its extent. According to Columbia University’s Frank Tannenbaum, a conservative Catholic historian has estimated that toward the end of the colonial period it owned not less than half of the real property and capital of the country, and manipulated the rest through its banking interests. Greene’s nameless priest may be contrasted with the hero priests of Mexico whose names are known and revered. Hidalgo and Morelos were nineteenth-century prophets from village traditions who led movements against the old order. These priests were so daring in their declaration of independence against Spanish exploitation that they were excommunicated by the church and executed by the civil power. Political upheaval always threatened economic stability, thereby threatening one aspect of ecclesiastical power. The church found itself on the side of reaction when revolutionaries sought a new deal of Mexican resources for the common good. Centuries of frustration meant the storing of wrath. In the twentieth century, fury was all the more ravaging because those who sought revenge could not reach back into the past to punish the dead.

Greene shows keen insight by allowing the lieutenant to represent a political rather than an economic bourgeoisie, and by implying the faithfulness of Mexicans in Tabasco. It is also true, however, that the revolutionary dictator, Calles, found it possible because of public support or acquiescence to enforce the restrictions of the 1917 constitution upon the church beginning in the 1920s. Greene’s own comment in his 1939 travelogue about the dim promise of revolution may give insight into the church’s approach to the situation. “Even if it were all untrue and there were no God,” he mused in The Lawless Roads, “surely life was happier with the enormous supernatural promise than with the petty social fulfillment, the tiny pension and the machine-made furniture.” For Christians the promise of God about future life overcomes the meanness of this existence, from the stink of the diaper to the stench of the shroud. But power in the presence of Lazarus should not employ this incentive as apology for wealth and for injustice. The lieutenant lays the blame for oppression upon the church itself. It stifled change commensurate to the economic needs of Mexicans. “The Church was poor, the priest was poor,” he remarks about the stance of the church through the years; “therefore everyone should sell all and give to the Church.” The priest responds meekly to his captor and accuser: “You are so right,” and then quickly, “Wrong, too, of course.” In spite of a disclaimer to the contrary, life does “contain churches.” It is this “right” and “wrong” about the relation of the church to the revolution which does not come through in Greene’s treatment of the priest’s tribulation. The church claimed to have a program of social betterment of its own. It could not cover inactivity in reform nor aversion to the whole revolutionary movement because of its supposed “godlessness.”

No priest can be made to bear the corporate guilt of an ecclesiastical institution. But the reason for the relentless persecution of this priest in The Power and the Glory may not be apprehended fully without recognition of his inescapable association with the most reactionary force in Mexico. Mexicans were bent on revolution, not abortive rebellion, to employ Camus’ distinction. Any drive for justice involved, among other matters, a decisive challenge of the power of the church. Perhaps Greene wanted to say that the church must become harassed, as was the priest of his novel, in order once again to be the church. If he meant to say this, he said it, in spite of his realism, with too many smooth pebbles in his mouth.

About Sacraments and Sinners

The power of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico never rested solely upon possessions of this world. Graphically, Greene’s tale asserts the churchly power by divine right to infuse into the believer the privilege of grace through a sacramental system. Discussion of this “hobo priest,” as one critic labeled him, would be incomplete without analysis of the power which accompanies the “keys” of the kingdom of God. Obviousness threatens to obscure the problem.

Contemplating his situation the priest reflects: “When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn’t it his duty to stay.…” By raising such a question, Greene explores the significance of the Roman Catholic system of sacramental grace. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the channel through which God’s grace is conveyed to believers from birth to death, even into the life beyond. Catholic life is regulated minutely through the use of sacraments—baptism, confirmation, penance, communion, marriage, extreme unction. Above all in order of significance is a seventh sacrament—ordination of the priest with a character indelebilis as the intermediary interposed between God and the individual. By definition, the administrations of the priest who bears his ordination as a “birthmark” are efficacious, ex opere operato, in spite of the condition of the administrant and provided the participant does not place any obstacle in the way. Moreover, the system presided over by the priest is de necessitate salutis—necessary for salvation. The believer must live by the system if the system is to bear the believer. Almost inevitably the system became the sanction by which the church maintained its power over Mexican peasantry.

Greene weaves this sacramentalism into his novel with consummate skill. All the sacraments are accounted for in some way as the cleric encounters and ministers to characters in the book. It would be erroneous to suggest that Catholicism ultimately binds God to the operations of a priest—the theological system is too circumspect to allow this. Given the lack of theological astuteness among Mexican priests and peasants, Greene implies that the presence of God actually depended upon the presence of the priest. The priest often administers the sacraments at great personal sacrifice. He lays down his life doing his mediatorial duty. The church was persecuted not because of heroic acts in abnormal situations, but because priests exploited the system in normal times. The priest of the tale is aware of his power. He alone should baptize; he alone can hear confession and pronounce absolution; he alone, considering the importance of the celebration of the Mass, can make God and place God on the lips of Mexicans. He can do all of this in spite of the fact that he is in mortal sin, unable to repent, a “sacrilege” in his own eyes. One of the truly great scenes is that in which he attempts to buy black-market wine necessary for sacramental purposes. He watches “all the hope of the world draining away” as those from whom he makes his purchase wheedle his hospitality and drink his bottle dry. The peasants also know how indispensable his ministrations are. Greene hints at the shape of exploitation when the priest finds himself, catching his breath in flight in the sheltered cove of a community which remained Catholic in spite of a three-year absence of clerics. At the request of the peasants, whose children have gone unbaptized and whose sins are unshriven, the priest prepares for the necessary sacraments. A peasant asks an irrepressible question: “What will you charge, father?” After haggling, the priest charges “one peso fifty” per baptism, five pesos a Mass, for the “enormous supernatural promise” (to employ Greene’s phrase from The Lawless Roads). The peasants “don’t value what they don’t pay for” in spite of their poverty. As the priest calculates his pesos, he falls into his “habit of piety” and assumes the authoritarian “parish intonation” which he practiced before the start of persecution.

Because he knows Roman Catholicism so well, Greene’s apologetics are forceful; they annoy because he seems incapable of presenting sympathetically the alternatives to his own position. This inability is illustrated when the priest finds temporary hospitality in the home of middle-class Lutherans, prim and proper in a Protestant smugness contrasting with his own misery. During this episode the priest runs across a Gideon Bible, astonished to find “its ugly type and its oversimple explanations” offered as soul-guidance. This skirts on caricature! Toward the end Greene himself seems to make problems simple enough. The lieutenant fails to find a confessor for the condemned priest. He asks if the confessor would make the difference. The priest, who knows he must receive absolution from another priest, hesitates, “Another man … it makes it easier.…” The padre begins his own general confession of sin, abject before God toward whom he looks for forgiveness. In bringing the haunted and hounded priest to this, does Greene intend to discuss an alternative to Roman Catholic sacerdotalism? This is not likely. While the priest’s procedure is theoretically possible under extenuating circumstances, it is the exception rather than the rule. A priest is still the necessity, not a contingent necessity, to the system. Because of its own definition of its relation to the Mexican, the church may have been as responsible as were those who persecuted the church for the seeming godlessness—the great void without forgiveness—which depressed Greene on his Mexican travels.

It is one thing to protect the church from Donatism and to deliver Christians from the dangers of subjectivism through a regulated and restraining system of sacraments. It is quite another thing to say that this is accomplished best in the way in which Roman Catholicism attempts to do it. In Mexico, the system was an occasion for the worse kind of subjectivism, the exploitation of priestly power in the face of the peasant’s ignorant faithfulness. Improper keeping of the “keys” of the Kingdom in Mexico is a key to understanding how God became accessory to the church’s accommodation to this world. When Greene introduces a new priest, mysteriously, almost miraculously, after the execution of his pathetic hero, the reader is forced to ask himself: Is this the author’s proposal for renewal? Is it possible that God may grant grace in another manner? This question is at the “heart of the matter”!

Not all Mexican revolutionists turned from Christ as they turned from the church. Those who often suspect clerics at least may respect Jesus. Soy católico, pero soy anti-clerical! Jose Orozco, rabid and rigid anti-clerical, painted the famous frescoes about the larger aspirations of western-hemisphere man at Dartmouth College in the 1930s. In one of the panels he shows a militant Christ-figure, symbol of an aroused and aggressive spirituality, with ax in hand, a cross at his feet. He stands against a junk heap of religious symbols. To be sure, Quetzalcoatl and not Christ seems to be the hero of the Mexican muralist. But artist Orozco breathes the spirit of prophets who know and warn that God may find man’s sacrifice to him an abomination. He may hate, all the more, the manipulation of Christ’s sacrifice as an instrument of any institutional power.

It is not enough to deal with Greene’s tale in terms of an anonymous priest whose plight exposes desperate human inadequacy, or to see, as Mauriac would have us see, the “utilization of sin by grace” (Francois Mauriac, Men I Hold Great, 1951). Grace may abound! God may turn sin to his own glory! But neither the Christian nor the church should sin that grace may abound. Certainly brutality may not be justified in the name and for the sake of any revolutionary ideology. At the time of Greene’s Mexican visit, revolutionists—for all of their pretensions about purposes and projects for justice—had enough of an ecclesiastical institution, centuries old, centuries rich, whose priests sanctified through a sacramental system exploitation of the dispossessed.

JAMES H. SMYLIE

Department of Church History

Union Theological Seminary

Richmond, Virginia

If the state is to be neutral toward all religious groups, it must not require religious faith of the atheist. A government pledged to religious freedom must therefore protect the atheist’s personal right to disbelieve and preserve his place as an individual in the community.

The nation expects atheist and theist alike to pay taxes and to perform military service; if the atheist insists on postponing his religious experience until he goes bankrupt, or occupies a foxhole—or even until the future judgment—that is his decision.

But does the right to disbelieve qualify an unbelieving minority to have equal influence with the majority in determining community standards and the cultural setting? Must those who put faith in God yield to every plea of the atheist for an “open society”? Must they yield to atheistic determination to remake social institutions in keeping with atheistic prejudices? Has the atheist a right to veto the majority’s right to engage in cultic acts if the majority wishes such acts? Does the atheist’s right to freedom of belief imply also his absolute freedom of action? Are there forms of unbelief (as well as of belief) that endanger public safety and morality? If so, what is to be the state’s attitude?

It is true that government tends to allow religious commitment to command more freedom of action than other levels of commitment (as seen in its approval of conscientious objection for religious reasons). Yet in view of conflicting religious beliefs the state cannot grant absolute religious freedom (as in respect to Mormon polygamy). The community must feel that the commitment to religious liberty in no way compromises its objection to positions that are for the public woe or its support for those that work for the common good.

Surely as long as he does not incite violence the atheist must be permitted to present his point of view and fully express disagreement from the majority. But if he organizes a militant minority whose effective use of pressure blocks results in the enactment of positions that really run counter to majority convictions, he is “inviting civil war,” as somebody has put it.

In his valuable work on Church and State in the United States (1888), the Presbyterian church historian Philip Schaff emphasized that religious freedom hardly implies the special protection of atheists to destroy the religious preferences of others; freedom is granted to infidels, as to all men, within specific limits. Today, when Christian forces should be stressing that separation of church and state as it exists in America does not necessarily imply separation of the nation from Christianity, it is well to read Schaff’s incisive words:

The infidel theory was tried and failed in the first Revolution of France. It began with toleration, and ended with the abolition of Christianity, and with the reign of terror, which in turn prepared the way for military despotism as the only means of saving society from anarchy and ruin. Our infidels and anarchists would re-enact this tragedy if they should ever get the power. They openly profess their hatred and contempt of our Sunday-laws, our Sabbaths, our churches, and all our religious institutions and societies. Let us beware of them! The American system grants freedom also to irreligion and infidelity, but only within the limits of the order and safety of society. The destruction of religion would be the destruction of morality and the ruin of the state. Civil liberty requires for its support religious liberty, and cannot prosper without it. Religious liberty is not an empty sound, but an orderly exercise of religious duties and enjoyment of all its privileges. It is freedom in religion, not freedom from religion; as true civil liberty is freedom in law, and not freedom from law (pp. 15 f.).

The problem comes into sharp focus by two competing notions of democracy in our time. Although a product of what may broadly be called Christian thought, the American republic is undergoing revisions within which Christian citizens find it increasingly difficult at times to feel at home. Supreme Court Justice Douglas, for example, indicates that the American concept of democracy presupposes belief in a Supreme Being. Humanists such as Professor Sidney Hook, on the other hand, argue that the validity of democracy as a political system and as a way of life depends upon no metaphysical presuppositions whatever. In the latter setting religious matters are demoted to something of wholly private concern, as soon as transcendental beliefs are involved. Every effort is made to find the essence of democracy merely in a consensus of “common values”; the supernatural source and sanction of human rights, as well as the emphasis on religion and morality as necessary supports of a republic—on which the founding fathers insisted—is viewed as dispensable. The colossus of democracy now emerging increasingly restricts Christian emphases. The less vocal Christian citizens become, the more aggressive beome the proponents of the non-religious notion of democracy.

On the Christian view, the atheist must not be tolerated as a second-class citizen but must be protected as an actual member of the community. But it need not on that account be concealed that his disbelief in the supernatural nevertheless shakes the foundations of social order. While the atheist is to be treated as an equal in the sight of the law, he is not to be given a free hand to demolish the objective character of justice or the transcendent nature of law. In other words, the Christian citizen must not only emphasize the will of the majority alongside the will of the minority, but he must also declare the will of God over and above every majority and minority. He must learn to apply God’s will, even where to do so means supporting the minority against the majority, or means repudiating both, as some of the greatest of the prophets were called to do. The Christian movement, it is sobering to recall, has existed historically as a minority force.

There are probably two extreme views of the atheist, both of which have their dangers. One view is that the atheist is religiously sterile and impotent, hence the dynamic Christian has nothing to fear from him. But in our generation we have seen atheistic materialism romp the globe and Mr. Khrushchev become its symbol. If atheism is allowed to reshape our public institutions unchallenged, Christians will eke out a miserable survival in the slave camps simply because totalitarianism brooks no competitive absolute. The other extreme view says that the atheist is, after all, a spiritual man of sorts, and therefore should be welcomed—if not for his strange religion, then for his moral idealism. It is true, of course, that one man’s atheism sometimes turns out to be another man’s theism (in this era of John Dewey and Henry Nelson Wieman). Dilution and perversion of Christianity by those who professed to be its friends may indirectly have encouraged atheism as a by-product (Marx studied under that liberal Protestant philosopher of religion Hegel). The atheist carries his own bible of secret absolutes and espouses social objectives that are fully as deliberate and dogmatic as those of the theist. The atheist’s pleas for an open society always point toward a social order he would like to hedge in, in his own way.

Certainly rights should be preserved—free speech, the right to propagandize, and so on. But an atheistic minority is certainly not entitled to equal time on the mass media, where it hopes to indoctrinate a semicaptive public as a “public service.” Virile democracy “owes” no one the “right” to remake public institutions serviceable to minority preferences and prejudices.

But the Christian would neglect his own heritage were he to trust simply in earthly weapons. For this world, as the Scriptures teach, lies in the lap of practical atheism. The atheist is often more “religious” than he would admit, for false religion and false gods run rampant. Christians who think that propagating religion through national preference and public institutions is the way to social well-being need to learn from European nations much older than the United States. It is the power of voluntary religion that holds a nation together. The presence of an atheistic power bloc is always a call to prayer, a call to piety and religious education in the home, a call to evangelism, a call to send dedicated believers into all the arenas of public service. It is no call, however, to allow the infidels to conform public institutions to an atheistic blueprint.

END

Problems Of The Jew And The Atheist; Christian Apostasy? Jewish Unbelief?

The Jewish community appears to be awkwardly and vulnerably situated in respect to American religious traditions. The protest against Christmas observances or religious influences in the public schools is often spearheaded by representatives of Jewish alongside atheistic elements in the community. Jewish spokesmen say this simultaneous action reflects neither special hostility to Christianity nor special affection for the atheist. Rather, it emphasizes the Jewish belief that religious concerns should be voluntary, and reflects the keen Jewish sensitivity to minority rights. Himself having so long existed as a member of an embattled or persecuted minority, the Jew assertedly sees his own image in the atheist’s plea. Hence protection of the atheist becomes a Jewish objective not for the sake of atheism, nor of anti-Christianity, but for the sake of religious freedom and voluntarism.

In the state of Israel, the modern Jew gives the world a window on how he understands the rights of the minority. Nowhere in the world has a modern nation had so full and reflective an opportunity to define minority rights. Yet in Israel both Arabs and Christians seem to miss that Jewish concern for them as minorities which the Jew in America professes to exhibit toward the atheist. In fact, the Israeli High Court had made plain that although Jewish agnostics and atheists are entitled to citizenship under the 1950 Law of Return, Christian Jews are to be rejected as apostates. By a curious turn of events the Israeli government therefore welcomes the Jewish atheist as an equal while treating the Christian Jew under the Law of Return not even as a second-class citizen but as an alien. It is no surprise, therefore, that constant reference to Christian Hebrews as “apostates,” alongside a regard for agnostic and atheistic Jews as true sons of Abraham, breeds an anti-Christian spirit at grass roots.

Some Jewish intellectuals have emphasized the need for the great theistic religions to confront the naturalistic offensive, particularly in its Communist form. Despite this fact, some Israelis seem increasingly prone to display the same antagonism toward Christian Hebrews that government spokesmen display toward Christian missionaries. In both cases Orthodox Jewry is notably the aggressive force through its pressures upon the Israeli government and people. This is especially regrettable from the standpoint of the Christian community because Christian Jews feel they share the Old Testament heritage much more with many Orthodox Jews than with Jews identified with the revisionist religious traditions, whether liberal or conservative. Periodically Christian missions in Israel are attacked. In Jerusalem recently two missions were invaded by teen-age students of the Yeshiva (orthodox Talmudic academy). Israeli spokesmen depict such acts as the work of “religious zealots” or of the “ultra-orthodox.” Whatever the excuse, anti-Christian demonstrations are fully as deplorable as anti-Semitic outbursts. Why should religious tolerance require a moderation of either true orthodoxy or religious zeal?

There is nonetheless a remarkable insight in the decision of the Israeli High Court denying citizenship to Father Daniel, a Roman Catholic monk born of Jewish parents. The court in effect voiced a New Testament judgment—that eligibility for the privileges of the Jew is not a matter of mere physical descent. God can raise up “sons of Abraham” from the stones of the field if he wishes. True sonship is spiritual sonship. From the New Testament point of view, only he is Abraham’s son upon whom falls the mantle of Abraham’s spiritual and moral character, and particularly, therefore, he who welcomes the promised Messiah and rejoices in salvation by faith. The remarkable insight of the Israeli High Court that true sonship is not simply physical but spiritual, however, becomes at the same time an occasion to deliberately reject the New Testament. In this rejection Christian students of biblical prophecy find confirmation of the verdict that the return of the Jew to the land of promise is at the same time a return in unbelief.

Jewish identification with the atheist more than with the Christian is also quite understandable from the Christian point of view. One who worships Christ as Saviour and Lord need not insist that atheists and other non-worshipers of the Redeemer are existentially related to Christ in wholly different ways. The Jew may be closer by historic tradition, may be formally closer in terms of philosophical or theological presuppositions, but he is not on that account viewed as any less under God’s judgment than the atheist. In fact, it was a Jew—a Pharisee of the Pharisees—who recognized that without the promised Messiah he had to count all the glories of his religious heritage as nothing. While his fellow Jews had greater privileges (Rom. 9:4, 5), as Paul knew, they frustrated the promises through their unbelief (Rom. 10).

Paul did not, however, go about erasing the difference between Jew and Gentile into a common gray of atheism. Because the Jew had greater privileges and greater opportunities, he also had greater responsibilities. It may be true that today’s situation is somewhat reversed: centuries of Christian witness over the world have stripped away Gentile excuses for rejecting Christ. Yet the Jew retains the Old Testament (“the oracles of God,” said Paul); he has also the record of the coining of Jesus Christ (“that it might be fulfilled,” as the Gospels reiterate), and alongside the ancient biblical prophecies can personally observe the remarkable restoration of the scattered Jews to Palestine. Even on this account the Christian community has no license to abandon the Jew to his “unbelief” (a term that doubtless seems as harsh to the Jews as “apostate” seems to the Christian). In this difficult dialogue within the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is the Jewish Christian who must lead the way. In the Apostle Paul he has an example of solicitude and a precedent to follow: “I say the truth in Christ.… I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:1–3).

END

On several occasions the writer has written, or remarked, that the Church spends much of her time trying to make non-Christians act like Christians.

We do not question the validity of this observation, but when it was made recently in a group of ministers, men honestly and earnestly preaching the Gospel, one godly pastor observed: “My problem is trying to get Christians to act like Christians.”

Sober thought reveals how true this is in our own lives, and in the lives of other Christians. How few of us act as Christians should act! How frequently our actions, and reactions, are much more like the unregenerate than like the regenerate! How often we belie our Christian profession by word and deed!

People become Christians through faith in Jesus Christ and in no other way. It is impossible to do anything which will bring us into a right relationship with God. This has been done for us and must be received by faith.

Nevertheless, living as one of the redeemed is a matter of growing in grace and involves an act of the will, a will enlightened, motivated, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Living as a Christian means the exhibiting of many facets of God’s grace in our hearts, all of them the outgrowth of Christian love and all of them polished and brightened by practice.

Their sequence is inconsequential, for they combine to make up the whole of Christian graces by which the believer should be recognized. Furthermore, these graces are the outward expression of an inner Presence and attitude, the putting into action of those things we know are good and right. This we do not for our own glorification but for the glory of our God.

Sympathy. There is hardly a day that we do not come in contact with someone who has been buffeted by the winds of adversity. All around us there are those who sorrow, who are the victims of illness, suffering, bereavement, or privation.

How utterly un-Christian to be indifferent to these unfortunate! True sympathy is begotten by love and expressed at the personal level. Only the Christian can know true sympathy, for he has experienced the comfort of the Holy Spirit and knows, or should know, how to sympathize with others.

Speaking of this the Apostle Paul says: “Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:4).

Compassion. The Christian should show compassion. There is a distinction between sympathy and compassion, for compassion involves depth of understanding—one sinner’s being sorry for another sinner. As Dr. Joseph Blinko has said, “One beggar telling another beggar where he has found bread.”

Compassion looks deep into the heart, suffers with and understands the need of the other person, and communicates that understanding. Compassion ignores the unlovely as it sees God’s image in most unlikely places.

Courtesy. Courtesy is the art and grace of treating others with respect and understanding—just as we would like to be treated. It is politeness in the face of provocation, the turning of the other cheek when we have been offended.

Courtesy involves the soft answer which can turn away wrath. It is the recognition of the niceties of social intercourse even in the midst of trying circumstances.

Only too often unhappy situations develop because of the lack of common courtesy. That this should be true where Christians are concerned is a travesty, reflecting dishonor on the very name Christian.

Patience. We live in a day of multiplied tensions, due, in part, to the pace of modern living. Impatience has dimmed the witness of many a Christian. How often we must distress our Lord by our impatience with others. Some people seem slow, inarticulate, and inept—how do we appear to our Lord? And yet he in infinitely patient with us.

Tactfulness. Frankness is not always for the glory of God. We have known some Christians who have prided themselves on being frank, and we have known some who have been hurt by this frankness. Telling the truth can be done in love, taking into consideration the feelings of others. There is a vast difference in the remarks of two shoe salesmen, one of whom said, “I’m sorry madam, but your foot is too big for this shoe,” while the other said, “I am sorry, but this shoe is too small for you.”

Tact is that grace which enables us to sense the feelings of others and to act towards them or communicate with them in a way which preserves human dignity.

Forgiveness. Without a spirit of forgiveness human relationships cannot be maintained at the Christian level. We live in the light of God’s forgiveness, and it is an attitude which God requires of us. Forgiveness involves the divesting of the robe of self-righteousness and being clothed with the humility which is a part of true Christianity.

Practicality. Where we so often fail is at the point of implementation. To too many of us Christianity is a matter of theory, the Christian graces nebulous attributes which we expect in others but fail to exhibit ourselves.

Practicality involves helping people in the place where they need help. It is not just a kind word but also a kind act where that act can do the most good. Where food is needed, give food. Where clothing is needed give clothing. Where comfort, sympathy, courtesy, and patience are needed, show these in a tangible way. The Apostle James admonishes us: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Acting like a Christian means just that.

In these things the Christian must rigorously search his own heart, at the same time determining by God’s help to grow in those aspects of grace which so intimately affect others, while they reflect Christ in our own hearts.

C. S. Lewis has well said, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor or not; act as if you did. As soon as you do this you find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

The exhibiting of the grace of God in our dealings with others must be for the glory of God. The unbelieving world sees Christ through the lives of Christians—and what a sorry spectacle is often paraded before them!

The exhibiting of Christian graces is a matter of practice, of growing, and of outward witnessing. In this the effectiveness of our salvation is exhibited to others. When we fail to act as Christians we dishonor the One whose name we bear.

The world needs the evidence of sanctification in the Christian’s life. This is evidence of the power of God to redeem and change, and also a balm to a sin-sick world.

Paperbacks

While the groundhog is still curled up in his shadow under a snowbank, spring comes with the appearance of the bookworm, who emerges to feast on the spring book catalogs. The early worm this year reports a bumper crop of paperbacks. More than a thousand new entries have been added to the 15,700 editions indexed in last year’s Paperbound Books in Print.

No doubt Washington watches with concern. Should the government launch a paper-bank program to subsidize publishers who will refrain from printing books? Or should book silos be built in Texas?

Already there are disaster areas of paperback flooding. A recent spot-check in a college apartment revealed one chair, three mattresses, one Munck reproduction, and 1,127 paperbacks. The floor was inundated and the rising tide of books was creeping up the walls.

Paperbacks admirably fulfill the specifications of Samuel Johnson: “Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”

That prophetic description of these handy books suggests, of course, a way to dispose of the surplus. But, contrary to the impression created by the drugstore rack, the paperbacks are gaining in quality as well as quantity. This minor publishing revolution could become a cultural renaissance under the very eye of television. Art, biography, economics, fiction, history, literature, philosophy, poetry, reference, religion, science—they are the classifications of the paperback catalog.

For years I have been filling my windowsills with these paperbacks, and some day I shall begin reading them. What I need, dear Editor, is your organizing genius. You have been spotlighting significant paperbacks regularly. Could you sponsor local CHRISTIANITY TODAY discussion groups? Or fine me if I haven’t read the book of the fortnight?

Leaders are readers; nowhere is a Christian retreat from the world more disastrous than in the world of books. If readers of paperbacks are to discover the leatherbacked Book, they must be met by Christians at home in both. The God-man must be confessed before men; the written Word of God must answer and judge the written words of men. The themes of culture are at root religious. Multiplied books do not make words cheap any more than the multitude of men makes life cheap. We must take both seriously. Christian journeyed to the City carrying his Book. Today he should have a paperback in each pocket.

No Need For Burial?

Thanks for the stimulating December 21 issue regarding the threats of Communism.… If we fail to clearly crystallize our crucial national and religious concepts and ideals international Communism may not have to bury us, but merely erect a tombstone over our graves that we have dug for ourselves. Now is the hour for national penitence and rededication: Communism is surely evil, but there is much evil within ourselves.

Oklahoma City, Okla.

I agree that basically this present world struggle is between two ideologies, individualism and collectivism, and these well may be called religion. And certainly Christian people must keep this fact in mind as they gird for battle. But the battle is being fought in the political arena, with overtones of the possibility that some phases of it may be fought by armed forces.…

I cannot go along with [Bishop Kennedy’s] declaration that “Communism as an economic system has certain undeniable strengths.” In my opinion the only truth in this statement is that Communism is an economic system. All too often it is assumed that Communism is either a political system or a political-economic system. Actually, Communism, an economic system, could operate under a monarchy, oligarchy or other political system. Communism does not exist anywhere in the world. The preliminary phase, dictatorship (of the proletariat!), is operating in the Soviets and other Communist countries, so called.

Neither Communism nor the “dictatorship of the proletariat” have “undeniable strengths.” Either would fall of its own weight except for the strength of the ruling political background.…

American Council of Christian Laymen

Madison, Wisc.

Congratulations on … “Facing the Anti-God Colossus,” by Billy Graham.… This is a most timely and excellent observation. Mr. Graham has occasionally been criticized for his straightforward proclamation of the Gospel, and I read one article that even went so far as to call him a “prophet of doom.” Personally, I am most thankful that the cause of truth has a voice such as his in times like these.…

Board of Church Extension and Home Missions of the Church of God

Anderson, Ind.

Never in all the Christian era have there been fields “white unto harvest” like those that now exist behind the Iron Curtain. Those people, now better educated than ever before yet denied access to truth, are desperately eager to find the meaning for life. Forbidden to enjoy even the basic freedoms of existence, they grope to know a better pattern of society than the one in which they are held subject.…

Memphis, Tenn.

Can the anti-Russians find no better remedy for our present divided world than this?… Physical force of our huge material riches will never defeat or convert communism into our outmoded American old-fashioned capitalism. The more we persecute our few Communists, the firmer they are in their self-defense, because they are firm in their social and economic religion as the first Christians were.…

Cleveland, Ohio

Though many truths are stated and well stated by all the writers on the subject, one wonders when Christianity is, as Bishop Kennedy has said, going to get off [dead] center.…

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Bonnell in … “A Challenge to Christianity” has made a very broad and sweeping charge, “Religion in every shape and form, and especially Christianity, is regarded by Communism as its arch enemy.” This will be disputed by many Communists and fellow-travelers, but I think he has hit the nail on the head. Such a statement is very controversial and it will arouse an attack upon him, with a request to prove his case, but I think he is standing upon very firm ground, and that he can prove that his words were not idle words.…

McKinley Park Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Wonder Book Disclaimer

I should like to explain the position of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare with respect to the book Primitive Man (Editorial, Oct. 26 issue).

This book is one of a series which Dr. Paul E. Blackwood has edited as an outside activity conducted on his own time. The laws and regulations governing the conduct of Federal employees permit such outside work if no conflict of interest is involved.

In this case, however, one of our procedural rules was not followed, although the work itself was properly approved. We require that when an employee’s title or connection with the Department is shown in a private publication, a disclaimer must be used which clearly rules out any official support or endorsement.

In August the omission of a disclaimer from the Wonder Books edited by Dr. Blackwood was called to our attention. He was instructed that in this case the use of his title is not appropriate, and that if the fact that he is an employee of the Office of Education is listed it must be accompanied by a disclaimer. We are following up on the action taken to carry out these instructions. Of course, depending on the number of books which have been printed, it may be several months or longer before all books in dealers’ stocks show the new format.

Administrative Assistant Secretary

Department of Health, Education,

and Welfare

Washington, D.C.

Garbc And Billy Graham

Dr. Paul R. Jackson’s letter (Eutychus, Sept. 28 issue) was of particular interest to me, because I attended Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, New York, when Dr. Jackson was president of the school.…

Dr. Jackson stated, “We are not against Mr. Graham, and it is our definite policy not to attack him.” This statement is false. Many times in chapel, in classrooms and from the pulpit at First Baptist Church in Johnson City, I have heard Dr. Graham attacked. Never once in my five years at Baptist Bible Seminary and in my past seven years association with the General Association of Regular Baptists have I ever heard a prayer uttered by any of the leaders in the movement for God’s blessing on Dr. Graham. I have heard prayers that God would show Dr. Graham the light so that he would repudiate his present position (this means come ye apart and join us).…

Due to the policies and the spirit of the movement several of the recent graduates of Baptist Bible Seminary have sought other fellowships.

Bethany Baptist Church

Highland, Ill.

I hold a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Baptist Bible Seminary, Johnson City, New York. BBS is an accredited school and endorsed by the GARBC. Dr. Paul R. Jackson who is now the National Representative of the GARBC was president and professor while I was a student.

I have had high regard for Dr. Jackson. However, when his letter to you appeared in the Baptist Bulletin, I believe he fell into his own error.… I can name men, and I am included, who … were sorrowfully led to leave the GARBC movement because its “policies” and “practices” are not in harmony. Let me add that these men were not only students but former faculty members of Baptist Bible Seminary.…

When I was a student I heard several times in class sessions and during chapel services aggressive attacks against Dr. Graham. This is one of the reasons that some men of my graduating class did not seek GARBC pulpits.

It may be a “definite policy not to attack Dr. Graham,” but I have witnessed the leading church in the Johnson City and Binghamton area do it from the pulpit. I was surprised at Dr. Jackson’s statement regarding the Chicago Crusade and the opposition from the GARBC. He said, “I live in Chicago, and I have not heard of any such incidents.” I heard about the attacks and I live a thousand miles away!

Billy Graham has nothing to hide. The conscientious laymen of the GARBC should know the facts.…

Pine City Baptist Church

Pine City. N. Y.

How do i feel and what am I doing about the fact that I am soon to die?

It’s quite certain, you see, that I will soon die. Such was not always the case. Fifty-five years ago when I began my struggle against tuberculosis (I learned years later that my family despaired of my recovery) I could only say, “I may die soon.” But now that I am an octogenarian, I can say without fear of contradiction that I am sure to pass away before much longer.

How do I feel about this prospect of imminent death? Just fine. I’m somewhat surprised at my spontaneous certainty that all will be well with me when I pass from this life. It’s a little like this: every time I come to a church I’m sure I will be safe and will have heartening fellowship. In the same way I’m happily expectant about the good life in the Great Beyond. When I read the New Testament I find myself saying, “I just couldn’t help believing in Jesus.” Just so, I find myself saying, “I just can’t help knowing I’ll be safe when I die.” Sometimes I start arguing with myself: “Are you so sure, old man? Aren’t there some things you haven’t taken into consideration? Are you fit to die happily? Better stop and investigate.” But it’s hard to get my own attention. I drift off into singing bits of songs that I love—I can’t help it.

I must admit I don’t enjoy the prospect of physical death. Let me illustrate what I mean. The first time I underwent a major operation I had complete confidence in the surgeon and in the nurses. I was sure I’d come through fine, and that I’d be in better health. But for some reason I’ve always had a horror of being smothered, and I was afraid the anesthetic would smother me. That’s how I feel about physical death. It’s like a dreaded anesthetic I need to take between the experiences of this world and the far better blessings of the future world.

Though I expect the future of life to transcend by far any experiences I have known here on earth, I can’t say I’ve attained to that eagerness for departure which Paul expressed. He said he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ—that he was willing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. I’m reminded—if you’ll forgive me—of the one brother who alone remained seated when the preacher asked that all who wanted to go to heaven should stand. “My brother, don’t you want to go to heaven?” asked the pastor. “Why, I thought you meant right now,” came the reply.

I’m still interested in the affairs of this world. I watch the growing crops with eagerness. I was astounded when my doctor friend told me that his sister was incubating 350,000 turkey eggs this year. I would have missed every meal of the day before I would have missed watching Colonel Glenn on his epic flight. I cheer at the peewee baseball games. And I wish that for once District Attorney Berger would get the best of Perry Mason. No doubt the time will come when I can only sit and wait. But I hope that when I must turn my back on this world, I’ll be looking upward with a song on my lips.

Well, in view of its soon coming, am I preparing for death? Not much more than I have for years. I remember a brother who told me that in World War I he was on a transport ship when a sub was sighted. It was almost amusing, he said, to see men everywhere with their little New Testaments, trying to find something to help them in a watery grave. When the danger was past, they put away the books—for safekeeping until the next big scare! I’m not moved this way. I’ve been getting ready for the last impressive hour for many, many years. I’ve prepared faithfully: when I tried so hard to have one more sermon for the people. When I said to a gifted teacher, “Won’t you ask the Lord tonight to help you settle this matter?” and she joyously sought me the next day to confess Christ. When I went many times to a home so revolting I would ask none of our women to go there. When I happily preached to a mere 8 or 12 or 16 at mission stations, sure of being in the Lord’s appointed place. When I read and read until I wore out several Bibles. When I turned ever and again to a man’s best earthly refuge, my own Christian home. Oh, in all these and a thousand other activities I was getting ready to die. Let me make a suggestion here. Just go along living a Christian life of usefulness the way a Christian should, and when you approach 82 you’ll find yourself thinking, “Why, I’ve been getting ready for my last hour on earth for a long time.”

But I think it’s time to tell you on what ground I base my almost audacious confidence that all is well with me as death approaches. The universal longing for another life is best answered by Jesus’ words and deeds. He was sure he had lived with the Father before he came to us, and he was sure he would return to the Father. He remembered he had come from God. And he went back to God after he had washed the disciples’ feet. On his last night on earth he said, “Father, I come to thee. Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory I had with thee before the world was.” On the cross he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

And he was sure he could save all believing disciples for eternity. He prayed that his friends might be with him to behold his glory. He said that his sheep hear his voice, that he the Shepherd knows them, that he gives them eternal life, and no one can pluck them out of his hand. Just before he died he told his disciples not to be troubled; he was going to prepare a place for them and would come to receive them unto himself, “that where I am, there ye may be also.” What a promise! What’s more, Jesus keeps his promises. When the first martyr, Stephen, was being tried for his life, he saw God in his glory and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “I see him, I see him!” he cried. Then while tormentors stoned him to death he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Jesus was there to welcome Stephen; and I say in utmost humility, I expect him to be there to welcome me, too.

Dwight L. Moody was as mighty an evangelist in the last century as Billy Graham is today. I remember when in 1899, in the midst of a great revival in Kansas City, he became ill and was rushed home to Massachusetts. A few days later he was gone. In the last moments he had said to his son: “This is no dream, Will. If this be death, it is inexpressibly sweet. Earth is receding, heaven is opening, God is calling, and I must go.”—The Rev. S. F. MARSH, of Leland, Mississippi, retired Southern Baptist minister who served more than 40 years in Texas pastorates.

A book salesman recently told me that there are about 600 book publishers in the United States, and I have observed all by myself that they run from Vintage to Vantage—which, viewed from either end, is a long way. Even if his figure is a typical salesman’s estimate, I hope that many of these never get my address. The postman whose bent back brings books up to my tenth-floor office already more than earns his hire. As he enters and tries to stand up straight, he reminds me of a hard-to-open book, and his eye says more than I care to read. As it is, his weekly deposit on my big desk scarcely leaves room for my coffee cup.

My postman’s future is not promising if promises of my already innumerable publishers about their new spring books come true—and they always do. We’re in for another avalanche. While never admitted in print—though facilities for such confession are not far from any one of them—publishers, it seems, have taken a vow to leave no subject uncovered.

And—speaking of covers—be it known to the reader that I am working up to the reason for CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s annual Spring Forecast: there are covers and covers. Literally, there are even covers for covers. Why is a well-bound, beautifully covered book covered up with what the industry calls a dust jacket? Dust, you say? My wife veritably finds the jackets harder to dust than the books. I admit that the composite effect of two or three shelves of colorfully jacketed books often creates the prettiest spot in the room, making a contribution equal, and often similar, to that of some modern paintings. Yet I suspect that the publishers’ concerns are not really related to interior decorating, nor to what my wife thinks of dust. They are concerned about that free space which can so effectively carry a colorful advertisement for the books I have not purchased. But why “dust” jackets? Are they asking me not only to accept their advertisements, but also to keep them clean?

Really, the only dust jackets that annoy me are those which cover the book but not the subject. The dedication of book publishers to leave no subject uncovered combined with their practice of covering up every book with a dust jacket whose advertisements and claims somehow are always brightly legible makes for colorful libraries, but also makes the life of the book editor difficult. True, there is no cover charge. But it is also true that while clothes may make the man, it takes more than a jacket to make a book.

The book editor must flee the temptation to judge a book by its jacket, and often suffers because reviewers don’t. This not only troubles him, but leaves him quite alone in his misery; since more people read jackets than books, the reviewer automatically has a majority.

Now that the reader has some intimation that the life of a forecaster is not an easy one, from endless offerings I will present a selection of what appear to be the most significant books to come with spring. The selection is made, of course, on the basis of (clean) dust jackets and publishers’ claims, but the reader can now know that it is done with some knowledge of the hazards, and with some not unsympathetic awareness that every producer, author, publisher, or father is, understandably, favorably prejudiced toward his own issue.

Eschewing all boasting, the reader’s assurance in my selective ability should be bolstered by his learning that rarely has any item in these forecasts ended up on those office shelves whose books even the office help refuse to take home free of charge. It may further be said that if this is to be a normal spring, the great world of publishers will again produce many exciting and even some great books, books worth every loyal postman’s ache.

NEW TESTAMENT: Harper and Row will publish A Historical Introduction to the New Testament by R. M. Grant, The Historical Jesus by Heinz Zahrnt, Jesus As They Saw Him by William Barclay, and The Gospel of Philip by R. McL. Wilson. John Knox Press will offer J. W. Bowman’s Jesus’ Teaching in Its Environment, G. Lundström’s The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, and R. N. Flew’s Jesus and His Way. From Westminster Press will come The Bible and the Church by S. Terrien, Parables to the Point by A. T. Childs, Many Witnesses, One Lord by William Barclay, Tradition in the Early Church by R. P. C. Hanson, and New Testament Apocrypha, Volume I, by E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher. Cambridge University Press will print W. D. Davies’ The Turin Fragments of Tyconius’ Commentary of Revelation (Tyconius’ thought influenced Augustine); and Oxford Press, C. K. Barrett’s The Pastoral Epistles.

Eerdmans will publish Origin of the Synoptic Gospels: Some Basic Questions by the late N. B. Stonehouse; and Sheed & Ward, Understanding the Lord’s Prayer by H. van den Bussche. From Association Press, T. S. Kepler’s The Meaning and Mystery of the Resurrection; from Fleming H. Revell, P. S. Rees’s studies in I Peter, Triumphant in Trouble; from Concordia Publishing House, Luther’s Works, Volume 26 (Galatians); from Philosophical Library, S. Umen’s Pharisaism and Jesus; and from Hawthorn, R. Zeller’s The Book of Joseph.

OLD TESTAMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY: Harper announces publication of what it appears will be a significant work, Before the Bible by C. Gordon. Revell will print D. A. Redding’s Psalms of David; Eerdmans, Treaty of the Great King by M. G. Kline and The Book of Isaiah, Volume I, by E. J. Young; John Knox, Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics edited by C. Westermann; and Sheed & Ward, Meditations on the Psalms by B. Mischke. Two archaeological productions are promised: Biblical Archaeology by G. E. Wright from Westminster, and The Splendor That Was Egypt by M. A. Murray from Hawthorn.

CHURCH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY: Here is a field that will be well ploughed this spring. Abingdon will give us a delightful book by G. Kennedy, While I’m on My Feet (an autobiographical writing), G. A. Buttrick’s Christ and History, and M. Schmidt’s John Wesley: A Theological Biography. Thomas Nelson will publish G. Mollat’s The Popes at Avignon, 1305–1378 and The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Volume 13, edited by C. S. Dessain; Harvard Press, The Harvest of Medieval Theology by H. A. Oberman and The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists by L. W. Spitz; Association Press, N. Ehrenstrom and W. G. Muelder’s Institutionalism and Church Unity; Yale Press, Luther’s View of Church History by J. M. Headley and Hoosier Zion by L. C. Rudolph; McGraw-Hill, The Meetinghouse and Church in Early New England by E. Sinnott; Macmillan, Moody by J. C. Pollock; World Publishing Company, The Idea of Prehistory by G. Daniel; Charles Scribner’s Sons, American Christianity, Volume II, 1820–1960, by H. S. Smith, R. T. Handy, and L. A. Loetscher; Broadman Press, The Anabaptist Story by W. R. Estep; Bethany Press, Reformation of Tradition, Volume I of “The Renewal of Church,” edited by R. E. Osborn; E. P. Dutton & Company, The Tides of History, Volume II, by J. Pirenne; University of Copenhagen (order from Wartburg Seminary), A Study in Immigrant History: The Americanization of the Danish Lutheran Churches in America by P. C. Nyholm; Oxford, What Jesus Did by T. P. Ferris and Jesus and the Gospel by E. C. Colwell; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy by A. Schmemann; and Southern Methodist University Press, George Washington and Religion by P. F. Boller, Jr.

Westminster will publish five in this area: The Church and Faith in Mid-America by V. Obenhaus, Presbyterianism in New York State by R. H. Nichols, Did the Church Baptize Infants? by K. Aland, Creeds and Confessions by E. Routley, and Luther by F. Lau; Harper, two: Second Chance for American Protestants by M. E. Marty and The Lively Experiment by S. E. Mead; and Cambridge, two: St. Anselm and His Biographer by R. W. Southern and Historian and Character by M. D. Knowles.

THEOLOGY: Kierkegaard As Theologian by L. Dupre, Christ the Redeemer by F. X. Durrwell, and Theology For Today by C. Davis, all from Sheed & Ward. Scribner’s will publish The Vindication of Liberal Theology by H. P. Van Dusen and The Rationality of Faith by C. Michalson; Bethany Press, Reconstruction of Theology edited by R. G. Wilburn; Revell, The Divine Comforter by J. D. Pentecost and Things Most Surely Believed by C. S. Roddy; and John Knox, Identification: Human and Divine by K. J. Foreman and Salvation History: A Biblical Interpretation by E. C. Rust.

From Association The Recovery of Life’s Meaning: Understanding Creation and the Incarnation by W. P. Jones; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Dogma of Christ, And Other Essays by E. Fromm; Macmillan, The New Creation as Metropolis by G. Winter; and Oxford, Truth and the Person in Christian Theology by H. V. White.

Westminster will publish W. Lillie’s Studies in New Testament Ethics, J. A. Baird’s The Justice of God in the Teaching of Jesus, and J. K. S. Reid’s Our Life In Christ; and Harper, Finality in Faith by N. F. S. Ferré and The Later Heidegger and Theology, Volume I of “New Frontiers in Theology,” by J. M. Robinson and J. B. Cobb. Fortress Press will issue Predestination by H. G. Hageman and Faith Victorious (an introduction to Luther’s theology) by L. Pinomaa; and Baker, Salvation by E. F. Kevan and The Holy Spirit by W. Broomall.

ECUMENICS: The offerings are few. Westminster will present One Church: Catholic and Reformed by L. Mudge; McGraw-Hill, The Challenge to Reunion by R. McA. Brown and D. H. Scott; and Macmillan, Unity in Mid-Career by Bridston and Wagoner.

MISSIONS: Broadman will publish Christ For the World by G. A. West and Fire on the Earth by S. Powell; Westminster, Christianity in Africa by C. Northcott; Eerdmans, Evangelism in the Early Church by S. C. Brown; Sheed & Ward, That the World May Believe by Hans Küng; Harper, Barriers to Christian Belief by A. L. Griffith; Moody Press, R. Evans’ Let Europe Hear and A. Rodli’s North of Heaven; Fortress, The Challenge of World Religions by G. F. Vicedom and Theology in the Life of the Church by R. W. Bertram; and Friendship Press, Christian Issues in Southern Asia by P. D. Devanandan, These Cities Glorious by L. H. Janssen, and Mud Walls and Steel Mills by R. W. Taylor and M. M. Thomas.

Revell will issue S. Perkins’ Red China Prisoner, My Years Behind Bamboo Bars; Herald Press, R. L. Mast’s Lost and Found; and Augsburg, Back of Beyond by J. Kjome.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY: In this area the following listings are promised: The Pastor and His People by E. N. Jackson, Channel Press; Encounter With Spurgeon by H. Thielicke, Fortress; The Seasons of Life by P. Tournier, John Knox; Principles for Interpreting the Bible by A. B. Mickelsen, Eerdmans; The Miracle of Dialogue by R. L. Howe, Seabury; Make Your Preaching Relevant by J. D. Sanford, Broadman; The Urgency of Preaching by K. Haselden, Harper; Preaching on Old Testament Themes edited by C. E. Lemmon, Bethany Press; The New Bible Survey by J. L. Eason, Zondervan; Power in Expository Preaching by F. D. Whitesell, The Pastor’s Counseling Handbook by J. L. Christensen, Preaching Week by Week by D. A. MacLennan, and Neurotics in the Church by R. J. St. Clair, all by Revell; and Epistle to the Romans by J. R. Richardson and K. Chamblin, Baker.

Abingdon will give us L. D. Weather-head’s Wounded Spirits and J. G. McKenzie’s Guilt: Its Meaning and Significance; Sheed & Ward, Preaching edited by R. Drury and To Preach the Gospel by P. Hitz; Westminster, The Preacher: His Purpose and Practice by R. Pearson, The Strong and the Weak by P. Tournier, The Gospel in a Strange New World by T. O. Wedel; Zondervan, ThePsychology of Christian Experience by W. C. Mavis; Baker, You and Your Mental Health by R. Heynen and The Christian and the Couch by D. Tweddlie; and Prentice-Hall, Principles And Practices of Pastoral Care by R. L. Dicks. Some of these are plainly very interesting titles.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS: P. L. Lehmann’s Ethics in a Christian Context will be issued by Harper; J. Leclercq’s Christ and the Modern Conscience by Sheed & Ward; H. E. Kolbe’s One World Under God by Abingdon; J. C. McLelland’s Living For Christ by John Knox; D. L. Munby’s The Idea of a Secular Society by Oxford; B. Morgan’s Christians, the Church and Property by Westminster; S. F. Olford and F. A. Lawes’s Sanctity of Sex by Revell. Holt, Rinehart and Winston will publish The Religious Press in America by Deedy, Marty, Silverman, and Lekachman—which should be an interesting book, as should McGraw-Hill’s The Church, the Court, and American Democracy by R. F. Drinan.

BIBLE STUDIES, COMMENTARIES, DICTIONARIES: Harper will print W. Neil’s one-volume Harper’s Bible Commentary; McGraw-Hill, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible (translated from the Dutch by L. F. Hartman); and Cambridge Press, the Cambridge History of the Bible by S. L. Greenslade. From Fortress will come H. Ringgren’s Faith of the Psalmists; from United Church Press, L. S. Mudge’s God Now with Us; from Seabury, C. R. Simcox’ The First Gospel: Its Meaning and Message; and from Zondervan, The Pictorial Bible Dictionary edited by M. C. Tenney.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: In this wide field Eerdmans will issue The Vocabulary of Communism by L. DeKoster and The Four Major Cults by A. Hoekema; Harper, Twentieth Century Religious Thought by J. Macquarrie, Christianity and World Revolution edited by E. Rian, The Dilemma of Modern Belief by S. Miller, and Passion by K. Olsson. From Westminster will come The Inspiration of Scripture by D. M. Beegle and An Introduction to Barth’s Dogmatics For Preachers by A. B. Come; from Macmillan, Good News by J. B. Phillips; from World, Natutral Law and Modern Society by R. M. Hutchins, J. C. Murray, and others; and from Sheed & Ward, B. Ulanov’s Contemporary Christian Thought. Moody will present The Spiritual Dilemma of the Jewish People by A. W. Kac; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict by H. J. Schoeps; Prentice-Hall, Positive Protestantism: A Return to First Principles by H. T. Kerr; and Presbyterian and Reformed, Karl Barth’s Theological Method by G. H. Clark.

SERMONS: Here is proof that some ministers still follow the good practice of writing sermons: The Mysterious Presence by E. C. Munson, Fortress; Christ’s Eternal Invitation by R. T. Haynes, Jr., John Knox; Sermons to Intellectuals by F. H. Littell, Macmillan; Sermons for Special Sundays by J. D. Holt, Broadman; and A Reasoned Faith by J. Baillie, Scribner’s. Harper will publish Freedom of the Christian Man by H. Thielicke, He Spoke to Them in Parables by H. Bosley, Christian Priorities by F. D. Coggan, and Strength to Love by M. L. King, Jr. Revell will present G. Powell’s Difficult Sayings of Jesus; Abingdon, J. A. Redhead’s Sermons on Bible Characters; Concordia, Sermonic Studies, Volume II, by various authors; and Westminster, K. Barth’s The Preaching of the Gospel.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Christian Education as Engagement by D. R. Hunter, Seabury; The Church College in Today’s Culture by W. O. Doescher, Augsburg; The Teaching Church by K. B. Cully and Called to Teach by C. D. Spotts, United Press; and three from Westminster: How to Teach Senior Highs by L. E. Bowman, Jr., The Case Method in Pastoral and Lay Education by W. Fallaw, and Servants and Stewards by A. R. McKay.

LITURGY, MUSIC, WORSHIP: Concordia will publish R. Seboldt’s God and Our Parish; Broadman, Church Music in Transition by W. L. Hooper; and Abingdon, The Training Of Church Choirs by J. R. Sydnor.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: Cambridge will issue Anglo-Saxon Churches by H. M. and J. Taylor; Eerdmans, Christ and Architecture for Reformation Churches by D. J. Bruggink and C. H. Droppers; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art by G. van der Leeuw.

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE AND CULTURE: J. B. Lippincott will publish G. MacGregor’s The Hemlock and the Cross; United Church, J. M. Benton’s Gift of a Golden String; and Augsburg, J. H. Burtness and J. P. Kildahl’s The New Community in Christ. Macmillan will offer Hertzberg, Marty, and Moody’s The Outbursts that Await Us.

DEVOTIONAL: From Abingdon will come The Word Became Flesh by E. S. Jones, Life Is Forever by G. A. Crafts, Power of Paul by W. McF. Stowe, Whom Christ Commended by R. W. Sockman, and No Saints Suddenly by H. G. Werner. Broadman will publish Did I Say Thanks? by L. B. Flynn, and from Bethany Press will come Gift of Hope by W. P. Ford, On Holy Ground by D. E. Stevenson, and Pursuit of Happiness by W. K. Pendleton. Eerdmans will publish Seed Thoughts for Christian Living by R. E. O. White and Reflections by H. E. Kohn; Channel, The Stranger Within by C. H. Powell; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I Believe In God: A Meditation On the Apostles’ Creed by P. Claudel.

MISCELLANEOUS: Abingdon will publish Halford Luccock Treasury, selected by Robert E. Luccock from various writings of his late father, onetime Yale Professor and “Simeon Stylites.” Scribner’s will issue A Nation So Conceived by R. Niebuhr and A. Heimert; Macmillan, P. Ferris’ The Church of England and W. C. Smith’s The Meaning and End of Religion. From William Morrow will come The Shoes of the Fisherman by M. L. (The Devil’s Advocate) West and The Birthday King by G. Fielding.

PAPERBACKS: Here I can select but a few from a vast literature: Zechariah Speaks Today by A. A. Van Ruler, Chrysostom and His Message by S. Neil, Association; Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian by J. Courvoisier, Concerning the Ministry by J. Oman, This We Know by S. de Diétrich, John Knox; The Struggle of the Soul by L. Sherrill, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth by A. Schweitzer, Religious Language by I. Ramsay, The School of Prayer by O. Wyon, The Cost of Discipleship by D. Bonhoeffer, The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, Macmillan; Many Things in Parables and The Gospel Miracles by R. S. Wallace, The Old Testament in the New Testament by R. V. G. Tasker, Eerdmans; Our Faith by E. Brunner, Christianity Among the Religions of the World by A. Toynbee, Scribner’s; The Call To Preach by C. Beyler, Herald Press; Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth by G. Malantschuk, Augsburg; Concordia Bible Dictionary by E. Lueker, Proclaiming the Parables by M. Schmieding, Key to the Full Life by R. Norden, Concordia; The Miracle of America by G. L. Ford, Zondervan; Lectures on Ethics by I. Kant (which suggests the very opposite of his position), Harper; William Carey—Father of Modern Missions by W. B. Davis, Moody Press; Jesus Christ and History by G. E. Ladd, The Century of the New Testament by E. M. Blaiklock, Inter-Varsity.

Probably any teacher of college freshmen is familiar with the student who turns up on registration day with a strong emotional urge to be a professional man but with complete disdain for the step-by-step process for reaching his goal. He may be an aspiring scientist who wants to remake the world—but can’t stand math; or a would-be physician with a burden to serve humanity—as long as he can stay away from chemistry; or a ministerial student who yearns to preach—if only he can escape Greek.

The human urge to bypass the process by which things happen and believe that “wishing will make it so” is a comfortable rationalization which helps us avoid work. We all indulge it at times. But when a Christian minister asserts, in effect, “Our purposes are so important and lofty that we will not be distracted from them by examination of the means by which we reach them,” the evasion may become dangerous. I am talking about the minister’s knowledge of communication process.

The study of communication theory as an integrated body of information constituting an area of scholarship in its own right is a relatively modern development. Given recent impetus by the growth of huge nationalistic propaganda organizations and astronomical advertising budgets, study of the communication process has attracted increasing attention from a variety of disciplines. Modern communication theory gathers together from relevant traditional areas of scholarship (such as sociology, linguistics, psychology, semantics, literature, anthropology, logic, and rhetoric) all available information about the transmission of ideas, and applies scientific information-gathering techniques to the study of the process. The classic definition of communication study as “the study of who says what to whom with what effect” provides a good outline.

There are indications that some ministers and theologians have taken fright that study of the communication process may turn out to be an attack on preaching. We have recently read rather pointed ministerial criticism of those who apply the principles of communication theory to the spread of the Gospel. Though variously expressed, most of the misgivings can probably be grouped under three general headings.

Believing, as he does, that participation in the revelation of Jesus Christ is the most important work in which man can engage, the minister owes it to himself to find out whether organized study of the communication process represents a potential threat or a possible source of increased efficiency in his work of spreading the Gospel. Let us examine the charges one at a time.

Problem 1: Communication theorists are technicians concerned only with method, with no regard for the truth or permanent importance of the matter conveyed. There is some basis for this assertion. The electronics expert who installs and operates the public address system for the evangelist is a technician. The effectiveness of his amplifier does not depend upon the truth or error of the speaker’s words. It depends upon the skill with which he designs his circuitry.

The student of communication theory is concerned chiefly with process—laws which govern it and effects which it can produce. But, unlike the job of the electronic technician, his work, if it is to produce results, cannot be separated from the source of the ideas. The preacher cannot say to the theorist, as he does to his public address operator, “I have now finished producing this idea—you transmit it to the audience.” For the very framing of the idea, the symbols chosen to express it, the time and place of its presentation, constitute the “techniques” to be considered. The “technique” and the “message” cannot be separated, which means that the minister must be his own “technician”—and the better-informed technician he is the more effective will be his message.

Problem 2: Theories of persuasion imply manipulation of the audience in violation of the freedom of the human will. The notion that the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines and the productions of Madison Avenue represent a magical new art which threatens all our traditional values makes good scare material, but it does not square with the facts. The basic devices of modern propaganda and advertising were well described by Aristotle. They are not the product of the black wizardry of electronics and neo-Freudian psychology. To equate the study of communication with some particular set of non-rational appeals used by an advertising agency is inaccurate and unfair.

If there is one observation which more frequently than any other causes dismay among students of communication, it is the passive receptivity of the mass audience. There are parallel areas of apathy and suggestibility in the Christian church. The ruggedly individualistic Christian of apostolic or Reformation times would seem strangely out of place in many spoon-fed twentieth-century congregations. One of the most urgent messages of today’s Church is that the significance of the individual lies in his personal accountability to God. The minister who knows how propaganda techniques short-circuit the human rational processes will most stoutly assert the importance of this personal accountability. He knows the hazards against which to warn his congregation and the non-rational shortcuts against which to guard his own sermons.

Problem 3: Application of communication theory to the work of the minister minimizes the direct work of God’s Spirit upon the human mind and elevates the human instrument. It is not a new charge that scientific examination of a process takes God out of it. Christian physicists and biologists have lived with this objection for years and have successfully contended that orderly description of the forces operating upon a celestial body or of the minute structures of the human brain need not eliminate belief in the upholding power of God. The fact that the physical finger of Deity does not appear as a value in an equation or as a location in the cortex merely teaches us that God operates his universe more efficiently and less primitively than we might have supposed. We learn that the Spirit that moved on the waters of Chaos operates lawfully.

The student of communication gathers together what has been learned about the process by which ideas move from one mind to another. He probes the pressures causing them to be accepted, rejected, or modified. He observes whether they are applied or not applied to conduct.

At what points does the Spirit enter the communication process? Certainly the preacher’s mind must be open to the Spirit’s stimulation through the written Word. Certainly the minister is alert for pertinent lessons in the circumstances God brings to him. Certainly he plans the ritual of his service and the sonorities of his organ and choir to allow the worshiper the peace and leisure for introspection—for the still, small Voice to be heard through the din of the huckster’s shouts echoing in his mind.

As in the process of the germination of a seed or the birth of a child, there is no spot to which we may point and say, “Just there is the finger of God.” Yet as in the planting of the seed or the rearing of the child, the more we know of natural law—the divinely ordained order of the universe—the more effectively we can work within its structure.

It is precisely because he believes that language and the human mind are both products of God’s creation and because he believes that God has deliberately chosen to communicate with men through the medium of human language that the minister is rewarded by study of the communication process. God could employ angels, direct vision, or other media at which man cannot even guess. But, as is obvious from the Gospel commission, the channel of human language as spoken by human beings is his chosen medium for conveying his message to mankind. Scripture records that he chose, in each age, the most effective individual transmitter for his message. Moses, Samuel, and Jeremiah were set apart from childhood; Paul was selected as a “chosen vessel” while still a rebel.

Why were these men chosen? They could scarcely have been selected for an orotund delivery, an impressive vocabulary, or a sincere presence. There must have been divine recognition of their total potential as communicators of a message. It is this total impact that concerns the student of communication.

If there is a single lesson that the study of communication would stress above all others for the minister, it would probably be attention to this “complete impact.” This means recognizing that a worship situation includes many “messages.” There are many of the communication channels which supplement or negate the words of the preacher. Communication research also suggests answers to a wide range of questions such as: How does the listener’s concept of himself affect the way he receives the minister’s message? Should the minister present both sides of a disputed point, or only his own convictions? How does audience perception of the minister affect its willingness to receive his message? Can the minister capitalize on the group identifications of his church members? When is fear not an effective stimulus to action? What happens in the mind of the listener when a new idea conflicts with a previously accepted idea? How do shifts in word meaning warp the minister’s message?

Far from attacking the study of the communication process as a threat to his calling, the minister should find in it a new opportunity to reexamine the worship techniques carried over from a previous generation. He should find incentive for rigorous self-examination. He should look to research findings as incentive to help him present the everlasting Gospel as fresh good news. He should be willing to compare his audience’s reaction to that of the audience of the Teacher of whom it is reported, “the common people heard him gladly.”

END

The best evangelical contributions of 1962, in the judgment ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY’Seditorial staff, are listed below. The selections propound evangelical perspectives in a significant way, or apply biblical doctrines effectively to modern currents of thought and life. These are not the only meritorious volumes, nor do they in every case necessarily reflect the convictions of all evangelical groups.

BERKOUWER, G. C.: Man: The Image of God (Eerdmans, 376 pp., $6). Eighth volume of “Studies in Dogmatics,” which are studies in depth by a master theologian.

BOETTNER, LORAINE: Roman Catholicism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 466 pp., $5.95). Contrasting emphases in Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism.

BRUCE, F. F.: The Epistle to the Ephesians (Revell, 140 pp., $3). Written particularly for the general reader, but also rewarding for the serious student.

BUSWELL, J. OLIVER: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Zondervan, 430 pp., $6.95). The first of two volumes, it provides a useful treatment of theism and anthropology.

DOUGLAS, J. D., ed.: The New Bible Dictionary (Eerdmans, 1375 pp., $12.95). A significant contribution to its field; rich in scholarship, comprehensive in coverage.

GORDON, ERNEST: Through the Valley of the Kwai (Harper, 257 pp., $3.95). The sustaining light of faith in a Japanese horror camp for prisoners of war.

GUTHRIE, DONALD: New Testament Introduction: Hebrews to Revelation (Inter-Varsity, 320 pp., $4.95). A useful study, embracing latest literature on the subject.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed.: Basic Christian Doctrines (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 302 pp., $6). Perceptive and literate expositions by an international complement of scholars.

HUGHES, PHILIP E.: Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Eerdmans, 508 pp., $6). Skillful exegesis, evincing acquaintance with ancient and modern authorities and spiritual insight.

KOLLER, CHARLES W.: Expository Preaching Without Notes (Baker, 132 pp., $2.50). Instruction in use of the preaching method indicated in the title.

MCKINNEY, GEORGE D.: The Theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Zondervan, 130 pp., $2.50). Analysis of the main tenets of one of the largest and fastest-growing sects in the world.

MURCH, JAMES DEFOREST: Teach or Perish! (Eerdmans, 117 pp., $3). A spirited plea for the revitalizing of Christian education at the local church level.

PAYNE, J. BARTON: The Theology of the Older Testament (Zondervan, 554 pp., $6.95). Scholarly study organized around the theme of “testament.”

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F. and HARRISON, EVERETT F.: The Wycliffe Bible Commentary (Moody, 1525 pp., $11.95). Compressed biblical exposition with balance of the practical and the scholarly.

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F.: Exile and Return (Baker, 137 pp., $3.50). Background material which enriches Bible reading of a significant period of Old Testament history.

POLLOCK, J. C.: Hudson Taylor and Maria (McGraw-Hill, 212 pp., $4.95). New source materials highlight the early missionary adventures and married life of China Inland Mission’s founder.

POLMAN, A. D. R.: The Word of God According to St. Augustine (Eerdmans, 242 pp., $5). A valuable study of Augustine’s theology of the Scriptures.

REDDING, DAVID A.: The Parables He Told (Revell, 177 pp., $3). Style has the polish of old silver, message has the ring of the present.

ROBINSON, WILLIAM CHILDS: The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace (Eerdmans, 189 pp., $5). The testimony of the Reformation to enduring theological and ecumenical concerns.

SAUER, ERICH: The King of the Earth (Eerdmans, 256 pp., $3.95). Science and the Scriptures undergird a reverent study of man created, fallen, redeemed, and restored to kingly honor.

SCHOOLLAND, MARIAN M.: Leading Little Ones to God (Eerdmans, 286 pp., $3.95). A guide to parents in teaching children about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

UNGER, MERRILL F.: Archaeology and the New Testament (Zondervan, 350 pp., $4.95). Archaeological light ably cast upon the New Testament world.

VAN TIL, CORNELIUS: Christianity and Barthianism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 450 pp., $6.95). A driving rejection of Barth’s theology as speculative, dialectical, and hostile to evangelical Christianity.

ZORN, RAYMOND O.: Church and Kingdom (Presbyterian and Reformed, 228 pp., $3.75). Reformed treatment of the relationship between the Church and the kingdom of God.