Page 5863 – Christianity Today (2024)

A list of things to be thankful for usually turns out to be merely a list of things we like. It ought rather, I think, to be a list of what we have been given. A bride sitting down to write thank-you notes does not write only to the people who managed to choose gifts that suited her (the job would probably not take long if this were so). She says thank you to everybody—all the people who gave her electric knives, all those who chose the usual run-of-the-gift-shop candy dishes—and she tries to be both truthful and gracious to all. But some of the thanks is only “polite.”

Parents know the difficulty of teaching children to say thank you. If the child is given something he likes, he grabs it and in his pleasure forgets to say anything. If he gets something he doesn’t like he sees no reason to say thank you. He has to learn the meaning of a gift before he understands the meaning of thanks.

There must also be an understanding of a giver. It is interesting to note that many primitive languages have no words to express gratitude. The Quichua and Colorado languages of Ecuador, for example, have to borrow from Spanish, and the Indians rarely use the Spanish words among themselves. They use them only when speaking to outsiders. This says something, it seems to me, about their whole view of life. They take all of nature for granted (“The sunset, señora? Beautiful?” an Indian once said to me). They are sufficient in themselves. They depend consciously on nothing and nobody.

Most Christians acknowledge dependence on God in a vague and general way. Most of us thank him for certain things—for food, for example (and we’ve all heard facetious remarks about saying grace when the menu doesn’t look especially appetizing)—but if we are candid about it we find that usually our thanks is for things that please us, or for things we’ve asked for. What about thanking God for anything and everything he has given? We know we are meant to give thanks “in everything,” as Paul told us, and sermons have been preached on that word “in” as distinct from “for.” But few of us have got much further than the little girl who said she could think of things she’d rather have than eternal life. There is a sense in which the mature Christian offers not just polite thanks because he things he ought to, but heart-felt thanks that springs from a far deeper source than his own particular pleasure.

How can we reach that kind of maturity? You learn to swim by swimming. I am convinced that we can learn how best to thank God by thanking him. Thanksgiving is in itself a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness and confinement of ourselves, into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God. The simple act of our own will—“I will thank him”—is for most of us an abrupt change of activity, a break from work and worry, a move toward re-creation.

I am not suggesting the mouthing of foolish platitudes as a spiritual exercise. “Things could be worse,” “Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!,” “Look for the silver lining!” and that sort of thing will hardly nourish the spirit of thanksgiving. I am not cheered, my faith is not fortified, my soul is not drawn out in gratitude by an attempt to ignore the truth. It is the truth of things I am trying to get at. It is what is given that I want to see clearly and be able honestly to thank God for. In mathematics you don’t find the solution to a problem until you know the givens.

A child has no idea of things as they are. He is ignorant, and therefore he is totally ungrateful. He gets his food without asking for it; he finds all his needs met, it seems, quite automatically. He has to grow up before he has much idea of what is involved in providing the necessities and comforts he has taken for granted. And the first spontaneous and sincere thank you for him is a sign that he is growing up. When the parent is thanked for doing a thing the child didn’t like at the time, he knows his child has come a long way.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is,” said Shakespeare, “to have a thankless child.”

Thankless children we all are, more or less, for we comprehend so dimly the truth of our relationship to God. We do not know him as the Giver, we do not understand his gifts. The depth of his love, the wisdom with which he has planned, the price he pays to bring his sons to glory—all these are far beyond us. The closer we come to spiritual maturity, the clearer is our understanding of where we are in relation to everything else. And this knowledge will enable us to give him what the Book of Common Prayer calls “humble and hearty” thanks, the kind that springs from true humility and a pure heart.

So let us get at the truth of things. Let us start with the basics. It is a help to me, when some petty private concern or perhaps some bad news in the daily paper depresses or confuses me, to “start over.” I am in no position to be thankful. Far from it. So I begin by deliberately putting my mind on a few of the Realities. What I am thankful for depends on what I believe, for what I believe determines what I most deeply desire. A concise statement of what I believe is found in the Apostle’s Creed, and I never get beyond needing to go over it and think about it.

BROAD-CAST

Strange

How bread

In breaking

Spreads

Shares

Itself divides

Distributes crumbs

All sundry

Take

Care your

Fair white linen

Not confine

The scattered seed

To virgin soil

Or all too narrow

Furrow

J. BARRIE SHEPHERD

“I believe in God the Father Almighty … and in Jesus Christ … I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

It is not a long list. But it is all we need. Evelyn Underhill calls these “the necessary supplies issued to us, the standard equipment of the Christian.” They are not things we’ve asked for. (Imagine having nothing more than what we’ve asked for!) They are given.

We are flimsy, trembling creatures, blown about, shaken not only by great winds but by the faintest breezes of any sort of nonsense, steered by our own whims and by the fashions of this world, crushed by criticism and elated by flattery, fearful and proud and selfish in our hopes and prayers, offering the thanksgiving of the Pharisee in the temple, tickled to death to think (look at us!) that we are not like him. To go back and begin again with God instead of with how we feel about things will alter our perspective. We will lose sight of ourselves for a change. We may have been, a moment ago, deploring the state of things in general (war, taxes, drugs, elections, “youth”), or the state of our own finances or position or reputation (or even the oven that needs cleaning or our weight that needs reducing), and we have not been able to find in such thoughts any reason for thanksgiving. But measure them now against those mighty foundation stones. The truth of our situation can be known only in relation to those Realities. They tell us what is. We can test our attitudes by them.

“Jesus Christ … suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified.” God, in flesh, at the mercy of a Roman procurator whose name we all know—is this cause for thanksgiving? It is, and the heart that can give thanks for such a thing must be a heart that accepts mystery, for this touches on one of the profound mysteries of all life and of our own individual lives. Suffering is required. It behooved Christ to suffer. And because soldiers fastened him to a cross of wood with iron nails one Friday afternoon on a hilltop, the world with all its agonies and iniquities and griefs is redeemed. There was, after this hideous death, Resurrection. “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.” But death had to come first.

On this Thanksgiving Day we do not give thanks only if we have not suffered. Some have suffered and are suffering greatly. Some of us know very little of suffering. But we know disappointments and betrayals and losses and bitterness we have never dreamed of thanking God for. These things were given. We could not possibly have chosen them, and we are not asked to like them, but our thanks is due because we are learning to know the Giver and to understand the meaning of his gifts.

The gift of food needs also the gift of hunger. Thirst itself is a gift when there is drink to satisfy it. Loneliness, which Katherine Mansfield said “opens the gates of my soul and lets the wild beasts stream howling through,” opens also our understanding of the communion of saints. Not until sin baffles us will grace ever amaze us. We learn then how precious is the forgiveness of sins.

This is the way things are. These things have been given to us. We may reject them, or we may receive them all with thanksgiving.

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

I write this just before departing for Athens, with stops in Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut, Babylon, and Istanbul. I always find that upon my return to the States I have a greater appreciation of home, even the smoggy air of Washington. I have already voted, of course, and I won’t be altogether sorry to miss the last few weeks of campaigning. Political campaigns seem to bring out the worst in people, including myself. How easy it is to suppose that the candidates I support have virtues foreign to their opponents.

This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY ranges widely over the Christian spectrum. Betty Elliot has a good word on Thanksgiving, and James Manz has one on prayer. Martin Rosen tells why he thinks young Jews are returning to Christ (Rosen himself is a “fulfilled Jew”). Then J. Edwin Orr speaks about the unhappy situation in Northern Ireland. No one should overlook the fact that Marxists and Maoists are fishing in these troubled waters.

D. G. Kehl describes Satan’s deceptive, fallacious logic. And, to fill out our cornucopia of good things, Faith Winger gives a bibliography for Palestine/Israel, and John Wagner tells about evangelicals in the Episcopal Church.

The quiescence of the 1,000 delegates attending the sixth biennial convention of the American Lutheran Church (ALC) held earlier this month in Minneapolis was rarely shattered throughout the six-day meeting. Despite such issues as p*rnography, capital punishment, busing, and the Viet Nam war, and the stimulating if not explosive topics of Lutheran merger and the further ordination of women, little roof-raising debate soared through the main arena of the Minneapolis Civic Auditorium. Vice-President David W. Preus (cousin of embattled Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod [LCMS] president J. A. O. Preus) commented, “I find it hard to believe that we’ve gone through [so many controversial subjects] with virtually no debate.”

The question of women appeared central to the problems of ALC fellowship with the LCMS—at least the way the ALC sees it. But Missouri’s official observer Ralph Bohlmann stated that the uneasiness between the two churches, which maintain tenuous pulpit and altar fellowship, stems primarily from a bigger question than the ordination of women: the authority of Scripture. “The Missouri Synod considers the question of women’s ordination to be symptomatic” of the problems in the ALC, he explained.

The ALC adopted a modified statement on women in which it pledges to “take extra steps to bring women significantly into leadership roles in the church” and “to take steps toward encouraging women to pursue theological education, calling women to the faculties of theological seminaries, creating an accepting climate for women in theological education.” A dissenting delegate questioned the advisability of reinforcing the ALC’s controversial stand on women in view of Missouri’s disagreement with it. But another pastor, referring to LCMS conventions, replied, “First we were told to wait for Milwaukee, now we’re told to wait for New Orleans, and I’m tired of waiting for Missouri.” A member of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Concerns of Women and the Church in Society told delegates that LCMS women “are looking to this report and the ALC” for encouragement.

The Missouri Synod in an unusual procedure had requested that the ALC reconsider its position on women. In response ALC president Kent S. Knutson asked the church’s three seminary faculties (Wartburg, Luther, and Evangelical Lutheran) to study the question. Each seminary arrived at its pro-female ordination decision independently, said Knutson. He added that Preus in a letter thanked the ALC for its study but commented that the LCMS still felt the matter had not been adequately investigated. According to Bohlmann, however, Missouri hasn’t yet seen the new report.

LCMS president Preus informed the assembly that “I would be less than honest with you if I were to say that everyone in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been completely satisfied with the fellowship which was established in 1969. An additional strain was put on our fellowship by the action of the American Lutheran Church two years ago in initiating the practice of ordination of women.” Later in a ten-minute mini-press conference Preus reported that the ALC’s latest action in regard to the position of women in the church “probably was not the most helpful thing” the denomination could have done.

Preus reiterated that Missouri, though uninterested in organic union, had appointed four representatives to participate in the discussions of the Inter-Lutheran Consultation. The ALC and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) consider these representatives to be observers only, though Bohlmann insists that the LCMS resolution on the Inter-Lutheran Consultation calls them participants.

Bishop Knutson (trial use of the title will continue for the next two years) in a press conference said that within the next four years “we will have a better idea of where Lutheran unity is going.” In Dallas he had told the LCA (see July 28 issue, page 35) that the ALC wouldn’t merge without both Lutheran bodies. But in Minneapolis Knutson told delegates that since Missouri had mailed its regrets to the proposed merger party “we must now decide if we’ll hold the party anyway.”

Several observers think Knutson is losing patience with the LCMS and has changed his mind since Dallas. Preus told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that he sensed such a change. Others, however, think Knutson is dragging his feet on merger to accommodate Missouri.

Knutson now is looking for cooperation at the grass-roots level. “The time has passed for church mergers at the national level,” he told reporters. And he is no longer talking about a “common structure” but “common structures.”

LCA president Robert Marshall told the ALC convention he didn’t think the ALC was dragging its feet on merger and agreed with Knutson that “the grass roots may truly produce the growth for the flowering of the church of the future.” Marshall added that, along with agreement on inter-Lutheran cooperation and the desire for common structures, “we even agree about the role of women in the church.”

The ALC’s progressive concern for women was seen not only in the statement on women (though a quota system was deleted in committee) but also in the fact that there were eighty-six women delegates at the convention. Women outnumber men in the ALC 52 to 48 per cent. The first woman nominated for national office, Birgit Birkeland, received 124 votes for general secretary, making her runner-up to the winner and current general secretary Arnold R. Mickelson, who won on the first ballot with 704 votes.

While the ALC is progressive on the question of women, it is falling far behind its sister denominations in youth participation. The ALC had only twenty-one official youth observers at the convention, and a total youth attendance of thirty-five. Representatives of the Luther League (ALC’s youth program) ran a coffeehouse, the Wilderness Edge, for delegates each evening after the convention adjourned. According to Mett Sorgenfrei, youth observer from Parrysburg, Ohio, this was the first year the church’s youth people were involved at all. Youth observers plan to “plant seeds” to get more youth involved by the next convention.

An establishment-organized “Youth Happening” preceded an evangelism service at the Sunday-evening session. The three-and-one-half-hour program, attended by about 5,000, included youth singers and an address by Knutson on evangelism.

Under the Key 73 banner, “Calling Our Continent to Christ,” Knutson told an enthusiastic but not frenetic crowd that “if there is anyone in the national office who turns up his nose at evangelism he gets a kick in the pants from me.”

Knutson emphasized evangelism throughout the convention. “We’re going to work at making our congregations understand evangelism,” he reiterated several times. As expected the convention reaffirmed ALC participation in Key 73. But ALC “unofficial” participation in the charismatic movement (see September 15 issue, page 50) received little attention. A delegate raised the matter from the floor. Executive Director of Evangelism Jack Hustad told the convention his commission had prepared materials on this divisive issue for congregational use, and that these will be released soon.

Delegates waded through social statements with a minimum of interest and excitement. Statements on busing and obscenity were referred back to ALC congregations.

The almost apathetic atmosphere lifted when delegates considered and passed “SOS: A Call to Affirmation of Human Values,” a statement of comment and counsel that struck many delegates and observers as an anti-Nixon document. With no debate the convention approved a balanced statement on amnesty and one on Viet Nam that was reworded to condemn all military activity in that country by all governments. A minority report applauding Nixon on Viet Nam was pushed through in the convention’s closing hours.

Delegates adopted restructure plans to reduce the twenty existing national units to eleven. Among major changes will be a new “Division for Life and Mission in the Congregation” that will include such former units as education, evangelism, worship, and youth activity. The convention also approved a new Assembly of Congregations recommended by Knutson, who estimated 10,000 people would attend such a conclave, to be held once a decade. The first one may convene in 1976.

At the final session a $24 million budget was approved, $198,000 over the original budget request. Observers sum up this convention as a “happy” one, and the surplus pledge is just one proof of it. Few problems were voiced, little complaint was heard, and resolutions were passed commending Knutson for his job. Delegates who were asked why everyone seemed so satisfied with the ALC answered with one word: “Knutson.” If the ALC president hasn’t been able to bring off Lutheran merger, he at least has been the stabilizing influence J. A. O. Preus two years ago predicted he would be.

Interview With Preus

Newswoman Cheryl Forbes recently chatted with Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president J. A. O. Preus about the holy war involving himself and Concordia Seminary of St. Louis, and about Lutheran unity. Here are some of her questions and his answers:

What are your chances for re-election? The nomination process doesn’t begin until March. Each of the 6,000 congregations will send in a nomination with the five highest nominees voted on by the convention. The suggestion of Oswald Hoffmann for president is ridiculous. A group of kingmakers got together, that’s all. I’m sure he (Hoffmann] must be very embarrassed. I don’t know about the election. I stand where I’ve stood.

Is this a battle of personalities? No, it’s a matter of doctrine. I like John Tietjen [Concordia Seminary’s president], It would be most unfortunate if it were billed that way.

How much grass-roots support do you have? My mail is running about eight to one in favor of my stand, and I’ve received thousands of letters. About 99 per cent of the clergy approve and 70 per cent of the laity.

What about the American Association of Theological Schools? I don’t want to say anything at all. The school’s administration refused to appeal the decision which I don’t understand. And then Tietjen was elected to the AATS executive committee to which the appeal would have been directed. If the seminary is so bad why elect its president to the disciplining board? The whole situation is a strange phenomenon.

What about student reaction? Students have shown restraint and wisdom, though there have been some complaints from them. Some students passed around a petition, but less than half the student body signed it. Remember, this has been going on through three different classes.

What’s the feeling on merger? Our congregations and districts have been unanimous against merger, and Tietjen, remember, is on the church-relations committee—and it too voted against organic union. The forty district presidents to a man expressed that they weren’t in favor of organic union. And not one district memorialized to merge, and in fact some were against pulpit and altar fellowship. I have received letters asking us to immediately sever that relationship because of women’s ordination. I have felt that this would be the wrong thing to do at this time.

Miss Forbes also talked with church-relations committee head Ralph Bohlmann about the upcoming New Orleans convention. His prediction:

Preus will be reelected. Fellowship with the ALC will continue but under protest and its practice not encouraged while the discussions on women’s ordination go on. In other words, it will be a polite way of dragging our feet. As for the Concordia situation, we are now conducting seminars in churches across the country on the historical-critical method of scholarship. We want our churches to know exactly what that means.

Talking Toward Togetherness

Lutheran and Catholic theologians have agreed that differences between the two faiths on the question of papal primacy may not be as insurmountable as first thought. The theologians—meeting for the fifteenth time since the inter-faith doctrinal talks began in 1965—said they were in “fundamental” agreement on the Nicene Creed, baptism, the eucharist, and eucharistic ministry, but were still discussing the church’s universal ministry.

Paramount in the discussion, they said in a joint statement, was the primacy of the pope. The group has not tackled papal infallibility yet, pointing out that historically, “primacy was an issue centuries before papal infallibility became a dogma.” Because of the meetings, the statement added, the Lutherans are more aware of the need for a ministry serving the church’s unity and mission, while Catholics see the need of a “nuanced understanding” of the papacy’s role. “God is calling our churches to draw closer together,” it said.

In Pursuit of Theology

Perched astride the hill of Tantur in the rugged Judean range on the main road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is the two-million-dollar complex of the new Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies (EIATS). During the three-day dedication rites last month, an ecumenical array of theologians presented papers in an atmosphere of unity in purpose and spirit that was indeed rare for the troubled environs of Jerusalem. The dedicatory address was delivered by EIATS rector Charles Moeller. Also taking part: Notre Dame University president Theodore M. Hesburgh, who is also EIATS president.

The institute was proposed by Orthodox and Protestant observers at Vatican II. Pope John XXIII concurred and instructed Hesburgh and Moeller (with the University of Lausanne at the time) to contact prominent scholars to shape up the project. The multi-million-dollar building costs were largely met by American philanthropists. The $100,000 library (it contains 20,000 volumes of a projected collection of 100,000) was donated by a Jewish family from Chicago. The Vatican and other religious sources have not been tapped, said an official.

Vice-rector Panayotis Christou, an Orthodox theologian from the University of Thessalonica, said the emphasis of the institute is carried in the latter half of its name. Its interest and common pursuit is theology, not ecumenism. (But at the dedication, theologian W. A. Visser ’t Hooft stressed that for the institute to succeed “we must not just study together but also pray and worship together.”)

Guidelines laid down at a planning meeting in 1965 bound the institute to “a program of common theological research, the principle theme of which would be the redeeming action of God in history and the significance of this fact for men of today.” During the past academic year, fifty scholars from Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant confessions have been pursuing study of the institute’s first-year theme, Mysterium Salutis, the mystery of salvation. Each scholar works independently, and at a weekly seminar attended by all he reports his findings. The group coordinates its work before beginning each new week of study.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Word From Romania

“Despite recent restrictions, churches in Romania are packed beyond capacity,” says California State University professor Emmanuel A. D. Deligiannis, who doubles as general superintendent of the Romanian Apostolic Pentecostal Church of God of North America. He recently returned from a five-week ministry tour of the country.

Large numbers of young people attend the jammed services; many sing in the choirs and take active part in other ways, he states. While there, he ministered in a variety of churches and house meetings. Several university students and a mathematics professor accepted Christ, and numbers of people were healed, he reports.

Deligiannis found the charismatic experience becoming widespread among the historic churches. He also found that the “so-called underground church is very much on the ground worshiping in the church edifices on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings (the only times legally permissible), and secretly in homes during week-nights.” If found attending house meetings, believers are heavily fined—up to several months’ salary, he asserts.

Religion in Transit

Bob Jones University and its students can no longer participate in government programs to benefit veterans because of the school’s policy against admitting blacks, a federal judge has decided.

Mrs. Beulah Bucklen, a 59-year-old mother of four, died after she was bitten by a rattler during a snake-handling ritual at the Jesus Pentecostal Church outside Charlestown, West Virginia.

Congress is being asked to review tax structures, including charity contributions and exclusion of the rental value of parsonages, under identical bills introduced in the Senate and House.

In a running battle with the Internal Revenue Service, the Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia refuses to deduct unpaid federal telephone taxes of $19.18 from the salaries of two clergymen protesting the Indochina war. The diocese says back taxes are a matter for the government and the individuals involved. Earlier, however, it paid $545 owed by one of the men in back taxes and deducted it from his salary.

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state’s 137-year-old abortion law, which allows abortion only to save the mother’s life. But a similar law in Connecticut granting legal status to the fetus was ruledunconstitutional by a federal court. The law violated the rights of a woman “to privacy and personal choice in matters of sex and family life,” said the court. The U. S. Supreme Court will soon rule on Georgia’s and Texas’s abortion laws.

Copeland Oaks, a retirement center in Sebring, Ohio, operated by the United Methodist Church, is under federal and state investigation. Elderly couples paying about $130 a month were suddenly hit with rent hikes; now they must pay $400 to $600 per month. They originally paid $27,000 to $44,000 just to get into a center. Church officials cite a deficit as reason for the increase.

Members of the United Methodist Church in Platteville, Colorado, acting on a challenge from young people, wore ordinary work clothes to church one Sunday to prove attire had little to do with worship of God. Now only a few wear dress-ups; the organist and pastor wear jeans to services.

The priests of the Roman Catholic diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, have endorsed diocesan participation in Key 73.

Partnership Mission of Wheaton, Illinois, plans to send a Living New Testament to each of India’s 1,200,000 telephone subscribers.

Delegates of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey rejected 66–64 a resolution approving busing for school racial integration.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, paid $1,506,586 in property taxes to the city of Boston weeks ahead of time to help Boston through a money crisis.

A number of regional Explo ’72 follow-up rallies failed to get off the ground, but Campus Crusade officials estimated that 30 million watched each of three Explo telecasts. More than 11,000 televiewers wrote saying they had received Christ, and 40,000 said they now have courage to witness as a result, according to Crusade.

The Presbytery of Louisville-Union (Kentucky), in a row over minister Terrence Davis’s signing up as an elector of the Communist party, endorsed Davis’s right to serve, while asserting it in no way supported the party. Davis says he is no Communist, only a “civil libertarian.”

Representatives of more than fifty agencies at a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Testimonies to the Jews have decided to work more closely than ever before in the field of Jewish witness. The group also expressed concern about discrimination against Hebrew Christians living in Israel.

Under a new policy, young people enlisting in the Army can be guaranteed a position as a chaplain’s assistant provided they have proper qualifications and complete training successfully, says chaplaincy chief Gerhard W. Hyatt.

Deficits of $56,000 are the result of “mismanagement and illegal use of funds” by recently resigned denomination executive H. Boyd Georgia, alleges an audit committee of the Presbytery of West Florida (United Presbyterian Church). Georgia quit ostensibly to seek psychiatric help. Presbytery officials say they will not take legal action; bonding companies may.

This may have been a record year for youth involvement in evangelism and missionary work. About 10,000 worked in the Ambassadors in Mission (AIM) program of the Assemblies of God. More than 5,000 served with Youth With a Mission around the world (including 500 in Egypt). Operation Mobilization enlisted over 2,000. And thousands worked with other organizations.

Physical-fitness author Kenneth H. Cooper, who may have started the American jogging craze, lists ministers as the least healthy class of citizens.

Episcopal and Roman Catholic administrative buildings were ordered off the tax rolls by the Oregon Tax Court, reversing an earlier ruling by a state revenue unit.

Personalia

A brigade of mercenaries organized by Chicago minister Paul D. Lindstrom to liberate American prisoners of war in Indochina penetrated “enemy lines” in July, said a Lindstrom spokesman.

The American Association of University Professors has appointed a committee to investigate the firing of instructor Arlis J. Ehlen from Concordia seminary, according to Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod spokesman Ralph Bohlmann.

Pastor Gene McCombs of the First Baptist Church in Duncanville, Texas, says he is the victim of a terrorist campaign and that his family and congregation have been threatened—all because he organized opposition against pro-liquor forces seeking a local option election.

Minneapolis Star religion editor Willmar L. Thorkelson says United Church of Christ executive W. Sterling Cary of New York will be the nominating committee’s choice for president when the National Council of Churches convenes its triennial general assembly in Dallas in December. If elected, he will be the NCC’s first black president.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair vows she will make evangelist Billy Graham retract and publicly apologize for allegedly accusing her on the Johnny Carson TV show of sending him a letter with four-letter words, an act she denies. Graham declined to comment and meanwhile teamed up with David Wilkerson on the “Today” show to rebut an appearance—and statements—by pseudo-evangelist Marjoe Gortner.

Wycliffe Bible Translators founder W. Cameron Townsend received an Organization of American States citation as “benefactor of the linguistically isolated human groups in the Americas.” It was issued at an Inter-American Indian Congress in Brazil.

Veteran Wycliffe Bible Translator Paul Smith has launched Bible Translations on Tape to help get the Scriptures to the globe’s 800 million illiterates.

San Francisco Examiner columnist Lester Kinsolving did some digging and discovered that chess champion Bobby Fischer is not a member of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God as reported widely; he attends Saturday services but has not been baptized. Kinsolving also hints that the recent mysterious sojourn of Garner Ted Armstrong in exile resulted when Garner Ted questioned the “British Israel” part of his father’s dogma.

Duane Vosburg of surburban Binghamton, New York, may be the first layman appointed as a conference secretary of evangelism in the United Methodist Church.

William Carey Moore is heading up a new editorial department and editing Translation for Wycliffe Bible Translators; formerly he was assistant editor of Decision.

Baptist street evangelist Arthur Blessitt carried his cross on a witness trek from France into Spain after a delay by wary Spanish border authorities.

World Scene

Thousands of Northern Ireland Protestants and Catholics prayed side by side in Belfast and Armagh for peace during a day of prayer this month. Other interdenominational services were held in the Republic of Ireland.

South Korean Army headquarters sent nine trucks to the World Literature Crusade office in Seoul to pick up nearly one million Bible correspondence lessons donated by WLC for 200,000 soldiers who had made decisions for Christ.

Two books getting attention in Spain these days: Thirty Thousand Spaniards and God and One Hundred Spaniards and God. The latter, a best-seller, surveys the religious beliefs and opinions of 100 leading Spanish citizens. Unbelief and paganism seep through profusely. Thus the reason for the former book—by four Protestant leaders.

After a ten-day conference of hundreds of Protestant and Catholic church leaders in Birmingham, England, Methodist executive Kenneth G. Greet said it was no longer a question of whether there should be church union, but of how and how soon. The conference was called by the British Council of Churches to “deal with a crisis of faith and a crisis in the institutional life of the church.”

Wesley’s Chapel on London’s City Road, the “mother church of Methodism,” has been closed because of deterioration; renovation will take at least three years.

A six-week Methodist mission to the island of Fiji netted 5,640 decisions for Christ, according to a report in the New Zealand Methodist. Other revival reports have come from New Guinea, West Irian, the Solomon Islands, and Thailand.

New Zealand Methodists, Congregationalists, and members of the Associated Churches of Christ have given straw-poll approval to a proposed five-church merger. The Presbyterian General Assembly has already given an official okay, but Anglicans are balking.

The British Student Christian Movement may lose its non-profit status. Government officials are criticizing its gift of more than $4,000 to Agitprop, a London “liberation” movement.

The British and Foreign Bible Society, with the support of Catholic and Protestant leaders, plans to distribute a modern-English version copy of Luke to every Northern Ireland residence by Easter.

After five years, Mundo Cristao, a Brazilian family magazine sponsored by Christian Life Mission, has folded, leaving a vacuum in the field.

After a month-long tour of Red China, David Wang of Asian Outreach in Hong Kong says he is convinced the mainland has a “dynamic, witnessing, worshipping church.” He tells of teen-agers who meet regularly for prayer in one city he visited. Overseas Chinese are thronging to the mainland, he says. They include Christians intent on outreach.

The German Bible Institute in Seeheim recently received accreditation from the West German government for both its three-year Bible and missions division and its university-level theological divison, reports acting director Cleon Rogers.

The Church of Norway (Lutheran) has rejected continuation of the present church-state arrangement which gives the government final authority to determine church affairs, and is studying alternate structures.

Never in the history of the international missionary movement has any world conference gathered around a topic more central than the one chosen by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism for its second General Assembly. At this gathering in Bangkok December 29 to January 8, the theme is to be “Salvation Today.”

When this topic was announced at Uppsala in 1968, many evangelicals inside the ecumenical movement rejoiced. After the debacle of Section II in Uppsala, they had felt that what conservative brethren outside the concilar movement had been saying was becoming true: the CWME has lost its biblical concept of redemption and thereby betrayed its own constitution, adopted at New Delhi in 1961. Here its goal was said to be to ensure “the proclamation to the whole world of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the end that all men may believe in Him and be saved.”

But now some people felt new hope. Could not the rallying around “Salvation Today” signalize a return to the true heart of Christian missions? Others, however, remained skeptical. Too often they had seen modernist theologians get hold of basic biblical themes and twist them to fit the slogans of contemporary humanist expectations. Everything, therefore, would depend on the approach in the theological preparation for the Bangkok theme.

The original idea in the minds of the Geneva staff members under the secretaryship of Thomas Wieser was to take a double approach. Exegetical scholars of various traditions would establish the biblical evidence. This would then be confronted by present-day documents of the human quest of salvation, and by testimonies of actual experiences of salvation. Thus the whole study project was to be built on two pillars: Scripture and the contemporary scene.

Evangelical observers could conclude already that this double approach meant an obvious deviation from the Reformation principle “sola scriptura”—not toward the former Catholic alternative of “Scripture and tradition” but toward Scripture and situation.

But it became evident to Thomas Wieser that this plan of approach would not work. The first pillar of the bridge could never be constructed. The exegetical consultants of the CWME, who except for Klaus Westermann in Heidelberg were never named, were unable to settle on one basic concept of the Bible’s teaching on salvation. Instead they produced a great variety of concepts, running parallel to, succeeding, or even contradicting one another.

This pointed up once again the basic problem of the ecumenical movement: the Bible is no longer seen as a solid standard of reference for theological work. Various modern methods used in exegetical work have created a hermeneutical crisis that has destroyed the indispensable conviction of both the unity and reliability of the Scriptures.

Meanwhile, the second pillar was growing beyond any reasonable proportion. Semantic observations, poetic expressions, comparative religion, and above all the mass of material on social-political concern already exhibited at Uppsala provided ample illustration of human yearning for a better world.

In March of this year the Geneva staff published a handsome volume with testimonies about what kind of salvation people of different backgrounds are dreaming about or impatiently demanding. Strangely enough, there was not a single testimony of an authentic experience of redemption in the evangelical sense. Instead we read the witness of a Chinese Communist who was saved by Mao, and the story of a Japanese Catholic priest who on the injunction of a supernatural vision saved his persecuted Christian fellow prisoners by denying his belief in Christ. Here, as at several other places in the preparatory material presented by the CWME, the new quest for salvation “relevant” to today’s needs revealed an openly anti-Christian tendency.

In September the Geneva office produced a second collection of study documents. It is a tiny brochure of twenty-five pages called “Biblical Perspectives on Salvation.” In it are twelve biblical texts of salvation and some interpretative notes. Some of the texts—e.g., Romans 3:23–26—do contain the highlights of the biblical message of God’s saving work through Jesus Christ.

The shock is to discover how the comments succeed in thoroughly forcing the present revolutionary ideology upon the texts. And none of the anonymous theologians who wrote the comments seems to have discovered that most of the Scripture passages cited either point toward or directly speak about that central soteriological event: the offer of peace with God, made available to sinful man through the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

The notes admit that the theme of justification by faith has become a major understanding of salvation since the Reformation, especially in the Lutheran Church. But the impact of this observation is immediately destroyed by what follows:

Today the concern for justice especially in the social and economic sense is very widespread and deep, and it would therefore be important to think out the relationship between the good news of justification of the sinner through faith in Jesus and the struggles for social and economic justice going on in different parts of the world. The emphasis on the fact that men are justified through the free gift of God’s grace has led some Christians to assume a passive attitude towards the concerns for human justice.

Perhaps the very phrase “Salvation Today” suggests this deliberate estrangement from the Christian message. Can we discuss a salvation today that differs from salvation yesterday and tomorrow? It is true that the application of Christ’s saving work in man’s life happens in a variety of different situations. The individual experiences and external evidences may vary. But whatever the visible fruit of salvation might be, the core of that experience must be an encounter with the saving event of Jesus Christ’s death for us on the cross.

Here we evangelicals, too, ought to test our own evangelistic messages and methods. For example, it is all good if drug addicts are rescued from their suicidal practices. But this event does not bring about genuine salvation if its heart is not the atonement.

The evangelical answer to “Salvation Today” cannot be confined to criticizing the humanistic pseudo-answers. It will have to offer a convincing, biblically founded alternative. And it must be given now, before Bangkok, while the challenge is presented to us.

As Reformation Sunday comes around we once again pay tribute to Martin Luther, the doughty reformer who helped change the course of Christianity when he hung his theses on the church door at Wittenberg.

Other reformers, such as John Calvin, also left an indelible imprint on the pages of church history. But there is one whose fame has been dimmed by the notion that he was a dour, unprepossessing character. In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the death of John Knox, we present an essay by Professor Hope of Princeton Seminary and a lead editorial. Both present Knox in a more flattering light than that in which he has commonly been seen across the years.

In this issue we introduce to our readers a new contributor to “Current Religious Thought.” Peter Beyerhaus is professor of missions and ecumenical theology on the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen, Germany. He knows the German scene, writes perceptively, and represents an evangelical viewpoint in a country dominated by theological aberrations for more than a century.

I will be in Europe on Election Day, but before I go I will cast a vote for Mr. Nixon. I urge all of our American readers to vote, for one candidate or the other (I am well aware that not all will vote as I will—see, for example, our news report on page 38). I urge our Canadian readers to do likewise in their elections October 30.

As the presidential election campaigns grind toward November’s moment of truth, churchmen are getting into the act—on both sides. Viet Nam, parochaid, abortion, welfare, busing, amnesty, and Middle East aid are issues that are polarizing the religious constituency.

One group of evangelicals—aiming to demolish the “conservative-theology-equals-conservative-politics” stereotype—formed an Evangelicals for McGovern (EFM) committee¹EFM members: Walden Howard, Faith at Work; evangelist Tom Skinner; Ronald J. Sider, Messiah College; Lewis Smedes, Fuller Seminary; David O. Moberg, Marquette University; Editor John Alexander, The Other Side; Gilbert James, As- bury Seminary; Robert W. Webber, Wheaton College; C. J. Dyck, Mennonite Biblical Seminary; William Harper, Gordon College; Richard V. Pierard, Indiana State University; Stephen Monsma, Calvin College; Deane Kemper, Gordon-Conwell Seminary; Paul Leatherman, Mennonite Central Committee; Anthony Campolo, Eastern Baptist College; author Columbus Salley (Your God Is Too White); Editor Roger Dewey, Inside; William Johnson, Bethel College; Robert Ives, Messiah College. dedicated to raising funds and pushing their candidate as the one who most closely adheres to biblical principles of social justice. The pitch was made to 8,000 evangelical leaders in a letter from EFM chairman Walden Howard, editor of Faith at Work. Most evangelicals, however, will probably follow the lead of evangelist Billy Graham, who announced at a Florida press conference last month that he intends to vote for President Nixon.

Other religious groups have not been forgotten by the candidates. Senator George McGovern, who pastored a Methodist church in student days (see August 11 issue, page 34), has a highly organized Religious Leaders for McGovern-Shriver committee (RLMS).²RLMS members: Methodist bishop James Armstrong; Rabbi Joseph Glaser; William Benfield, COCU and Presbyterian Church U. S.; T. Garrott Benjamin, Disciples of Christ; John C. Bennett, Union Seminary; Robert McAfee Brown, Stanford University; Gilbert H. Caldwell, Black Methodists for Church Renewal; William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Yale University; David G. Colwell, United Church of Christ; Harvey Cox, Harvard University; Episcopal bishop John Craine; Episcopal bishop William Davidson; Rabbi Roland Gittlesohn; Methodist bishop Charles Golden; Georgia Harkness, Pacific School of Religion; Abraham Heschel, Jewish Theological Seminary; Jesse Jackson, Operation PUSH; Methodist bishop Gerald Kennedy; Methodist bishop James Matthews; Brooke Mosley, Union Seminary; C. K. Steele, SCLC; Krister Stendahl, Harvard Divinity School; Sister Mary Luke Tobin; Episcopal suffragan bishop John T. Walker, Washington, D.C. The group was founded by United Methodist bishop James Armstrong of South Dakota and Rabbi Joseph Glaser of the Central Conference on American Rabbis shortly after McGovern first indicated he would seek the presidential nomination.

The committee pulls support from persons in mainline Protestant denominations who are generally acknowledged as liberal in theology and politics. McGovernites hope the evangelical committee will balance their mainline group. (Catholic support is tapped through an ethnic and urban-affairs committee, while Jewish voters are courted by a committee dealing with Middle East affairs. From a Watergate office building in downtown Washington the RLMS carefully coordinates and choreographs activities by key clergy in each of the fifty states.

Roman Catholics, normally a strong Democratic bloc, are apparently going for Nixon in large numbers. In contrast to the elections of 1960 and 1968, when Nixon received poor support from Catholics, he approaches November with a growing majority of Catholic voters, according to several polls. (In 1960 he garnered 22 per cent; in 1968 33 per cent. (A recent poll accorded him 56 per cent of the Catholic vote.)

Meanwhile, groups of Catholic nuns and priests across the country have come out for McGovern. One hundred Jesuits called McGovern’s election a “moral urgency” and added that the senator’s stands are “morally superior” to Nixon’s. And nuns in nearly seventy cities are active in local McGovern offices seeking support among urban Catholics. The nuns hold “political education days” designed to brief constituents on campaign issues.

Because of his Middle East policies, Nixon is the kosher candidate, say many Jewish leaders who normally vote Democratic. They credit him with giving more aid to Israel than previous administrations.

“Evangelicals should be concerned about social justice from a biblical perspective,” EFM chairman Howard said in an interview. “I just don’t believe social justice is a high priority with Nixon. But it’s the heart of McGovern’s motivation.” Howard’s letter asserts that the McGovern platform “moves at many crucial points in the direction indicated by biblical principles.”

The committee was formed spontaneously in September (Howard says he’s met some members “only over the phone”), with black evangelist Tom Skinner as vice-chairman and Ron Sider, acting director of Messiah College’s Philadelphia campus, as secretary. Pleased with the group’s presence, Michael McIntyre, national coordinator of the religious leaders committee, looks for it to break Nixon’s stranglehold on the evangelical camp. Said he: “Conservative evangelicals are not tucked away in Nixon’s back pocket yet, Billy Graham notwithstanding.”

McIntyre directs a small cadre of McGovern workers, coordinating nationwide activities of lay and clerical volunteers. The locals are urged to organize letters-to-the editor campaigns, pay for local advertisem*nts, mount voter-registration drives by church groups, and engage in literature distribution. They must also raise a minimum of $1,000 for the campaign from each of 255 key cities. (EFM has set itself a $100,000 goal hoping to present it in a lump sum to the campaign as proof of evangelical support for McGovern.)

Nixon strategists eschew the highly organized religious-leaders type committees. “We made a conscious decision not to go that route,” says a White House press aide. “We feel it’s manipulation.” Nevertheless, he admitted that no “spontaneous” group seeking to work for Nixon’s election is ever turned away.

He also revealed that thirty-five religious leaders and evangelists from across the country were flown to the White House in mid-September for a series of briefings by top administration officials. (Among them: Elton Trueblood, Rex Humbard, Jess Moody, Bob Harrington, and Bishop William Smith of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.) The clerics were asked for advice on how to run the campaign. Expenses for the junket were paid by the Committee to Re-elect the President, the campaign organization currently under fire in connection with the Watergate bugging scandal. Similar briefings were scheduled for other church leaders October 17. Administration postures on Viet Nam and drug abuse were among topics covered in the sessions.

The Nixon campaign got a big boost from the not-surprising Graham endorsem*nt. “His support is extremely valuable,” the aide acknowledged. “Billy reaches across the boards and touches lives all over the country.” Graham insists he’s not campaigning for Nixon but allows that the California Quaker will probably go down in history as one of the country’s greatest presidents.

White House spokesmen quickly quarreled with the assertion that McGovern’s positions are more moral than Nixon’s. “We could get into a theological debate on what is social justice,” said the aide as he enumerated Nixon’s “moral” stands and accomplishments. Some California Jesus people deluged state party headquarters with help, declaring Nixon was more in line with the Bible than McGovern, he claimed. (These Jesus people are communal followers of Los Angeles street evangelists Tony and Susan Alamo.) The Nixon administration is not concentrating on the “messianic politics” of promises to end war and poverty, the source stated, because “man can never end those evils.”

Among Roman Catholics, parochaid now carries less weight as an issue, weakened as it is by both candidates’ pledges of federal aid for parochial schools. (Americans United for Separation of Church and State blasted McGovern for following in Nixon’s footsteps. The group wants no aid and calls the tax credit system proposed by both candidates “radical and dangerous.”)

Up front with Nixon is Jesuit priest John McLaughlin, his leading Catholic apologist and speechwriter, who is seen in some quarters as the Republican answer to the Berrigans. McLaughlin was a prime administration spokesman during the North Viet Nam dike-bombing furor and attacked Nixon critic Eugene Carson Blake, World Council of Churches secretary, on his version of the bombing. The priest has since defended his boss’s war policy on a variety of occasions.

While Nixon was foraging in Democratic territory, McGovern scavenged in Nixonian haunts. A recent invitation by the student government of Wheaton College to McGovern to speak on campus was rescinded by President Hudson Armerding. Reason? The proposed rally fell on the same night as the final session of Spiritual Emphasis Week at the college. However, Armerding did not rule out another date, provided a similar invitation was extended to Nixon or one of his top spokesmen. An invitation was sent to Nixon, and McGovern was rescheduled to speak October 11.

At the college, McGovern was introduced and endorsed by Skinner, who described the senator as a man in the “vein of the Prophet Amos.” McGovern told the 2,400 students (some waving Nixon posters) there would be no political speech because “I suspect you’re more interested in how my religious convictions shaped my view of America’s difficulties and our destiny.” The thirty-minute speech, dotted with Scripture quotes and allusions, emphasized McGovern morality—“the president should be the great moral leader of the country.”

McGovern has apparently chosen to make morality the key election issue. Many of his backers see the Indochina war as the major moral issue. As far as EFM’s Sider is concerned, the election can be summed up on the basis of that issue: “If Vietnamese boys mean as much to God as American boys, then a solution that kills Vietnamese instead of us is not a just solution.”

‘On the Just and Unjust’

American newsmen who toured North Viet Nam after covering the release of three American pilots reported that several Roman Catholic churches and the showplace Cathedral of Phat Diem were wrecked by American bombs. A government official told them that five were killed and others injured in an August raid. A priest charged bitterly that America is “trying to kill many Christians and destroy many churches in order to arouse the people against the government.” Instead, Catholics are more loyal to the government than ever, he said.

The priest, Vu Hieu Cuc, 75, said that there are 1,650 members in his three congregations, and 80,000 Catholics in Ninh Binh province. Hanoi sources say there are 800,000 practicing Catholics in all of North Viet Nam, a figure doubted by American officials.

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

Carl Parks and the Jesus people of Spokane, Washington (see January 29 issue, page 34), have the town in an uproar over a Jesus ’72 campaign. Baptist pastor Endel Meiusi stuck a campaign sign in the lawn of his parsonage, but the church board ordered him to remove it, and now the members are split right and left. Some disgruntled ministers say the campaign is a McGovern trick, while others wondered aloud why they didn’t think of the idea first. Congregations are debating whether Jesus would wear a shirt and tie (as campaign posters depict him) if he were around today, or the traditional white robe.

“How can you be against Jesus?” asked one campaigner when the pastor of a large church refused to allow a sign in the church yard. As a result, say some wags, you can now tell which churches in Spokane are “for” Jesus (Lutherans and Catholics lead the list), and which are “against” him (fundamentalists).

Actually, says former hippie Mark Owen, who got the idea rolling, “we aren’t running Jesus as a candidate. After all, he’s already king.” The campaign, he says, is simply an evangelistic tool to confront citizens with God’s plan to end war, poverty, racism, divorce, immorality, drug addiction, pollution, and the like. Weekly campaign rallies have been held in parks and streets, and a march is set for election day. Truth, the movement’s popular 200,000-copy circulation tabloid, is covering the campaign quote by quote and tract by tract.

“All we’re asking is that people give Jesus a chance,” says leader Parks.

Reports that the Hanoi regime had executed 500,000 Catholics in a land-reform campaign in the fifties are widely disputed even in American circles, and some news sources claim the reports were fabricated by American intelligence forces. At any rate, reporters conclude, Catholics are apparently alive and well in North Viet Nam—provided they stay out of the way of stray bombs.

Media Movement?

In two articles in the official Swiss Reformed Church fortnightly Kirchenblatt, Oswald Eggenberger concludes, “Switzerland isn’t America. There the Jesus revolution has developed into a broad youth movement. Here the Jesus movement exists only in the mass media, especially in the newspapers and magazines, and in the claims of Pentecostal circles and certain independent groups.” Eggenberger maintains that the Swiss churches ought to cultivate dialogue with the Jesus people, but points out that many of them “think of dialogue not as discussion but as witnessing to Jesus as the One Way.”

Evangelistic Episcopalians

Whether it was through the singing of the doxology to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway” or the abundance of “Praise the Lord” exclamations from the congregation, the first national Episcopal Conference on Evangelism—held this month in Memphis—commanded attention. The 475 registered delegates (125 were clergy) came from thirty-eight states. They came to the low-key conference with tape recorders, pencils, and notebooks poised for action.

Since the conference dealt with a subject considered by the Episcopal hierarchy to have been covered already, the meeting never got the church’s official sanction. (But an “unofficial” representative of Presiding Bishop John E. Hines was seen by conference officials “profusely” taking notes.)

Among speakers handling seminar sessions were author Keith Miller, Faith Alive president Fred C. Gore. Canadian Anglican evangelist Marney Patterson, and United Methodist evangelism official Joe Hale, a Key 73 Executive Committee member.

Hale asked for support of Key 73, urging delegates not to think of evangelism forms of fifty years ago, or of the other groups involved, with whom they might differ, “and lock the door.”

Conference organizer Robert B. Hall, who directs the Episcopal Center for Evangelism in Miami, termed the conference successful because it enabled conferees to define the church’s needs in evangelism and recognize their resources.

The entire meeting appeared to be a contradiction of the traditional concept of Episcopal worship. The host church, Grace-St. Luke’s, is one of the oldest Episcopal churches in Memphis, and its massive Gothic design symbolizes formality. Inside, where 700 often crowded into an auditorium designed to seat 650 comfortably, the air was filled with contagious joy. Delegates ranged in age from the twenties to the seventies and dressed accordingly.

Our Father’s Children, a religious ensemble from Washington, D. C., set the conference tempo with bright gospel songs. Hugh Bellas greeted the congregation with “Praise the Lord” and was answered in kind by the delegates, many with arms upraised. Bellas is a Pennsylvania layman who is president of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. “I had always gone to church,” he told the crowd. “I criticized the vestry until I became a member.… I began to realize that men don’t change people without the help of God himself.”

Organizer Hall said another national evangelism conference is being planned though no location or date has been set. “There is a need for a separate department on evangelism in the national church,” he said. “But national leaders believe evangelism already permeates the church. We have here demonstrated the need for a separate department.” Further, said he, the Episcopal Church will get involved in evangelism only if laymen insist on it.

BETH TAMKE

PASSION, BUT WHERE ARE THE FRUITS?

“Turn Toward Jesus Amazes Pastor,” headlined the Chicago Daily News last month in a story about pastor James Duren and his United Church of Christ congregation in suburban Lombard. Seems Duren instructed this year’s confirmation crop of thirty-four high school freshmen to divide into six groups and discuss what they ought to study, what textbook to use, and how to handle the material. All six groups came back and said they wanted no textbook but the Gospel of Mark and no subject matter but Jesus.

All returned the next week having read the Gospel, and Duren told reporter James H. Bowman it was “the most exciting class” he had ever taught. The mini-Jesus revolution touched off Bible-study groups and a wave of evangelism among the youth of First Church, known less for spiritual pursuits than for social activism. “I never taught my son to take Jesus that seriously,” commented a parent. Others remark about changed lives.

Duren says he is amazed but “somewhat disturbed” by the turn toward Jesus among his young people. He fears they will become naïve in their outlook on world problems. Yet he is sympathetic. “They have real thirsts, legitimate ones, to be quenched,” thirsts that a liberal church like his has not always met, he told Bowman.

Instead of debates at church on social issues, he says he now hears haggling about the meaning of Bible texts. “So what?” he said, pointing to a picture showing Jesus sleeping in the first pew while a robed preacher speaks to an otherwise intent audience. “Jesus is still asleep. There’s enthusiasm and passion, but where are the fruits?”

Grist For the Mills

The Federal Trade Commission has ruled that an Ohio college which claimed to be a non-profit religious institution and which has been described as a “diploma mill” must stop misrepresenting itself as a degree-granting institution.

The commission found the college has no student body, no faculty, and no campus. Diplomas are granted through a “home-study plan.” The school is run by self-styled minister A. O. Langdon, his wife, and two associates. The commission’s own investigator said that while the school fraudulently misrepresented itself in advertising, the commission had no jurisdiction because the school was classified non-profit. The commission disagreed, saying that the profit was being distributed among the four principals and that the school thus resembled a closely held commercial operation.

The college, meanwhile, alleged it was associated with Calvary Grace Christian Churches of Faith, Inc.—a group that commission investigators found to exist largely on paper with no visible congregation.

A second alleged degree mill, Philathea College in London, Ontario, has been ordered by the provincial education authorities to change its name. Philathea was struck by controversy this summer when press reports indicated people holding Philathea degrees were counseling in New York City (see August 11 issue, page 36). A provincial investigation resulted in the order to limit degrees to the religious field and rename itself Philathea Theological Seminary.

A thirsty woman came to the well at Sychar to draw water not only for herself but also for her household. There she found spiritual water that became for her a spring, welling up to life eternal.

Had this woman found the water of Jacob’s well only, she would have continued to go back from day to day. But on that memorable occasion she met Jesus Christ, who revealed himself to her as the Messiah, the one for whom all Jewry longed. That it was to this stranger and despised person that Christ witnessed makes the story all the more thrilling.

Countless sermons have been preached about this well-side encounter, and in them are to be found multiplied lessons for our own eternal good. There is one lesson we need to learn in each generation—that the difference between the temporal and the eternal transcends all else. The things that are seen are temporal and temporary. It is the things not seen that are eternal.

Never has the Church needed to recognize this difference more than today. So many things are spoken of as “Christian” that are not Christian but humanitarian. As a matter of fact, much of theological controversy hinges on this basic problem, while the effective witness of the Church stands or falls at precisely this point.

Exploding populations, emerging nations, and accelerated communications have made good men more conscious than ever of the plight and needs of men around the world. Attempts to alleviate suffering, raise standards of living, and offer something of the “good life” to all men everywhere strike a responsive chord in many hearts.

All this is as it should be, but the task, message, and emphasis of the Church goes infinitely further than this, and we are in grave danger of losing sight of this priority.

To the Church is committed the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. This in no way minimizes the obligation to carry the cup of cold water as we proclaim the Gospel; but if the Church sees humanitarianism as its dominant work, it is not fulfilling its obligations to a lost and dying world.

As one studies the emphasis of many church programs (an emphasis reflected in the pronouncements of major denominations in their annual meetings), one is forced to conclude that for many the primary concern of the Church has to do with people as they live in this present world.

Who then is to preach the Gospel of redemption—of salvation from sin? Where then can men go to learn the way of eternal life? Who will preach to men of sin, and of self-control, and of future judgment? If the Church is to center its emphasis on the temporal needs of mankind, who will enter the spiritual vacuum this creates?

A consecrated layman told of having evening prayers with his wife. He was praying for the sick and the needy, he said, when suddenly he felt God speaking to him: “I have given you the means to help the needy; why pray about something you can and should be doing already?”

There is no use in hiding our unwillingness to become involved in the relief of human need and suffering with pious platitudes about the next world. At the same time, if our concerns have to do solely with the material and secular welfare of mankind we are not being Christian either in attitude or in activity.

We frequently hear persons spoken of as “great Christians.” As a rule this phrase is used as a tribute to their humanitarian efforts. Concern for peace, for relief of human suffering, for social justice—all this has its place in the lives of Christians. But these concerns, singly or in the composite, do not constitute Christianity. To be a Christian one must have entered into a new relationship with God through faith in his Son. This relationship involves a spiritual change, a rebirth into the family of God whereby one has eternal life.

For twenty-five years I shared in the work of a large mission hospital in China. During those years several hundred thousand patients went through the clinic and hospital. A great many of them had their diseases cured. Where are these people today—after a quarter of a century? Probably most of them are now dead.

During the time these people were under medical care, the hospital staff carried on a carefully worked-out plan of evangelistic effort. There was a prayerful and careful determination to lead these patients to Christ through word of mouth, the printed page, and example. Many of them accepted him as Saviour and Lord either while hospital patients or later.

Suppose all efforts had been centered on physically rehabilitating these patients without also preaching to them Christ as their Saviour and their hope of eternity? Had this been the case, I would have to look back today on twenty-five years of futility, as far as eternal verities are concerned.

Even true Christians can be led to spend their time and energies—yes, for a whole lifetime—only to find they have lived in vain in the light of the final testing.

The Apostle Paul speaks of men who have established their lives on Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation but who have built with perishable materials of wood, hay, and stubble, all of which are destroyed when tested by the fire of God’s judgment even though the individual is himself saved.

Emphasis on the temporal is a grave temptation, for it is this which we see and experience. Furthermore, if our Christianity is valid we must show forth love and compassion in ways that really help men in their social and physical misery.

But as far as the Christian and the Church are concerned, love and compassion are fruits of the Spirit and are never complete unless they look down the corridors of time into that eternity for which all men are destined.

Hungry men, thirsty men, needy men, constantly enter the doors of a church only to hear economic, political, and social platitudes and panaceas. They are not fed with the bread of life, nor have they been able to drink from the fountain of living water.

Our Lord says: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Shall those who need God’s greatest gift be offered nothing more than that which perishes with time?

It’s being done.

I wish that every pastor in North America would immediately write a letter to each college student in his congregation urging that student to take part in Key 73. If a great host of Christians on campuses all over the continent were to rise to this evangelistic challenge, they alone could bring off a spiritual awakening and moral revolution next year. In this segment of society more than in any other there is the latent power for making Key 73 a Christian blitz.

The beauty of Key 73 is that you do your own thing. The only qualification is that you start doing it in 1973, so that during this year individual efforts will reinforce one another and have a cumulative effect. It’s like Christmas and Easter: people observe these days in their own way, but at the same time. Many of us have long thought of someday trying to do something really significant for God. Well, 1973 is the year. Key 73 gives you the discipline of a deadline.

Besides encouraging the efforts of students and, it is hoped, many other individuals, local congregations should also be gearing up for their own Key 73 undertaking. The time is short, and corporate programs must be decided on right away if they are to get off the ground in the coming year.

Key 73 leaders say they are encouraged by the momentum that is building. The initial press run on the Key 73 Congregational Resource Book was 49,000, and it was gobbled up in a matter of days. The second printing of 100,000 is also going fast. This is evidence of a great interest. Yet many churches that want to cooperate and feel they should have not made any concrete plans.

Each church should start where it best can, perhaps in areas where interest is greatest or in something in which participation will come easy. The most important thing is to begin doing something.

A prerequisite to doing anything in evangelism, of course, is to be committed to the urgency of it. Whatever a church undertakes, training of the would-be participants is a necessity. Part of the training is to motivate people to see their responsibility in fulfilling the Great Commission.

If your local church is already heavily engaged in evangelistic work of one kind or another and has not considered tying in with Key 73, let this much be said: each venture into evangelism turns up information that can be useful to others. Evangelistic churches ought to be willing to share what they learn with others, and Key 73 offers the ideal clearing house. By sharing, evangelistic churches also add another dimension to their ministries.

For the minister who is uncertain what his people are willing or able to do together for Key 73, here’s a way to start: set up a Key 73 idea box in the church foyer. You might even duplicate a list of suggestions and distribute it to parishioners, asking that they indicate which they would like to support. To make a numerical tabulation, ask them to put 10 by their first preference, 9 by the next, and so on.

Next month in “The Minister’s Workshop”: What Christians can do for Key 73 as individuals.

What Is Key 73?

Key 73 is an easy-to-remember label given to the saturation-evangelism effort planned for next year by most major denominations and Christian organizations as well as many smaller ones in both the United States and Canada.

Doctrinal differences are being respected in that each church or group determines its own way of participating.

A small secretariat operates as a clearing house for participants interested in sharing information. The 244-page Key 73 Congregational Resource Book gives basic data and can be obtained (at $3) from the Key 73 office, 418 Olive Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63102.

An introductory article describing Key 73, “Getting It Together For Jesus,” appeared in the July 7, 1972, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Mnemonic Music

When I arrived home today my daughter, the psychiatrist-to-be, was in the kitchen. On the table, left from breakfast time, was a Cream of Wheat box with a special offer on the back. The only things I read with unfailing regularity are the backs of cereal boxes. On this particular box was a record offer for children’s stories from the old “Let’s Pretend” radio program of thirty-odd years ago.

Immediately, without thinking, I began singing:

Cream of Wheat

Is so good to eat

That we have it every day.

Ta ta ta

And it makes us strong

Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta

“What in the world is that, Daddy?” asked my daughter.

“It’s the commercial they always sang on the old ‘Let’s Pretend’ radio show back in the thirties.”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “it’s not a bad song.”

Later in the evening, preparing to write this column, I was wandering around the house looking for a piece of typing paper, all the while humming and singing. I stopped to listen to myself—something no one in my family does with any great frequency. What I was belting out in my best soul-blues style was:

Aren’t you glad you use Dial?

Don’t you wish everybody did?

Apparently my mind is very suggestible. On other occasions I’ve found myself melodiously reminding the world that:

If you’ve got the time

We’ve got the beer.

For about six weeks I went around expressing my desire to buy the world a co*ke.

Somehow this melodic merchandising does what the sponsors intend: it sticks in my brain. But from the standpoint of the advertisers’ investment, it’s probably a loss. While I sing their songs, I use only one of those products.

What is striking in all this is the staying power of music. No doubt, thirty years from now the proper reminder will cause some forty-year-old to break into:

I’d like to teach the world to sing

In perfect harmony …

While part of this effect is produced by sheer repetition, many of the songs are engaging and very singable.

Somehow we ought to be able to use this phenomenon for Christ. To that end Christians could make more judicious use of their stereos by surrounding themselves with Christian music. Perhaps then our unconscious singing would remind ourselves and others of our faith.

And you Christian musicians, whereever you are, couldn’t you provide us with some more engaging contemporary music?

EUTYCHUS V

TWO SPECTRA

I find CHRISTIANITY TODAY a helpful magazine in my ministry. I also take the Christian Century to keep informed of another spectrum. I must admit that I find your magazine consistently more helpful. Keep up the good work!

ANDREW C. BYERS

First Presbyterian Church

Franklin, N. J.

LOGS VS. WHEELS

I continue to be amazed at the “guilt by association” philosophy often espoused by supporters of the Christian school. D. B. Lockerbie, in his article “Christian Schools: Whole Truth for Whole Persons” (Sept. 15), writes off a great potential for positive contributions to classroom learning made available by modern technology because of its endorsem*nt by behaviorist B. F. Skinner. The Skinnerian philosophy of behavioral conditioning has been treated as though synonymous with the many alternate forms of audio-tutorial systems in use today. Such a sweeping generalization is both unfair and misleading.

It is only the casual observer of audio-tutorial learning systems who can hold the rather naïve position that technology will “eliminate the human teacher”.… The new technologies allow the teacher, perhaps for the first time, to exercise a truly professional evaluation and prescriptive instruction so vital to each student’s total education.

I fear for the Christian school in the United States if it is not allowed to implement proven educational technologies, especially when they do not compromise, and may even enhance, the commitment to the “total truth” viewpoint of Christian education. Why should the Christian school curriculum roll along on logs when the wheel and axle has already been invented?

WENDELL F. MCBURNEY

Indiana University

Bloomington, Indiana

COPPING OUT?

A basic question which underlies your editorial “Assignment For Christian Citizens” (Sept. 15) is, “Are the creation ordinances to be perceived through special revelation or natural revelation?” If through special revelation, the need is not for “a Christian political party,” but for courageous Christian ministers who will do the necessary hard work of applying biblical truth to today’s complex moral issues. A Christian’s position is never determined by a party boss, even if he’s Christian, but by the Word of God. On the other hand, if creation ordinances can be perceived through natural revelation, the need is for Christians to get so involved in the arena of life that they build a platform of influence from which they can “persuade others” that the most just, fair, human position is best for all. The Christian will know that this can only be true if it is also biblical. In either case, the call for “a Christian political party” is a cop-out to the obviously hard work at hand.

PAUL L. BYER

Pasadena, Calif.

We already have such a party—the Prohibition party, in existence for over 100 years. Its address is P. O. Box 2635, Denver, Colorado 80201. Why do Christian periodicals in general ignore this fact? Is it the fear of ridicule and the misconception that it is a “one idea” party when its platform disproves this allegation? Or could it be because the party is not on the ballot in all states? California has ruled us off the ballot, but we still can write in the names of our presidential candidates and they are counted by order of the registrar of voters. If enough “protest” votes were cast, some attention would be given to Christian voters. Because of disunity on the part of Christians when it comes to moral issues, most politicians ignore us.

H. D. GOLDTHWAITE

Prohibition Party Committeeman

Santa Ana, Calif.

LUTHERAN CORRECTIONS

In my report on the First Lutheran Conference on the Holy Spirit (“Charismatic Sweep in Minneapolis,” Sept. 15), reference was made to a Tofte, Minnesota, Lutheran pastor whose leg had grown two inches after a charismatic evangelist had prayer for him. This was an error; the correct growth was one inch. However, other persons with similar back ailments who received prayers for healing at the conference reportedly had leg growths of two inches.

Also, the $18,000 expenses for the conference did not include the costs of the flights of chartered planes from Europe, as the report said. These were met by the Europeans themselves.

WILLMAR L. THORKELSON

Minneapolis, Minn.

A MODEL

Your news story in the September 29 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “Charges Lodged: Seminary on the Spot,” is a model of fair and objective reporting. I have been a pastor in the Missouri Synod for eighteen years and cannot find one sentence in your article that I would change. I can also attest to the accuracy of your statement, “The election of Preus to the presidency in 1969 was a surprise—he made no effort to seek the post—and he is obviously much more concerned with the outcome of the theological battle than with his own future.”

CLIFFORD BREGE

Immanuel Lutheran Church

Saginaw, Mich.

Through the years your journal has reflected the effort of its editors to deal with the problems of Christian denominations in a reasonably dispassionate and objective manner. It is doubly sad, therefore, to see you depart from this policy in your editorial “Missouri: Peace in Our Time?” and the “news” article “Charges Lodged: Seminary on the Spot.” President Preus and the faculty of Concordia Seminary are engaged in a process of discussion and search. The administrative agents of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod are undertaking their respective roles in assisting this process. The basic issues themselves need to be uncovered and faced. Therefore to find your journal declaring itself in favor of one party in this difficulty is to see you aligning yourself with the hucksters of prejudice rather than responsible journalists.

RICHARD R. CAEMMERER, SR.

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

I am amazed and thankful that your journal could be so objective and truthful, getting at the heart of the Missouri Synod’s problems. I thank you for your clear reporting, which shows Dr. Preus for the “champion” of the Lord’s truth.

CHARLES T. PIAZZA

Calvary Lutheran Church

Plymouth, Ind.

It was helpful to be reminded in your editorial that the secular world rarely shows interest in or understanding for the church’s desire for truth and certainty in regard to scriptural teachings. Unfortunately, the notion that fixed and absolute truth is unavailable and perhaps unessential has found adherents even in the church.

Your analysis highlights the problems and indicates needed remedies. One reason why doctrinal purity in a time of theological crisis is difficult to retain or regain is the high cost and the slow development of individualized ingredients containing a potential for victory. Genuine appreciation of the priceless and indispensable value of truth requires the presence of a deeply rooted corrective—a firm and Spirit-wrought belief in the total and detailed accuracy of Scripture.…

Your editorial renders a service also in focusing attention away from mere personalities and in directing it pointedly to the issues of the controversy.… Church history shows that concentration on personalities polarizes the church.

Oliver C. RUPPRECHT

Concordia College

Milwaukee, Wisc.

AND WE’RE OUT

Strike three!!! Your editorial “Church Buildings: Who Needs Them?” (Sept. 29) just about ended the ball game between myself and your magazine. I am amazed at the lack of biblical substance and interpretation on your part. How can you possibly draw any reasonable connection between Mary of Bethany (pouring costly oils on Jesus) and our church buildings, using that incident as a rationale for “extravagance”?

Man seems to have this need to build beautiful and extravagant buildings “for God,” but the Lord seems to pay little attention to them. The first chapters of Second Chronicles go into great detail concerning the building of the Temple, but note in chapter 7 what the Lord’s response to all of that is: his accepting of the buildings is secondary in contrast to the warnings and disciplines that he gives to his people. May I suggest that you sit through the trustee meeting or even a deacon meeting of any large church. I’m sure that you’ll quickly become aware that money and property are ends in themselves, and not the tools (and nothing more) that God intended them to be.

When George Forman stalked down the aisles of American churches demanding reparations for blacks, he wasn’t playing hopscotch. He knew that church business was good business, and operated on a profit factor of which G. M. would be proud. All we do is clothe our wealth in biblical terminology. I would hazard a guess that from 30 to 50 per cent of every church’s budget is spent on either building or maintaining property that is used exclusively for itself. Let’s face it: Institutionalism Is Rampant.

I resent greatly your throwing out Hargrave’s quote without even attempting to explain it. That’s called “taking phrases out of context,” I believe. And then you throw in Harvey Cox’s name for no other apparent reason than to incite. Perhaps Hargrave is closer to a workable definition of the New Testament church than are many of our evangelical congregations today. May I also ask what you mean by labeling home congregations as reinforcing “social exclusiveness”? What do you think our conservative church buildings are doing today?

JOHN KEPLER

Trinity Baptist Church

Marion, Ohio

On a gray November day in 1572 John Knox died in Edinburgh soon after his wife had read to him from John 17 (“where I cast my first anchor”). To his funeral came a great multitude of high and low, including the Earl of Morton, regent during the infancy of James VI. It was Morton who, though no friend of ministers, spoke the epitaph of which Knox himself would surely have approved: “There lies he who never feared the face of man.”

Four centuries have passed, and the land for which the prophet did so much accords him that scant honor which is the traditional prophetic portion. Knox’s house is now a public thoroughfare, and over the tiny tablet that marks his grave the lawyers of Edinburgh park their cars. A BBC speaker last summer referred to “that tiresome old thunderer.” The post office with its baffling preference for second-rate subjects refused to issue a commemorative stamp in this quatercentenary year. The Roman Catholic archivist for Scotland not long ago boasted that although Knox had banned the mass forever, one thousand masses were daily said in the land.

Most pathetic of all, Knox is ignored in the 425-page Church of Scotland Yearbook, where a list of “dates to be noted in 1972” includes the queen mother’s birthday and Girl Guides Thinking Day. In The Concise Dictionary of National Biography, Knox rates only a quarter of the space devoted to his adversary Mary, Queen of Scots, who incredibly has come gliding down the centuries in a romantic aura that owes little to fact. Knox for his part still lies “under a load of unmerited reproach,” and is customarily dismissed as a gloomy bigot whose legacy to Scotland was a hangover that has inhibited innocent enjoyment and the tourist trade.

Take a sixteenth-century preacher, ignore the turbulence of his times and the need for the revolution he successfully led (while one enjoys the fruits of it today), and judge him according to twentieth-century attitudes, and an unfair assessment is inevitable. It is usually augmented by durable lies that have grown up around his name: that, for example, he danced with joy on hearing of the death of Mary of Guise (the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots) and that he was a fierce opponent of the episcopal system and was responsible for the destruction of many beautiful buildings.

Knox was essentially a man born in due season called on to tackle long entrenched evils. No understanding of him is complete without a grasp of how virulent and deep-seated was the disease that confronted him. Quintin Kennedy had put it graphically in 1558, two years before the Reformation:

If a benefice is vacant, the great men of the realm will have it … and if they have a brother or son … nourished in vice all his days he shall at once be mounted on a mule with a sidegown and a round bonnet, and then it is a question whether he or his mule knows best to do his office. What wonder is it … the simple people be wicked … the convent and place where God should be daily honored and served goes clean to ruin … the poor simple people, so dearly bought by the blood and death of Christ, miserably perish; the Kirk is slandered; God is dishonoured.

Against such scandal there could be no tempering of the tongue. Ambassador rather than diplomat, Knox spared neither royalty nor prelate and defended his bluntness: “To me it is enough to say that black is not white, and man’s tyranny and foolishness is not God’s perfect ordinance.” He was vilified for making use of worldly allies and for making a girl queen weep. His antecedents and outlook were sneered at: an apostate priest of undistinguished appearances and obscure origin, without a university degree; one with little aesthetic sense and no capacity for compromise.

On the other hand, this was a humble man who took up the task with diffidence, concerned never to go where God had not summoned, and who felt himself called to fight not for fleeting things but for the very truth of his God. It was this very singlemindedness that was and still is held to be most odious. “If I had cast me to please men,” he affirmed, “I had not been the servant of God.” This would have been arrogance in anyone but a man who sought nothing for himself and who was so conscious of his own frailty as to have penned the perceptive rubric that begins, “Be merciful unto me, O Lord, and call not into judgment my manifold sins; and chiefly those whereof the world is not able to accuse me.”

When near the close of 1559 the Protestant cause seemed lost, the reformer in a memorable sermon exhorted his colleagues to “turn to the Eternal our God (who beats down to death, to the intent that he may raise up to the praise of his own name), which if we do unfeignedly … our dolour, confusion, and fear shall be turned into joy, honour, and boldness.” So it happened, and not the least of Knox’s achievements is that the Reformation in Scotland was accomplished without the prolonged and terrible civil war known to other countries. Although there had been many Protestant martyrs we know of only two (and it may be only one) who later died for their adherence to Rome.

Knox’s detractors tend to forget how farsighted the reformer was. He saw in education an important step toward the creation of a “godly commonwealth” and the implementing of the ideas of the Protestant Reformation, not only because the young are most susceptible to learning but because his theology demanded literacy so that the Word of God might be read. Education, religion, and morality were inseparably bound up together. Knox wanted a school in every parish, and offered a comprehensive system of education based on aptitude and independent of a child’s social status or the wealth of his parents. School and university education was to be free to the poor. Those not capable of benefiting from academic education were to be trained in manual work.

Such proposals, found in the 1561 First Book of Discipline compiled by Knox and his colleagues, were centuries ahead of their time. Some indeed have still to be achieved. But many were incorporated into the religious system of Scotland: church representatives, for example, still sit on county and city education committees, religious education is still part of the school syllabus, and the four Church of Scotland seminaries are also the faculties of divinity in their ancient universities.

Knox also broke down ecclesiastical barriers to give the laity greater opportunities for service. Every congregation was to meet weekly for the reading and exposition of the Bible, “at which time it is lawful for every man to speak or enquire as God shall move his heart.” As early as 1564, a layman, John Erskine of Dun, was appointed moderator of the General Assembly, a position he occupied at least four, possibly five, times. Today in all the courts of presbyterianism there are equal numbers of clergy and laity.

Today the memory of John Knox is honored more in the Free Church of Scotland than in the national establishment, which is for the most part out of sympathy with Reformation doctrine and principles (a fact seen also in recent steps to demote the Westminster Confession of Faith). It may be that this in itself suggests the continuing relevance of one of Knox’s dying prayers: “Lord, grant true pastors to thy Kirk.”

Music For God’S Glory

The German composer Heinrich Schütz is a relatively unknown musical figure for most English-speaking people. Yet on the 300th anniversary of his death—on November 6, 1672, at the age of eighty-seven—his life and work are being commemorated the world over (see September 29 issue, page 45). Living in an age of spiritual and cultural richness, yet also of violent social upheaval, Schütz made music to the glory of God out of genius and personal suffering.

As a young man he went to study in Venice. There under the guidance of Giovanni Gabrieli he absorbed the sumptuous sound of the late Renaissance Venetian polychoral style. The full extent to which he imbibed this heady atmosphere, with its powerful element of expressiveness, is revealed in his Psalms of David (1619), dedicated to Johann Georg I, elector of Saxony, whose Kappellmeister he was by this time. The richness of tonal color, harmony, and rhythm of these compositions reflects the deep emotion and vivid imagery of the Psalms themselves. For example, Schütz’s interpretation of Psalm 136 with its great refrain, “His goodness endures forever,” invites the hearer to enter wholeheartedly into this great song of praise. Probably Schütz’s most famous work is The Seven Last Words (?1645), an oratorio type of composition. Once again, the music reflects his deeply held personal devotion and piety.

Of central significance in the music of Schütz is his total reverence for the Scriptures. This reverence is the living spark with which he illumines the expressive nuances in the text. Scripture is the foundation and informing factor for practically all his music. Indeed, his penetration of the text forms a kind of musical exegesis, an inspiring commentary on it. Not again till Bach is the Word of God so organically united with tone or so informed with insight on a multiplicity of levels.

May the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of this great man’s death be an occasion for renewed interest in the performance and appreciation of his music.

Preus Versus Tietjen?

The theological battle currently raging in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod places at stake the future of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. But people on both sides of the controversy who understand it well agree that an even more important matter than the survival of an institution is being debated. From the perspective of the theological conservative, the very grave issue is whether this great communion will countenance a less-than-orthodox view of Scripture.

In a broader context, one might also ask, as James Adams did in a perceptive analysis in the Cincinnati Post: Does a group of believers have the right to collect around a creed and then pay people to teach it?

Some well-intentioned moderates are trying to pour oil on the troubled waters through an election campaign. They reason that if at next summer’s convention a more flexible leader can unseat the determined Synod president, Dr. J. A. O. Preus, harmony will ensue. We fail to see, however, how this will correct the situation at Concordia, where in recent years a dramatic shift has taken place in how the Bible is taught.

Hard as it may be, this dispute deserves to be settled on firmer ground than inclusivism, which is what the solution would be if a fence-straddler were elected. Inasmuch as Concordia president John Tietjen, a Union Seminary graduate, contends that the Preus forces are doctrinal deviates, why not select him as the opposition candidate? Then the delegates would have a clear choice between two incompatible viewpoints.

Russia And Rhodesia

Communists may despise the capitalistic money economy, but anyone who has ever tried to travel in the U. S. S. R. or to engage in any financial transactions with a Soviet-bloc trade partner knows that Communists love capitalistic hard currency and will resort to almost any expedients to acquire it. Thus the astronomical exit tax on departing Jews.

The American Jewish Congress has recently been lobbying—so far with little effect—to get the United States to refuse preferential trade status and generous credit terms to the U. S. S. R. as long as that nation continues its policy of in effect demanding ransom money for Jewish citizens permitted to emigrate. Since the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches have supported economic sanctions against South Africa and especially Rhodesia because of racial discrimination practiced in those lands, it would be logical for the AJC to ask them to do likewise in the case of the U. S. S. R., which is not merely harassing but commercially exploiting its Jewish religious and ethnic minority. The AJC would do well to present a formal request to the two ecumenical organizations, so that their responses could become a matter of public record.

‘When Parochial Schools Close’

One of the most heated topics in current debate is whether public funds (in whatever form: grants, tax-credits, or others) should be used to keep non-public schools alive. Only about 10 per cent of all elementary and secondary students attend non-public schools. Moreover, despite considerable growth in Protestant and secular private school attendance in recent years, still four out of five non-public school students are in Roman Catholic schools.

We have previously argued that for a religious school to accept public funds invites public control, which erodes the distinctively religious character of the school (see editorial, May 12 issue, page 27). Often the argument is pressed that non-public schools save the taxpayers money, because if these schools were to close, the “dumping” of students into the public systems would overwhelm them and escalate taxes. Now a book has appeared that presents the results of research to see whether this is so: When Parochial Schools Close (Robert B. Luce [750 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017], 313 pp., $7.50), by Martin Larson. The author reports on his research in sixteen cities whose substantial Catholic school enrollments have been eliminated or drastically reduced. Among them are Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Paul, Dubuque, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, and Bakersfield, California. In this section of the book Larson does not speculate on “what might happen if …” but rather tells us “what did happen when.…” He shows that thanks to the declining birth rate the public schools and the taxpayers were well able to absorb the former parochial school students.

There may be valid arguments for public funds for private schools, but the argument of expediency that unless they are kept alive the public schools will be swamped is not acceptable.

Selective Indignation

The perceptive British author Sir Arnold Lunn speaks of “selective indignation,” the phenomenon that gives worldwide publicity to the “political” trial (on murder and kidnapping charges) of a Communist enthusiast in California but passes over with scant notice the much more clearly political trials of non-conformist Communists in Czechoslovakia. We all know that the shooting of one Irishman by a British soldier is much bigger news than the slaughter of ten thousand Hutu tribesmen in Burundi by their Tutsi rulers. Jacques Ellul distinguishes between the “interesting poor”—those whose cause can be used to embarrass the democratic and capitalistic nations of the West—and the “uninteresting poor,” whose sufferings are of concern only to themselves.

Just imagine that the Greek government (often referred to by adversaries as “the colonels”) had tried to destroy all the manuscripts of the anti-government composer Theodorakis as he was leaving the country. What an outcry there would have been—and with good reason! The colonels didn’t try. However, after the Soviet Christian painter Yuri Titov was “expelled” in June, he discovered that all the paintings he had been allowed to take with him had been drenched with sulfuric acid between the time he presented them for customs inspection at a Moscow airport and their delivery in Rome. Sixty-two paintings, a major part of his life’s work, damaged or destroyed. Did you know about it? Poor Titov—his case just isn’t very interesting. Or is it?

Geoffrey Francis Fisher

When Geoffrey Francis Fisher, middle-aged schoolmaster, was appointed bishop of Chester, a local clergyman lamented publicly, “We prayed about this beforehand, and this is what we have got.” Having confounded and won over the gloomy at Chester, and seen the diocese of London through the war years (he once housed in his palace 300 people made homeless by German bombs), he took on his most difficult assignment in 1945 when he became primate on the premature death of William Temple, a post he held until his retirement in 1961. As Lord Fisher of Lambeth he died last month at the age of eighty-five.

Assessments of him have differed. After the war, it was said, the Church of England needed “a fisher of men,” but Fisher was not that man. He disappointed many by concentrating on canon-law revision and church administration. Yet many an ordinary minister testified to his percipience and compassion in moments of personal crisis or bereavement; one evangelical ordinand whose doctrine was unacceptable to his own bishop was ordained privately by the primate. He was not afraid of controversy: he wanted to retain capital punishment for certain offenses, defended the atom bomb as our “lifesaver and deterrent,” was a strong opponent of divorce, and told a bishop in Convocation that if he (Fisher) had held certain heretical views attributed to the bishop he would have felt compelled to resign his see.

While an early sponsor of the World Council of Churches, Fisher was against organic unity, and his opposition in retirement to the now rejected Anglican-Methodist scheme greatly embarrassed the hierarchy. He made ecumenical history with a famous trip that included Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome. Asked on his return what was his most striking memory, he replied thoughtfully: “Of a camel that looked at me with most ineffable scorn.” This knack of putting things in proper proportion had been seen already on his seventieth birthday. However unpleasant the process of dying might be, Fisher reflected, the experiences that awaited the Christian soul was, above all, exciting and invigorating: “entry into more aboundant life, advance into fresh understandings of God’s love and truth, and companionship with our fellows in the Kingdom.” Anglo-Catholic and evangelical combined to combat him on occasion, but that remark had something meaningful to say to both.

‘A Day Of National Humiliation’

What we miss and have missed for decades in the presidents of the United States and the leaders of other nations is the kind of spiritual insight that characterized Abraham Lincoln a century ago. Amid the dark days of 1863 Lincoln issued a proclamation that described the conditions of American life and proclaimed a remedy. The document speaks for itself:

Whereas, The Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and Just Government of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation:

And Whereas, It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And, Inasmuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisem*nts in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us: And we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart THURSDAY, the 30th day of this month [March], as a day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of worship public and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

By his excellency

ABRAHAM LINCOLN