David L. Mckenna
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Games of chance seem to pervade every society and intrigue all men. The idea taking a chance and getting something for nothing has universal appeal. If gambling is an “instinct,” it must arise from the drive for self-fulfillment. Human potential can never be realized without risk. A person who chooses to grow chooses also the risk of losing. Love itself, then, becomes a gamble: a person who loves creates not only the potential for his own fulfillment but also the risk that he may be destroyed. And the greater the love, the greater the gamble. There is a sense in which Christians are called to be the greatest gamblers of all. Jesus actually commended a gambler whose talents paid off ten to one.
In gambling, the willingness to take a risk is twisted by the desire to get something for nothing. Gambling is, then, a sin of perverted stewardship. It is parasitic, producing no personal growth, achieving no social good. Even the strongest advocates of gambling agree that gambling is a non-productive human activity. It must be justified either by its entertainment value or by the use of its revenues for worthy purposes.
Public opinion about gambling moves in waves. At the present time, there are powerful pressures to make the United States a gambling society with games ranging from church bingo to a nation-wide lottery. The immediate reaction of evangelical Christians is alarm and revulsion. But an emotional reaction will probably accomplish little. There is a need for a clear, fact-founded position. As chairman of the Governor’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gambling for the State of Washington, I had to think through a position on gambling in order to defend my minority statement in the committee’s report.
A starting point is to recognize that a scriptural position on gambling must be derived by inference, not prescription. Arguments based on the stewardship of resources are strong but not conclusive. If affluent Christians evoked the principle of not spending their money except for bread, their conspicuous consumption would make much more sermon material than games of chance in which they do not participate. Perhaps Jesus would have more to say about the stewardship of an affluent church than about the Roman soldiers’ shooting craps for his clothes at the Cross. Ironically, he might point out how the Holy Spirit worked through a game of chance when Matthias was chosen to replace Judas as a disciple.
During the mercantile period in the Middle Ages, insurance was invented for merchants who sent their goods to sea against the odds that the ships would be attacked by pirates. Church fathers opposed insurance because God controlled the destiny of ships as well as men. Not only did insurance show a lack of faith—it was gambling on the will of God. But today Christians do not consider insurance an “actuarial numbers racket”; it is used as an example of commendable stewardship planning.
Recognizing that the definition of gambling has changed, Christians must currently be concerned about three types: social, professional, and governmental. “Social gambling” emphasizes the entertainment value of games of chance. By legal definition, this means that the participants enter the game on “equal” terms. There is neither a professional operator nor a “house cut” against which the participants have to compete. For example, four friends sit down for an evening of cards in the home of one of the players. Even though the stakes may conceivably rise to thousands of dollars, it is “social gambling” because the players remain on equal terms. In most instances, this form of gambling is recognized as an individual’s privilege.
“Social gambling” has been extended to organized games, particularly bingo and raffles, as a modest and easily controlled expression of human desire. Sympathy and public pressure, however, identify bingo with charitable and non-profit institutions, primarily the Roman Catholic Church, which uses the proceeds for religious or charitable purposes. Because of this sympathy and pressure, it can be expected that gambling will be reintroduced to the American public through the door of the church. A reporter asked me, “Will bingo be the trunk upon which a tree of gambling will be built?” Regretfully I had to answer, “Yes.”
Gambling in charitable and non-profit institutions is indefensible for more than the reason that it sets the precedent for other forms of gambling. I have heard the advocates of church bingo oppose state lotteries on the grounds that the government should not use gambling as a substitute for responsible tax reform. This argument boomerangs on them. It is less defensible for the church to use gambling as a substitute for responsible stewardship than for the state to use it as a substitute for responsible taxation. If gambling is a non-productive human activity, no charitable end will justify the parasitic means.
“Professional gambling” is a step up from “social gambling.” The difference is the introduction of a gambling parlor, a professional operator, and what is called a “house cut” of the proceeds. This is the point at which controls break down and organized crime enters. This kind of gambling is big business and worth the risk of gambling speculators. Their ability to provide the capital for gambling houses, the expertise for professional operators, and credit to the players cannot be matched. That is just the beginning of the problem. The intrusion of syndicated interests into gambling leads to the bribing of public officials. The record of enforcement of gambling makes a sordid history. The stakes become so great that enforcement officials can be given handsome pay-offs as normal expenses for the gambling operation. Although public opinion still tends to be negative toward Nevada-type slot machines, they are easier to control than professional dealers at a card table. Then, the potential for crime and corruption must be joined by the temptation for operators to “cheat” on individual games. Of all the control problems, this is the most difficult. As an assistant attorney general told our committee, “the possibility of cheating in gambling is limited only by the human imagination.”
Corruption and cheating plague charitable bingo games as well as professional gambling activities. Charitable bingo is a multi-million-dollar business that requires stringent controls and constant surveillance to keep it honest. Bingo-sponsoring churches must face the question whether they are polluting the moral climate as well as subverting their principles of stewardship.
If “social” or “professional gambling” is inevitable, history dictates the controls that are absolutely necessary to reduce crime, corruption, and cheating. A powerful and independent gambling commission must be created. Uniform state regulations must be adopted that do not permit towns, cities, or counties to set their own rules or choose their own games. Enforcement must come from both state and local levels as a check-and-balance on corruption. Gambling premises, operators, and games must be rigidly screened and licensed to keep out organized crime. Books of the gambling operation must be audited at the point where the money first passes from the player to the operator if “skimming” of the profits is to be controlled. Penalties on violators must be heavy and automatic. Finally, controls must be set on each type of gambling to minimize cheating by the operators. When the public chooses to gamble, it also chooses crime, corruption, and cheating. These elements can be reduced at best, not eliminated.
“Government gambling” must be considered by a different set of rules. State-wide lotteries are becoming popular indicators of the public’s desire to gamble and the state’s need for money. Arguments in favor of government lotteries usually include the opinion that they are a non-criminal, non-corruptible, non-cheating form of entertainment that will produce funds for worthy purposes. In New York State, for instance, the lottery was promoted as a means for increasing aid to education.
It is true that state-wide lotteries are comparatively free from the abuses of “social” and “professional gambling.” Other concerns, however, make lotteries a questionable form of “government gambling.” The basic question is, Should the government be involved in gambling? Advocates will show that most governments are already involved in the promotion as well as the control of certain human vices, such as liquor or horse racing. Those who oppose state lotteries will immediately respond by asking whether the fact of involvement makes it right and whether that involvement should be extended. One thing is certain: when the state becomes a gambling operator with a lottery, some principles of government have to change.
First, the state must promote gambling as a business. Studies of state-wide lotteries show they can succeed only if the state approaches the lottery as a consumer product. In the first year of operation, lottery revenues are large because of its novelty. At the close of the second year, however, the proceeds are usually cut in half. To avoid some of the loss, the state must keep novelty in marketing the product and provide improved chances for pay-out. Frankly speaking, a government does not have the market mentality needed to make the lottery a success.
Second, the entertainment value of lotteries is secondary to the expected increases in revenues. Lotteries may be a convenient and socially acceptable form of gambling for the public, but the major reason for them is political: they are designed to provide additional revenues in a time of “tax rebellion.” Yet a study by the Fund for the City of New York concluded that lotteries were an unreliable source of income. A research analyst put it bluntly: “At its best, a state lottery is good for five or ten years.” Not only that, but the start-up costs and the continuing administrative machinery of such a short-term operation make the investment questionable. A well-run lottery will be based upon 45 per cent of the revenues for prizes, 40 per cent for the state, and 15 per cent for administration. It also requires annual betting of $8 to $10 for every person in the state. Even then, the amount of aid for state treasuries is almost negligible in comparison with the needs. In the State of Washington, for instance, a mathematically designed lottery would provide approximately $13 million for the state in the first year. This is less than 1 per cent of the annual budget. From either the short- or long-range view of revenues, a lottery is difficult to defend.
Third, lotteries are also advocated as a means of undercutting the illegal numbers racket. Admitting the failure of law enforcement, some states have decided to compete with organized crime for the multi-million-dollar gambling market. It is assumed that a legal game will run the law-breakers out of business. Nothing is further from the truth. To use New York State again as an example, the state lottery has actually been used by organized crime to enhance the numbers racket. To obtain the revenues promised for education in the state and still pay out a modest percentage on prizes, the state charges fifty cents for a lottery ticket. The numbers racket, however, only charges twenty-five cents per ticket, provides a more attractive payout, and gives credit to the customers. The fact is that private enterprise, even in gambling, is always more efficient than government bureaucracy.
Many states do not have threatening “numbers” operations. Therefore, the argument is that a lottery is intended to provide revenues rather than to undercut crime. Initially, this may be the case. Organized crime, however, is interested in extending the tentacles of its influence wherever profits make the venture worthwhile. As a successful competitor with state lotteries, a new lottery might actually attract several illegal numbers games. While the advocates of lotteries would call “foul” on this argument, the implications of a decision for a lottery cannot be ignored.
Fourth, a state-wide lottery requires the cultivation of a new gambling market. Researchers point out that lotteries are played by middle-class whites rather than poor blacks. This finding does not make the lottery a respectable game. The poor can play illegal numbers for one-half the price of the state’s ticket, if numbers games are available. If not, the lottery invites the poor to play, and it becomes a form of “regressive taxation” on the poor.
In either case, the lottery must be promoted by the creation of new gambling markets. No lottery can succeed on the number of people in the state who already gamble. Young and old, poor and rich, black and white must be counted upon to play the lottery if the operation succeeds. And so a greater question arises, Should the state create a gambling climate? The implications are far-reaching. Public morality, public safety, and respect for the law suddenly become issues that cannot be avoided. A “gambling attitude” does affect the quality of life in a state. It certainly would influence the response to people to the claims of Christ; even evangelism has a stake in the gambling issue. Lotteries are no more innocent than card rooms or slot machines.
What conclusions can be drawn to guide a Christian’s position on gambling? First, gambling is a vice that violates the principle of Christian stewardship. Although gambling is not specifically prohibited in Scripture, the non-productive use of resources, whether money or time, is poor stewardship. Christ said we would be called to account for the use of our resources, and there is little or no justification for letting chance rule our fortunes for selfish returns when Christ has called us to lose our lives for the sake of the Gospel.
Second, if social gambling is inevitable, controls should be demanded to limit crime, corruption, and cheating. Because evangelicals regard gambling as a black-and-white issue, there is a tendency to pull out of the war once the first battle is lost. This is not the time to quit! At the risk of misunderstanding, Christians should call for the controls of an independent gambling commission, uniform state laws, dual enforcement of laws at state and local levels, rigid licensing and standards, and heavy, automatic penalties for abuse in even such innocent games as charitable bingo. The least we can do is make law enforcement workable.
Third, professional gambling should be vigorously opposed by practical as well as moral arguments. Crime, corruption, and cheating accompany professional gambling. Irrefutable evidence also shows the connection between professional gambling and prostitution, drugs, and violence. Once the stakes are high enough, no system of controls can cope with the efficiency and subtlety of organized crime, or with its daring.
Fourth, state-wide lotteries are a questionable means for controlling crime or producing state revenues. Under the pretense of satisfying the gambling instincts of respectable citizens, lotteries are political tools to win votes and increase revenues. When a senator announced that the gambling bill in our state would be passed at midnight on the day of the closing legislative session, an informed newsman told me, “He means that the vote on the gambling bill will be determined by a pay-off at midnight.” More is at stake than just a lottery for citizens who want to bet. Gambling is a corrupting yeast that contaminates the loaf from core to crust. Christians who give up when gambling is legalized will still have to accept responsibility for the quality of life in their city, county, or state. Even though gambling is wrong, the extent of gambling is still critical.
One lesson stands out from my experience as chairman of the Gambling Committee. As a Christian, I was overly cautious about being fair. Perhaps I was sensitive to a letter-to-the-editor that said the governor’s appointment of a minister to chair the Gambling Committee was like the Pope’s appointing the devil to guard the Holy Font. In one sense, my concern for fairness was wise, because I eventually earned the right to speak without being discounted as a minister. The only trouble was that no one else was fair. Flags of vested interests were flown at full mast from the beginning. At one time, the heat of debate produced the veiled threat that the committee’s work was useless anyway because money and votes would ultimately decide the gambling issue. At any rate, I lost my timidity about speaking from my convictions as a citizen and as a Christian. And most of the committee members seemed to be waiting for someone with the nerve to speak with moral conviction.
Whether Christian or not, the roots of our spiritual heritage have not been cut. Christians in the twentieth century can still help keep those roots alive.
George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”
- More fromDavid L. Mckenna
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
By the time this issue reaches the homes of our readers I will have had surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where my son-in-law, Dr. William C. Wood, is completing his surgical residency. His wife, Judith, presented him with another William (8 pounds, 6 ounces) on May 19, and Friend Wife is watching over me as well as the mother, the baby, and two-year-old Kristen.
It is good for clergymen and editors to have to grapple with pain personally. Health never looks so good as it does when we are sick. I recall that Matthew said that Jesus bore our sickness; and Calvary’s pain surely was greater than any we are called upon to bear. But the greater promise remains to be fulfilled in the city of our God, where pain, sickness, and sorrow shall be banished forever.
Watching some of the Senate Watergate hearings leads me to wonder who is keeping the legislative branch going. The most pressing issues of inflation, dollar-devaluation, and foreign affairs seem to be neglected. It also seems to me that the legal protection guaranteed a man being tried by a jury is being denied the witnesses. Opinions, conclusions, and inferences are being asked for by senators who ought to know better.
J. D. Douglas
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
About eleven years ago a slipped disc immobilized an Anglican bishop, and the result was Honest to God. This was a potpourri of old German radical theology garnished for local consumption and dished up with an odd combination of flashy sensationalism and engaging diffidence. It questioned the biblical view of God, declared that the only intrinsic evil was lack of love, scoffed at the Atonement as “frankly incredible to ‘man come of age’ ” and requiring “for most men today more demythologizing even than the Resurrection,” and referred to the Incarnation in terms of “God dressed up—like Father Christmas.”
A poll taken among English booksellers in 1963 showed that Bishop Robinson’s volume sold more copies than Tropic of Cancer, and even edged the New English Bible into second place. Just when scandal and sales were receding, publisher and author fanned the flames with The Honest to God Debate, more than 100,000 copies of which were ordered before publication. It incorporated, inter alia, fifty letters, of which only five were hostile, and twenty-three reviews, not one of them from an evangelical source.
John Robinson, currently dean of chapel at Trinity College, Cambridge, has now produced a book on Christology entitled The Human Face of God (SCM, £2.50)—269 pages of the mixture as before. I make merely some general comments on a first reading of the book. It has seven chapters under the headings “Our Man,” “A Man,” “The Man,” “Man of God,” “God’s Man,” “God for Us,” and “Man for All.” “Who is Christ for us today?” it asks. What language can be used about his humanity, divinity, historicity, sinlessness, uniqueness, finality, and atoning work? Even more relevant, why do we go into these matters at all?
Before embarking on his subject, the author tells us that his views might lead to his sharing the fate of the “white liberal” in politics, and to accusations of “reductionist,” “adoptionist,” “humanist,” “and the rest.” He believes such potential critics will be wrong. Such an attitude suggests a self-identification with those who thanklessly confront long-entrenched evils (can’t you see that slogan: HERESY IS HEALTH?), tacitly assumes that to anticipate criticism is somehow to rebut it (a Muggeridgean ploy), and betrays Robinson into that characteristic dogmatism which does not tally with his oft-repeated disclaimer that he is merely “raising questions” to “test reactions.”
Let me confess that I have difficulty with the bishop, and not just on theological grounds. In this new book, as in Honest to God, I found myself diverted, puzzled, irritated, not just by what he is trying to say, but by the language in which he wraps it up. Such a self-proclaimed pursuer of truth might be expected to take more trouble over communication.
This may, of course, reflect my own intellectual inadequacy, but I cannot forget Robinson’s indiscreet admission near the beginning of Honest to God: “I cannot claim to have understood all I am trying to transmit.” This is a procedure permissible only in prophets and poets, and John Robinson is manifestly neither. If he could not understand his own message, how could we trust him, and how could he later claim that he was misunderstood?
In the latter book, moreover, that he is not greatly concerned that others should not be misunderstood can be seen from the preface: “There are great writers and thinkers in the field to whose position as a whole I am well aware that I have not been just. I have used, or abused, what they have said for my own purposes.” Disarming candor in its place is all very well, but such tactics do not make more credible the battery of 1,042 footnotes in his book.
The champion of Lady Chatterley’s Lover has predictably in this volume too something to catch the secular press headlines: a point about whether Jesus was sexually aroused when the woman wiped his feet with her hair. And what emerges is the suggestion that in order to be “perfect” Jesus must have been an ambidextrous bisexual of middle height and no one particular blood group—behind which is a valid discussion in danger of being vitiated by the skittish way in which it is presented.
Among the traditional Christian beliefs Robinson here discards, or interprets differently, are the Atonement (p. 232), the Resurrection (131 f.), the pre-existence of Christ (37), the integrity of Scripture (passim), the Second Coming (117), and direct access to God in prayer (218 f.; cf. Honest to God, where Robinson tells how long ago he discovered he was “not the praying type”), and the uniqueness of Christianity (223). He questions our knowledge of the historic Jesus (“and does it matter anyhow?”) (p. 28), and the relevance today of patristic views of the humanity of Jesus (39). The saints come out of this book badly at the hands of one who is unsympathetic to their testimony and who thinks nothing of wresting words out of context.
Robinson has a maddening habit of not only “testing our reactions” but prescribing how we should react if we are not complete dunderheads. Thus page 39: “Hilary was canonized for views which can only cause us the acutest embarrassment” (views later defended by Thomas Aquinas). This, it should be noted, is not just the literary “we,” for the writer is elsewhere more than usually addicted to “I”—and his bibliography lists no fewer than ten of his own works, more than those of Barth, Brunner, Forsythe, Cullmann, and Mascall combined.
But the real giveaway in Robinson’s book is not something he said but a missing dimension. It reminded me of the Scots dominie trying to teach the Apostles’ Creed by allocating a phrase to each pupil, so that the class could go through the creed with each making his contribution at the right moment. One day all went well until an expected voice did not chime in with his part. There was silence for a moment before a voice piped up: “Please, sir, the boy who believes in the Holy Ghost is not here today.” Robinson mentions the Holy Spirit ten times, in different contexts but never later than the first century. For one so obsessed with contemporaneity (“Who is Christ for us today?”), the omission might be thought astounding. It may be that even the resourceful bishop could not find words to describe an emanation from the Ground of Being.
Some years ago I invited a Cambridge theological professor, now a colleague of John Robinson, to a gathering of evangelicals in the city. “Is it,” he inquired gently, “the sort of thing that will make me angry?” (It wasn’t; he came.) John Robinson’s book will make many people angry; one Scot is already feeling guilty that some sixty cents of the sum he spent on it will sustain the author for the writing of further books. His one comfort is that there can’t be much left for Robinson to demolish.
- More fromJ. D. Douglas
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Word leaked out that a number of young Christians from the West intended to stage a Jesus demonstration during May Day celebrations on Red Square in Moscow. So, the police were on hand to welcome the caravan of fifty-one youths and their leaders when they arrived from Finland. First, the Christians were hassled for hours over passports. Next, they were detained at a roadblock in predawn hours. Here they sang and witnessed to authorities. Then their Christian literature was confiscated and they were placed under house arrest at a motel miles from Moscow, and May Day on Red Square passed without their presence.
On the next day the police escorted them back toward the border. The group’s Jesus poster-decorated vans attracted attention all along the route. So did the crosses with the slogan in Russian, “Christ loves you,” that the youths wore. As they neared Kalinin (population 350,000), a number of Soviet Christians came out to meet them. En route to Leningrad on May 3, police noted other posters on the vans: “Stop Persecution of Soviet Christians!” That did it. No more posters. End of visit.
About half the young people were Americans, many of them affiliated with Youth With a Mission. The turnout was a bit disappointing to leaders. When the plans were laid in Denmark last summer, hundreds indicated their desire to participate. Nevertheless, a lot of Soviets got the message. Who knows, maybe Soviet Jesus people will be demonstrating next May Day as a result, says a planner of the operation.
Meanwhile, the executive committee of the Netherlands Reformed Church sent an Easter message to forty-five Soviet evangelicals who were jailed during 1972. At the same time, these church leaders assured the Russian ambassador in The Hague that the message was not an anti-communist one but was intended to express alliance, compassion, and encouragement. It did, however, protest Soviet persecution of Christians.
Correspondent Jan J. van Capelleveen attributes the gesture to Albert van den Heuvel, former World Council of Churches press officer who is now executive head of the Dutch church. Journalists had badgered the churchman as to why the WCC supports discriminated people everywhere except under Communism.
Although the statement is a first for the Dutch denomination, for years it has quietly been sending financial aid to Iron Curtain pastors who have lost their pulpits and pensions and to families of imprisoned believers.
At about the same time the Dutch sent their letter, four separatist Baptists in the Soviet region of Byelorussia were imprisoned for failing to register their congregations and for giving religious instruction to minors.
A month earlier, twenty-eight persons, mostly young adults, were baptized at the Moscow Baptist Church.
There are signs of increased Communist Party concern over the almost revivalistic spread of Christianity, especially among the young, in some areas of the Soviet Union. Knowledgeable travelers speak of certain cities that have been virtually sealed off by authorities because of the spiritual activity. According to these unconfirmed reports, the quarantines have been imposed to prevent the flow of Christian literature, leaders, and news.
WORLD WALKER
At last word, cross-carrying evangelist Arthur Blessitt was plodding across Africa on his around-the-world witness trek. He had walked through France, Portugal, and Spain, crossed into Morocco, sailed to the Canary Islands and back, arriving in late February at Freetown, Sierra Leone, and then set out for Liberia. The former “minister to Sunset Strip” in Hollywood said he may interrupt his journey when the rainy season begins, back-track (via jet) for a few rallies, then take up his cross again at the next dry season.
It is known that conferences on promoting atheist education were held throughout the Soviet Union this month in response to such Party concern—and directives. At one in Vinnitsa, the head of the Scientific Atheism Institute remarked that “under present-day conditions, attention is being concentrated on convincing believers of the absurdity of their beliefs, on the expansion of their social and cultural horizons, and on attracting believers to labor, social, and political activities.” A month-long refresher course for lecturers in atheistic subjects, with heavy emphasis on students and youth, is going on in Samarkand, north of Afghanistan.
The area around Samarkand is reportedly one of the spiritual hot spots of the Soviet Union. Missionary J. Christy Wilson, Jr., visited a packed-out 1,000-member church there and was told by a leader: “We are praying for the Christians in the West, that God will deliver them from secularism.”
Rio Grande Record
Southern Baptist evangelist Richard Hogue, 25, is believed to have set a denominational record in a one-week crusade when nearly 1,800 professed Christ at Harlingen City, Texas. Most were Latin American teen-agers from the lower Rio Grande Valley area. Additionally, Hogue spoke in seventeen high school assemblies to about 10,000 students. The 550-member First Baptist Church of nearby Rio Hondo, the crusade sponsor, is following up.
Truce
Leaders of the United Church of Canada (UCC) and B’nai B’rith have called a halt in their running feud, which has made regular headlines. The focus of the dispute was the UCC charge that Israel mistreated Palestinian refugees and the B’nai B’rith retaliation that the United Church was anti-Semitic.
Officials of the UCC and B’nai B’rith signed a joint statement. The United Church apologized for “the insensitivity and the inaccuracies” in an article in the church paper, the United Church Observer. The B’nai B’rith signers repudiated “invective as a form of expression and communication.”
B’nai B’rith has now withdrawn its libel suit against the church, and Observer editor A. C. Forrest has withdrawn his libel suit against B’nai B’rith.
Expressing regret at the “deep wedges of misunderstanding and acrimony between us,” the signers pledged a dialogue of reconciliation.
“We will not agree always on problems of the Middle East, but agree to respect each other’s differences,” remarked United Church moderator Dr. N. Bruce McLeod.
LESLIE K. TARR
Spree
SPREE ’73 is a British Explo: the aims and the teaching are the same—only the location and names have been changed. This is not surprising, because the man behind SPREE, Maurice Rowlandson, British director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, attended and was impressed by Explo ’72 last year in Dallas. “I felt that a similar event could have an impact on Britain,” he says.
SPREE will be held August 27–September 1 in London’s Earls Court and Olympia, two huge exhibition halls, and in the 100,000-capacity Wembley Stadium for an evangelistic finale, where evangelist Billy Graham will be the main speaker. Rowlandson hopes that SPREE, standing for Spiritual Re-Emphasis, will “go on forever” as clued-up, revived Christians return to their local churches and ask their ministers to involve them in work in the church and in the neighborhood.
Training sessions led by Richard Harbour of Campus Crusade for Christ will use Crusade’s materials. More than 25,000 are expected to participate. They will attend classes and seminars during the mornings (evangelical church leaders will speak), then head for the streets in the afternoons to test their training. Evening concerts will have such artists as Cliff Richard and Johnny Cash.
So far enrollments are on the slow side, although planeloads are reportedly booked from abroad. A rush is expected toward the end, however.
SPREE’s aim, according to its publicity, is “to harness and use the growing enthusiasm of Christians across Britain and the continent, extending the Kingdom of God through the Church by mobilizing and preparing them to make known Christ as Lord and Savior.” The project is not without its critics, evangelical churchmen among them. Three main criticisms concern priorities, expense, and imposition.
Would not, they ask, resources be better used through existing channels, seeking to train people in their local churches? Would this not be preferable to whisking them away on a spree that may prove so unlike the local church situation as to be irrelevant to it?
As for expenditures, a SPREE budget of £500,000 (about $1.5 million—all but £168,000 of it to come from delegates’ registration fees) has raised some eyebrows. “At a time when missionary societies and others are in great financial need, can we afford the luxury of such a spending spree?” asks one evangelical minister. “Perhaps if some of the expensive entertainment and unnecessary free offers were dropped this incredible figure could be reduced.”
The major complaint heard, however, is that planners have imposed SPREE ’73 upon British evangelicals without seeking any consultation or advice outside the Graham organization’s inner circle. “They want our full cooperation,” complains a minister, “but they don’t tell us what they are going to do. Everything’s cut and dried before we know a thing.”
While some criticisms seem valid enough, the general feeling among British evangelicals is that, whatever its faults and shortcomings, SPREE ’73 should be supported for its worthy motives and goals.
DAVID COOMES
Baptists Of The World
Contrary to an old joke, there are still a lot fewer Baptists in the world than there are people, but the gap is gradually narrowing. A Baptist World Alliance survey places the global total at 32.8 million. That includes only church members. If Sunday-school children and others who attend services regularly are added, the figure climbs to nearly 67 million.
Most Baptists are in the United States (24 million members). Next is India (731,000), then the Soviet Union (535,000, some of whom are really non-Baptists forced to register as Baptists), Brazil (400,000), Burma (275,000), the United Kingdom (261,000), and Zaire (225,000).
Adam’S Rib In Norway: A Bone Of Contention
Can a vote for women’s lib be construed as a vote for theological liberalism? In Norway, apparently yes.
The conservative, non-state-related Lutheran Theological Faculty of Oslo (Menighetsfakulteten), reversing its position, voted 5–4 to approve the ordination of women to the Lutheran ministry. The majority statement called the New Testament passages that relate to the issue “products of their time” and therefore not binding.
In Scandinavia, the issue of women Clergy has taken on disproportionate significance because, say observers, it has been used by liberals to get parliamentary and media support to break the power of active churchgoers to determine policy in the state Lutheran churches. Over 90 per cent of Scandinavians belong to the state churches, but only a small minority attends. Ordination of women has been a weather-vane issue in Scandinavia because of its significance in church-state power struggles. Accepting it is widely regarded as capitulation to secular pressure, say the sources.
Conservative Swedish Lutheran scholar Seth Erlandsson, for one, believes that the vote is a symptom of the growing strength of liberals at Menighetsfakulteten, which trains over three-quarters of the clergy for Norway’s state Lutheran church. The school was founded and is supported by private contributions of those who want the clergy to get a conservative theological training rather than the predominantly liberal one offered at the University of Oslo. Erlandsson has publicly questioned the ethics of using designated gifts by evangelicals to pay liberal scholars.
Bringing Up Father
A rift has opened in the organization left by the late Father Divine, the black religious leader whose claims to being God forty years ago brought both adoration and hostile criticism.
Father (born George Baker in Savannah, Georgia) died in 1965. His followers, who claim he is “merely resting his body,” continue to operate missions in six U. S. cities and in Canada, Switzerland, and Australia.
Ever since his death, the movement’s missions, churches, grocery stores, laundries, barber shops, restaurants, newspaper, and two hotels have been administered by Mother Divine (formerly Edna Rose Ritching), the white Canadian whom Father took for his wife in 1946. Technically, the properties are owned cooperatively by the members, and Philadelphia lawyer Austin J. Norris guards the estate as the former private attorney for Father. Mother is described as just a spiritual head who, like Catholic clergy, lives at just sustenance level without owning property.
Now another claimant to the estate has appeared. He calls himself Jesus Emmanuel and says he is the son of Father Divine and legal heir to the movement’s holdings—estimated to be worth $4 million in Philadelphia properties alone. Born under the name William Gibson, he claims that Father’s movement is being run by a group of impostors.
The battle between Mother and “Son” seems destined for the courts, though Gibson’s chances at winning anything seem very slim—especially since acquaintances say they know who Gibson’s real father was.
JAMES S. TINNEY
Great Giveaway
When a white Southern Baptist congregation in Kansas City, Trinity Baptist Church, found it could not attract black adults to its services in a rapidly changing neighborhood, it could have sold its relatively new $175,000 building and relocated. Instead, it donated the building to a struggling black church as a gift.
Since the members of the white congregation are so widely scattered now in the suburbs, they decided not to try to relocate as a unit. So, without any major hassles among themselves, they handed over the keys and the deed to Spruce St. Matthews Baptist Church.
Earlier, Spruce St. Matthews became the first black congregation in Kansas City to leave the fold of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Incorporated, and join the Kansas City (Southern) Baptist Association. This kindred relationship may have influenced Trinity’s choice, acknowledges Pastor Darrell Rickard of Trinity.
Since moving into the new quarters a short time ago, attendance at Spruce St. Matthews has grown from 100 to more than 500.
JAMES S. TINNEY
Devalued—And Hurting
Many foreign missionaries and the agencies that sponsor them have been seriously hurt by the dollar devaluation. The arithmetic is simple: the mission dollar is worth less—much less, in some cases—than it was last year in many countries, and the result is a de facto salary decrease for personnel. More dollars are required for purchase of the same goods and services as before, placing increased demands on mission board budgets back home. On top of this, there is runaway inflation in some lands, making the crunch even worse. It all amounts to a severe financial crisis.
“Faith” boards—those in which individual missionaries must raise their own support—are among the hardest hit. They have few or no cash reserves to tide them over in emergencies of such magnitude. Churches that support them often show reluctance to change their own fixed mission budgets, especially between annual congregational meetings. A number of faith missionaries are taking early furloughs or crash leaves to seek additional support.
A board with an annual budget of $500,000 will need about $50,000 extra this year to make up for devaluation, estimates Evangelical Foreign Missions Association secretary Wade T. Coggins. Sudan Interior Mission says it will cost about $100,000 to close the gap in its work across central Africa, $60,000 of it in salaries. Value-added taxes, inflation (cheap hamburger, $2 per pound; gasoline, more than $1 per gallon), and devaluation ganged up on missionaries in some European countries. Dollars there buy 30 per cent less than at the beginning of the year, reports the Greater Europe Mission.
The extent of the crunch varies. Latin America, South Africa, and other nations that devalued their own currency in line with the American move are little affected. But the situation is grim in Japan, Europe, and African countries that follow the French franc.
The American Baptist Convention has tapped reserve funds for salary increases for its missionaries in Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Okinawa. The currencies of Thailand and Zaire are still unsettled; adjustments will be made later for missionaries there.
An Assemblies of God spokesman says his denomination’s mission budget of $12.5 million must be increased by about $500,000 to take up the slack in thirty-seven affected fields. Seventh-day Adventists, who operate in 189 lands, took losses of about $3.5 million in devaluation, say officials. They warn that missionaries will be ordered home and other items cut unless the churches increase their giving. Youth for Christ people overseas say they have suffered de facto salary cuts of up to 20 per cent. The Lutheran Church in America reports its Asian fields were badly hurt; salary increases amount to $2,865 per month.
Many mission leaders see only two ways out of the predicament: cutbacks in expensive operations such as schools and hospitals or increased receipts from donors. Pessimists are already eyeing the former. Says one, a denominational executive: “Some churches haven’t changed their mission giving in twenty years. And the missionary is left holding the bag.”
Dollar, Dollars, And Dogma
White conservatives in Kansas City are at odds with one another over the proposed sale of a church building to the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims). Normally committed to the “law and order” line, Pastor Truman Dollar of Kansas City Baptist Temple, which boasts the city’s largest Sunday School (average attendance: nearly 1,500), has attacked the FBI, which he says has clearly violated the civil rights of the Muslims and intimidated him as well.
When it was learned that Dollar was negotiating sale of the modern-designed church to the Muslims for $300,000, FBI agent William Brookhart paid Dollar a visit. Dollar contends that the agent called Nathaniel Muhammad, head of the local mosque and a son of Muslim prophet Elijah Muhammad, a “liar, thief, and a black S.O.B.” Brookhart reportedly confided that he had been watching the Muslims in Kansas City for ten years, and that if the sale of the church were completed, the FBI would “bug” the church.
The white Baptists are eager to sell: the neighborhood has rapidly turned black, and they have already built a $1 million church plant on the outskirts.
Dollar said he took the personal visit by the FBI’s Brookhart as attempted harassment and an effort to discourage sale of the church to the black group.
The FBI is apparently not the only opponent of the sale. One of the members of Dollar’s church, a policeman, contacted the FBI agent and requested the visit with the pastor, it was later revealed. And some staff members of the local Calvary Bible College, unrelated to the Temple though doctrinally similar, have been critical of the sale to the “anti-Christian, heretical” Muslims. But Dollar says that he could “sell to the devil” in good conscience.
Sources say the Muslims had defaulted on the sales contract. The Baptists and the black realtor handling the sale, however, were expected to extend the time for the Muslims to make good the deal.
JAMES S. TINNEY
Dominican Republic: Getting It Across
Once again, Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau has harnessed the mass media to reach virtually an entire nation for Christ. After each night’s rally during a recent two-week crusade in the baseball stadium at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Palau hustled over to the television studio of the national network channel for a half-hour talk show. Most viewers who called wanted to know how Christianity relates to sex problems and family relationships. Every night someone prayed to receive Christ on the air, and scores more professed faith in person at a TV counseling center.
Additionally, Palau was a featured guest on a number of other shows. Newspapers and broadcasters gave his crusade extensive coverage, and one paper published a daily column he wrote. The pace was set after the first press conference when a daily headlined, “Evangelist Agrees With Marx.” Palau, marking the difference between Christ and religion, commented that religion “is the opiate of the people.” That remark, said Palau, drew a number of students to the meetings.
Except for a few separatist groups, all of the 120 or so evangelical congregations in Santo Domingo (population: 850,000) participated. Crowds averaged 5,000 nightly (there were 8,000 on youth night), with 2,600 reported decisions. Palau and his team conducted a school of evangelism on the side for about fifty young people and others. Using Campus Crusade for Christ materials and methods, they recorded 350 decisions on three forays into the market place.
Palau was able to penetrate upper social ranks, thanks partly to a lavish hotel breakfast for 200 business leaders, professionals, and politicians sponsored by prominent evangelical layman Alfonso Lockward. The second coming, suicide, and forgiveness were the main after-breakfast topics. Again, wide press coverage carried Palau’s comments to countless thousands of the four million Dominicans.
Palau, based in Mexico City, is affiliated with Overseas Crusades of Palo Alto, California.
Number One In Germany
An opinion poll conducted among 3,000 West German teen-agers in Kitzingen, only 5 per cent of whom belonged to church youth groups, reveals that the number-one question on their minds concerns life after death. Social and political questions, which the pollsters (public school religion teachers) expected to rank higher, interested them less, according to the survey.
The popularity of Eric Segal’s novel and movie Love Story appears to have brought the question of human love into the limelight, says evangelical editor Gerd Rumler. The survey, he says, shows that teen-agers are more interested in the meaning of love than in information about sex. It all shows that kids are “no longer asking how to live, but what to live for,” he adds.
China In Contrast
After a visit to China, where he served as a missionary from 1935 to 1941, Canadian Presbyterian missionary executive E. H. Johnson described the transformation in that country as “probably the greatest single event of the twentieth century.”
The most impressive thing about Chinese life, he said, was the “unbelievable release of creative energy throughout the whole country.” Although persuaded that Maoism failed to fulfill “the religious dimension,” he found a sense of purpose pervading Chinese society. “What a vast contrast between the commitment and dedication of those Maoist people and the pale, hypocritical expression of Christian faith that marks so much of our official church life.”
Religion In Transit
At least one congregation—Killarney Park Mennonite Brethren in Vancouver—has taken to heart recent admonitions from publishers about unauthorized copying. The church held a ceremony to burn all known copies of music that had been illegally reproduced. Said Pastor Bob Roxburgh: “It was a question of moral versus financial considerations. As Christians we were left with no other option.”
The International Catholic Communications Association gave top awards to the Southern Presbyterians for two best-rated radio programs: “What’s It All About?,” a weekly youth show on 600 stations, and “Rock Music: What’s It All About?,” a thirty-minute special.
Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, established in 1956 by what is now the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (current enrollment: 100), received accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
Mormons report 3.2 million members in seventy-eight countries. President Harold B. Lee says the steady growth is due in large part to 17,000 missionaries who are serving two or more years at their own or their families’ expense.
Vowing to work within the framework of the Southern Baptist Convention to counteract allegedly liberal trends, about fifty SBC ministers in an Atlanta meeting formed the Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship, with North Carolina pastor M. O. Owens as head.
Baptist Towers, a federally subsidized high-rise apartment house built three years ago by 100 Chicago Baptist churches, most of them black, is reportedly $100,000 behind in mortgage payments. Officials blame high taxes and say they will sue to get relief. If none is forthcoming, they will be forced to sell, they add. Across the nation, many church-backed residential facilities have been faltering financially or charging exorbitant rents.
A Methodist study team predicts that many “Old First” churches in central city business districts will not survive the present decade because the “supporting membership base” will all but disappear.
Campus Crusade has taken to the airwaves with a weekly television series, “Explo 73.” The music-interview-testimony-news show was launched in nine cities with plans to add others later. At the same time, the Southern Baptists premiered a gospel variety-show format, “Spring Street USA,” on twenty stations. Both shows are thirty-minute color programs.
Garner Ted Armstrong, 42, took his Worldwide Church of God law-and-prophecy message to Dallas last month, and 12,000 heard him in a three-night stand. The WCG claims 85,000 members in 260 churches around the world, a 2.5 million-circulation magazine (sent free), programs on 300 radio and 100 television stations, and a budget that is said to exceed $40 million.
Newspaper ads reportedly netted eighteen priesthood candidates for the Catholic Church in Montreal. A Catholic spokesman notes that there were a number of other inquiries also.
The U. S. Postal Service last month issued an official pictorial envelope with first-day stamp cancellation to mark the 250th anniversary of Boston’s Old North Church.
Sponsors are putting together in Toronto a Karl Barth Society of North America to “recall the Church to its biblical, catholic, and ecumenical nature,” apparently by preserving and propagating the neo-orthodox theologian’s thoughts.
Construction of new churches and other religious buildings, reversing a downward trend, increased by 5 per cent in dollar value last year, according to the U. S. Department of Commerce. But with inflation, the estimated $852 million worth of new buildings really represents 4 per cent less construction than in 1971. If converted to 1967 dollars, the value dips to $565 million.
ABC television in Los Angeles gave news coverage to a week-long evangelistic happening by the young people of First Baptist Church in suburban Van Nuys. The event drew crowds of 1,000 or more at a time to the light-and-sound show on a vacant lot. Scores who made decisions were enrolled in Bible-study groups.
Tiny Poolesville (Maryland) Presbyterian Church is producing a complete concordance to The Living Bible. The fifty-eight members dug up $6,500 to finance it. Several got free computer use from employers; others volunteered photocopy and promotion skills. The church says it needs 600 orders of the $24.95 volume to break even.
The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs and the American Baptist Convention joined the National Council of Churches on the side of anti-communist preacher Billy James Hargis in a U. S. Supreme Court case aimed at getting Hargis’s tax exemption reinstated. But Hargis fellow-traveler Carl McIntire parted company, saying he did not wish to travel with “the Lord’s enemies.”
So far, about forty of the 150 Catholic dioceses in the United States are participating in Key 73.
The New York State Council of Churches announced its support of a bill that would permit the sale of contraceptives to youths under 16.
Under pressure from parents, a few clergymen, and a representative of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, urban Montgomery County, Maryland, discontinued “The Bible as Literature” units in junior and senior-high English classes.
A group of law students at George Washington University have organized VIOLENT (Viewers Intent on Listing Episodes of Violence on National Television) to monitor TV programs that allegedly teach young viewers the ways of violence.
United Church of Canada minister Michael Zuk, 47, mayor of Spirit River, Alberta (population 1,100), as well as pastor of its UCC church, read a resignation letter to his congregation, charging mental cruelty by political opponents in the church.
Personalia
Recipients of the new Claremont (School of Theology) Awards for Excellence in communication arts: Dan L. Thrapp (journalism), religion editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Harry C. Spencer (radio and television), United Methodist Church communications executive.
In 1946 Samuel Sobel became the first rabbi to be commissioned a chaplain in the Navy; now he’s the first Jewish chaplain to head the 200 Marine Corps chaplains.
Bishop Charles F. Golden, 60, of Los Angeles, assumed the presidency of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church last month. He is a black.
Director Mariano Di Gangi of the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship was elected president of the Evangelical Theological Society of Canada.
Lutheran Church in America communications director R. Marshall Stross received the Religious Public Relations Council’s top award this year for “creative and effective religious communication.”
DEATHS
BERNICET.CORY, 73, co-founder and executive of Scripture Press Publications; in Wheaton, Illinois.
MACKE.JONAS, 89, founder of the Church of God in Christ in Ohio and one of its bishops; in Cleveland.
ALBERT RHETT STUART, 67, retired Episcopal bishop of southeastern Georgia; in Savannah.
CORNELIUS P. TROWBRIDGE, 74, Episcopal clergyman and former president of Planned Parenthood; in Wilmington, Delaware.
Wainfleet, Ontario, pastor Robert K. Leland, 40, will become executive minister of the forty-congregation Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Canada in August.
Administrator Stanley B. Long of the American Tract Society changed jobs last month to become executive director of the Tom Skinner evangelistic organization.
Resigned: President Arthur R. McKay of a Rochester, New York, complex embracing Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Bexley Hall, and Crozer Seminary. The United Presbyterian clergyman, formerly president of McCormick Seminary, wants to return to the pastorate.
Gordon College executive Daniel E. Weiss, 35, has been named president of Eastern Baptist College and Seminary in Philadelphia.
Black Baptist youth evangelist Melvin Floyd of Philadelphia, a former policeman of note, received a top Freedoms Foundation award.
Seventh-day Adventist publicist Paul Lee Becker of Nashville was elected president of the Religious Public Relations Council.
Texan James E. Andrews, 44, a Presbyterian clergyman who was formerly a publicist and presidential assistant at Princeton Seminary, has been nominated to the top staff post (stated clerk) of the Southern Presbyterians. He is now assistant to Stated Clerk James A. Millard, Jr., whose resignation takes effect next month.
World Scene
Christian literature will be classed with pornography under a new law in Yugoslavia and, like pornography, will be subject to a 30 per cent tax, according to a European Baptist Union report.
More than 18,000 persons from 100 nations, the majority of them young adults, visited the famed Taizé, France, ecumenical community at Easter in preparation for next year’s launch of an international Council of Youth, a spiritual-renewal movement.
Sixteen apparently disillusioned Jews returned to the Soviet Union after two years in Israel and a year of waiting in Vienna for Soviet reentry permission. The emigrants, the largest single group of Jews permitted to return after renouncing Soviet citizenship, charged the Israeli government with deception and inhumanity.
Twenty Mennonite hospitals, schools, and other mission facilities in India are among the latest properties to be transferred to the Evangelical Trust Association of North India (ETANI), now serving about twenty denominations. ETANI was set up after a law was passed last year forbidding the holding of property by a foreign-based organization.
Youth for Christ in the Netherlands, now operating nearly fifty coffeebars, is getting an assist from the Christian Reformed Church (Gereformeerde kerken) to mount evangelistic campaigns in the Amsterdam area.
The fiercely atheistic government of churchless Albania executed a Catholic priest after he baptized a child; the regime claims he was guilty of anti-state crimes.
In a project organized by the evangelically oriented Festival of Light, petitions bearing 1.3 million signatures and calling for a campaign of national decency in England were presented to British prime minister Edward Heath.
The Romanian Orthodox Church has requested from the London-based United Bible Societies (UBS) enough paper to print 100,000 Bibles. It also asked for 5,000 copies of the Gospel of Matthew in Braille. The UBS will pick up the $115,000 tab.
A new immigration law in Thailand gives missionaries first crack at residence visas. The government has officially encouraged religious leaders to propagate their faith, especially among young people.
Six Methodist churches and five church schools were destroyed or badly damaged during a storm that ripped across the Tonga Islands last month, leaving hundreds homeless. An estimated half of Tonga’s people are members of the Free Wesleyan Church (Methodist Church).
Pedro Luciano Paredes Encina, director of the Radio Council of the Methodist Church of Chile, has called for a “strategic alliance” between Christians and Marxists, but acknowledges that while “our message … is acceptable to the various Marxist elements, and although we do not conceal our philosophical differences with Marxism, our stand angers conservative and reformist elements in the church.”
More than 13,000 Israelis signed petitions calling for a law to prohibit missionary activity in Israel.
More than 1,000 persons professed Christ in two evangelistic campaigns in Baguio City and M’lang in the Philippines led by North Carolina Baptist pastor Mark Corts. Nationals have organized follow-up rallies and Bible-study groups.
A survey shows there are now about as many Anglicans outside the 32-million-member Church of England as in it.
There’s a Youth for Christ rally in Wellington, New Zealand, which is attended consistently by 2,000 teenagers, say YFC leaders.
Church agencies have channeled $13.5 million into Bangladesh through a World Council of Churches-sponsored relief organization, according to a WCC report.
Edward E. Plowman
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
We are diamonds in the rough, spiritual-advice lecturer Bill Gothard tells his audiences. God uses others, he goes on, to chip away our rough edges and thus accomplish his purpose. Gothard illustrates his point on page three of the “Chain of Command” chapter in the big red loose-leaf notebook that is the heart of his six-day, thirty-two-hour “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.” On that page parents are depicted as one version of God’s hammer and chisel.
Last month Gothard found himself cast in the painful role of the diamond as The Wittenberg Door, a 2,200-circulation evangelical bi-monthly, chipped away in a fifteen-page spread.
Actually, its critical views aside, the Door scored one of the journalistic triumphs of the year in the evangelical scene simply because the press-shy Gothard is one of the hottest stories around. Editor Denny Rydberg, 28, a Seattle Pacific College graduate and former youth and Christian-education director, says his small part-time staff worked months to nail the story down. (The magazine, less than three years old, is published by Youth Specialties, 861 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, Ca. 92101. With wry humor and stabbing satire it has probed critically into a number of sacrosanct evangelical institutions and personalities. “We lose almost $1,000 an issue,” Rydberg acknowledges baldly. Sales of program idea books help keep the Door open.)
Rydberg isn’t the only one who’s had trouble sleuthing the story. An Eternity editor was barred from the Gothard premises (Gothard says he didn’t know this happened and is sorry about it). Moody Monthly was persuaded to kill a story it had prepared. Reporters of major secular newspapers are told they must attend the entire course if they wish to know what Gothard teaches, and even then they are asked to refrain from writing. The reason, says Gothard, is that such articles take content out of context, forcing readers to make a judgment before they take the course, perhaps damaging the instruction’s potential impact. (Gothard’s listeners are urged not to discuss the course with outsiders or let them see the notebook.) Such secrecy has resulted in several unfavorable newspaper stories—and some slams from the Door. Ironically, in seeking to avoid reaction, Gothard has created it.
Gothard, 38, a Wheaton college graduate, can’t hide the fact that he’s sort of an evangelical guru. Last month nearly 20,000 sat through his week of lectures in Seattle (there is no singing or special music; only Gothard and an overhead projector); this month more than 17,000 took the course in Portland, Oregon. So far this year about 125,000 have gone through the institute, already equaling the total for all of last year. And all by word-of-mouth advertising only. Less than ten years ago Gothard was talking just to dozens at a time.
Each person pays a $45 fee for the course ($35 if he is a member of a large church or school group). Alumni take refreshers free. Plenty of scholarships are available for the needy. The Seattle institute alone grossed about $500,000. With twenty-one institutes scheduled this year, the Gothard organization will probably gross $5 million or so. Gothard estimates that 20 per cent of income is used for scholarships, another 20 per cent for overhead, 15 per cent for development and distribution of curricula materials, 15 per cent for alumni follow-up and ministerial training, and the remainder for development of a headquarters complex in Oak Brook, Illinois.
Gothard has a full-time staff of fifty. He plans to build a school at Oak Brook within two or three years to produce teachers of his concepts. Meanwhile, to extend his own personal role, he has purchased $500,000 worth of television equipment for closed-circuit applications. Two medical doctors, a minister, and a Wheaton professor serve as board members.
The unmarried Gothard lives with his parents (his father, a retired Gideon executive, works as a volunteer at the Gothard office), drives a used car, and dresses plainly. He receives a monthly salary of $600 from designated offerings of friends, buys necessities, and gives the rest away to missions—much of it apparently to Campus Crusade for Christ. When he’s home, he attends the LaGrange Bible Church in suburban Chicago, where he was ordained.
Much of the institute’s content is a blend of psychology, Scripture, and common sense. Symptoms and causes of conflicts within and without are noted, with Gothard all the time pointing to a new kind of life-style as a prelude to solutions. Thousands of people, young and old alike (Gothard says he aims at the father), say their lives are transformed as a result of Gothard’s counsel. But even some of these confess they disagree with Gothard on some issues. The criticisms heard most often: not enough room is given to the Holy Spirit’s ministry; responsibility is abdicated to others unjustifiably; Scriptures are sometimes twisted to support preconceived theories; complex life situations are dealt with superficially; the past is unnecessarily dug up.
Some psychiatrists and other professionals blame Gothard’s teachings for some of the problem cases they have. But others are on record saying their counseling is more effective and their case loads lighter because of their use of institute concepts.
For his part, Gothard refused to discuss content further until the reporter completes the six-day course.
Beating Out The Devil
In a widely reported incident, fundamentalist minister Douglas A. Matheson, 48, former pastor of Immanuel Bible Church in Long Beach, California, was jailed for kidnapping and beating his former wife and four children (“to rid them of their sinfulness”). Meanwhile, two elders of the Church of the Body of Christ in Searsport, Maine, were convicted of beating an allegedly demon-possessed young waitress during a church service. The elders said they were only trying to restrain her from self-harm.
Christian Holiness
At its 105th annual convention this month, the Christian Holiness Association (CHA)—a coordinating body of ten denominations and a number of other agencies and institutions that hold similar Wesleyan theological positions—reaffirmed its endorsement of Key 73, called for “responsible self-regulation of the public media” regarding allegedly pornographic material, and gave a nod to evangelical social action.
The social-action resolution urged Holiness Christians to “recover the compassion for the underprivileged and poverty-stricken which is historically a part of the Wesleyan heritage and which has too often been eroded by an unfortunate confusion of true Christian compassion with the so-called ‘Social Gospel.’” It also called for the divestment of “every recognizable trace of racism.”
Glossolalia was a topic both in the corridors and on the platform, where speakers gave it a minor-importance rating. One of them, Houghton College president Wilber F. Dayton, said a general rule “seems to be that when [tongues] are not sought they are not experienced.” He implied that modern Christians need not seek the phenomenon.
About 800 persons, 150 of them voting delegates, attended the four-day session in Portland, Oregon. A $39,500 budget was adopted to run the CHA office in Indianapolis another year. Brethren in Christ bishop Henry A. Ginder began the second year of his two-year term as CHA president.
Nae: Preferential Selection
At its thirty-first annual convention this month, the National Association of Evangelicals spoke out against abortion on demand, called for reinstitution of the death penalty for certain crimes, and asked that “compensatory alternative service” be provided for draft resistors.
The NAE also called for federal authorities to uphold the rights of religious institutions to hire people “of their own persuasion.” This was in response to guidelines issued by the U. S. Department of Labor forbidding religious discrimination in hiring. “Preferential selection” is necessary “if the essential character of a religious institution is to be maintained,” declared the statement.
Nearly 1,000 delegates and several hundred visitors attended the Portland, Oregon, sessions. Speakers highlighted the need for evangelical social action, spiritual power, and cooperative outreach. Evangelical Free Church of America president Arnold T. Olson told the audience he had visited Israeli officials and gotten assurances that no laws will be passed to curtail missionary work in Israel.
The NAE has thirty-three member denominations, 36,000 member congregations (some of whom are in denominations not in the NAE), and a constituency of 3.5 million individuals in sixty denominations. Billy Melvin is executive secretary and Bishop Myron F. Boyd of the Free Methodist Church is president.
Typical Week
Pollster George Gallup says that 98 per cent of adults interviewed in a recent survey attest to a belief in God. But in a typical week, he adds, only 40 per cent attended church or synagogue.
The Wcc: Talk Of The Town
The name World Council of Churches conjures up visions of exotic cities in strange lands.
So when the United States Committee for the WCC met in Madison, Wisconsin, this month, bringing to the university community of 180,000 what a local paper described as “the most distinguished assemblage of Protestant dignitaries ever to visit Madison,” the people were impressed.
Although impressed, no one seemed quite sure what the distinguished assemblage was doing in Madison, a predominantly Lutheran city relatively untouched by either the threats of secularization or the growth of “conservative churches.”
Madison is no stranger to ecclesiastical meetings. The General Board of the National Council of Churches met here in 1965 and adopted the first resolution condemning the war in Viet Nam to be accepted by a major church body. But the World Council of Churches meeting was a different thing entirely because it didn’t really “do” anything. Instead, the dignitaries from Geneva and from the mini-Vaticans of liberal denominational headquarters slipped into town and conducted Bible studies and seminars on the nature of salvation.
To be sure, the secular society encroached on the meeting. An address by the Reverend Philip Potter, general secretary of the World Council, had to be delayed while delegates listened to another address, this one by President Richard M. Nixon explaining the Watergate affair, to which Potter responded (see story, page 46). The theologian went on to talk about salvation and what it might mean to churches today. Other luminaries followed him to the podium and added their views.
It was soon obvious that the WCC leaders were not talking about salvation in the same way that most evangelicals do. What came through was that the meaning of salvation is closely—and even primarily—connected with social change.
A black South African who serves on the WCC staff branded her country’s racial practices “the Nazism of our time” during the opening worship service. But the service was also marked by a Greek Orthodox priest lighting candles and a Baptist gospel group singing “This Little Light of Mine.”
On the whole, it was a strange meeting for the college town. No fundamentalists called individuals to repentance; no liberals condemned American society in unbalanced terms. Instead, the churchmen came and talked mostly about salvation.
WILLIAM R. WINEKE
Watergate
It seems everybody is talking about the Watergate scandal these days, including well-known church leaders and the pastor of one of the convicted conspirators.
World Council of Churches head Philip Potter declared that the affair reveals the Protestant ethic, which he defined as an emphasis on individualism, “at its worst.” Those involved are outwardly good looking people, he said, but they “seem to be defective in moral sensitivity.”
Evangelist Billy Graham, a long-time friend of the President, told reporters that he didn’t believe Nixon knew about the bugging incident or the attempted cover-up. Graham went on to call the scandal a symptom “of the permissiveness, corruption, and crime permeating much of American life.” America needs “to get down on its knees in repentance before the Lord,” he asserted. Many evangelical pulpits reacted similarly in recent weeks.
The Christian Science Monitor, a respected national daily but nonetheless a mouthpiece for Christian Science, editorialized that Watergate represents a “superficial symptom of a moral canker near the heart of American government.” Interestingly, the Monitor failed to mention that three of the former key White House aides implicated in Watergate and the Pentagon Papers spy caper are members of Christian Science. They are H. R. Haldeman, John D. Erlichman, and Egil “Bud” Krogh, Jr. A high Christian Science spokesman declined to comment on the trio and moral standards of the church. “We have no authority over their private lives,” he stated. (Christian Science teaches that sin is a state of mind.)
Krogh, who confessed to masterminding the Pentagon Papers incident (including authorization in 1971 of a burglary of psychiatric files), experienced something of a spiritual awakening a few months ago and became active in the White House prayer group, according to a former White House aide also active in the group.
Another person implicated is David Young, a staffer of the National Security Council and Krogh’s assistant at the time, out of whose office the Pentagon Papers crew operated at first. He arranged access to secret State Department cables for E. Howard Hunt. Young is a 1959 graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in physics. He could not be reached for comment.
The Watergate dam broke wide open when convicted conspirator James McCord testified before a grand jury. McCord, a former Baptist, is a member of a United Methodist Church in Rockville, Maryland. Pastor Walter C. Smith, Jr., tells how McCord had been active in a ministry to the elderly and says he is “one of the half-dozen best people in our church.” He’s taking “a bad rap for somebody else,” insisted Smith before McCord’s testimony hit the front pages.
After mentioning Watergate at the Chicago Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast, Senator Mark O. Hatfield, an outspoken Conservative Baptist, warned against an “idolatry of the Presidency” which makes the “temptations and burdens that fall on the shoulders [of the President] to be almost inevitably unbearable—and corrupting.” He called for compassion and “fervent prayers” for the President, victimized in part by “our idolatrous expectations.” Americans want desperately to believe in man-centered power, stated the lawmaker, because “we have let the wellsprings of deep spiritual faith in our lives run dry.”
Missionary Pow
During more than five months of captivity in Indochina, Canadian missionary Lloyd Oppel, 21, leaned heavily on the promise of God’s strength in Deuteronomy 31:6, which he had read the night before his capture. Oppel, a medical assistant with Christian Missions in Many Lands (CMML), was taken by North Vietnamese troops near his mission post of Kengkok, Laos, last October (see November 24, 1972, issue, page 41). He told the Vancouver Sun in a copyrighted article that the Vietnamese disbelieved he was a missionary and labeled him instead “an American imperialist collaborator.”
Relating his experiences, Oppel told how he and fellow missionary Samuel Mattix, 19, of Centralia, Washington, were painfully trussed with wire and led on a thirty-five-day forced march to Hanoi. At rest stops in Laos, the pair was able to witness to curious Laotians because the Vietnamese guards did not understand the language. The preaching stopped when they crossed into North Viet Nam, however, where they encountered the hatred and physical abuse of Vietnamese civilians, said Oppel.
Throughout the captivity, Oppel told the Sun, he was not tortured physically but was tormented “psychologically.” He said that after arriving at the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison he was subjected to incessant questioning about his family, friends, and mission. Each time, he said, the Vietnamese offered—but never gave him—food, tea, clothing, and drugs to reduce his fever.
Oppel credited Mattix with saving his life when he came down with malaria: “He washed me, persuaded me to try and eat, ignored my diarrhea and my delirium, and looked after me like a baby.” More importantly, he added, “Sam and I prayed a lot.”
During the trek across Laos, said Oppel, he learned from several Laotian Christians that two other missionaries had escaped from Kengkok, but he did not find out until after his release that two other missionaries, Evelyn Anderson, 25, of Quincy, Michigan, and Beatrice Kosin, 35, of Fort Washakie, Wyoming, were killed in the attack on the mission. The concern shown by Laotian civilians—including a quick prayer session with three Christians—proved that the time spent on mission effort was not wasted, Oppel affirmed.
Super Rally
Sporting a bright yellow suit, Pat Boone leaped up on the roof of a dugout from a shiny convertible and shook hands with scores of the 40,000 mostly young people who nearly filled the new Kansas City Royals stadium. Boone was the star attraction at what was described as the largest Youth For Christ (YFC) rally in history, held this month to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Kansas City YFC chapter.
Local YFC director Al Metsker, an independent evangelical minister, has watched his work grow from a few Bible clubs for teen-agers to reputedly the largest chapter in the world. It now boasts clubs in 110 senior and junior high schools, a spacious headquarters building (including a 3,000-seat auditorium that is filled to capacity once and sometimes twice every Saturday night), and its own summer ranch thirty miles outside the city, according to a YFC spokesman. A weekly telecast, “Christ Unlimited,” is aired on three stations and may expand to other cities soon.
The super-rally was clearly a Metsker milestone. Despite gloomy forecasts for attendance by both pessimistic city ministers and rain-threatening weathermen, the young crowded in. A local chain of supermarkets handled advance tickets and donations of $1 per person. When the invitation was given, several hundred young people made first-time decisions for Christ.
Along with the evangelical trimmings, the three-hour event reflected an ultra-patriotic Americanism. Local groups sang upbeat songs praising America, two returned POWs and a disabled veteran gave speeches, and the audience sang both the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the national anthem. It was almost an anomaly that such a feat could be pulled off with the young, even in mid-America.
One black minister attending complained about the absence of blacks. Only a handful were visible in the stadium and none on the platform even though the city’s schools are 55 per cent black. Only white suburban school bands and color guards participated down front. But then, black student participation in the local rallies has never been more than minimal, and no blacks serve on the staff.
JAMES S. TINNEY
Seminary Statistics
Enrollment in the member seminaries (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish) of the American Association of Theological Schools (AATS) increased by a microscopic 0.4 per cent to 32,822 last fall, according to an AATS report. (The addition of five more schools since then elevates the figure to 33,036 and places AATS membership at 189.) The number of candidates for graduate degrees, however, decreased 13.1 per cent. Finances are not as bleak as a couple of years ago, but the AATS, which includes most of the major seminaries in North America, still reports a cumulative operating deficit of $2.47 million.
Call To The North
Call to the North, like Topsy, just grew. From a seed thought in the minds of two or three people five years ago, it has sprouted and flourished into something involving most of the churches in the north of England.
The call was issued initially in the name of church leaders in the north by the archbishop of York, Donald Coggan, for the Church of England and representatives of the Roman Catholic and free churches (see February 2, 1973, issue, page 43). Today there are 4,000 study groups, involving members of most of the denominations, meeting in homes to “look at the faith they share, to get excited about it, and to work out ways of sharing it with others.” Also, 500,000 copies of St. Mark’s Gospel have been distributed.
Holy Week was a chance to coordinate all that has happened so far, and hundreds of churches put on special happenings, from street marches and passion plays to Bach’s Mass and straight evangelistic rallies. Says the Reverend Eddie Neale, press officer for Call to the North: “Only the Pentecostals and the Free Church have opted out of involvement. They are genuinely worried about the influence of Rome, which is a pity, because Call to the North is uniting churches in the best way possible, talking frankly, and clearing up misunderstanding.”
Canon John Hunter, advisor to the archbishop of York, says he hears “all the time of groups meeting weekly and renewing the parish, which is as it should be. Our principal aim, after all, is to recover the dynamics of the Christian faith.”
Hunter attributes the change in mood from pessimism to optimism in many churches over the past five years to “the Spirit of God.” “I’m sure the archbishop of York is right when he says, ‘I feel the finger of God in this,’” Hunter commented. “It’s come at the right time, too, when the charismatic renewal is infiltrating all denominations, uniting Christians of very different backgrounds and traditions. Everything is dovetailing neatly together.”
DAVID COOMES
Combat Zone
After asking its bureaus in every state to check all death certificates filed for a recent week, the Associated Press reported that 345 Americans had died by gunfire in that seven-day period. Of these, 226 deaths were listed as homicides, eighty-nine suicides, and twenty accidental deaths.
It was the fourth such national survey by the AP in the past two years and revealed the highest total recorded thus far. By comparison, American deaths in combat averaged a little over 200 a week during the worst period of the Viet Nam war.
GLENN D. EVERETT
Closed
Disturbed over the closing of 1,300 United Church of Canada churches, the United Church Observer has called for a moratorium on closings and church mergers.
United Church “preaching places” declined from 5,741 to 4,442 in the period. The Observer said that many closings were “amalgamations” and that some were good. At the same time, it added, the UCC had a net loss in membership during those same years (1961–71) while many smaller evangelical groups made rapid gains, often picking up the disaffected members and even using the buildings lost by ill-considered closings.
The Buck Stops Here
Some Episcopalians in North Carolina are upset again. Their diocese okayed a $35,700 grant by the national denomination to support a Black Panther-run, non-emergency medical transportation project in Winston-Salem. Several other black groups were turned down.
In 1969, the Episcopal Church gave a $45,000 grant to the Malcolm X Liberation University at Durham, despite the fact that church officials were not allowed to inspect its facilities or curriculum. Infuriated church members sharply reduced their offerings.
- More fromEdward E. Plowman
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
A Thorough Outline
A Biblical Theology of Missions, by George W. Peters (Moody, 1972, 368 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Robert Brow, Anglican rector of Millbrook, Ontario.
This book by the professor of world missions at Dallas Seminary is a necessary addition to every Bible school and seminary library. Its subheadings and numbered points will be appreciated by students but do not encourage bedtime reading.
The first five chapters thoroughly outline the idea of mission in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and in the Old and New Testaments. There is a distinction between the mandate to Adam—“the qualitative and quantitative improvement of culture on the basis of the revelational theism manifested in creation”—and the mandate for mission through the Church. Peters clarifies the latter by giving a helpful exegesis of the great commission in the four Gospels.
Field missionaries will note the lack of a thorough discussion of the theology of Roland Allen and Donald McGavran in the brief chapter on missionary societies.
A chapter entitled “The Instruments of Missions” gives one view of the relation of the apostles and prophets of the New Testament to modern missionaries. Peters argues for the continuance of two kinds of missionary: evangelist-church planters, and pastor-teachers. The former are successors of the apostles, but without Paul’s apostolic authority. The latter are “functional successors” to the prophets, but without the function of teaching “under the immediate influences of the Spirit.” It is pastor-teachers who are mainly needed as the “contribution of the older churches to the younger churches.”
The distinction between the call to a ministry of the Word and secular callings (farmer, businessman, banker) is very sharply drawn. Peters’s theology makes him very suspicious of the man who turns from “the ministry of the Word” to “some other type of service or profession.”
A final chapter touches on the relation of the Gospel to other religions. Peters contents himself with a twelve-point summary of the biblical view. He notes but does not directly discuss the various views of mission that are current in ecumenical circles.
Two Views Of Black Religion
The Black Preacher in America, by Charles V. Hamilton (Morrow, 1972, 246 pp., $7.95), and Black Sects and Cults, by Joseph R. Washington, Jr. (Doubleday, 1972, 176 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by J. A. Parker, director, American Speakers Bureau, Washington, D. C.
Both volumes promised to remind me so much of growing up that I could hardly wait to begin reading them. Like Charles Hamilton, I grew up in a black Baptist church. Hamilton romped in south Chicago and I in south Philadelphia. I have many relatives, friends, and acquaintances who are members and supporters of a great number of “black sects and cults”: Baptists, Methodists, Sanctified Holiness, Father Divine, Daddy Grace, African Orthodox, Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, and many others. The names may seem more exotic, but it is no more difficult associating with these worshipers than their white Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Presbyterian, and Episcopal counterparts.
Hamilton gives readers many brief but important insights into black American preachers, including Nat Turner, Benjamin Mays, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Joseph H. Jackson, Jr., and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is predictable that someone of Hamilton’s persuasion (he co-authored Black Power with Stokely Carmichael) would find fault with these men.
Hamilton could not resist mentioning the intense and fundamental disagreement between Joseph Jackson, longtime president of the National Baptist Convention, Inc., and pastor of the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, and the late Martin Luther King. Hamilton correctly notes the strange allegiance to both Jackson and King by the members of Mount Olivet and the National Convention. It was not at all unusual for Jackson to denounce King as an undesirable troublemaker from his pulpit, only to have many of the flock attending a King rally a day or two later. The people apparently viewed Jackson as their “salvation” preacher and King as their “civil rights” preacher. Hamilton points out that “even though King and Jackson had much disaffection for each other the membership did not get involved.” Nevertheless King sided with those who led in the formation of the Progressive National Baptist Convention of congregations formerly associated with Jackson’s denomination.
Black Sects and Cults is another in the C. Eric Lincoln series of books about the black religious experience. Washington does a fair job of cataloguing numerous religious groups. Unfortunately, like many other writers, he unwarrantedly generalizes from specifics. Washington feels that “the distinguishing characteristics of these diverse religious groups is a common concern for power.” Like many radical clergymen, he ignores previous attempts and proposes a “black theology” that can galvanize the black sects and cults to “serve the real needs of the black community.” It would be instructive for Washington to consider the Jackson-King conflict and its implications for any unifying “black theology.”
School Thoughts
Reshaping Evangelical Higher Education, by Marvin Mayers, Lawrence Richards, and Robert Webber (Zondervan, 1972, 215 pp., $6.95), and About School, edited by Mark Tuttle (Houghton College Press, 1972, 144 pp., $2.50 pb), are reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, assistant dean of arts and humanities, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.
When these two books arrived for review, it seemed natural to begin with the larger hardback, assuming it would be the more important. It wasn’t! Like so many cooperative writing projects, it lacks continuity and direction. I am less than hopeful that it will be a significant force in “reshaping evangelical higher education.”
That is not to say that Mayers, Richards, and Webber (teachers of sociology, Christian education, and theology, respectively, at Wheaton College) have nothing important to say. Webber’s section on the historical development of two alternative world views, stemming from the Renaissance and the Reformation, is succinct, accurate, and helpful. Mayer’s discussion of the emerging educational pattern as event-focused, noncrisis, holistic, goal-oriented, vulnerable, and non-sequential is informative.
Newly Published
Good News or Bad?, by Seth Wilson (Ozark Bible College [1111 N. Main, Joplin, Mo. 64801], 24 pp., $.40 pb). Today’s English Version (the New Testament of which is known also as “Good News for Modern Man”) has been the object of many vicious and untruthful attacks. Nevertheless, the sponsoring American Bible Society has seen some 35 million copies distributed since it appeared in 1966. Christians who have been misled by critics now have a brief but adequate study of the facts. A Bible college dean clearly demonstrates from TEV itself that the version supports rather than casts doubt upon the blood atonement and the deity, uniqueness, and virgin birth of Christ.
The Missionaries, by Geoffrey Moorhouse (Lippincott, 368 pp., $7.95). A British feature writer relates in rich, fascinating detail the Protestant missionary efforts in Africa since early last century. Illustrated with photos and prints. Attempts to give a balanced perspective of the movement without religious bias. Very interesting style.
Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change, edited by Erika Bourguignon (Ohio State University, 389 pp., $12.50). Ten articles, part of a research project headed by the editor (who is chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Ohio State), discussing the ritual use of ecstatic religious experience in different cultures around the world, with conclusions regarding this phenomenon in contemporary American society. Technical; deals extensively with spirit possession and charismatic experience.
Should Preachers Play God?, compiled by Claude A. Frazier, M.D. (Independence Press [Box 1019, Independence, Mo. 64051], 224 pp., $4.95). Fifteen essays by professors and pastors not only on the theme of the title but on Sunday observance, politics, and women. Most of the authors are evangelicals, but some are definitely not, and one is a Latter-day Saint.
Help: An Aid for New Religious Educators, by Leonard A. Sibley and James J. Ahern (Fortress, 107 pp., $2.95 pb). For the beginning church-school teacher, a stimulating guide for understanding Christian education, using curriculum materials, and planning units and sessions. Practical workbook format.
A History of Christian Thought, by Paul Tillich (Simon and Schuster, 550 pp., $4.95 pb). Two series of lectures covering developments from the first to the early twentieth centuries, which were previously published separately.
The Church in Search of Its Self, by Robert Paul (Eerdmans, 384 pp., $7.95). A first-class biblical, historical, sociological and theological study of what the Church is and what it ought to be.
Clergy in the Cross Fire, by Donald P. Smith (Westminster, 232 pp., $7.50). General director of the Vocation Agency of the United Presbyterian Church discusses ways to clarify personal, staff, and congregational expectations of the minister’s role; emphasizes methods of goal-setting and performance review.
The Acts of the Apostles, by Charles Carter and Ralph Earle (Zondervan, 435 pp., $7.95). Some updating of a well-received commentary first published in 1959 as part of a never completed series. Portions of it also appeared in the seven-volume Wesleyan Bible Commentary.
Folk Psalms of Faith, by Ray C. Stedman (Regal, 321 pp., $1.45 pb). Studies on nineteen favorite psalms, unfolding for believers today their devotional and practical meaning. Very helpful for personal or group study.
In It to Win It, by Roy C. Putnam (Christian Literature Crusade, 143 pp., $1.25 pb). Nine chapters that tell how to master life by faith, based on Ephesians 6. Another invigorating book on spiritual victory.
Invitation and Response, by Enda McDonagh (Sheed and Ward, 206 pp., $8.50). An up-to-date summary of middle-of-the-road Roman Catholic thinking on several ethical questions, centered on the Church as community.
God Speaks to an X-Rated Society, edited by Alan F. Johnson (Moody, 95 pp., $1.50 pb). A perceptive, thoughtful study of the spirit and practical implications of each of the ten commandments, by eleven Wheaton professors. Stimulating.
Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, by Theodore Roszak (Doubleday, 451 pp., $2.95 pb). Certainly Christians can agree with Roszak’s analysis that the decay of urban-industrial society, coupled with a technocratic challenge to individualism and moral society—e.g. genetic manipulation, euthanasia—results from the “inevitable extroversion of a blighted psyche.” Unfortunately, in Roszak’s advocacy of a return to the unreason of the “essential religious impulse”—typified by William Blake—he squarely rejects Christianity. Nonetheless, he is an excellent, important writer who suggests one of the next waves of anti-Christian thought.
Living and Loving, by A. N. Triton (Inter-Varsity, 95 pp., $1.25 pb). Timely, practical guidelines toward a Christian approach to key aspects of sex and marriage. Brief, but refreshing and thoroughly biblical.
Why Can’t I Understand My Kids?, by Herbert Wagemaker (Zondervan, 111 pp., $3.95, $1.95 pb). A psychiatrist offers thirteen brief chapters, each with discussion questions, on a topic of concern to most parents. Chapters include “The Importance of Listening” and “Providing Limits.”
Servants of God or Masters of Men?, by Victor Daniel Bonilla (Penguin, 304 pp., $2.65 pb). A prominent Colombian documents the exploitation of an Indian group in his country by church and state.
The Present Revelation: In Quest of Religious Foundations, by Gabriel Moran (Seabury, 318 pp., $8.95). Beginning with a broad rejection of the concepts of special and propositional revelation and even of the validity of talking about Christianity as a revealed religion, Moran distinguishes revelation from a disclosure of truth. He defines it as “the encompassing reality that is expressed everywhere,” but especially in “Human Science,” “Struggle for Human Rights,” and “Ecology.” Moran is head of the New England branch of the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order known for its wines.
Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, by Robert C. Lester (University of Michigan, 201 pp., $2.95 pb). A fascinating overview of the traditional ideals and modern values of the religion that is the basis of culture and key to future political and social change in Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
The Plains Brood Alone, by J. Birney Dibble (Zondervan, 200 pp., $4.95). Touching portraits of the people and culture of Tanzania by an American doctor who spent several years as a missionary at a rural hospital.
Faith and Creativity, by Placide Gabourg (Vantage, 155 pp., $4.95). Seeks to relate faith and creativity by drawing elements from the thought of such men as Tillich, James, Fromm, Dewey. Fuzzy.
Christographia, by Eugene Warren (Ktaadn [Box 25, Houghton, N.Y. 14744], 24 pp., $2 pb). Fifteen choice poems—“views of Christ”—by a poet whose work has appeared in this magazine a number of times. Handsomely printed.
You’re in Charge, by Cecil G. Osborne (Word, 154 pp., $4.95). Paul Tournier’s warm introduction provides an appetizer for the reading of this sympathetic treatment of man’s responsibility for his actions. Lacks clarity in places. The author is a leader in the Yokefellows Movement.
Abiding in Christ, by James E. Rosscup (Zondervan, 254 pp., $5.95). A Bible professor at Talbot Seminary discusses the meaning of John 15 in light of other passages and sound biblical scholarship; deals with interpretations of the text that deny the believer’s security in Christ. Thorough, good material for Bible studies.
The City of the Gods, by John Dunne (Macmillan, 243 pp., $2.95 pb.). Reprint of an interesting, highly readable study of the characteristic forms and solutions that the problem of death has taken in various epochs, from the earliest times to the present. Less than adequate understanding of the Resurrection.
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, by David Friedrich Strauss (Fortress, 812 pp., $12 pb). A fanciful but influential nineteenth-century study. It reportedly turned the young Marx away from Christianity. Edited by Peter Hodgson.
The Death of Christ, by Norman Douty (Reiner [Swengel, Pa. 17880], 120 pp., $3.95). A learned essay by a Calvinist who argues that Christ did not die only for the elect, thus attempting to knock limited atonement out of its high place among latter-day Calvinists. Well presented.
Contemporary American Protestant Thought: 1900–1970, edited by William R. Miller (Bobbs-Merrill, 567 pp., n.p., pb). The editor admittedly made his selections for this anthology with no attempt “to allot equal time to each conceivable claimant”; he includes only what he deemed “major creative contributions to the ongoing stream of development.” Hence the book is gravely mistitled. Fosdick, the Niebuhrs, and Altizer may be “creative,” but are they “Protestant”? The compendium offers a good way of seeing how men wander aimlessly when they no longer find Paul—and Luther, Calvin, and Wesley—“relevant.” Now the publishers owe us a volume of Machen, Mullins, Montgomery, and the like.
“… And the Criminals With Him …” Luke 23:33, edited by Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway (Paulist, 151 pp., $1.25 pb). Prisoners’ reflections on faith, society, and prison life with an article by the editors on the good news from Christ to prisoners. Realistic.
Using the Bible in Groups, by Paul D. Gehris (Judson, 47 pp., $1.25 pb). Four workshop sessions for group leaders that experiment in study methods to help others discover the uniqueness, authority, and meaning of the Bible today.
JESUS—Everything Jesus Christ Said and Did, Blended Into a Single Narrative in Modern English, compiled by Charles B. Templeton et al. (McClelland and Stewart [Toronto], 222 pp., $6.95). Former Youth for Christ leader and Canadian evangelist Charles B. Templeton, now a self-confessed agnostic, compiles a synthesis of the four Gospels in a modern paraphrase. Paradoxically, the volume is first-rate! Assisted by four able scholars and communicators, Templeton has come up with an easy-reading, biblically accurate, powerful presentation of the Christ-story. But—a life of Christ by an agnostic? Templeton’s explanation: “A pacifist may write a biography of Napoleon. My reverence for Jesus Christ is as high as it has ever been. But I have not returned to faith. I haven’t changed one iota.”
The Day Music Died, by Bob Larson (Creation House, 213 pp., $2.75 pb). Larson strikes again. With ignorance of music in general and prejudice against rock in particular, he begs young people to forsake their culture and turn to Christ. His definition of rock could also apply to Bach, Rachmaninoff, or Prokofiev. The reaction of young people to their music probably parallels that of most music lovers; music lifts the listener out of himself. The problem with Larson is that he assumes rock music (not just the lyrics) is inherently evil. One could carry his reasoning to the conclusion that all music is of the devil.
Experimental Preaching, by John Killinger (Abingdon, 175 pp., $3.95). Twenty-one sermons edited by the professor of preaching at Vanderbilt showing how to use such things as poetry, drama, and lighting effects as preaching aids. Unfortunately, some are weak in biblical content.
Private Money and Public Service: The Role of Foundations in American Society, by Merrimon Cuninggim (McGraw-Hill, 267 pp., $7.95). The president of the Danforth Foundation responds to frequent criticisms of such institutions. For those who deal with foundations, valuable as an insight into their future.
Heralds of God and A Faith to Proclaim, both by James S. Stewart (Baker, 222 and 160 pp., $1.95 each pb). Reprints of lectures on effective methods of preaching and, as a sequel, on five key doctrines that the preacher should proclaim. By the well-known Scottish preacher.
As a whole, however, the book lacks consistency and any sense of compelling logic. It includes a considerable amount of material that is beside the point. The Philippine case study is not used to its full advantage as an illustration of crosscultural education. Richards’s chapter on “Reshaping Church Education” contributes more to the bulk of the book than to an understanding of higher education (as the term is normally used). The focus of section III is elementary and secondary education rather than higher education, as the title of the book promises.
The smaller book, About School, is a collection of “Essays by Scholars Investigating Christian Higher Education” (the subtitle). Tom Howard of Gordon College fearlessly declares that Christian colleges have a mandate to oppose liberal education as an open-ended, presuppositionless, relativistic, question-raising enterprise. This opposition is to take the form not of a retreat from the discipline but of a fundamental opposition of axioms. Anthropologist Clyde McCone, defining education as “the transmission of culture through the processes of social interaction,” (p. 42), concludes that, since culture is the human product of man’s usurping the place of God in his life and becoming the author of his own value system, the only way we can speak of Christian education is in the sense of education taking place within the Christian himself.
Bernard Ramm—who inevitably has something of importance to say—sketches the shifting profile of American education, warns of certain dangers that arise from these changes, and suggests how the Christian college can play an increasingly significant role in shaping the future. Ramm sees that any attempt to use the university as an agent of reform is a disguised totalitarianism that will destroy its very essence. An ideological foreclosure of options is diametrically opposed to the search for truth and leads to bondage, not freedom.
The Young Turks of the Peoples Christian Coalition, with Dennis MacDonald as their recording secretary, carp and sulk through a chapter called “The New Left Student Movement and the Christian Liberal Arts College.” Although provocative because of its quasi-radical stance, the chapter seems out of place in a book on education, primarily because so many questions—and ethical ones at that—are already decided. War is wrong, Christian colleges are hothouses (they are “unjustifiable” and “an expensive cancer to the Body of Christ”), Campus Crusade is irrelevant, and so on. One gathers the impression that instant intellectual and moral superiority is granted to all who bolt the Establishment and fly the banner of the evangelical counterculture. When it comes to pretension, the mentality of this essay establishes a model for emulation.
In the other three essays, Augsburger discusses education and a Christian world view, while Reist and Woolsey write with Houghton College front and center in their thinking. These are not the best chapters in the book.
Hopefully, the Houghton essays will provoke lively discussion among evangelical educators whose concern for academic excellence compels them to tangle with the fundamental issues of our day.
Exciting Compendium
Crucial Issues in Missions Tomorrow, edited by Donald A. McGavran (Moody 1972, 272 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Robert Brow, Anglican rector of Millbrook, Ontario.
This well-known missiologist’s compendium is missions reading at its best. An exciting introduction by McGavran pitches us into the radically new missionary situation of the past ten years. Arthur Glasser and Peter Beyerhaus give us a pungent contrast between some views of mission current in the ecumenical movement and those based on the New Testament. Alan Tippett’s “The Holy Spirit and Responsive Populations” should be read by every preacher, missionary, elder, and mission executive. Louis King’s “The New Shape” reveals the great gulf between ecumenical ideas and the very large number of evangelical missionaries. Another article by Tippett explains why so many millions of animists have responded to effective preaching. I hope that John Mbiti, writing on “Christianity and Traditional Religions in Africa,” will be followed by many other African theologians—he mentions 100 million Christians already, and David Barrett has calculated there will be 350 million Christians in Africa by A.D. 2000.
Paying due heed to “Quality or Quantity” by Ralph Winter would force many of our successful churches to ask whether they are in fact growing. George Peters makes a very impressive case for “Great Campaign Evangelism.” (This article, incidentally, is full of live examples, which I missed in his major work.) Two final articles by Roger Greenway and Edward Murphy remind us that huge cities are ripe fields for church growth if missionaries know what to do there.
In short, the book is a gem, and I enjoyed every facet of it.
—IN THE JOURNALS—
A useful aid for those who are seriously interested in China is China Briefing, a monthly, four-page newsletter sponsored by World Vision and available from the Asia Information Office, Room 711, Melbourne Plaza, 33, Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Jesus the Messiah: An Illustrated Life of Christ, by Donald Guthrie (Zondervan, 1972, 386 pp., $6.95), A Shorter Life of Christ, by Donald Guthrie (Zondervan, 1970, 186 pp., $2.45 pb), and The Gospels in Current Study, by Simon Kistemaker (Baker, 1972, 171 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Donald Hagner, assistant professor of Bible, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
It is a treat to have two books on the life of Christ from the veteran British New Testament scholar Donald Guthrie, perhaps best known to American readers for his excellent New Testament introduction. The Shorter Life presents the substance of Guthrie’s article in the forthcoming Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. It includes not only background material and a sketch of the life of Jesus but also a discussion of critical questions associated with the subject, as well as special treatment of the teaching and miracles of Jesus and of the Christology of the early Church. Guthrie shows himself thoroughly familiar with modern criticism of the Gospels from redaction criticism to New Quest. Although he is willing to learn what he can from the modern debate, he fair-mindedly and honestly holds to a solidly evangelical perspective. Against much scholarly opinion, Guthrie adamantly refuses to allow a wedge to be driven between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. The recognition of the gospel writers as theologians writing from the standpoint of post-resurrection faith, Guthrie rightly insists, does not mean they cannot also have been careful historians.
In Jesus the Messiah Guthrie writes at the popular level, giving no space to discussion of background or critical questions; he limits himself to a full description of the life of Christ from the annunciation to the resurrection. The book virtually amounts to a concise commentary on a harmony of the four Gospels, proceeding passage by passage chronologically; its arrangement would enable it to lend itself well to six months of daily Bible study. An added attraction are photographs of the Holy Land, related to the text. Although this is easy, non-technical reading, the perceptive reader will quickly sense the author’s theological depth and learning. The book serves as a fine example of biblical scholarship in the service of the average layman.
Unfortunately, Guthrie’s two volumes are only somewhat complementary, since about a third of the Shorter Life is given over to a sketch of the life and ministry of Jesus and thereby overlaps the content of the larger volume. I would have preferred a volume entirely devoted to critical questions.
Guthrie’s handling of the life of Christ in both volumes is an excellent illustration of what a judicious stance on matters of criticism can produce. When confronted with chronological difficulties in the Gospels, Guthrie will on occasion harmonize (tentatively), but will also give full weight to the authors’ right to order the materials in keeping with their distinctive purposes. The outcome, however, is not historical skepticism but a confidence in the broad chronological framework and the historicity of the narrative. Thus, for example, Guthrie says that the difficulty in reconciling the accounts of the resurrection appearances, rather than detracting from the historical reliability of the events, enhances it by ruling out collusion between the writers or the use of a common source. Also notable in Guthrie’s work are the excellent material on the purpose and interpretation of the parables, the fairness with which he discusses Pharisaism, and the consistent defense of the reality of the supernatural in the Gospels.
Guthrie knows the problems and faces them squarely, seldom contenting himself with a facile explanation. His work in the sensitive area of the Gospels shows that evangelical convictions and a moderate use of criticism are not inimical. But the best thing about these books is Guthrie’s ability to capture the essence of matters so beautifully, often shedding considerable light in a single sentence.
The person looking for a popular yet more detailed treatment of certain modern critical questions associated with the study of the Gospels would do well to turn to Simon Kistemaker’s volume. Kistemaker, a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, covers topics ranging from the textual to the theological, including more unusual subjects such as the Gospel of Thomas and audience criticism. The various essays are self-contained units.
Kistemaker has produced an excellent account of modern critical study seen from an evangelical perspective. Like Guthrie, he shows admirable honesty in his approach. He rightly argues that the serious evangelical interpreter cannot simply ignore the methodologies of radical criticism. The theological purpose of a gospel writer may take precedence over chronological sequence, he maintains, but the theological interest itself does not rule out concern for the historical.
Kistemaker’s answers to the claims of radical criticism are usually quite brief, but often incisive. (Unfortunately, the section of the Dead Sea Scrolls could not have anticipated O’Callaghan’s alleged fragments of Mark from Cave 7 at Qumran.) This volume provides a handy and excellent overview of questions in gospel criticism that by their nature and difficulty often repel evangelicals but for the same reasons are of great importance to an informed and effective evangelical voice in our day.
Christianity TodayMay 25, 1973
Political Espionage
Intelligence operations “are commonplace in political campaigns and usually include efforts to collect all published information about an opponent along with occasional efforts to obtain advance copies of speeches, travel schedules and the like,” wrote Seymour M. Hirsh in the New York Times. But Watergate went far beyond this; the illegal acts that the term now signifies must be condemned.
Billy Graham in another Times piece commented that Watergate is “a symptom of the deeper moral crisis that affects society.” How right he is! Anyone at all familiar with the Washington scene knows there are skeletons stacked high in some congressional closets. If all these doors were opened, the Watergate scandal would no doubt rate only second billing.
What jars us is the selective morality some persons display in regard to the Watergate and Ellsberg cases. Whatever may have happened subsequently, we need to remind ourselves that Ellsberg admitted stealing and reproducing the Pentagon Papers and delivering them to the news media. Both the Watergate and the Ellsberg incidents are exhibitions of law-breaking, and nothing should be allowed to obscure this fact.
Columnist David S. Broder, who just won a Pulitzer Prize, wrote in the Washington Post (May 8):
We could well discuss with our readers … why the same papers that have been so outraged by the threat to civil liberties resulting from the bugging of a party headquarters or the break-in at a psychiatrist’s office feel free themselves to print the transcript of secret grand jury testimony, regardless of the risk to the reputations of persons who may be mentioned in that non-adversary proceeding.
We do not think that Nixon knew what was going on at Watergate at the time it happened. We do not think he moved fast enough when he did find out. And we do not think he will be impeached. We hope that the sordid affair will be aired thoroughly, the guilty punished, and the administration’s attention turned to solving such problems as inflation, the energy crisis, and the pressing need to rebuild confidence in its own integrity.
Two at the Top
CHRISTIANITY TODAY won two awards in the annual competition sponsored by Associated Church Press. Among ACP magazines of opinion, public affairs, and social concerns, CHRISTIANITY TODAY got top awards for best article and best editorial in 1972. The article was “The Irrelevance of Relevance” by Kenneth Hamilton (March 31), and the editorial was “The Church’s Distinctive” (May 12).
Jacques Maritain
When Jacques Maritain died in Toulouse, France, April 28, at the age of ninety, it was the passing of one of our century’s intellectual giants. Raised a liberal Protestant in comfortably bourgeois circumstances and at a time when there was very little evangelical fervor among French Protestants, Maritain rebelled against the emptiness of the skeptical, ostensibly scientific humanism of the academic world of his day. Although stimulated by the philosophy of Henri Bergson with its “creative evolution” and “élan vital” as an alternative to materialistic naturalism, Maritain remained unsatisfied, and ultimately—together with Raissa, his Russian-Jewish wife—he turned to Roman Catholicism.
An ardent if imaginative disciple of Thomas Aquinas, because of his open-minded and critical spirit Maritain was for years considered a liberal in Roman Catholic circles. But in recent years, as he saw both Rome and Protestantism beginning to make absolutes out of some of the social and intellectual values for which he had sought Christian endorsement—for example, freedom, social justice, and the fine arts—he spoke out against what he considered their idolatrous and world-worshiping tendencies. He vigorously opposed the “Catholic pantheism” of Teilhard de Chardin. Although loyal to the Roman church as an institution, he seemed primarily concerned for fundamental Christian and evangelical principles, an attitude that gained him more popularity among Protestant evangelicals than among modernizing Catholics. His tremendous academic and literary attainments never prevented him from testifying to his faith in simple, easy to understand terms. An intellectual par excellence, he was never embarrassed by the simplicity of the Gospel and never tried to adjust it to the modern world.
Monkey Business
In a beautiful park in Lausanne, Switzerland, there is the original of the familiar statuette of three monkeys, one covering his eyes, one his ears, one his mouth. The inscription in its familiar English version reads, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” This is a respected motto in Washington—not among journalists but among those in high government office. But when monkey business goes on long enough, it eventually becomes public knowledge, and an indignant and outraged public turns with anger on those who for so long kept eyes, ears, and mouth closed.
Located midway between the White House and the National Press Club, we at CHRISTIANITY TODAY can observe the example both of the “say nothing” and of the “tell everything” school. And sometimes—particularly when it concerns charges of monkey business among evangelicals—it may be that we incline rather quickly in the direction of the Press Club and the “tell all” school. We are certainly not infallible, and occasionally may not even be prudent. But to our readers who are genuinely concerned about the possible harm done to the cause of the Gospel when evangelicals’ vagaries are publicized, we urge this reflection: think too of the harm that is done when they are long piously concealed—until finally exposed by secular media or hostile muckrakers.
Second Thoughts About Honey
The current “back-to-nature” movement may have some beneficial theological fallout. For one thing, the growing preference for natural foods might help people appreciate more the language of the Bible, whose food references are mostly, of course, to unprocessed fare.
Take honey. Sticky, messy, inconvenient. Why bother with it when the pantry shelf offers a neat array of boxed sugars—regular (loose, in cubes, or in premeasured packets), super-fine, confectioner’s, light brown, dark brown, granulated brown, and others. And so until very recently, many moderns knew little about honey. We had little basis for understanding why it was important in biblical times, why, in Jeremiah 41:8, the King James Version refers to honey as a “treasure.”
Honey is pleasant to eat because it is sweet and smooth. Even the very hard to please may find a taste that suits them, because flavors vary somewhat according to the source of the nectar the bees use. Unlike white sugar, it has nutritive value, and it provides an immediate as well as extended source of energy. It keeps well without preservatives and without refrigeration—no bacteria can grow in pure honey. And it has medicinal value: when fortified with particular pollens it alleviates hay-fever symptoms, it has some antiseptic properties, and it soothes an irritated throat. Little wonder that the ancient Hebrews thought so much of it and used it profusely to illustrate spiritual truth.
Critics of the Bible have scoffed at its agricultural orientation as being irrelevant to modern times. But actually the Scripture’s use of such perpetually important products as honey, milk, salt, and leaven serves to confirm divine inspiration and to vindicate the Bible as truly the book for all ages. Had God not superintended the writing, the authors could have relied for their imagery upon things destined to disappear from the human scene.
Acupuncture And The ‘Fitly Joined’
You don’t have to be a Taoist or fly to Peking to be treated by acupuncture. But those are the origins of the enigmatic method of anesthesia and medical treatment about to be studied at the National Institutes of Health. Acupuncture is traditionally based on the ancient Chinese belief that health comes from the free circulation of “life energy” (ch’i) through the body. Sickness is the result of an imbalance in the negative (yin) and positive (yang) life forces in the body. The acupuncture needle is inserted in one of the many control points in the body keyed to the various organs, to correct the imbalance of yin and yang. Often, these control points are somewhat removed from the site of the disease. For instance, a needle is inserted in the little finger for effect on the heart.
Now, far from its Oriental home and with its basic philosophical tenets quietly relegated to the category of metaphysical “personal preference” by serious scientists, acupuncture is coming into its own as a credible contender for Western medical approval. NIH has set up a committee, as yet to receive financial support, to establish research activity. The body may be a little more “fitly joined together” than modern science suspected.
Thankfully, man has discovered many ways of treating his body, but unfortunately his spiritual medicine often has not kept pace. Paul speaks of an acupuncture that can heal the soul as we apply the “sword of the Spirit” to the “thoughts and intents of the heart.”
The Energy Crisis
Last winter in America there was a mild shortage of fuel oil for heating purposes; natural gas too is in short supply. Now some smaller independent outlets have had to close for lack of gasoline to sell, and there is some fear that major oil companies may soon have to skimp on supplies to their own franchised dealers as well.
At precisely this time, as though by a singular coincidence, Saudi Arabia, America’s largest and hitherto most dependable overseas source of oil, has officially indicated that it is not interested in increasing its oil sales to us—unless certain aspects of our political climate “develop favorably” (namely, in the direction of decreasing U. S. support for Israel). It is not difficult to see what could well lie ahead for America: increasing stringency on the domestic front, and increasing vulnerability to blackmail in foreign affairs.
Isaiah warned that apart from God, even youths faint and are weary, and young men fall exhausted (Isa. 40:30). Most of us are no longer used to the heavy taxing of our physical energies, because we have been abundantly supplied with mechanical power. But now the prospect of weariness is suddenly less remote.
The energy crisis is certainly not insoluble. We can—given time and effort—develop alternative sources of power. Solar energy and energy from the recycling of waste products hold promise. Much wider use of nuclear energy is a possibility, if satisfactory safeguards can be developed. During World War II, blockaded Germany learned how to make aviation fuel out of coal, a resource with which America is bountifully supplied, but one whose mining and burning pose severe environmental problems. If the nation faces up to the energy crisis realistically, then certainly, despite the lateness of the hour, some of the worst consequences can be avoided.
Yet something more is necessary if we are to deal with the crisis without panicking: we have to realize that we can do without many luxuries, indeed without some things we have come to consider necessities. Without a growth in spiritual and ethical maturity, we will inevitably be easy marks for just the kind of economic blackmail at which Saudi Arabia is now discreetly hinting.
Maybe in time we will be able to preserve many or most of our present comforts. But unless we are prepared for sacrifice, we may be squeezed into economic dependency and ultimately into a mendicant role among the world’s nations. It is well to remind ourselves of what the prophet says of those who wait for the Lord: “They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). We may soon be needing a lot more of that kind of energy.
Postal Rates
Congress is currently considering legislation backed by the Postal Service to increase postal rates for second-class mail, that is, regularly appearing periodicals. Under the proposed legislation non-profit publications would generally have much higher increases than (would-be) profit-making ones over the next ten years. Costs would go up to two, four, even as much as eight times more than they now are.
It is true that the Postal Service, like many another business, has a tough job to try to make revenues cover expenses. It is also true that the readers of a periodical should be willing to pay the costs involved in producing and distributing it (either directly through subscriptions or indirectly by patronizing its advertisers).
Yet two other principles should be kept in mind. When a major change in the established way of doing things is instituted (unless the change comes because of discovered illegal or immoral factors), the change should be instituted gradually, to allow those who would be affected adequate time to adjust. Of course, not every periodical deserves to survive, and many will fall by the wayside as did the Post, Look, and Life, because they cease being competitive for the subscriber’s and advertiser’s dollar.
Another principle is that of “subsidy” for what Congress deems to be of social value. (It’s called subsidy when companies or the relatively better off individuals are involved; it’s called welfare when the relatively poor are the recipients.) We subsidize homeowners (and home builders) through mortgage interest deductions, small cities served by regional airlines, farmers (even for not farming), landlords through ridiculous “depreciation” allowances while the value of their property is increasing, oil companies by depletion allowances, and even ministers with housing allowances. It might be a good idea to phase out almost all subsidies; but as long as there are so many, we think (for admittedly biased reasons) that periodicals are, as a whole, worth a tiny slice of the subsidy-pie.
A Debt For All Christians
Many Christians sport a collection of credit cards as large as anyone else’s. Few today insist on paying for everything in cash, on the basis of the Apostle Paul’s command, “Owe no one anything …” (Rom. 13:8a). (Of course, one could easily argue that when a creditor holds the title to your house or car or the like, you do not in fact “owe” him anything if you keep up regular payments. And if hardship should ever cause you to stop paying, the creditor would simply repossess, very likely at a profit.)
However, the main intention of Paul’s command is not to give advice on money management but to tell Christians that they have a debt to their fellow men, a debt as binding as the gas bill or mortgage installment or Master Charge balance. Paul’s concern is that Christians “owe no one anything except to love one another.”
For the Christian, love is not an optional virtue, to be offered when and to whom he pleases, any more than paying his bills is optional. Paul tells believers whom to love, quoting the Lord: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom. 13:9). And he gives a simple guideline for recognizing what love is not: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor …” (v. 10).
For Paul, love is no tingly feeling of mutual attraction among those who are, at least for a time, highly compatible. Love is a permanent duty to all men, not to be counterfeited by mere profession: “Let love be genuine” (Rom. 12:9). Nor is it incompatible with hatred so long as we “hate what [not who] is evil” (Rom. 12:9). Love is not content to let others take the initiative: “… outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10).
Love is especially tested in the face of provocation: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom. 12:14; cf. vv. 17–21). Love is not simply to refrain from wronging another, which is hard enough, but to express itself positively: “Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality” (Rom. 12:13).
Christians tend to be influenced by a materialistic society that judges a man’s goodness by his wealth, however acquired (as suggested by the phrases “a good neighborhood” or “he has done well”). Similarly, they are susceptible to the world’s practice of limiting love to those with whom one feels compatible.
Probably we can excuse our modification of the command to “owe no one anything” if we are talking about secured loans. But by no stretch of interpretation ought we to evade the main thrust of Paul’s command: “Love one another.”
Ideas
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Christian education is distinctly different from secular educational processes in that it puts knowledge and learning into the context of faith and piety, i.e., into relationship with knowledge about God and ultimate truth and with the attitudes we should adopt in the light of such knowledge. At its heart is a world and life view with God at its center.
Education divorced from faith and piety is not merely truncated but distorted. If a Christian’s formal education is received exclusively under secular auspices, he must necessarily complement and correct it by spiritual insights secured outside the halls of academia—in the churches or within Christian fellowship groups operating on secular campuses. Such a clarification of secular knowledge is essential, but it is rarely possible to achieve a real integration of faith and learning on the basis of a purely secular intellectual diet supplemented by occasional Christian correctives and additions. The task of integration is the specific calling of Christian colleges, which they not only perform for their students but also make available through them to the general Christian public.
Christian history teaches us that God has called and used believers equipped with both piety and learning to build his Church. Paul is the outstanding New Testament example of the combination of faith and scholarship. Turn the pages of history and you find figure after figure emulating him in this double endeavor: Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Samuel Rutherford, John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Adoniram Judson, to name only a few. Of course there have also been many effective servants of God who did not have academic training: John Bunyan, William Carey, D. L. Moody, and Billy Sunday, for example. (Carey founded Serampore College, the alma mater of Christian theological study in India.) But it is evident that the role of men who could combine great learning with great faith has been of crucial significance to the history of God’s people.
In our own day, higher education of all kinds has come under suspicion. Educational institutions are having problems with their image and coincidentally with their finances. Lest we do an injustice to Christian institutions, we should remember that in the United States it was not at Christian colleges that riots, bombings, and burnings took place. Nor did the left-wing student radicals and anarchists come from schools with a dictinctively Christian orientation. When socially and politically radical students have been confronted—often by Christian college students—with the claims of Christ and have received him as Saviour, their whole outlook and life style have undergone fundamental changes. Would this have been possible without the efforts of Christian educators to provide an integration of faith and knowledge capable of replacing the widespread commitment to a secular prophet?
There are hopeful indications that the best years for Christian colleges lie not in the past but in the future. The formation of the ten-member Christian College Consortium shows that administration and faculty members are aware of rapid change in our society and determined to function effectively in the midst of it. On many campuses, spiritual awakenings have brought new power and conviction to young lives. There is a deepening concern on the part of Christian college students and faculty to relate the Gospel to society and its problems. Wheaton College has conducted summer seminars on the integration of faith and learning, where teachers from Wheaton and other Christian institutions have explored ways to promote such integration on their campuses.
The critical test of Christian higher education is the performance of the graduates. There is ample evidence to support the view that Christian institutions have made an invaluable contribution. Of course, there are risks in any human enterprise, and there are students who fall by the wayside in Christian institutions just as there are students won to Christ in the midst of a militantly secularistic environment. On the whole, however, Christian institutions have maintained academic standards, have sent multitudes of students on to graduate schools, and over and above this have helped them develop Christian character and have prepared them for a positive witness to Christ in the world. One piece of evidence for the Christian colleges’ value to their graduates is the large number of second- and third-generation Christians who attend the parental and grandparental alma mater.
Higher education is expensive, and costs will continue to rise. Believers who recognize the invaluable contribution made by Christian colleges to the spiritual and intellectual vitality of the Church should confront this task with determination and dedicate a portion of their giving to one or more such colleges. To neglect to do this at the present moment in time could allow our institutions to wither just when they are needed most. The cost in spiritual and human terms would be immense.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
As yet no statistics reveal how many have died from being thrust into the damning combination of physical sluggishness and a schedule that would make a honeybee quiver. It seems clear, however, that being out of physical condition, perhaps overweight and stagnant, is no way for a pastor to live, much less work. Some have found that jogging meets a much neglected need in their lives.
Here are seven reasons why a pastor (or anyone else) should jog, if his health permits (be sure to get your doctor’s approval).
1. Jogging gives the maximum benefit for time spent. Other sports cannot even approach the cardiovascular benefit, to mention only one item. A slow jogger can run three miles in thirty minutes; every moment of that thirty minutes is workout. Other sports take as long as four hours and do not require this beneficial exertion.
2. Jogging exercises the part of the body that a pastor needs most in his work—the legs and the lungs. After jogging for two months you can dash to an emergency sickbed and up flights of stairs and arrive serene, not gasping for breath.
3. Jogging is a tonic to the nerves and a releaser of psychological tension. You go to the track or field worried or even tired, and through oxygen intake and exertion the troubles seem to melt with the fat. Your mental outlook is improved; the troubles seem smaller and you are stronger to tackle them.
You will have to experience this marvelous benefit to believe it. One theologian pointed out that at given points in their lives some persons do not need prayer and Bible reading as much as they need exercise and proper sleep. Great are the beneficial effects of jogging on the mind as well as the body.
4. Jogging may well make your ministry quantitatively longer and qualitatively better. Perhaps you read the National Geographic article that told of people active after the age of one hundred who daily used their bodies in jogging motions. Many joggers have lived long; it is surprising more have not shared their secret. Perhaps they thought few would listen—it seemed so outlandish, until medical research verified the benefits. A notable example is Harry Lewis, a 105-year-old man in San Francisco, who still runs six miles daily.
5. Jogging can be the key to successful weight-reduction. Jogging burns calories like fury and, more important, readjusts the metabolism. After much jogging, one is more inclined to consume food only as it is needed. Jogging is psychologically satisfying: one finds small amounts of food tasting better.
Jogging is a form of mastery of the body. When the body is used for long running periods it becomes more tractable; you start giving orders to the body and not vice versa. Even minimally reduced food intake plus jogging will take off weight and keep it off. Have you ever seen a person who jogged daily for a year and stayed obese? Of course not.
For a jogger it is either live thin or give up. The act of running becomes more important than food. Food also loses its dominance over other aspects of life.
Jog every day for four weeks and you’ll be hooked. Look back after a year and you will want to run as long as you are able, and that will probably be a long time.
6. Jogging prepares you for other sports and for long hours of work. Why fool around with the other sports, even the best ones, if you are out of shape? For example, it is harder to get in shape by swimming, because you give out too soon and cannot keep moving into your tiredness (an aspect of jogging-conditioning).
After running three miles daily for nearly a year I was able to do the three-mile run, in summer heat, and after a shower go to a pool and swim vigorously for half an hour. I left feeling relaxed and vibrant, calm and yet strong.
After two years of faithful jogging, one summer day I cut the grass, ran three miles, and then played eighteen holes of golf with a neighbor. I was hitting stronger than ever by the eighteenth tee, beat my neighbor’s score, and was not tired. (I golf once a year for old time’s sake. My neighbor practices every day; it helps keep his pot-belly in tone.)
I know this: jogging carried me through a full load of post-graduate work with four churches and 120 miles between. Before jogging I couldn’t have done it. Many times I enjoyed this experience: four sermons on Sunday, home to run three miles, a snack, a 120-mile drive, an hour’s work, to bed, and up to a nine o’clock class with no martyr-feeling. It was routine. I trace it to jogging, not prayer. Many pastors have not neglected their spirits, but they have failed their bodies.
7. Lastly, jogging offers the best athletic analogy to the Christian life. I speak advisedly. Jogging is not glamorous; it is often boring drudgery broken with moments of high delight. However, nothing exceeds the joy and delicious feeling that comes over a runner after each substantial run.
To run requires persistent, step-by-step, day-by-day patience. For this long-drawn-out courage, the rewards are great; you will notice the striking results yourself. Others will, too, and this will tend to create a hearing ahead of time for what you have to say. (These comments apply to both running and the Christian life.)
Men of God, I call attention to the fact that God’s most widely used evangelist is a jogger! You know his name. I hope you add your name to the list.
Run, pastor, run. The life you save may be your own—to the saving of others as well.—HAYDN GILMORE, pastor and journalist, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania.