Page 6025 – Christianity Today (2024)

Dear Prudes about Nudes:

The style of life in 1968 is pretty well epitomized by the ubiquitous mini-skirt on the maxi-mum. Americans today seem obsessed by the desire to view or reveal as many curved inches of skin as the occasion will allow. In any major city, skin-flicks formerly shown clandestinely at stag parties now are big box office at “art” theaters. Lurid still shots lure customers in to see such epics as The Nudies Meet the Nasties. In countless cabarets, bottomless ecdysiasts now draw the leering lechers formerly titillated by the artistry of strictly topless performers.

In such a culture it is hardly surprising that churchmen who get their inspiration from observing humanity’s endeavors to be truly human should produce a film like Another Pilgrim, a forty-minute experimental feature recently screened at New York’s Judson Memorial Church. Its climax comes when a minister totally disrobes at the close of a service. The Rev. Al Carmines, who produced the film for the World Council of Churches, explained that the disrobing had a symbolic significance. Standing nude before his congregation, the minister in the film, it seems, dramatically demonstrates the need for absolute honesty.

Now I’m not exactly against honesty, and I enthusiastically endorse the human body—especially the female—as God’s greatest work of art. But I must protest the unrestrained exploitation of nudity for any cause—moral or lascivious. When will people learn to leave a good thing alone? To glut the market with nudity is to diminish its mystery and lessen our appreciation of it. Any woman realizes that sexual attraction depends more on charming concealment than blatant exposure. And many men know that after you’ve seen so many, they all look alike. Well, almost. Entrepreneurs of nudity seem to forget that after the bottomless, little can be done for an encore. There’s nothing left to show in such show business.

Far-out churchmen with scatological eschatological doctrine have a penchant for “shocking” all us “prudes” with gimmicks like the disrobing scene. We can be thankful at least that they have not introduced prostitutes into their temples for “religious” purposes. Yet. But then our modern La Dolce Vita has not run its course.

Your observant sexpert,

EUTYCHUS III

A THIRD APPROACH

I rejoicingly agree with Dr. Gaebelein (“Toward a Biblical View of Aesthetics,” Aug. 30) that “for a Christian aesthetic the primary source is Scripture.” But there is an approach to the Bible as a basis for a Christian aesthetic other than “references to art” and “biblical doctrine” (cf. Auerbach’s Mimesis). That third approach is via reverent examination of the God-in-spired scriptural literature of narration, history, biography, parable, epistle; of devotion, penitence, comfort, edification, festivity, and adoration—and the sovereign Triune God is the Subject in each genre and tonal expression. These Scriptures are our perfect models as well as (in their totality) the fount of our entire redeemed life by the Holy Spirit in Christ our Lord and King.

MERLE MEETER

Sioux Center, Iowa

SHOULD BE SHOUTED

I have read with deep interest the article entitled “Christ in the Classroom,” by James Kallas (Aug. 30).

As a Roman Catholic, I am anxious to tell you that, in my opinion, the views expressed by Dr. James Kallas are so overwhelmingly sound that his message should be shouted from the housetops. I strongly suspect that the scenes that I witnessed on television … from the streets of Chicago depicted many of the results that come from the false doctrine of no indoctrination of any kind, whether it involves Christianity, good morals, good citizenship, or good manners. Christian education, as explained by Dr. Kallas, leads, as a rule, to self-discipline, which I believe is the key to personal happiness.

C. ELLIS HENICAN

New Orleans, La.

Dr. Kallas’s article implies what is perhaps the best case against Christian education, namely, the ever-present danger of its elevation to a status which is all out of proportion to that given it by our Lord or the Scriptures generally.… Christ said nothing about education; he said a very great deal about piety, if by piety we mean holiness.

RICHARD A. RIESEN

Claremont, Calif.

THE BIBLICAL BASIS

One must agree that the proposed creed for the United Chuch of Canada (“A Creed for Canadians?,” editorial, Aug. 30) is lamentably lax. It is a patent “accommodation to the temper of the times”.…

The editorial’s most trenchant criticism came in the closing paragraph: “Where is the biblical basis for a creed that neglects vital factors …?” Indeed! Where is the biblical basis for any human creed?

DAN ANDERS

Church of Christ

El Monte, Calif.

TO BE ONE

“Negative Thoughts About Ecumenism” (Aug. 30) also contained some anti-biblical thoughts about the unity of the Church. If the Bible is to be truly taken as the only guide, then it matters nothing what “we have to give to each other,” but what we are able to find together in Christ.… “To be one,” truly, does not necessitate uniformity in all matters; but to therefore conclude that the present denominational divisions are permissible, even laudable, shows a lack of reading of First Corinthians 1:10–13 and Galatians 5:20. The New Testament Church, God’s Church, was one Church, one body, and no rationalizing can support any improvements on God’s design.

TERRY PACE

Christ’s Church at Remmel

Newport, Ark.

BOLD SATELLITE

While Skyline Christian Institute begins a twelve-month countdown before it launches its satellite campus (News, Aug. 30), Messiah College has already launched such a campus in cooperation with Temple University.…

The Messiah College-Temple University program is a bold attempt to provide relevant education for Christian young people through broad curricular opportunities, rich cultural advantages, and direct confrontation with the ghetto problems of urban America. Students will complete two years of work in the suburban setting of the Grantham campus. They may then study at the Temple campus for one or two years. During their study at Temple, all students will engage in a team-taught general-education course. This course on Christianity and culture will examine current problems of our society, including such topics as war and peace, the urban crisis, and racial relations. In studying these present problems, constant attention will be given to such underlying themes as the nature of man, the role of the church, and the nature of the just society.

DANIEL R. CHAMBERLAIN

Dean

Messiah College

Grantham, Pa.

ANSWER TO ATHEISM

Congratulations to Harold B. Kuhn for his article, “Atheism: The Old and the New” (Current Religious Thought, Aug. 30). He managed to cut through the plethoric body of environmental, psychological, and theological conclusions which gave rise to “Christian atheism” and present a succinct, understandable summary of that “cancer.” Would to God he or someone else could do the same in rebuttal to this newer atheism. Evangelical theology is admirable, desirable, and soul-satisfying, but it seems unable to equal modern theology in satisfying the intellect. Perhaps Mr. Kuhn should expand the last two paragraphs of his article to give us laymen the answers to the problems he identified in the first thirteen. I wonder how many semi-informed evangelical Christians give spiritual assent to their faith but secretly agree with many of the “findings” of the newer atheism?

MARVIN OWENS

Waltham, Mass.

WISH FOR LAYMEN

As a layman I want to thank you for the very fine article, “Babel or Pentecost?,” by L. Nelson Bell (“A Layman and His Faith,” Aug. 16). I wish that every layman in the country who is concerned about his Church and its message to the world could have an opportunity to read this provocative article calling attention to the causes of a gradual apostasy in the pulpit and in the churches.

TOM F. BURR

Houston, Tex.

NO HANGUPS

You did it! And I can hardly believe it, for most of the time those who write feature articles on the Bible in your magazine have too many hangups. But thanks to Klaas Runia for his accurate and aggressive and encompassing article (Aug. 16). “The Modern Debate Around the Bible.” Let’s have more like it.

DENNIS E. GLAD

South Park Covenant Church

Rockford, Ill.

HOPE FOR HARMONY

Acts XXIX (News, Aug. 16) is not the result of a “stormy chapter in the history of Campus Crusade for Christ.” Those of us who left Campus Crusade are still more than convinced that Campus Crusade is an outstanding organization accomplishing a great ministry.… We desire and expect a harmonious relationship with Campus Crusade as well as all churches and groups involved in the work of Christ.

JON E. BRAUN

Acts XXIX Fellowship

Blue Jay, Calif.

IN BOOK FORM

This is to thank you for the “Fundamentals of the Faith” booklets which have been bound in with the several issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Now that the series of thirteen is complete, may I enter a plea, in which others will join, I am sure, that the entire series be bound together in a paperback. It would provide a splendid study book for adult classes looking for elective courses and would, I am sure, find many other uses.

JOHN OLDMAN, JR.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

• The essays on “Fundamentals of the Faith” will appear cloth-bound in 1969 in the series of “Contemporary Evangelical Thought” volumes edited by Dr. Carl F. H. Henry.—ED.

In an article last year, Dr. Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College, reported that a committee of fifteen evangelical scholars had begun work on a new English translation of the Bible. Many of these scholars, including Dr. Paine, are well known in conservative circles. They will be advised by a large board consisting of officers of national Christian organizations and denominations, school men, and other Christian leaders.

In this article (“Why We Need Another Translation,” United Evangelical Action, October, 1967), Dr. Paine discusses the reasons for this project. The King James Version is losing its long-held ascendancy because of the public demand for a Bible in modern language. The Revised Standard Version, now the only strong alternative to the King James, is, in the opinion of a number of evangelical scholars, “quite unacceptable to Bible-believing people.” “Its most serious defect,” says Paine, is “an apparent design to minimize and annihilate what we call the unity of Scripture, its cohesiveness and harmony, particularly as between the Old and New Testaments.” In contrast, he says, a faithful translation will be marked by consistency between the Old and New Testaments. “Those who believe that God through human instrumentality authored both Old and New Testaments will expect to find them harmonious. In making word choices in translation they will naturally choose the words which recognize rather than destroy this harmony.”

The devotion and sincerity of members of this Committee on Bible Translation can only be commended. But some of their assertions and assumptions must be respectfully challenged.

Alleged Mistranslations

Paine points out three sets of RSV passages that he feels show mistranslation.

1. Psalm 45:6—Hebrews 1:8. In the King James Version, Psalm 45:6 reads, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.…” Paine notes that the writer of Hebrews regarded this as a prophetic reference to Christ: “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever” (Heb. 1:8, KJV). The RSV translators are then criticized for rendering the line in Psalm 45, “Your divine throne endures for ever and ever.” In doing this the RSV “seemingly snuffs out any logical or probably Messianic implications of the statement” by eliminating the “thy” referring to the deity; the “divine throne,” says Paine, could refer to that of any king.

This is quite misleading. Psalm 45 is addressed to the king of Israel or Judah (v. 1). To translate the line as “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever” is to imply that the king was thought to be divine. In the Ancient Near East, kings of some countries, such as Egypt, were often considered divine. But most scholars believe that evidence is generally against a widespread belief in the deity of a Hebrew king.

Now if the verse is not intended to make the king divine, then it must be said to embody hyperbole or exaggerated language. And if this is so, then the RSV translators legitimately render the verse, “Your divine throne endures for ever.” They thereby retain the idea of divine approval but avoid the notion of divine kingship for a ruler of Judah. At the same time they note in the margin that the Hebrew syntax allows for other renderings, including the KJV one.

For philological and contextual reasons, the reading of the RSV is perfectly legimate. And many evangelicals feel it is the preferred reading. In this instance as in many others, the New Testament goes beyond the Old Testament. It adds something new. It does not agree exactly with the Old Testament; to insist that it must is to pervert the first intention of the Old Testament writer.

2. Isaiah 7:14—Matthew 1:22, 23. Paine cites the much discussed passage in Isaiah 7 as a “standard” RSV handling of the text. As is well known, the RSV translates verse 14, “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” In a footnote “virgin” is listed as an alternative reading. The New Testament (Matt. 1:22, 23) uses this sentence to refer to the virgin birth of Christ. The Greek word parthenos definitely denotes a virgin, not merely a young woman, and it was this word that was used in the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 made about the third or second century before Christ. Consequently, some evangelicals have long inveighed against the translators of the RSV for mistreating the Old Testament text.

But that is not the whole story. The direct reference in Isaiah 7:14 is to a boy to be born, at most, within fifteen years from the time of the prophecy, and probably sooner. The mother of the boy is a contemporary of Isaiah. Moreover, despite Paine’s assertion that “no one questions that ’almah [the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7:14] could properly be translated ‘virgin,’ but somehow the RSV committee thought it better the other way,” there are many scholars who question whether ’almah should ever be translated “virgin.” There is certainly no definite evidence that it must be translated that way. And most scholars, including various evangelicals, think that the word should be translated “young woman” in Isaiah 7, even if it can sometimes mean “virgin.” They note that Hebrew has another word, bethulah, that explicitly means “virgin.”

In using the prophetic statement to refer to Christ, Matthew goes beyond the Old Testament just as the writer of Hebrews does. He adds something new. It is a travesty to deprive the Old Testament of its direct intention and to insist that an indirect usage in the New Testament must be imposed upon the Old Testament.

3. Genesis 12:3; 22:18—Galatians 3:8, 16. The other example of alleged mistreatment of the text by the RSV translators is in Genesis 12:3. As Paine notes, in the King James Version and the American Standard Version the verse is translated, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” These versions also use the passive verb form for Genesis 22:18, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Paine then observes that in Galatians 3:8 Paul uses the Abrahamic blessing as a prophecy of Christ: “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (KJV). This too is a passive construction. One should note also Galatians 3:16, where Paul says, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many; but, referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ which is Christ” (RSV).

Paine now takes issue with the RSV translators for rendering Genesis 22:18 (the article says 12:3), “By your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves.” Again there is no reference to the footnote in the RSV giving “be blessed” as an alternative rendering. The author claims that by using the plural, “descendants,” the translation excludes the one, Christ. Using “bless themselves” rather than “be blessed” changes the picture, we are told from one of Christ bringing blessing to the nations to one of having the nations bless themselves through Abraham or his descendants.

In reply, one may say that the RSV translation has good reason behind it. “Seed” in reference to offspring is not used in modern speech, and “descendant(s)” is a much more appropriate translation. Moreover, the Hebrew word for “seed” (zera’) is simply not used in the plural form. The singular form commonly has a plural meaning.

More importantly, the contexts of the blessing statements in Genesis support the plural reading. Let the impartial reader look at all the “your seed” promises addressed to the patriarchs. For orientation let him begin with Genesis 15:13–21 and then proceed to Genesis 12:6–7; 13:14–17; 17:1–22; 21:12, 13; 22:15–18; 24:7, 60; 26:1–5, 24; 28:1–4, 10, 15; 32:9–12; 35:9–12; and 48:3–21. Even in the King James Version, the plural connotation of “seed” is generally inescapable.

The reflexive translation of Genesis 22:18, “And by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves,” is also in full accord with the Hebrew verbal construction. The passive translation, “be blessed,” would be equally possible if one were to look at this verse alone. But the same construction is also found in Genesis 26:4; Deuteronomy 29:19; Isaiah 65:16; Jeremiah 4:2, and Psalm 72:17. In Genesis, Isaiah, and the Psalms the meaning of the verb is ambiguous, either reflexive or passive. But the context in Deuteronomy 29:19 and the parallelism in Jeremiah 4:2 show that a reflexive translation is preferable. Interestingly enough, even the translators of the King James Version used the reflexive in these passages. The RSV translation of Genesis 22:18 and corresponding passages is, therefore, based on the evidence of the Hebrew texts themselves.

The RSV use of “bless themselves” in Genesis 12:3 is less certain. This verbal form is found in only three places (cf. Gen. 18:18 and 28:14). Hence, little evidence is available to indicate whether a reflexive or a passive translation is preferable. To argue that the RSV translators made a mistake in choosing the reflexive here would be incorrect. On the other hand, to use the passive in these three places would be perfectly acceptable also. Paul no doubt followed a Greek reading like that of the Septuagint, which has “seed” in the singular and “blessed” in the passive. Aside from these few uncertain instances, the Old Testament evidence corroborates the RSV translations of the promises of blessing in Genesis.

Examination of alleged mistranslations in the RSV often shows that they are not mistranslations at all but are faithful renderings of the Hebrew texts. About 90 to 95 per cent of the supposed mistranslations in the RSV can be defended. And most of the other “errors” are possible or probable as alternative translations.

In some evangelical circles the Revised Standard Version has too long been spanked like a naughty boy. Probably there are a few points at which theological bias has caused a less preferable reading in the RSV text, but these are rare. And in many ways the RSV is an excellent translation. It is dignified, yet idiomatic and contemporary, and it is powerful in its representation of Old Testament poetry.

The most disturbing thing about the proposed translation is the apparent contention that, if a translation is to be reliable, the Old Testament must agree exactly with the New Testament. This contention is especially associated with prophecy and fulfillment.

From time to time someone will argue something like this: “There are at least seventy-five direct prophecies about details of Christ’s life made at least four hundred years before he was born.” But this approach is grossly oversimplified. Actually, most of the “prophecies” are not at all direct. They are indirect and are based only on one or more points of correspondence. And having a point of correspondence is not the same as being equivalent. In numerous places where the New Testament uses the Old, there is either a modification of the text or a shift of application or both.

This does not mean that the New Testament use of the Old Testament is necessarily inappropriate. To Christians, the language of the Old Testament often finds its completion and greatest meaning in Christ, even when the first intention or meaning of that language was somewhat different. The unity of the Bible cannot be based on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament by New Testament writers or on an exact equivalence in meaning and translation. Rather, the unity is based on the great over-arching themes that span the two testaments, God’s continued work among his people, and the actual realization of some hopes and prophecies.

New Translation Unnecessary

The RSV is not the only modern version available to English readers. The American Standard Version, the Jerusalem Bible, the Berkeley Version, and a number of other translations and paraphrases are helpful. Moreover, other translations are forthcoming, including the New English Bible translation of the Old Testament.

It is questionable, then, whether a new evangelical translation is needed, even if it were to be based on the soundest principles. Could not the thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours to be spent on this new version be better invested elsewhere? And because the new translation is to be based in part on the highly questionable premises described in this article, the translation is more than unnecessary. Despite the good intentions of the translators, it is also inadvisable.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible has been used now for over fifteen years and has won many friends and suffered much attack. Even yet it is perhaps too early to gauge accurately its total influence on the Church. Obviously it has attractive features. It reads well. The translation is carefully prepared and dignified. And it embodies current scholarship. Why ask for another translation?

The answer is that the RSV also has serious faults.

First, it is clear that the RSV represents modern critical scholarship. Higher criticism does not accept the doctrine of the full trustworthiness of Scripture, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Nor does it believe that truly predictive prophecy is possible. These views are noticeable in the resulting translation.

Another problem is that the RSV is more than a translation. On many of the pages of the Old Testament there are footnotes, marked by Cn, correcting the Hebrew text on the basis of the translators’ ideas of what the text should have said. Often the Greek, Syriac, or Targumic readings are chosen over the Hebrew, but with no discernible regularity or definite principle. Many times the evidence is bypassed and the Hebrew is corrected according to the translators’ judgment. Doubtless some of these changes in the text may be justified. To conservative scholars, however, many of them seem quite unnecessary, and some seem entirely unwarranted and even prejudicial to the teachings of the Bible.

Here is the main problem in the RSV. Any version will have mistakes, but many of what the conservative sees as problems in the RSV seem tendential. They introduce unnecessary conflicts between Old Testament and New Testament and between one book and another. These conflicts become particularly numerous and important in the field of Messianic prophecy. The full force of this treatment can only be to weaken respect for the full truthfulness of the Bible and for the evidential value of Old Testament prediction.

Conjectures and Mistranslations

In the general field of conjecture it is of interest to test the authors of the RSV in the Book of Isaiah. About thirty conjectured textual alterations are noted in the footnotes of the RSV Isaiah, in addition to the places where the translators chose the Greek or another version over the Hebrew. Twenty-six of these corrections had been suggested thirty years ago in the footnotes of the third edition of Kittel’s Hebrew Bible, which is of critical slant. While the RSV was in preparation, the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah was discovered and published. It is interesting to note that not one of these thirty scholastic conjectures is supported by the Isaiah scroll (about 150 B.C.). Possibly a few of them are justified. In most of these places, however, it seems likely that critical scholarship has done an injustice to the Hebrew text simply in order to obtain an easier and smoother reading.

A further troublesome matter in these corrections is that the footnotes, which claim to give the reading of the Hebrew as it stands, are not always sound. It is not clear which words of the text replace which words of the Hebrew as given in the footnote. And often the footnotes translate the Hebrew with such wooden, word-for-word equivalence that the rejected reading looks far more impossible than it really is. The net result is unfair to the Hebrew text.

Also of interest are passages where conservative scholars have alleged that there are mistranslations.

In Leviticus 16:8, 10, the RSV states that on the day of atonement two goats shall be taken for a sin offering for the congregation. One shall be sacrificed to the Lord; the other shall be “sent away into the wilderness to Azazel” (the ASV rendering is similar). Azazel is not explained here, but in standard dictionaries it is defined as a Jewish demon of the wilderness mentioned in Enoch and other apocryphal literature. The translation implies that the high priest was to placate both the Lord and the demons, thereby suggesting that Israel’s religion had low origins indeed. But this translation is quite unnecessary. The name can well be taken as a compound, “the goat of going out,” or “escape goat” (so the Septuagint), thus symbolizing the removal as well as the expiation of sin. No alternative reading is suggested by the RSV.

In Deuteronomy 1:2; 4:46, the RSV (like the ASV) refers to Moses’ final addresses as given “beyond the Jordan.” This is in accord with long-standing critical opinion that Deuteronomy was written not by Moses but by some later author living west of the Jordan river. However, concordance study will show that the phrase is applicable to both shores of the Jordan regardless of the author’s standpoint. In Numbers 32:19 it is even used of both east and west banks in the same verse, the second instance being translated by the RSV as “on this side of the Jordan.”

In Joshua 9:1, Joshua in Palestine refers to the west bank using this phrase. The KJV rightly translates it “on this side Jordan.” The RSV has the Palestinian author of Joshua 9:1 refer to Palestine as “beyond Jordan,” which is manifestly wrong. Like Deuteronomy 1:2, it is a misunderstanding of the Hebrew phrase.

In Psalm 29:1 the RSV translates “sons of the mighty” as “heavenly beings” with a footnote that the Hebrew actually says “sons of gods.” This reading derives from parallels between this psalm and Ugaritic poetry and from a critical interpretation of a somewhat similar phrase in Genesis 6:4. The claim is made that Genesis 6:4 embodies the myth of illicit unions of heavily beings with humans. These views neglect the comparison with Psalm 96:7–9, where the words of Psalm 29:1, 2 are quoted verbatim except that the phrase “sons of the mighty” is given an equivalent expression “families of the peoples.” The Hebrews themselves evidently did not take the phrase to mean “heavenly beings.”

Messianic Passages

The greatest harm in such unwarranted translations occurs when Old Testament Messianic passages are altered in line with critical theory. Almost half the usual Messianic passages suffer in the RSV.

The Septuagint version (200 B.C.) of Psalm 45:6 is quoted in Hebrews 1:8 as a proof of the deity of Christ. This verse has long been considered a sign that Christ’s deity was taught in the Old Testament, too. But the RSV without warrant renders the noun “God” as an adjective, “your divine throne,” with the KJV reading given as an alternative in the footnote. The present writer is convinced that the Septuagint, the New Testament, the KJV, and the ASV are correct in their translations. The psalm is one of the royal psalms. It derives its imagery from the promise to David that his descendants would include the Messianic King. True, this King is described in a wedding song. But the symbolism of a wedding need not render the psalm non-Messianic in intent. Plain translation of the Hebrew requires the view that the psalm is directly applicable to the Messianic King.

A somewhat similar problem in another Messianic prophecy is found in Psalm 16:10. The word shachath is translated “Pit” in the RSV, “corruption” in the KJV, and the verb tenses are rendered present in the RSV instead of future. The translation suggests that the psalm was written concerning one of David’s many escapes and was not applied to Christ until the New Testament. There is no footnote to indicate a possible alternative translation.

The heart of the problem is the word shachath. Most critical scholars derive it from shûach (“dig”) and claim that it can mean only “pit.” But the word can also be derived from shāchath (“to go to ruin”) and rendered “corruption” (other very similar words have a double derivation; cf. nachath, meaning both “rest” and “descent”). The Septuagint many times translated shachath as “corruption” long before the New Testament was written. It seems proper and preferable to interpret verse 10 as a promise of resurrection and verse 11 as a reference to heavenly glory. The future tenses of the KJV are also the most natural rendering.

The New Testament follows the Septuagint translation here and also informs us of David’s own faith. Peter reminds us that David was a prophet and that he understood God’s promise to raise up Christ from his royal line; knowing this, David predicted Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 2:29–31). Paul also says the verse cannot refer to David, for his flesh “saw corruption, but he whom God raised again saw no corruption” (Acts 13:36, 37). In the face of these apostolic testimonies, it is strange to see the translation “Pit” when the etymology of the word concerned allows “corruption” and the context demands it. Unfortunately, critical scholarship does not believe that David could have predicted Christ’s resurrection.

A brief word should be said about Isaiah 7:14. Reference even to Young’s Concordance will show that the disputed word ’almah (“virgin”) never refers to a married woman in the Old Testament. It is used of unmarried women and was translated “virgin” by the Septuagint long before Christ came.

Moreover, the claim that the birth was to occur during the time of King Ahaz is disputable. The child of Isaiah mentioned in Isaiah 8:1–4 was indeed contemporary to Ahaz in his struggle with Israel and Syria, and the fulfillment of Isaiah 8:4 came in the Assyrian invasion of Galilee in 733 B.C. But another child, a divine child, is spoken of in Isaiah 9:6, 7, and he is definitely not Isaiah’s son. Nor could he have been Ahaz’ son, Hezekiah, who was already a grown boy and not essentially different from other princes. The child of Isaiah 9:6, 7 had to be David’s greater Son, who would be of David’s line and would rule in an eternal, righteous reign.

Likewise, in Isaiah 7:14–17 the date of the coming of the child is not given. It is said that before the child is born and weaned, Israel will be overthrown and Judah will be depopulated by the Assyrians. But this did not all happen until years later, probably not till Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 B.C. Neither Isaiah nor Ahaz knew when the threat would be accomplished, only that it would be before the coming of the wonderful child, Immanuel. The situation reminds us of Christ’s warning in Matthew 25:13, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh.” The judgment came years later, the wonderful birth many years after that.

Textual Criticism

We spoke at the beginning of alterations of the text in the interests of critical theory. This process can be dangerous indeed. Unfortunately, however, there has been some irresponsible criticism of the RSV at this point in its treatment of the New Testament text. The science of New Testament textual criticism has been studied well by both critical scholars and conservatives, and there is great agreement. Hence, the basic Greek text of the RSV New Testament does not seem to be a question of doctrinal argument, although, of course, there is room for difference on details, and doctrine is occasionally involved.

It is quite otherwise with the Old Testament. All our Old Testament Hebrew manuscripts known before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in very close agreement. They are not early; they date after A.D. 900. But the Hebrew text used by the RSV was no better than that used by the KJV except for the Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah and Habakkuk. And from these, correctly enough, only a very few new readings were adopted. The new thing the RSV did was to adopt many readings from the Greek Septuagint, the Syriac, the Latin, and Jewish Targums. Unfortunately, it seems almost as if the RSV translators chose whichever text made a smooth reading regardless of its inherent value. Surely many times they might better have chosen the harder reading.

Perhaps the strangest example is in Psalm 2:11, 12. The footnote says that the Hebrew is uncertain. But, there is no uncertainty in the Hebrew at all, except that critical scholars have refused for years to admit that the Aramaic word for “son” occurs here. The RSV takes two letters from a word in verse 11, jumps them over three words, and attaches them to the word bar (“son”) in verse 12, thus making a new word, “feet.” There is not the slightest warrant for this in any Hebrew manuscript or version. It may be noted, however, that after this scholastic legerdemain the verses lose their Messianic import. No longer is there an exhortation to trust in the “son”; he has been removed. How can a person who does not read Hebrew himself trust a translation that alters the text so greatly?

Less violent but also objectionable is the treatment of Psalm 49:12 and 20. These two verses are identical in the Hebrew except for one letter. “Abide” is līn; “understand” is bīn. Perhaps the difference is deliberate, and original. However, it is hard to avoid the view that the Septuagint is correct in taking both verses to read like verse 20. This makes the passage not a denial of immortality but an exhortation to wisdom. The RSV takes the opposite tack and translates both verses like verse 12, thereby suggesting a pessimism rather contradicted by the context (vs. 15). Moreover, although on this very page of the RSV the old versions are referred to five times in various footnotes, there is no footnote at all to indicate that verse 20 has been translated against the Greek, against the parallel in verse 12, and also against many of the Hebrew manuscripts (some of which say “abide” and some “understand”).

A Constructive Version

Both translation and text problems are less numerous in the New Testament than in the Old. And there are a number of New Testament translations in modern English that can be studied and compared. In the Old Testament field, however, there is still a crying need for a modern translation that is dignified, plain, and attractive, and above all, true to the message that God spoke through holy men of God moved by the Holy Ghost. It is not that evangelicals want an evangelical translation; they have always held that every translation must be tested and controlled by the text of the original languages. But evangelicals want a contemporary version that does not damage the text and meaning of Scripture by embodying destructive critical ideas.

It is probably too much to hope that a version can now be produced that will satisfy all scholars. The KJV was the climax of several attempts. But no effort should be spared to achieve for our day something of what the KJV translators did for theirs.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Therapeutic abortion is to some a blessing, to others murder. Most people see it as the conclusion to a highly unfortunate situation in which two lives appear to compete with each other. What guidelines are there for prescribing—or not prescribing—this drastic step?

In the past, most therapeutic abortions were performed to preserve the life of a pregnant woman; but gains in the prevention and control of severe illnesses have decreased the number of abortions performed for that reason. Today, however, psychiatric disturbances and the possibility of damage to the fetus by such conditions in the mother as German measles maintain the abortion rate.

No federal law forbids abortion, but each state has a prohibitory law with an exception for therapeutic abortion. Although these exceptions lack uniformity, most states permit abortion to save the mother’s life. Abortion laws date back to 1803, when abortion became a statutory felony in England. The first state law was enacted by Connecticut in 1821, and other states soon followed. Until 1967 there were no significant changes in these laws. Theoretically, most states still do not allow the physician to decide about abortion by exercising his best professional judgment in keeping with the medical ethics of his community. In practice, however, abortion laws are interpreted by the medical profession without interference from the courts. This means that therapeutic abortions are done in all fifty states in order to preserve maternal health as well as life. Modernization of abortion laws is necessary so that a physician, after proper consultation with specialists, can treat his patient without violating existing laws.

In the American Law Institute’s proposed Model Penal Code, medical ethics and legal opinion would permit abortion in three situations:

1. When it is needed to prevent grave impairment of the physical or mental health of the mother;

2. When there is substantial risk the child will be born with a grave physical or mental defect;

3. When the pregnancy results from rape or incest and there is authoritative certification.

The 1967 laws enacted in Colorado, North Carolina, and California, and the proposed new laws in several other states, are patterned after this code.

Although the Bible does not comment directly on abortion, the early Christian Church greatly influenced the development of present attitudes toward abortion. As early as A.D. 120–160, the Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) said that abortion was murder: “And this is the second commandment of the teaching. Thou shalt do no murder.… Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, or kill them when born.”

This condemnation of abortion in the early Christian Church was based on the simple thesis that abortion is murder and the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” forbids murder. However, in spite of this seemingly simple solution to the problem, sixteen centuries of debate by scholarly leaders of the Church have failed to settle the question whether abortion is always murder, or sometimes murder and sometimes not murder. About A.D. 240, the Roman theologian Tertullian said that abortion was murder only after the fetus had reached the point in its development when, according to Tertullian, it became human. But St. Basil, who also lived in the third century, maintained that abortion at any stage of fetal development was murder. And St. Augustine, in the early fifth century, distinguished between a “formed” and “non-formed” fetus as well as between a “living” and “not-yet living” fetus. Later, much discussion was given to whether the fetus was “animated” or “non-animated,” that is, infused with a soul or not. Gratian, a twelfth-century Italian canonist, stated, “He is not yet a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is infused into the body.”

Just when the fetus was infused with a soul, therefore, became a major subject of theological discussion. Each of the three points of view that evolved in some way influenced present attitudes and laws.

The Catholic Church settled the animation issue by maintaining that the soul entered the embryo at the moment of conception and that the embryo became at that moment a human person with full human rights. Therefore, Pope Sixtus V, in 1588, specifically stated that all abortions at any period of fetal development were murder, punishable by excommunication.

The second position—that animation occurred with the first fetal movement—dates back to the thirteenth century, when Thomas Aquinas defined motion as a principle of life. Thus in England after the fifteenth century, when common law declared that life began at the moment of quickening, abortion was a criminal offense only if after the fetus was quick. This position has influenced present laws, which require a birth certificate only after the fetus is twenty weeks old.

The third theory said the human soul was infused at the time of birth. The fetus was recognized not as a living human being but as part of the mother’s organs and only a potential person. This attitude lifted abortion out of the category of murder or homicide and formed the basis for present laws, which do not consider abortion homicide, since the subject of homicide must be a living human being.

Before the attempt is made to derive ethical guidelines for therapeutic abortion, some definitions are needed. In medical terms, abortion is the termination of a pregnancy at any time before the fetus has attained the age of viability, which varies from fetal weight of 400 grams (14 oz.) and twenty weeks’ gestation to a fetal weight of 1,000 grams (2 lb. 4 oz.) and twenty-eight weeks’ gestation. The most accepted standard for viability is fetal weight above 500 grams (1 lb. 2 oz.) or a gestation period longer than twenty weeks. It is at this mid-point in pregnancy when most women become aware of fetal movement (quickening).

To define the subject further, several questions should be considered:

1. When does life begin?

2. When does one become an individual human being with full human rights?

3. What are the rights of the non-viable fetus and the viable fetus?

4. What are the rights of the mother?

5. What happens when the rights of the mother are in conflict with those of the fetus?

On some of the questions there seems to be a consensus. Life begins with conception, more specifically at the time of fertilization, when the sperm and the egg unite. Then there is a period during which the fetus develops a body, mind, and soul. This phase of development has an obvious definable endpoint at birth, when the fetus becomes a human being with full human rights. The non-viable fetus, as well as the viable fetus, has certain rights; but in view of the dependence of the fetus on the mother, its rights should be considered and evaluated in relation to the mother’s rights.

Present-day observations and practices support these statements. Psychiatrists say the pregnant woman usually does not develop any specific feeling or attachment toward the fetus until after viability. Until she feels the fetus move, the pregnancy is an impression or figment of her imagination that she will either accept or reject. Later, however, the fetus becomes real to the mother, and she starts relating to it more specifically.

When there is a spontaneous abortion, the aborted products of conception, including the dead fetus, are considered surgical specimens and after proper medical examination are disposed of as such. Likewise, the non-viable fetus is not baptized or given a burial. After the fetus has attained viability, it is usually treated differently. It may be baptized, and the parents have the choice of a burial or scientific disposal of the fetus, whether it is born dead or alive. If carcinoma of the cervix is diagnosed in the first three months of pregnancy, the mother is usually treated with radiation or surgery without delay and without regard for the rights of the fetus. However, if the diagnosis is made in the last three or four months of pregnancy, the fetus is allowed to continue to the point where it can be delivered and have a chance of survival before the beginning of therapy. These are a few examples of situations in which the viable fetus is held in greater esteem than the non-viable fetus.

Thus, in medical, legal, and traditional religious practices, a distinction is usually made between a developing embryo or non-viable fetus and a viable fetus. Forbidding all abortions assumes that a human being came into existence at the time of conception; forbidding abortion of a viable fetus expresses the assumption that the prenatal process is one of becoming a human being. The corollary of the latter assumption is that the embryo, which is in the process of becoming a human being, under certain circ*mstances does not have the same rights as a viable fetus or the mother herself. However, this conclusion should not obscure the fact that the embryo is a human life and therefore is sacred.

The problem of therapeutic abortion has been receiving much publicity, and one can expect the issue to confront him more frequently in the future, requiring him to make decisions. In view of the Christian’s concern for the sanctity of life, what should his attitude be? Medical, legal, and traditional points of view should no doubt have some influence on this decision, but does the Bible offer more specific direction? As with other ethical problems where Scripture is not explicit, the Christian should seek God’s will in general guidelines for personal and corporate conduct. Those guidelines incorporate two elements: the character of Jesus described in the Gospels and the Christian attributes outlined in Galatians 5:22, 23.

Within the Christian Church today there are several approaches to ethical problems such as this. Which one establishes moral guidelines that are rooted in biblical ethics and are of practical value to the physician and clergyman?

A common approach to moral problems is the “existential” one, in which man is alone in the universe and free to act as he sees fit. He lives for himself and establishes values as situations arise. The nearest thing to an existential guideline would be freedom. Decisions are not right or wrong; they are only authentically free or not free. Man should do just what is right, decided solely by his feelings. Such an attitude would consider therapeutic abortion a problem of personal freedom. Anyone who would dictate a certain action or in any way interfere with a woman’s right to decide whether she will bear a child is unreasonably interfering with her fundamental right to personal freedom.

Another approach is the “situation ethics” code of conduct, for which the only guideline is love. Out of human love and concern for a woman’s social predicament, a doctor may decide that she needs an abortion.

These two approaches to abortion do not take into consideration any rights of the fetus as a human life. In addition, they do not recognize any absolutes on which to base decisions. They classify all God-revealed laws and principles as mere traditions and conclude that no specific rules can be applied to a problem apart from the nature of the particular situation itself.

A third approach tries to make hard and fast biblical rules for everything and often makes absolutes of things that are relative. It insists that the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is the absolute rule by which to judge abortion and thus forbids any direct interruption of a pregnancy at any stage of development. This seems to be a hyperlegalistic distortion of true Christian ethics.

Furthermore, “Thou shalt not kill” is usually interpreted “Thou shalt not murder.” The malicious, premeditated killing of one human being by another shows hostility, hatred, perhaps a desire for vengeance, and a complete absence of love. But the circ*mstances that lead to a therapeutic abortion are usually entirely different. There is no personal hostility expressed toward the non-viable fetus. The abortion is done not in the absence of love but out of a concern for the unfortunate circ*mstances that the woman faces. It is not an individual decision but usually involves a group, including several consulting doctors and a therapeutic-abortion committee. Often a minister or counselor is consulted also. The final decision of the group is based primarily on medical evidence and a concern for the persons involved. Still, when the physician destroys the life of the non-viable fetus, it is not his proudest moment.

Scriptural ethics, especially as summarized by Christ, accepts love as the guiding principle of conduct. Yet man is not always rational; without guidelines for love he can talk himself into many unloving things in the name of love. Thus, although love is the primary guiding principle of conduct, it must relate to the commandments and other biblical guidelines. Scripture declares that love and law are not opposites but rather are supplements of each other. Just as love motivated God to give laws for man’s welfare, so the person who truly loves God tries to keep these commandments. Love subjectively experienced and humanly interpreted, though superior to cold law, is inferior to divine love objectively revealed through Christ and the Word.

Of all the ethical approaches, only the scriptural one seems to provide the freedom, law, and love that the others seek. With God’s love and other scriptural guidelines to define the larger boundaries of personal conduct, decisions about the specific demands of love must be resolved out of a relationship to Jesus Christ and with a personal regard for individual situations.

Medical ethics as expressed by the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code and the scriptural approach to therapeutic abortion complement each other very well. Proper consultation with other physicians, counselors, and a therapeutic-abortion committee can document the medical reason for the abortion. Prayer, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit can help the physician and his patient understand what God’s love demands. Such an approach does not condone abortion for unwanted pregnancies where there is an absence of love and concern for the fetus, for population control, or for failures in family planning. With these guidelines, the Christian should be able to decide responsibly.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Just as Harvey Cox celebrates the freedom and discipline of the secular city, so I celebrate that of the secular university. If I, like Cox, seem over-optimistic, it is not that I do not see the dangers. Bishop Lesslie New-bigin in Honest Religion for Secular Man strikes the right balance when he points out the inevitability of secularization as well as the ambiguities in the notion of a secular society. He writes: “The more one explores the idea of a secular society, the more clear does it become that such a society could be maintained only by the participation of men and women in whom commitment to Christ is a living, personal, religious reality.” In such a context secularization need not be anti-Christian, and the Christian need not fear it. It may even be beneficial to Christianity and to the dissemination of Christian thought. A secular society may well give the Christian a better opportunity to serve God and share the Gospel than a religious, even a Christian, society. On the secular campus Christian students can learn to serve God today and prepare to be leaders in tomorrow’s secular society.

The secular campus provides every sort of opportunity for discussing the basic questions about life, and one hopes that Christian answers are offered along with others. With the anti-Viet Nam students I know—and with love-hippies, too, I imagine—one can have a field day in discussion. If one listens a lot, one begins to understand their concern and then will in turn be listened to. As the various standard objections to Christian faith are trotted out, one has a splendid teaching opportunity. While helping recently in a student mission I ran into objections having to do with the problem of evil, the character of God, sin, love, the past behavior and present attitude of the Christian Church, freedom, justice, the empirical basis of the Christian faith, hell and damnation, Christian teachings on sex, and the notion that science and evolution are disposing of the need for God.

There are a number of identifiable sources for the objections one meets.

1. Many result from ignorance. As ignorance of Christian teaching is increasing, we cannot say Christian things to students in Christian language and expect them to understand. Pre-evangelism will become increasingly important.

2. Other misconceptions are not simply the result of ignorance. Some may be traceable to faulty Christian teaching, others to the inadequacy of some traditional Christian conceptions.

3. Hosts of obstacles are generated by unexamined presuppositions. For example, lots of questions about why God permits evil arise from tacit assumptions about the character of God, or his relation to the universe. Ignorance of the presuppositions of science is a fruitful source. Many a student will start off, “Wouldn’t it be more rational …,” and then proceed with a mechanistic explanation. If I then help him to look for the starting points of his reasoning, he will generally agree after examining them that they too are based on faith. As a university teacher I believe I render the student a service if I help him to be critical of his presuppositions, even if I cannot help him to Christian faith.

4. One family of difficulties that arises for Christians and non-Christians alike stems, I believe, from employing a wrong model of the universe. Since the common use of a faulty mechanistic model weakens Christian apologetic, I shall elaborate this point later.

5. As civilization progresses, new situations arise that cause new problems for Christian understanding. A current example bears the tag, “man come of age.” We must let the non-Christian see that though we have no ready answers we are not afraid to face the issues.

6. The last source of obstacles to belief is the content of the Christian faith itself. Although one may be able to show the coherence of the facts of the faith, one cannot answer the question, “Why should it be this way?” One can only bear witness, and worship.

A Faulty Model of the Universe

Quite often I am asked to speak on science or evolution in relation to Christian faith. In discussing problems in these areas with Christians of all sorts, I early became aware that for them Creation was an event that happened a long time ago, and nothing much has happened since. Things go on by themselves; matter is eternal. Thus while few of us accept consciously the deist position that the Creator is no longer involved with the world he fashioned, important elements of that crippling view linger still.

When people discuss the sovereignty of God, human responsibility, and free will, their notion of God’s relation to his creation often seems mechanical. Christians who talk of being “in” or “out” of God’s will make it sound like a railway track, and they may wonder fruitlessly how, when they have got off the track, they can get back on. A mechanical image such as this seems to conflict with the concept of forgiveness of sins. We entertain such static notions of God! To many, heaven seems a boring place, because nothing ever happens or if anything does happen it is dreadfully repetitive, like “harpers harping on their harps,” to quote an Anglican hymn.

All the points I have mentioned cluster in my thinking around two words, “machine (or mechanism)” and “blueprint”—both completely static concepts. In my mind, “blueprint connects with metaphysical statements about God, the God of the philosophers, who can be clearly defined and who is quite unlike the God of the Hebrews whom we meet in the Old Testament. You cannot guess, much less predict, what Jehovah will do. St. Paul speaks of the mystery of the Gospel—a secret revealed, not a theorem latent in a set of axioms.

In the first part of The Secular City, Cox points out correctly that God the Lord is known through history and that history knows no blueprint. Science, of course, is an enterprise whose main goal is to discover or reconstruct a blueprint describing the universe as science knows it. That science deals in blueprints is not surprising, because one of its basic assumptions is the uniformity of nature, which means that the passage of time is irrelevant, that the behavior of the universe does not change. If time is irrelevant, then all that science can discover is an unchanging set of relationships that can be schematized one way or another, even in a blueprint. In short, it can only discover what it assumed—an unchanging, static pattern. I am told that the Greeks, to whom in part we are indebted for science, had no concept of history. For them the passage of events was circular (“the ever-encircling years”), not linear; that is, it did not move from a beginning to an end as in biblical thought. The Greek notion of the passage of events is compatible with the blueprint idea and with the idea of a machine, because all depend upon the view that reality is unchanging, static.

One of the qualities of machines is that they are independent of their makers, and of their designers. It is because we normally think that the universe is a machine, that matter is eternal, and that nothing ever really happens, that we no longer effectively believe in God as a Creator and Sustainer. If the universe were indeed a machine, then the current scientific theory of evolution would dispose of the need for God. But if instead the scientists assured us that every kind of living thing had existed in the universe as far back as anyone could go, we would still, if the universe is a machine, have no need of God. We would just need a different blueprint.

Since in a machine universe nothing every really happens, human work has no real meaning apart from its usefulness in providing the means of living. I think it is because most Christians still believe in a mechanical universe that they have so little positive thought on the subject of work and culture to offer the world.

I have no quarrel with the scientist for likening the universe to a machine. The utterly remarkable thing is that he can get away with it. There really are points of similarity between the nature of the universe and that of a machine. No one yet knows how far the similarity goes. For the purposes of science, the scientist can properly regard the universe as a machine. The Christian ought to know better than carry the image beyond this. The Lord revealed himself in history, in ways that defy blueprinting. The whole of creation, then, cannot be adequately modeled on a machine or a blueprint.

An Unfinished Novel

I want to suggest that if we liken God, in relation to his creation, to an author writing a partly finished novel, we have a much better model to guide our thinking and stimulate our intuition. In a good novel the characters have a surprising degree of freedom, within the giveness of their natures and environment. Moreover, their actions and choices seem to flow naturally from their natures and circ*mstances. At the same time we know that, without forcing his characters, the skillful writer is in control of the situation and knows the end from the beginning. Is it too much to claim that the author and his characters cooperate in creating the ongoing tangle of events and relationships that make the novel?

Such a model is rich enough to contain the complex personal interactions that we know are part of human life but that, probably because of their complexity, are not dealt with by the reigning priesthood, the scientists. It also easily contains the machine-like aspects of the inanimate universe. Within this model, a discussion of predestination and human freedom presents much less difficulty than it does within a mechanistic and hence deterministic model. I think the model also helps us grasp more clearly the utter freedom of God to create what he wanted, plus his lack of freedom in changing the ground rules once he started.

Like all comparisons, this one will not match reality perfectly. Before acccepting it wholeheartedly we should test its explanatory power more thoroughly.

The Old Testament is readily understood on the basis of the novel model. People have certainly used the expression “the drama of the Bible” often enough, but they do not seem to have applied the concept to reality and then asked what sense it makes of the Old Testament. Put simply, the Old Testament brings together the most significant events and ideas in the whole history of the human race. From it we learn that the Author of the novel loves his characters and intends to have a special relationship with them that the Hebrews called “knowing him.” In the twentieth century we can best liken it to an intimate, personal relationship like marriage. The writers of the Old Testament books were men who believed in God and so could infer his character from his deeds and from his words through the prophets. By faith they understood, and by faith they grasped the beginning and the distant end of the story. Thus they were able to select intelligently the significant events for inclusion in what Bishop Newbigin calls an “outline of world history,” and in another place simply “universal history.”

In this kind of model, “things happen.” Hence we can readily cope with ideas of development and progress that are in no sense mechanical or automatic, such as the ordinary Hebrew’s growth in understanding the character of the Lord and the rather general growth one can trace throughout history in moral discipline and care of the other fellow.

I find the model particularly attractive when I think of Christ as the Logos or Word, the Self-Expression of God. No word of wide human use can serve as a tool of communication out of context. What do I mean if I simply utter the word “love”? Nothing, It must be spoken in context. Similarly, the author of the universe took a long time in history to prepare an adequate context in which he could utter his Word and then be understood. This is why I believe the Old Testament to be a most important book.

In discarding the mechanical model and opting for the novel model of the universe, we break out of a closed system of thought and move toward an open one: we are freed from a metaphysical bondage. An important result is that our thinking can become at once more biblical (see Ps. 104 for the LORD’s involvement in the everyday) and more like that of our contemporaries in this empirical, secular age.

Benefits of Secularism

Secularization is the process in which human government and laws and human thought are removed from religious control. It seems to stem from a realization that we can neither get nor compel human agreement on ultimate questions, whether of government, morals, or faith. The enterprise we call modern science prospered when men ceased to concern themselves directly with ultimate causes and investigated the local causes of phenomena instead. Some scientists have great hopes for human welfare from the application of genetic knowledge for the improvement of human heredity. But all such schemes founder upon the lack of agreement by the planners (and the planned for!) as to what are desirable long-range goals.

In the symposium Man and His Future, P. B. Medawar concluded that we must limit our aims to “doing good in small particulars.” I like that phrase. It expresses well what I think may lie behind the process of secularization—a becoming humility.

What are some examples of the process of secularization? An obvious one in the United States is the separation of church and state. Another is a refusal to consider a person’s religion in assessing his suitability for employment. The ruling that prayers and Bible reading should not take place in public schools is another instance of the apparently irresistible logic of secularization. Protestants generally object when Roman Catholics support certain laws because of their teachings on birth control, when the Protestants do not agree with those laws. Simple justice, then, prevents us from imposing our wills on other people for purely religious reasons. The modern state of India is another example of secularization. In contrast, Burma has declared itself a Buddhist nation and is opposing secularization. One predictable consequence of this is that they are excluding Christian missionaries.

From what I have said about secularization, it should be clear that the end result, a secular society, is a pluralistic society in which one is free to believe as one chooses and free to win others by persuasion. A secular society would be a very different thing from a secularist or materialist society, or indeed from Christendom as we have known it in the past. In a materialistic society one would not be free to be a Christian or a Buddhist or anything else, because the government of that society would be committed to a certain philosophy or world view—to a religion, one might say.

Do I think secularization is a good thing? The scientist in me reacts to that question by observing that the process is occurring whether I like it or not. Personally I feel it is inevitable. Why? Because I am very aware, as a Christian, that whatever freedom I want for myself I must work to obtain for the other fellow also. It is clear that the underdeveloped countries think that industrialization, technology, and science are good things, because countries that have these facilities and skills have a comfortable material life. It is quite clear that these things historically have gone along with secularization, and that if one wants these, secularization follows along, if for no other reason than that to get industrialization is to become part of Western civilization, where the process of secularization is occurring. It is not arrogance to say that in order to industrialize, nations will have to abandon or seriously modify their traditional cultures and religions. This, after all, is what has happened to Christendom.

What makes it hard for Christians to cope with secularization is that our religion is the source both of the process and of the cultural and institutional features of our society which the process is destroying or modifying. The Western attitude toward nature—namely, that man is superior to nature—makes possible technology and science, and it is widely recognized that this attitude derives from Christian faith. The empirical approach so characteristic of modern society echoes a biblical attitude and accords with the fundamental Christian assumption of the contingent nature of the universe, a nature, therefore, that we can know only by discovery and not by reasoning alone. The same insight that moved the Pilgrim fathers to reject the divine right of kings also enabled Moses to confront Pharaoh and, I believe, informs the struggle for civil rights. The God of Abraham and Jesus, whom Christians worship, is greater than any government, even a Christian one, and is not to be identified with any. Obviously his will is not to be identified with any set of social customs, however gracious. This prophetic, biblical conviction lies behind the process of secularization and means that the status quo is under continual judgment.

I see all secular activity, and secularization in particular, in relation to the revealed purposes of God. When I read the prologue of John’s Gospel, I learn of the activity of Christ, the Logos. I learn that he was active in creation (v. 3), that all men live because of his life (v. 4), and that men’s reason, moral and intellectual (v. 4, 9) comes from him. I learn that he is opposed but that the enshrouding darkness has not overcome his light (v. 5). No human activity occurs apart from God.

God, in giving man dominion over the universe, made him, in a limited sense, co-creator with Himself. In telling man to be fruitful and multiply, the Lord God set him free to make society; in giving him dominion, he made man his agent for the development of civilization—technology, science, the arts, social institutions. While I think it likely that God limited man’s choices, it is abundantly clear that he ratified what man chose to do, for good or for evil.

Secularization as a process involving human choices could, of course, be evil, basically contrary to God’s intention; but this would have to be squared with the fact that it has its historical roots in the acts and words of God as we have them in the Old Testament.

At all times our task as Christians is to seek to understand what God is about and to declare this to all men as the basis of their self-understanding. As I have considered our ways of thinking about the universe, and the sources and features of the process of secularization, I have begun to discern God at work today in social change. His actions have a historical continuity with the Bible and display the same style as seen there. As we Christians cooperate with God in creation, talk about it, and share our insights widely in today’s empirical, secular style of thought (which is so like the biblical), we shall raise fewer obstacles to faith on the secular campus, and shall prepare a good background against which the Gospel of redemption will be intelligible and profoundly significant.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Former editor Carl F. H. Henry, longtime friend and college classmate as well as colleague on two seminary faculties, has now begun a year of research and writing in England. The debt owed him by myself, the Board of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and the readers of the magazine is great. An editorial and a news story carry details of his activity and our appraisal of his long and honored ministry (see pp. 28, 37). His ready pen will again be featured in this magazine six months from now. Dr. Henry will have a column under his own byline every other issue so that readers can continue to enjoy his perceptive insights as he shares the fruits of his research and reflection with us.

I have on my desk a statement by Joseph Pulitzer of newspaper fame, who had for his maxim, “Put it before [men] briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” This maxim I hope to observe.

We welcome to our office Dr. Richard Love, whose coming was announced previously. He will be assistant editor. Miss Barbara H. Kuehn (B.S. in journalism, Northwestern University, 1966, and reporter on the Milwaukee Sentinel for a year and a half) joins us as news intern as part of her program with the Washington Journalism Center. For information on this program see page 70.

Harold Lindsell

“The early Christians,” Bishop Stephen Neill has said, “argued about everything except evangelism.” Twentieth-century Christians seem to have gone them one better. We seem to spend much of our time arguing about evangelism. Our style of mission (which should have priority: preaching crusades? or open housing? or neither?) is most certainly shaped by our understanding of what evangelism is.

Current commitments in evangelism tend to cluster in three groups.

Evangelism is “institutionalized” in many denominational programs. The key word here is “recruitment.” The typical action is membership visitation. The aim is focused on church extension.

Radicals have “secularized” evangelism. Their key word is “involvement” and their typical action “demonstration” or “community organization.” Evangelism is politics, and the aim of mission is focused in response to revolution.

The evangelical camp has often been guilty of “atomizing” or individualizing evangelism, focusing on “decision” as the key word, proclamation as the typical action, and individual salvation resulting from an isolated religious experience as the end result.

While conservatively oriented groups are all gung ho for traditional soul-winning efforts, many old-line denominations have been marking time as they agonize through an evangelistic stocktaking.

The moderately conservative Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern) called a virtual halt to new evangelistic endeavors while a blueribbon task force labored to bring forth a theological basis for the work of evangelism that would speak to the present condition of the Church. After two years the task force was so divided that it seemed for a while it would be unable to agree on a one-position paper. Eventually a middle way was chosen and a report issued that tried to bridge over such tensions as the relation between deed and word evangelism, and to give new directives. The report has been greeted with groans, cheers, and puzzled glances.

Similar ferment is evident in Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada. Although such mainline groups as the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and convention Baptists seem content with the fairly traditional stance, the United Church, according to the editor of its official magazine, has presently opted to be “less concerned for winning converts,” and instead to attempt to “witness … by promoting positive social action.” Its Board of Evangelism and Social Service was led in this social-activist role by its late secretary, Ray Hord, until his untimely death this past winter. Hord was characterized in a front-page article in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, as the archetype of “the new evangelist” for whom “salvation is a liveable income, adequate housing, racial integration, peace in Viet Nam, national unity, and sensible divorce legislation.”

The severe tension illustrated in these two churches came into focus at the World Council of Churches’ Uppsala assembly this summer in the section on renewal in mission. “New humanity”—the theme of the section statement—was used seventeen times without definition in the original draft. The accompanying commentary made it clear that the drafters saw the goal of mission not as “Christianization” but as “humanization.” After sharp debate the theme was retained but given a more God-directed, Christ-centered, and biblical basis.

These current debates reveal above all that the so-called old and new evangelism operate with very different meanings of such key terms as “Church,” “world,” “mission,” and “salvation.”

A picture (or perhaps a caricature) of the “old” evangelism might show two separate circles, one standing for the world, the other for the Church. Mission would imply more or less regular forays into the world to rescue individuals from death in the world to eternal life in the Church.

A picture (or perhaps a caricature) of the “new” evangelism might show two concentric circles, the inner one standing for the world, the other for salvation (showing reconciliation already a reality). The Church would be a part of the inner circle, that part of the world which recognized that salvation is an accomplished fact. Its mission is to point to and identify with those secular humanizing events (politico-social action, revolution) where God is at work in the process of history.

Certain basic questions underlie this tension and must be the subject of increasing theological reflection. Is evangelism basically for the sake of the Church? the individual? the world? or the glory of God? Is the gospel call in some sense out of the world into the Church, or is it to be fully human in the world? Is it to salvation as well as to service? Is Christ the Saviour of all as well as Lord of all? Is it more proper for the evangelist to say “be reconciled” or “you have been reconciled”?

In this brief space we cannot address ourselves to these important questions. But as preparation for thinking about them we must, it seems to me, see clearly that our evangelistic mission depends on God’s purposes as revealed in Scripture.

God has a purpose—a dual purpose. His will is to bring righteous judgment and peace to a disobedient world (Ps. 85:10; Isa. 2:2–4; 11:1–9) and to create for himself a holy and obedient people who will glorify him and serve his purpose in this world and the world to come (Eph. 1:10–14).

God’s purpose centers in Jesus Christ. In his career, a model for true humanity has appeared, and God’s rule has been inaugurated in power (Mark 1:15); both reconciliation (for those who receive) and judgment (for those who reject) have been initiated (Luke 3:16,17; John 3:16–18); and final peace and judgment are anticipated at Christ’s return (Matt. 24; Phil. 2; Titus 2:13).

God’s purpose has been entrusted to God’s people. Those who have turned to him in repentance and faith are called and equipped by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Good News of salvation to every creature (Luke 24:46–49). They are to demonstrate the reality of the Gospel “through holy lives, genuine love, devoted service to all men, and patient suffering.”

God’s purpose aims at “God’s glory, man’s peace.” Evangelism is ultimately motivated not so much by concern for the Church or the world or the individual as by concern that as men acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour (some willingly, some stubbornly; some in salvation, some in judgment) God may be glorified.

Evangelism today means the presentation of Jesus Christ, by word and deed, in the power of the Spirit, so that as men turn to God, follow Christ as Lord in the fellowship of the Way, and serve him in their daily lives, God may be glorified by the coming of his kingdom of justice and peace in this world and the next.

Would that around such common conviction Christians might be committed with one heart and one mind, desiring to see men become truly “men in Christ” that they might be fully “men for others.”—LEIGHTON FORD, associate evangelist, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Samuel Johnson once made an acid remark about women preachers, and on another occasion declared what a fearful thing it was to contradict a bishop. He would not have been happy at the Lambeth Conference that concluded last month in London, for the world’s Anglican bishops were found to be contradicting one another over the ordination of women.

The topic brought into rare alliance two men from the same country who are normally found on opposite sides. “If the ministry of the church is opened to women,” said Archbishop Marcus Loane of Sydney, Australia, “it would sound the death knell for the church in its appeal to men.” He saw deep theological reasons against the proposal, which, he declared, conflicted with the doctrine of the headship of Christ.

Supporting his evangelical colleague was a high churchman, Bishop Ian Shevill of North Queensland. He pointed out that ordination of women was unknown among Roman Catholic and Orthodox, who make up the majority of Christendom, and he called rather for “creative dialogue with these historic churches.”

Pentecostal Social Credo

The 200-member policy board of the Assemblies of God, biggest U. S. Pentecostal group, last month passed a precedent-setting statement balancing sin and social concern. Noting “grave crises” in American life, the board said “devised confrontations” and “revolution” do not heal alienation. “Community-betterment projects and legislative actions on social improvement … should be prominent” but are inadequate. The Church’s “most significant social contribution,” the statement said, is in meeting man’s greatest need—personal salvation through Jesus Christ: “It is only as men become right with God that they can truly become right with one another.… In these matters the world does not write our agenda.” The statement vowed influence for “justifiable social action in areas of domestic relations, education, law enforcement, employment, equal opportunity, and other beneficial matters.”

Among those contradicting was Bishop G. W. Barrett of Rochester, New York, who saw no biblical or theological arguments against ordaining women, suggested that statements to the contrary appeared “emotional” or “due to prejudice,” and contrived to make an equation with racial discrimination. An English Congregational observer, the Rev. John Huxtable, suggested that the prospect of a great flood of women seeking ordination “terrifies some of you.” But it was a false alarm, he said: only about eighty women had been ordained by his denomination in fifty years—and this, moreover, did not keep the men away.

The outcome reflected a typical Anglican love of compromise: the conference passed a resolution that declared that at present there are no conclusive theological arguments for or against ordination of women to the priesthood—but that it did not endorse such ordination. The bishops did, however, agree to recommend as an interim step that Anglican churches be encouraged to permit duly qualified women to share in the conduct of services, to preach, baptize, read the Scripture at Holy Communion, and assist in distribution of the elements.

On intercommunion, another explosive topic, the conference resolved to permit the practice in cases of “special pastoral need” and on a reciprocal basis. In a related matter, the bishops corrected a longtime anomaly by agreeing to allow ministers of the Church of South India to exercise their ministry in Anglican churches and to re-examine the relation of the Church of South India and Anglican churches “with a view to entering into full communion with that Church.” At present not a single one of Anglicanism’s nineteen provinces is in communion with the CSI.

Bishop W. L. S. Fleming of Norwich, who is also an explorer and geologist, supported a Maltese petition to the United Nations for drafting an international treaty on oceanography. This said that the ocean floor, beyond national limits, should be preserved from economic exploitation and from national competitions, and should be used only for peaceful purposes. International pacts were necessary, Fleming said, since the oceans were in danger of pollution and dumping, and could serve as sites for undetectable military equipment, including nuclear devices. The bishops listened with interest, espied no heresy in the proposal, and resolved accordingly.

Some heated differences of opinion emerged, however, when the conference discussed the proposals for reunion of the Methodist Church and the Church of England. A warning was given that dissentient Methodists and Anglicans (both evangelical and high church) have signified their intention not to participate in the merger scheme as it stands at present. Finally the proposals received the blessings of the conference, “even if,” in the words of one reporter, “members of the two churches are torn among themselves over the issue.”

On a motion from Bishop Neil Russell of Zanzibar it was agreed that bishops, “as leaders and representatives of a servant church, should radically examine the honours paid to them” during worship services, in titles and customary address, and in style of living. Two bishops dissented. Said the conference secretary, Bishop Ralph Dean of Cariboo, “I do not allow my people to call me ‘My Lord.’ If they see me in the street and say, ‘How d’you do, Bish,’ that’s all right.” Also executive officer of the Anglican Communion, Dean has the job of liaison among bishops. A series of flying visits has taken him sixteen times round the world in three years. “A sort of church 007½,” he says.

A communion service was held for 15,000 people at the White City Stadium, usually the scene of athletics, soccer matches, and dog racing. Assisted by sixty pairs of bishops, Archbishop Campbell MacInnes, who retires from his historic see of Jerusalem later this year, conducted the service. Preaching was Bishop Hassan Bernaba Dehquani-Tafti of Iran. The ultimate aim, he said, was not to preach philosophy and theology, “important though these are,” but to make disciples of all nations. “This means that first of all we must be disciples ourselves; and that in its turn means that we must have within ourselves that divine quality of self-giving love, which was revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ.”

PERSONALIA

Retired medical missionary Robert Baird McClure is the first layman ever elected moderator of the United Church of Canada. He won the two-year term on the fourth ballot at the opening of the UCC meeting in Kingston, Ontario. McClure, son of a medical missionary in China, served there until the Communist takeover and later worked in India.

Cesar Chavez, leader of the California grape-pickers’ protest, told a Pax Romana conference in Philadelphia that artificial birth control is being promoted as a way to “exterminate the poor and all the non-white peoples of the world.”

The U.S. Congress On Evangelism

An interdenominational group has announced that the United States Congress on Evangelism will be held September 8–14, 1969, in Minneapolis. The Rev. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, “Lutheran Hour” speaker, is congress chairman, and evangelist Billy Graham is honorary chairman.

Hoffmann, who spent several days with the executive committee of eight Minneapolis churchmen last month, said the meeting will seek “a more urgent declaration of the Gospel to our generation” and re-establishment of “the original strategy for universal evangelism”—bold witnessing by all believers in Christ. He said “our goal is to lift both the spiritual and temporal burdens of man,” by, among other things, “a vigorous attack upon the Satanic forces which produce misery, inequity, emptiness and all other evils in our society.”

The U. S. congress is one of several inter-church regional meetings inspired by the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism. A West African congress was held in July. An Asia-South Pacific congress is scheduled next month, and a Latin American meeting next year.

The local committee is led by Evangelical Covenant pastor Paul Fryhling and includes: American Lutheran Church evangelism director Conrad Thompson, Lutheran pastor William Berg, Methodist pastor C. Philip Hinerman, President Carl Lundquist of Bethel College (Baptist General Conference), Evangelical Free Church editor Mel Larson, and George M. Wilson and Victor Nelson of the Billy Graham association. Nelson is executive secretary.

An invitation to meet in the Minneapolis Auditorium was extended by a “Minnesota Committee of 100” ministers and laymen, including Governor Harold LeVander. The congress expects to assemble 8,000 church leaders, evangelists, ministers, and laymen from scores of denominations and interdenominational organizations.

A. D. Pont, church-history professor at South Africa’s Pretoria University, was ordered by the Johannesburg Supreme Court to pay $90 a month for the rest of his life to two fellow academicians he libeled in a Dutch Reformed newspaper. He had alleged that the pair, associated with the apartheid-opposing Christian Institute, were Communist conspirators.

Colonel Hans E. Sandrock, a veteran American Lutheran Church Air Force chaplain, was appointed executive director of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board in Washington, D. C.

Pastor Brooks Ramsey of the 1,700-member Second Baptist Church in Memphis resigned after reporting he was harassed for his stand on race relations. The church declined to accept his resignation, however, and instead ousted all forty-five deacons.

Glossolalia globe-trotter David J. Du Plessis of Oakland, California, said he met a number of delegates at the World Council of Churches meetings in Uppsala who had been “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” later preached to 4,000 at the International Gypsy Conference in Les Choux, France.

Bishop Hans Niklot Beste of the Evangelical Church of Meckenburg, East Germany, is new chairman of the East German Bishops’ Conference. He succeeds Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher, Pomeranian bishop who supported Evangelical unity across Germany’s East-West lines. Krummacher was denied governmental permission to attend WCC sessions at Uppsala.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

Preaching and holding church office by women are “contrary to Scripture,” ruled Colorado’s Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod meeting. It also rejected a recommendation of altar and pulpit fellowship with the American Lutheran Church, an issue to be voted on nationally next July.

The Lutheran World Federation’s Theology Commission, meeting in Geneva, endorsed Christian participation in violence “to carry out a revolution with the goal of bringing about a more just legal structure.”

Seventeen of the nation’s twenty largest Sunday Schools are Baptist, according to a Christian Life magazine survey. Akron (Ohio) Baptist Temple, with an average weekly attendance of 6,300, tops all others. The 17,000-member independent church is pastored by the Rev. Dallas Billington, who founded the church with fourteen persons in 1935.

The 500-congregation National Christian Missionary Convention, the Negro group within the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), voted 97–9 to dissolve and form a new lobby within the national denomination, which will vote this month on the same issue.

Property of the proposed Maryland Baptist College, aborted amid controversy by Southern Baptists last November, will be sold to avoid further losses.

MISCELLANY

Ten-year-old Mark Painter will remain in permanent custody of his writer-photographer father, a bohemian type, in California. The boy’s grandmother, awarded custody in 1966 by the Iowa Supreme Court, credited a visit to her son and a report by United Church of Christ minister Clay Lumpkins of Gilbert, Iowa, for her decision not to fight the contested case further. The New York Conference of the Methodist Church had filed a brief with the U. S. Supreme Court in the father’s favor, but the court refused to intervene.

Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Dwight L. Moody, Frederick Muhlenberg, John Carroll, Cardinal Gibbons, Mary Baker Eddy, and Brigham Young are included in an exhibition of 160 distinguished Americans at the opening of the new National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C.

The First Apostolic Church of Bell Gardens, California, is moving to Atlanta because, as one member put it, God is going to make California “fall off in the water.” He said pastor Donald Abernathy had previously predicted the Watts riot and the Arab-Israeli war.

Deaths

DOUGLAS HORTON, 77, retired dean of Harvard University Divinity School; World Council of Churches leader and Congregational Christian executive; negotiator of the merger that formed the United Church of Christ; in Randolph, New Hampshire, of a heart attack.

EUGENE SMATHERS, 60, rural pastor elected as 1967–68 moderator of the United Presbyterian Church; in Big Lick, Tennessee, after a long illness.

OSCAR FRANKLIN PELFREY, 65, lay minister of the snake-handling Church of God in Jesus Name sect; in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, of rattlesnake bite during a service.

HARRY ELMER BARNES, 79, philosophical naturalist and vocal foe of Christianity; in Malibu, California, of a heart attack.

Pinebrook, the Bible conference near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, made famous by the late Percy Crawford, was sold last month to the Bible Fellowship Church.

Since Canada’s liberalized divorce law went into effect in July, a 300 per cent increase in applications (643) is reported in the Toronto area, compared to the same month last year.

The eight-week premiere showing of the new Billy Graham film “Two A Penny” in London (July 19 issue, page 49) drew attendance of 22,786, with 850 of those filling out cards requesting further spiritual help.

Latest Soviet paper to condemn “illegal” activities by underground Baptists such as religious instruction and praying in unauthorized places is Lenin’s Banner.

Vatican officials denied press reports that the corps of seventy ceremonial Swiss Guards are threatening to strike for shorter hours and higher salary. They admitted there had been “some grumbling” among the group, whose pay is $160 a month.

Mounting rebellion in the troubled Roman Catholic Church strained the “Bond of Love” theme of last month’s International Eucharistic Congress in Colombia. Here Paul VI made the first papal visit ever to Latin America, which in name at least is overwhelmingly Catholic. His visit to the congress was also the first South American event beamed by satellite to U. S. and European color TV sets.

The Pope got a tumultuous, unparalleled reception in Bogotá as three million pilgrims and citizens waved white handkerchiefs and shouted “Viva El Papa.” They flocked to his seven public appearances and lined the streets as the Pope passed, often standing in an open car.

The Pope called his fifty-six hours on Colombian soil he had knelt to bless and kiss “intense and unforgettable.”

Order generally prevailed, none of the feared incidents materialized, and the crime rate actually dropped as much of the nation enjoyed a virtual three-day holiday. But the excited throngs gave thousands of police and soldiers some bad moments. The worst was in the cathedral, where 3,000 priests awaited the Pope’s arrival. His address could hardly be heard for the noise of the ecstatic clerics, and when he left for the adjoining archbishop’s palace he was mobbed by priests who were shoving, even fighting, to get near him. The Pope looked terrified during the four minutes before guards opened a path. In the Plaza Bolivar outside, the crowd waiting for papal blessing was so thick and emotion so high that 750 persons fainted.

In his nineteen speeches the Pope balanced carrot with stick. As he had wanted, he met with the poor of the city. Quoting his encyclical “Populorum Progressio,” he called for more equal distribution of wealth and gave qualified approval to distribution of church land in agrarian reform.

But he rejected “atheistic Marxism, systematic revolt, blood and anarchy,” and said that “reform must be peaceful and gradual.” Though aware of the torment of the masses, he counseled patience, education, peace, and organization, and reminded the poor of the spiritual value of their state.

The Pope also defended church authority and tradition against both charismatic and intellectual innovations and warned against social change without a spiritual base. He gave a brief defense of his birth-control decree. Observers took the general tone—despite calls for social reform—as a solid blow to the Catholic liberal wing. But to thousands of the faithful, the visit to Bogotá was a dream fulfilled.

New expressways, housing projects, and ambitious clean-up projects in the Colombian capital were part of multimillion dollar preparations. Refurbishing of one cathedral alone cost $1 million. Thousands of beggars were temporarily whisked out of sight to outlying camps, but the city’s reputed 40,000 prostitutes apparently escaped the purging.

Space was provided at the open-air Eucharistic Temple site for 305,000, with room for another 750,000 just outside. But early attendance was so sparse that the National Radio Network called the congress an economic flop and charged that it was no more than ecclesiastical “exhibitionism” that had “very little influence on the life of a true Christian.”

Economics brought the seething social discontent of some Catholics to the surface. In protest against “wasteful spending” on the congress, more than 200 Catholics in Chile seized a cathedral, from which they called for church leadership in radical social reforms. Later some 700 Latin American priests signed a letter urging their bishops to “proclaim the right of the oppressed to resort to violence as a legitimate force for social reform.”

The congress was haunted by the specter of the slain Colombian revolutionary Camilo Torres, a former priest who said he left the church in disillusionment over social issues. Brazil Archbishop Helder Camara observed that the continent “is in a pre-revolutionary climate”; he went on to say that he hoped for peace but nevertheless respected “all those who in conscience feel obliged to take the option for violence.”

Conference frills could not hide other sources of ecclesiastical discomfort. While Catholic rolls claim 90 per cent of Latin America’s 268 million people, churches can count perhaps 10 per cent as practicing members. There is a shortage of priests to face the challenges of increasing secularization. The church itself, on a continent where fewer than 5 per cent of the people hold most of the land and wealth, is caught in a squeeze between old-line conservatives and progressives. Poverty abounds, and the church tends to stick to the status quo. The Pope’s controversial encyclical on birth control earned him no merit with reformers concerned about extremely high birth rates. Colombia’s minister of foreign affairs resigned after publicly denouncing the encyclical.

While clouds of revolution cast an ominous pall on the conference, ecumenical winds were blowing.

The congress marked ten years of relative peace and liberty after the violence of two decades ago in which Colombian Protestants suffered the loss of churches and schools, and some even lost their lives. A political agreement ended the violence, but some Protestants credited Vatican II for the changing climate of freedom. “What we are seeing,” said one evangelical pastor, “is the protestantization of the Catholic Church.” A missionary commented that there had been “a leveling off; both Catholics and Protestants are less fanatical.”

Congress officials invited still-wary Protestant and Jewish groups to participate, but with limited success. Organizers had trouble gathering enough non-Catholics to stage Ecumenical Day at the meeting. A Baptist choir withdrew under pressure at the last minute. The confederation of evangelical churches, which represents most of the 300,000-member Protestant community, officially declined. Presbyterian Moderator Aristobulo Porras, in rejecting the invitation, said that if the hierarchy of the church would make it certain that Protestants could enjoy their constitutional rights, this would be “the most effective and greatest act she could perform to better relations between the two confessions.”

Some Protestants who accepted the invitation embarrassed the Catholic conservatives. An Episcopal priest who addressed the assembly called for granting of full legal rights to non-Catholics, who are discriminated against under an eighty-one-year-old concordat between the Vatican and the national government. A missionary panelist brought silence when he suggested that the Pope should apologize for the persecution of non-Catholic missionaries in Colombia.

“It is difficult for those who have been through the heat of the violence to believe the Catholic Church is changing,” explained one missionary.

But the changes are real and include an emphasis on Bible study and on ecumenism. These changes have brought a new day for evangelicals in Colombia, who are growing five times faster than the population. The Pentecostalists are the fastest-growing group in Latin America. A Congress of Evangelism will convene in Bogotá in November, 1969.

SWINGING REVOLUTION

While the Pope sought to cool revolutionary fervor in Latin America (see story above), brushfires of Roman Catholic rebellion flared in Washington, D. C.

Orthodoxy was jettisoned at the National Liturgical Conference, which Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle refused to endorse. Fifty-two priests withstood O’Boyle’s demands that they recant from anti-establishment birth-control views. Catholic University theologians enlisted worldwide opposition to the Pope’s encylical Humanae Vitae.

Nearly 1,000 of the 4,500 liturgical conferees cabled the Pope in Bogotá to demand that he: end the Vatican concordat with Colombia; stop building new churches and step up anti-poverty work; give up the Vatican superstructure and its wealth; refuse to celebrate mass with the special $15,000 chalice and ornaments; suppress rich nunciatures (papal embassies).

The demands were suggested by speaker François Houtart, Belgian Catholic scholar, who said:

“Perhaps the time has come to organize an international Christian movement of really committed people, ready to identify themselves with the revolutionary cause of the oppressed in the whole world, across the boundaries of all the churches, without abandoning our belonging to these Churches. This will be the church of Jesus Christ.”

Other speakers included such well-worn types as community-organizer Saul Alinsky, Floyd McKissick of CORE, and even Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker, who denied that Communists were infiltrating churches and that churches were marked for Marxist destruction. (Aptheker went on to condemn Soviet “atrocities,” including the invasion of Czechoslovakia.)

Nuns, priests, and laymen locked arms and danced at a reconciliation “happening” during the conference. It featured a rock band called “The Mind Garage,” a psychedelic light show, film clips on war and poverty, and clowns passing out peanuts. Self-styled Baptist “fundamentalist” Will Campbell dropped a four-letter word and blasphemies during a homily on Acts 2, which repelled many participants. Afterward, hundreds—some of them sporting McCarthy buttons—swarmed to the Russian embassy to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

On another night a number of delegates clandestinely took part in an inter-faith charismatic meeting at a Pentecostalist church. A Benedictine monk who attended said that most members of his order in Wisconsin practice glossolalia.

A jazz mass directed by musician Edward Bonnemere concluded the sessions. Its components: a Harlem choir, a jazz combo, interpretative dancers clad in black tights, Scripture reading by a teen-age girl, handclapping and embracing of one another by those in the congregation, de facto open communion, and blasts at the hierarchy by Catholic editor Robert Hovda.

Besides passing resolutions on Viet Nam and selective conscientious objection, many delegates voted to bypass the Pope on birth-control matters and to seek directly the guidance “of the Holy Spirit.”

Earlier, O’Boyle and fellow archbishops Cody of Chicago, Krol of Philadelphia, and McIntyre of Los Angeles secretly visited the Pope in Rome. The widespread opposition to the papal encyclical was probably a key discussion topic.

To date, more than 700 Catholic theologians, many of them in the United States, have signed a statement that says contraception is a private matter that should be left to “individual conscience.” But, criticized Archbishop John J. Carberry of St. Louis, leaving guidance to personal conscience is “a grave error.” And the directors of the National Council of Catholic Men declared that the Pope’s authority in the matter “cannot be rejected.”

O’Boyle, meanwhile, was pondering what to do about the fifty-two of his priests who are holding out for the right of couples to “responsibly decide according to their consciences on the use of contraceptives.”

Elsewhere, a rift opened along racial lines. More than 150 Negro nuns launched the National Black Sisters Conference in Pittsburgh. And a Black Catholics in Action group was formed in Detroit to put pressure on the church’s “white power structure.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE

A massive boycott, supported by churches, unions, and political figures, put the squeeze on California table grapes in every major city in the nation and several in Canada just as the 480,000-ton harvest reached a critical peak.

The boycott is engineered by Cesar Chavez’s crusading AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee as part of its three-year vintage effort to wring recognition as bargaining agent with grape-growers in central California’s lush agricultural valley.

Churches have been in the forefront of the lobbying against the state’s $16 billion agribusiness. Politicians ranging from mayors of half a dozen cities to Vice-president Hubert Humphrey and Senator Eugene McCarthy also backed the boycott, which officials call the most serious crisis to the state’s agriculture ever. Losses in excess of $100 million are forecast.

Locally, the California Council of Churches favored the boycott, but scores of valley churches attacked it. The California Roman Catholic bishops supported the organizing efforts of the farm workers but did not endorse the boycott. To complicate the scene, growers filed a $25 million suit against the union, charging “an illegal secondary boycott,” while the union retaliated by asking $150 million in damages.

Although pressure halted the sale of California grapes in most New York supermarkets, by mid-harvest Los Angelinos had not curbed their grape appetites. But a cluster of interfaith leaders¹Heading the group were the Rev. James E. Jones, president of the Los Angeles City School Board and national president of the Presbyterian Interracial Council; Sister Mary Corita, Immaculate Heart College’s ebullient pop-art nun; and Rabbi Albert Lewis, social-action chairman of the Southern California Board of Rabbis. was mobilized to do something about that. In New England, priests and nuns helped stage a Boston Grape Party by throwing grapes they bought into the water.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal warned editorially: “Those who resort to this form of pressure … need to be aware that boycotts can backfire with painful economic consequences for everybody.” In retaliation against organized labor’s ban on grapes, farmers were urged not to buy American-made vehicles and equipment. And already, church newspapers are lamenting severe revenue losses from counter-boycotts by advertisers.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

CHICAGO AS ARMED CAMP

The chaplains in the armed camp that Chicago became for the August Democratic National Convention weren’t happy about the city’s atmosphere.

After a night of rioting August 27 in a lakefront park during which a number of seminary students were hurt or threatened, about fifty clergymen and students joined a march to the convention hall to protest police conduct. The march started at downtown St. James’ Episcopal Cathedral. More churchmen were hurt in the larger protest crushed by police the next night.

Individually, many Chicago clergymen were dismayed at extensive security precautions. Collectively, a significant number protested Mayor Richard Daley’s refusal to let demonstrators demonstrate. Officers of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago and Jewish and Quaker groups charged that by manipulating procedures for granting meeting and parade permits, Daley was interfering with the right to peaceful assembly. Daley heatedly denied he had placed any unusual restraints on the right to dissent.

It was the ease with which Daley increased security measures and blanketed the city with troops that bothered many churchmen. Observant Chicagoans recognize that within his fiefdom Daley is a benevolent despot, but never before had his power been so visible.

Already uneasy from camp discipline and uncomfortable from high temperatures and humidity, church activists were not mollified by treatment of the Viet Nam problem. Platform-writers had gotten testimony from the National Council of Churches and several denominations. Presbyterians John Coventry Smith and ex-Representative Leroy Anderson told the panel “there can be no ‘victory’ in Viet Nam.” Doves were disheartened by obvious lack of delegate enthusiasm for Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, and for platform planks they favored.

The Platform Committee decided a halt to all bombing of North Viet Nam should be determined by response from Hanoi. A minority report, like the World Council of Churches assembly in July, sought an unconditional halt, and was defeated after a long debate.

McGovern, son of a Methodist minister, evoked warm response as a delegate to the WCC assembly when he asserted that “every political question is a moral question, which challenges politicians to seek the guidance of the Church.” His Viet Nam proposal suggested he had studied the assembly’s stand on the war.

The Rev. Channing E. Phillips, United Church of Christ minister who led the District of Columbia delegation, became the first Negro nominated for president. He got 67½ votes on the first ballot, which nominated Vice-president Humphrey.

The Church might have had some impact at a pre-convention birthday celebration for delegates marking the 512th anniversary of Gutenberg’s first printed Bible. But Chicago Alderman Ralph Metcalfe, the delegate who was to have cut the birthday cake, was unable to attend. He was tied up in credentials hearing, a Chicago Bible Society spokesman said. “Tied up” was a phrase heard frequently in Chicago the last week of August.

RICHARD PHILBRICK

NEW WORK IN NEWARK

Evangelicals did a turn-about this summer and hit the streets of several inner-city ghettos across the nation. College students led the way.

Most notable was a united campaign in Newark, New Jersey, a city ripped by riots last year and rated the country’s most explosive by the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders.

Newark participants included: Nearly 100 collegians, most of whom responded to a last-minute appeal by Campus Crusade for Christ and its staff leader, Phil Needles, 29; evangelist Tom Skinner, one-time Harlem gang leader, and his crusade team; Rhodesian pastor Joshua Dubé, 34, who manned a youth center for the Newark Evangelistic Committee; tenors Jerome Hines and Derek DeCambra, whose Christian Arts organization staged outdoor concerts; and the Rev. Bill Iverson, 40, operator of a luncheonette ministry called Cross Counter (where Hines sometimes helps dish up hot dogs and the Gospel) and the city’s best-known man in the street.

Most of the collegians, including a $15-an-hour water-ski instructor, gave up lucrative summer jobs for the $25-a-week “new work in Newark” project. (Only $2,000 of the needed $15,000 was raised the first two months, however, and some youths witnessed on empty stomachs; they were housed and fed breakfast by a rescue mission and the Salvation Army.)

In addition to militant evangelizing door-to-door, on street corners, and in juvenile detention centers, they cleaned streets and organized neighborhood block parties, each attended by 200 to 800 persons. The outdoor parties featured food prepared and served by both black local residents and suburban white Christians, concerts by local rock groups and CCC folk singers, and gospel messages.

Iverson, DeCambra, and CCC’ers were bombarded with eggs and bottles when they marched troubadour-fashion into the fearsome Central Ward. Iverson caught one youthful attacker and—as angry faces appeared in doorways—shouted, “We have come in love; why do you try to hurt us?” The neighborhood’s hostility melted into the summer’s best block party, attracting newspaper attention.

Leading clergy and civic officials credited the evangelical efforts for Newark’s “cool” summer.

By summer’s end, CCC’ers had reported over 1,000 decisions and had set up indigenous Bible-study and action groups. Needles hopes he can return next year with a team of 500.

Skinner’s Symphony Hall crusade registered hundreds of other decisions but did not draw many ghetto residents. He will try again next month.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

The Rev. Jaroslav J. Vajda, editor of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod monthly “This Day,” wrote this report in Vienna, Austria, after his visit to a Slovak cultural conference on a scholarship from Comenius University in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, had been cut short by last month’s Soviet invasion:

The day after I completed investigation of the far-reaching effects of Czechoslovakia’s liberalization on its 510,000-member Lutheran Church, the scene was totally and abruptly revised with the sudden occupation by Warsaw Pact forces.

There was no immediate assurance of a return to the pre-occupation freedoms enjoyed during seven brief months under Communist Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek. In my week in the capital of Slovakia, I heard exciting signs of this atmosphere in announcements to congregations.

For the first time since 1948, parents would register their children for religious instruction with local church authorities; the previous practice of registering with public-school officials frightened and frustrated most parents from doing so. There would be no persecution of registrants as in the past, and the church could extend training to an earlier age.

Parishioners of the 10,000-member Bratislava Lutheran Church were asked to sign petitions to restore broadcasting of worship from the large 200-year-old mother church in the capital, where the pulpit microphone had not been used since 1951. More than half the 300 worshipers lined up to sign; a marked contrast to the quick scattering of churchgoers from a service I attended there in 1965.

The church biweekly, “Lutheran Messenger from the Tatra Foothills,” handed to members after services, was bigger than usual and carried a strong pro-Dubcek editorial appealing for dialogue between Marxism and Christianity. The paper’s former editor, Joseph Juras, was released from a six-year imprisonment just two months ago.

The edition also carried a defense of the late Bishop Vladimir Cobrda, former head of Slovakia’s Lutherans, who was tried for subversion five years ago at age 83. The onetime war hero, decorated for resistance to the Nazi occupation, got a suspended sentence and died, crushed, a short time later. His is one of thousands of names being rehabilitated after public disgrace under the Stalinist Novotny regime. Dozens of the nation’s 350 Lutheran pastors had been deposed or imprisoned; a few were beginning to return to their parishes.

The church rejoiced over the increase of ministerial students: eight a few years ago, fifty-two for the upcoming fall term at the Bratislava Lutheran Seminary.

There were hopes that charitable institutions confiscated by previous regimes would be returned. Publishing, down to a few hymnals and New Testaments, was also expected to increase now that the excuse of a paper shortage was no longer quoted. Lay officers (presbyters) hoped to be able to function without threat to their jobs or to the education of their children. Children of church members could now expect to enter college without hindrance. (Children of Lutheran pastors, prominent in national and cultural leadership far out of proportion to their numbers, were special victims of discrimination after the 1948 Communist takeover.)

Since January, the first youth programs in a generation had begun. Two hundred young people attended a Bible institute in one town, 120 in another. Youths who had previously taken the risk of enrolling for the two-year confirmation course did not even know the Lord’s Prayer.

As of August 18, the Lutherans had a leadership crisis. Of three district officials, one had died and had not been replaced. Bratislava Bishop Jan Chabada was on leave for illness. No general conference of clergy has been held for years. In the spring, church leaders issued a statement supporting Dubcek and pleading for correction of past wrongs and more freedom in the future.

I wrote down these encouraging reports Tuesday, August 20. That night at 11:30 the Russians began moving in. All night long they streamed over the Danube bridge into the city in endless lines of tanks and military vehicles. Airplanes unloaded troops and supplies, and by morning the city of 300,000 was completely enclosed in a trap of armor. From my dormitory window I saw tanks so numerous they could not move.

Such things happen in films. We could not believe they were taking place before our eyes.

At 7 A.M. the local TV station went on the air with bulletins. Government officials asked the people to remain calm and not provoke the occupiers. Although Soviet soldiers surrounded the studios and the announcer warned that each segment might be the last, broadcasts continued until 2 P.M.

At noon the entire country was asked to stop all activity for two minutes as a sign of support for the government. Whistles and horns were blown, and a church bell rang as I walked to Safarik Square at the base of the Danube bridge.

A group of youths carrying the Czech flag marched toward the circle of tanks chanting “Dubcek and Svoboda, this is our liberty.” (Svoboda, the president’s name, means freedom.)

In minutes a crowd of nearly 1,000 formed a human barricade and prevented military vehicles from entering the city. After a half hour an armored car drove into the crowd, firing shots in the air. The crowd separated but then began to clamor up the sides of the tank, throwing sticks and stones. Soldiers began firing over the heads of the crowd, and people ran in all directions. Two youths were said later to have been killed.

Low-flying jets buzzed the ancient city all afternoon as scattered shooting continued. A hundred yards from my dormitory window some boys rolled up a canvas banner, set fire to it, and stuffed it into the path of a passing tank, which was crippled.

By late afternoon every tank had been painted or chalked with a swastika or “Go Home.” A girl on the steps of the university administration building on the square shouted “Fascist” at a passing tank and was killed at the foot of a column. At 6:30 P.M., as we left the city with twenty-one American students in a hastily hired bus, we saw behind a Russian tank and gun the inscription a young man had chiseled into that column: “Here the Russians killed a 17-year-old Slovak girl.” At the foot of the pillar lay a bouquet and the scarf the girl had worn.

As we reached the Austrian border five miles west of the city we left a determined people, their dreams of freedom shattered, their intellectuals facing arrest, the night of terror they recalled from 1939 falling again with the Soviet invasion.

The border was still in friendly Slovak hands, just an hour before the first curfew. Night had already settled as we transferred to transportation that was still free. The border guards said, “Tell your people that we shall not give up.”

A part of our own freedom depended on that determination.

NEAR-SPLIT ON RACE-SPLITTING

Indonesians became unexpected mediators between South Africans and Hollanders at last month’s Reformed Ecumenical Synod, preventing a complete split between them and a predicted collapse of this small world confessional movement. The Asians proposed a marriage of majority and minority reports on race relations, one of which was too vague for many delegates, the other too explicit.

Several young churches were accepted at the RES meetings in Holland, making it an organization of thirty denominations with five million members. The synod has met every five years since 1948. Major members are the U. S. Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and two of the three Boer churches—the large Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in South Africa.

Although members of the group share a deep love for the Bible, Reformed confessions, and presbyterian government, it soon became evident that they have grown far apart on such issues as ordination of women, the World Council of Churches, and—especially—apartheid.

The meeting drew scores of journalists, because the South African Dutch churches have had virtually no recent contact with other churches. For the first time since 1960, they discussed apartheid with fellow Christians in public.

The original study report on race was considered a rather weak piece of work. Professor J. van den Berg of the Free University of Amsterdam had added a strong anti-apartheid minority report. Yet South Africans, also dissatisfied, added their own comments. A synod advisory committee was also unable to write one report. A majority chose sides with the South Africans; a minority of Hollanders and Indonesians issued a strong minority report.

After one and one-half days of hard discussion, the synod followed an Indonesian’s original suggestion and appointed three “wise men” to seek a compromise: Professors Klooster of Grand Rapids, Sudarmo of Djakarta, and Helberg of Pretoria.

After eight continuous hours of consultation the three men proposed resolutions based on both reports. With amendments, their work was accepted by a simple voice vote, though South Africans still thought it went too far and the Dutch not far enough.

The document says, “Marriage is primarily a personal and family matter. Church and state must refrain from prohibiting interracial marriages”—a clear strike at South African laws. Moreover, the churches are advised to not only reject “every form of racial discrimination and racism” but also “subtle forms of racial discrimination found in many countries today with respect to housing, employment, education, law enforcement, etc.”

It was unclear whether South African apartheid had been condemned. A motion to spell this out was rejected, both by South Africans and by those who didn’t want to endanger the measure of unity that had been found.

On other subjects the synod spoke less unitedly. By 25 to 22, it supported the Free Church of Scotland’s opposition to women in “the governing or teaching orders of the Church,” thereby rejecting a committee proposal to study the issue.

With a somewhat bigger majority the synod repeated its advice to shun membership in the World Council of Churches at the present time. The same thing was said about the International Council of Christian Churches, with the addition that churches are free to decide this one for themselves. This was done despite the fact that three synod members are in the WCC and only one is in the ICCC. The synod, however, did ask members to investigate the ICCC role in church splits in Pakistan and Cameroun.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

PENTECOSTAL GROWTH IN CANADA

The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada told tales of growth as 300 leaders celebrated an August golden-jubilee convention in Windsor, Ontario. Canada’s fastest-growing major denomination has added 5 per cent a year to its constituency since 1950. Last year fifty-seven new congregations brought the total to 745.

In a strong evangelism resolution, the group—counterpart to the U. S. Assemblies of God—called for a national program of personal evangelism, preparation of a manual, and increased instruction in methods at Assemblies colleges. They moved boldly into TV evangelism, with “Cross-roads,” a program sponsored by the Sudbury, Ontario, church, planned as a future national TV voice of the Assemblies.

At a jangling Offerama—in which Assemblies across Canada phoned in contributions to the 166 missionaries—$131,620 was contributed, nearly $30,000 more than the amount two years ago.

Looking outward, denominational Editor Earl Kulbeck said, “Like nearly all fundamentalists, we buried our heads for years and neglected social matters. But more recently we’ve decided that nobody should do better social work than born-again Christians.” A resolution opposed proposals by the nation’s new Liberal government to legalize lotteries and hom*osexuality and urged a “gigantic” letter-writing campaign against them.

Delegates also expressed considerable opposition to the Ontario government’s proposal to tax denominational property, but the convention did not take action since it was not a national issue.

The convention chose the Rev. Robert Taitinger, 41, of Edmonton, Alberta, as general superintendent, to succeed retiring ten-year veteran the Rev. Tom Johnstone, 65.

In near-100-degree heat August 24 the delegates decided to switch conventions back to the usual September date since “August is proving to be a very unsatisfactory month.” By Monday, temperatures were more comfortable, and they rescinded the action.

JAMES L. HUFFMAN

FUNDAMENTALISTS ON THE BEACH

President Johnson wired: “You go forth with the gratitude of this nation and the admiration of your President.” New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes, a Democratic vice-presidential possibility, welcomed “your large and distinguished international group.” Chiang Kai-shek said the organization is “known and highly esteemed around the world” for its fundamentalism and anticommunism.

Thus armed with establishment credentials, the International Council of Christian Churches’ August assembly at Cape May, New Jersey, proceeded to assault the religious establishment. The fundamentalist council had invited three of its major targets—Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, and Eugene Carson Blake—to speak, but plans didn’t pan out.

The ICCC condemned the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Revised Standard Version, and all Communists everywhere.

Although ICCC orthodoxy had held Tito-type Communists to be the same as the rest, the invasion of Czechoslovakia brought the assessment that peaceful coexistence is now a myth, “for they cannot even coexist as Communists.” The religious-liberty resolution was the only time non-Communists were condemned: several ICCC pastors have been jailed in the Cameroun, and the members think U. S. income-tax enforcement is loaded against conservatives.

The resolution on Roman Catholicism, more acid than the 1965 statement,¹The resolution said, “The whole ststem of Poperyis a system of nondage and tyranmy—the bondage and tyranny of anti-Christianity. By a colossal web of superstiton … Rome has enslaved millions of the human race. By the galkling chains of an intolerable priesthood, Rome has imprisoned the souls of those who have fallen prey to her blasphemies. By the cunning of her decits Rome has brought down whole nations to mental and even physical slavery …” etc. didn’t discuss the Pope’s current weak spot—the birth-control stand. It brought dissent by a moderate minority from Sweden, Holland, and New Zealand. No less anti-Catholic than the hawks led by Northern Ireland’s Ian Paisley, they sought to convince troubled Catholics rather than intimidate them.

The ICCC, ever alert to soft spots in the WCC, paid to bring as an observer the Rev. Apostolos Bliates, pastor of one of Greece’s biggest Protestant churches. The Greek evangelicals are restive about their WCC ties, partly because of the move toward Catholicism. But Bliates said that the resolution on Catholics was too strong even for Greek palates, and that the ICCC should be more careful about politics and more friendly toward non-ICCC evangelicals.

Most of the ICCC groups have pulled out of other denominations, and much of the council’s effort is aimed at getting others to follow suit, which makes for some tedious sessions. All thirty minutes of the British report were spent on the picketing and protests against “His Dis-Grace” the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope; nothing was said of evangelism or other church tasks. By contrast, many speeches offered an intelligent, forceful expression of biblical belief.

The ICCC never gives out constituency estimates, so it’s hard to guess just what the 480 delegates and 2,000 visitors at Cape May represented. But the movement is growing, fueled by such events as the WCC’s Uppsala assembly and the dismissal of heresy charges against Principal Lloyd Geering in New Zealand.

At the ICCC meeting the Rev. Carl McIntire was more omnipresent than his arch-rivals Blake and Pope Paul were at Uppsala or Vatican II. Dr. A. Rackotobe of an independent Reformed church in Madagascar exclaimed with enthusiasm, “The world is beginning to rot. Happily, Dr. McIntire is the salt.… Apart from Dr. McIntire the whole world is in deep darkness.”

At 62, McIntire is a hard-working, happy warrior. He has been ICCC president twenty years and is in his thirty-fifth year at the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, New Jersey, whose 1,800 members constitute nearly a fourth of that denomination. From there he puts out a weekly paper and a daily radio program he says is on 600 stations.

But Cape May is an increasingly important base. McIntire picked up the long-vacant 333-room beachfront Admiral Hotel for $300,000 and spent $1.5 million restoring its Victorian grandeur and putting up a large auditorium. Then he acquired several more Victorian buildings and—last December—the 100-room Congress Hall for $550,000. All this makes McIntire’s group the town’s biggest taxpayer. The Admiral’s summer conference features such speakers as Strom Thurmond, John Stormer, and Edgar Bundy. The bookstore sells Carleton Putnam’s notorious Race and Reason.

RICHARD N. OSTLING