Page 6234 – Christianity Today (2024)

The little red schoolhouse seems an unlikely place for a showdown on major national issues. But the American race controversy has had many a classroom climax in recent years. This fall, a new cause for furor in the schoolhouse was to be found in the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling against compulsory devotions.

It was not termed defiance as such, but as pupils resumed classes there were large pockets of resistance to the court ban.

Seventy per cent of the American public disapproves of the court’s decision, according to a Gallup poll published a few days ago. Only 24 per cent approves. Six per cent gave no opinion.

In Idaho, the practice of daily Bible readings was scheduled to continue as usual, according to D. F. Engleking, state superintendent of public instruction. Engleking said he saw no reason to change, “unless some court tells me otherwise.”

The Delaware State Board of Education, guided by an opinion of State Attorney General David P. Buckson, announced that Bible reading and recital of the Lord’s Prayer would continue in the state’s public schools. Buckson said the Supreme Court’s decision of June 17 banned religious exercises only in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida.

The attorney general of Arkansas, Bruce Bennett, also advised the public schools of his state to continue devotional exercises. He said Arkansas law is permissive and “a far cry from that which was considered in the notorious Abington [Pennsylvania] case.”

Public school officials in Alabama were ordered by the State Board of Education to establish daily readings of the Bible as part of a prescribed course of study.

One of the most detailed analyses of the Supreme Court ruling came from Attorney General Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Brooke’s twenty-two-page opinion contended that mandatory prayers, Bible reading in the form of a devotional rite, and compulsory religious ceremonies or exercises are unconstitutional. But he held that a voluntary period designated for “silent meditation”—not a “silent prayer”—would be consistent with the court’s stand. He stated that voluntary prayer, meditation, and even Bible reading not under official auspices, could be permitted in the schools.

“Students may gather in the classroom before supervised activities begin for the purpose of discussion, inspiration, or for other orderly purposes,” he said. “If entirely on their own initiative, these [students] decide to utilize that free time in devotion, that is their right.”

In other states, meanwhile, Bible reading and recital of prayers were eliminated without qualification. One such action was in Vermont, where four of the Board of Education’s seven members said they opposed the court ban but saw no alternative.

In Pennsylvania, group Bible reading and prayers were banned in public schools by Attorney General Walter E. Alessandroni. He said the practices would be illegal even if they had the approval of local school boards, teachers, or parents and even if children participated on a voluntary basis.

In the District of Columbia, Superintendent of Schools Carl F. Hansen said the idea that Bible reading is out of line “seems to me to be very clear.” He declared that opening exercises would consist of the Pledge of Allegiance “and suitable inspirational readings from poetry or good prose writings.” He said he would invite teachers “to help us prepare an anthology of suitable writings.”

Among the assortment of adustments was a decision by the board of education of Bloomingdale, New Jersey, to substitute the fourth stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the reading of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools. That stanza ends with the words, “In God is our trust.”

Earlier in the summer, state governors, gathered in Miami Beach for their annual meeting, voted 38 to 1 in favor of a resolution urging Congress “to make clear” the right of public schools “to have free and voluntary participation in prayer.” The single negative vote was cast by Democratic Governor Karl F. Rolvaag of Minnesota.

There appeared little hope, however, that Congress would pass any enabling legislation for classroom prayers. Some fifty-seven bills asking for constitutional amendment to permit public school devotions are bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee. A discharge petition designed to force discussion on the House floor now has about seventy-five signatures. To override the committee, 218 are needed. Democratic Representative Emanuel Celler, committee chairman, having indicated firm opposition to such an amendment, has refused to call public hearings.

The Supreme Court decision seems to have given atheism in the United States a new lease on life. Mrs. Madalyn J. Murray, avowed atheist and a chief litigant in the Bible reading-prayer case, says she now heads a group called Other Americans, Inc., which will build and operate an atheistic center near Stockton, Kansas. She says the center will include a university, radio station, publishing house, and home for the aged. It is to be built on an eighty-acre tract donated by Carl Brown, described as a nudist, atheist, and former Kansas legislator.

Mrs. Murray has charged that Roman Catholic nuns are teaching in some Kansas public schools. She says she will start litigation to halt the practice.

In Protestant ranks, meanwhile, there is a lingering measure of grass-roots unrest over the attitude of church leaders toward current church-state trends. In Pittsburgh, a group of twenty-one United Presbyterian churchmen, including several prominent ministers, issued a joint statement of concern.

“The recognition of God is a principle that the church should defend rather than oppose,” the statement declared.

The statement charged that the 175th United Presbyterian General Assembly “was in error in urging that Bible reading and public prayers be omitted as religious observances from public school programs.”

From a Communist country, where the people’s revolt in search of freedom was brutally crushed, a professional man sent this hopeful greeting: “However small the individual may seem among the factors that make up history, he is a factor nonetheless, and he can affect the very course of history. The great ideas and movements have grown from little beginnings, from improbably tiny beginnings. And these great ideas and movements are always set aflame by the realm of the Spirit, and never by the state.” How gratifying that not even the totalitarian tyrants can destroy man’s confidence in the power of the truth.

Yet we who live in the free world sometimes seem stilled and choked by the Communist climate, by the evolutionary temper, by the sensate spirit of our age, when we ought to be trumpeting truth and tidings to our times with courage and faith to stir new hope where the disgust of life now reigns. Sometimes even those who profess to be vitally interested in evangelical education seem skeptical of the power of the truth. If so, one may hope this sin is not visited upon our children and our children’s children.

We may fail our generation in many ways, but few failures will be as devastating as skepticism over the importance and power of truth.

We dare not underestimate Christianity’s stake in the truth. The Bible tells us that God himself is the Truth. Truth is not something independent of God, but the Logos is himself the ultimate originator and the ultimate definer of all reality. The Holy Spirit uses truth as a means of conviction and persuasion. The Truth has become incarnate and inscripturate. And the Truth, so wonderfufly revealed to us, is not simply to be known, but is also to be done.

At no time in Western history has so much depended upon the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the Christian college as in our own day.

Why is it that Cuba, ninety miles away from our shores, can become the symbol of a world political crisis, while a Christian college or university a stone’s throw from a state university or secular college can be wholly overlooked? Why, if the Christian campus is really fulfilling its distinctive mission? Why are our distinctive views not mentioned in secular textbooks, not argued in secular classrooms, not even reflected on their reserve reading shelves? In the modern contest for the minds of men, why is it that our positions are ignored and disregarded? Why? Are we concerned simply to eke out our own academic survival as a Christian community? To maintain a mere holding-operation for the last scattered and surviving remnants of the evangelical view in educational circles?

Or do we understand that if Christ is Saviour and Lord we have a mandate to challenge and to claim all the spheres of learning and life? Do we really understand that the whole of culture soon glides into the service of antichrist, and in our century glides swiftly into enslavement by antichrist, when the dominant cultural forces are no longer effectively challenged and confronted by the claims of Christ? Do we really understand that in our time of transition none of the realms of culture—neither literature and the arts nor politics nor science nor education itself—long vacillates in the twilight zone of the worship of inherited ideas, but all render prompt obedience to new gods, and that we aid and abet this process by our withdrawal from the secular debate and dialogue of the day? In Germany after World War I, when students welcomed every attack on Christian supernaturalization in the chapels of the universities with sustained applause, Rudolf Eucken spoke a prophetic warning: that if Christianity were to lose the university mind and the laboring class in Germany, the Christian religion would be done as a force in national life. The generation after Eucken’s in the land of Luther was the generation of Hitler and the Nazis, of Eichmann and the slaughter camps. In American universities it is not the custom to applaud radical ideas: but it is stylish to absorb them. In this land of Roger Williams and Jonathan Edwards, are you asking yourself whose is the next generation if the university mind and labor continue to hold the Christian view of the world and life at a distance? Eucken saw that a nation in this predicament is only a stride from antichrist. We can hardly think that America has greater immunity to spiritual declension than did Germany.

We are all agreed, if we take Christian education seriously, that the Bible must be treated not simply as a memory object for a multitude of details of past history, important as that may be. The Bible must again become a revelation that provides a living resource of moral integrity and spiritual wisdom for all man’s days, and that supplies integration to the whole of life and thought, including the exploding areas of discovery in our own time. For the man or woman whose calling is that of Christian teacher, this awareness implies a heavy burden of responsibilities in respect to one’s discipline and one’s students.

A State Department career man remarked recently that the strategists seem so preoccupied today with the science of weaponry that they forget that persons are the ultimate weapons. What tragedy to have had in class the promise of a Kepler or a Calvin, a Moody or a Machen, and to have dulled that promise, or to have contributed nothing to his personal mission. Yet even the Christian teacher seeking to inspire students with a high sense of calling or vocation often does them an unwitting disservice. For the interest in vocation is translated wholly into present preparation for a future task, while all the while the student neglects his present calling as a Christian student. Unless he inspires young learners to see that while they are on campus they have a present calling, a divine vocation, as Christian students, the Christian teacher fails in his own vocation. Their future calling may be in doubt, but there must be no doubt about this calling, it is sheer calamity when a young person enrolls in a Christian college and is challenged by everything else—challenged to maintain personal piety, challenged to preserve evangelistic fervor, challenged to keep Lip church attendance (that is, challenged to do everything that being a Christian off campus already implies)—without being challenged specifically with what being a Christian on campus demands: the calling of Christian student. A campus that does not make this matter plain to students when they enroll, nor sustain it throughout their college years, not only dilutes its academic stature but evades a Christian duty.

Much of the student skepticism about the power of Christian truth follows upon the fact that too few teachers require them to earn their heritage, and too many are content if they simply parrot the inherited tradition. Our educational institutions are primarily concerned to keep the student clean morally (an ideal that often is mostly diluted to not doing certain things) and to shelter him from the pagan theories of the day. Now, education unconcerned for moral purity is a sham; it sacrifices the comprehensive character of truth, and it can lay no claim to be genuinely Christian. But students ought to know the commandments of God before they get to campus, if local churches and parents have done their job; the special purpose of a college is to sift out truth from error, to set the Christian view alongside its competitors, and to drive students to earn their heritage, not simply to memorize it. First and foremost the academic effort exists for the victory of truth. In the final analysis, neither spiritual nor moral victory is secure apart front the triumph of truth. Meeting this special responsibility of the Christian college lies not in ringing doorbells for Christ (although something is amiss about evangelical education if it dulls that desire, and fails to produce more competent evangelistic conversation); it lies, rather, in mastering the realm of truth and error. No amount of evangelistic zeal can compensate for the evasion or neglect of genuinely academic concerns. An institution that trains parakeets may be a devout bird sanctuary, but academic enterprise requires more than an assembly-line production of orthodox cheeps and chirps.

Here is tomorrow’s task force, charged to learn and to live by the light of God’s Word.

Does this young person in the classroom realize what it implies that God has privileged him with a knowledge of His Word as a student at a time when genuine faith no longer lights the path of most students in the academic world?

Does he realize that his being an evangelical scholar is a strategic divine step in our generation’s comprehension of the unity of truth in Jesus Christ?

Does he understand that a binding commitment to the Scriptures as God’s authoritative revelation—to the Logos as the first principle of all things (the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier, and the Judge of life) implies not only that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Lord of one’s life, but that he is the only adequate answer to the persistent problems confronting human civilization and culture?

Does the professor set him an example—vocation for vocation—Christian teacher to Christian student—of a passion for the whole body of modern learning illumined and informed and integrated by the light of God’s Word? On this campus, if the faculty is true to its mission, an array of competent scholars will daily mirror the modern mind and allow the winds of modernity to blow full fury through these windows of learning, so that the student will feel the very pulse and heartbeat of the diverse and divergent credos of contemporary man. But is it sufficient—is it evangelical education—to imply that one can combine the modern faith with the faith once for all delivered to the saints? That is to say—and it is being said on church-related campuses whose Christian moorings are loose—that the apostolic and secular perspectives may be held alongside each other, provided only that the biblical view is not replaced; or that only the matter of personal salvation is important. Students and faculty, administrators and trustees are easily misled into this dangerous disjunction where there is no maturing to a Christian view of the totality of things.

Students trained in this climate appraise one facet of Christianity or another in a developmental or relativistic way, and readily accept an alternative to the Christian view under the pressures of scientism. Turn the classrooms of our evangelical colleges over to this atmosphere of learning, and the winds wafting over our campuses today will become the whirlwinds sweeping tomorrow’s once-evangelical institutions. For then Jesus Christ is no longer the Truth; rather, he is demeaned into some truth alongside other truths. Now there is a diversity of truths; the oneness of truth is gone, and the Logos no longer seen as the unity of meaning. Now truth is compartmentalized into separate, isolated realms. Evangelical education thereby lapses into the inner predicament of the world of secular learning—the university whose uni- is lost in diversity, and whose college is no longer a co-legio. The consequences of such evangelical default would be disastrous for the future of Christianity, as for the academic world generally. For the Word of God is deprived of a directive role in the world of learning. As Christian affirmations are attenuated to the tolerances of scientism, evangelical ambition is no longer seeking to guide the course of events by the sure light of biblical imperatives, but is content to escape demolition through isolation and shelter from the forces of antichrist.

Criticism and correction are a necessary task of Christian learning. But criticism and correction, according to Archbishop William Temple, reflect essentially a negative role in antithesis, and as such lack creative and constructive power. In history any forward movement, any true advance, comes with thesis (cf. Henry P. Van Dusen, God in Education: A Tract for the Times, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, pp. 89 ff.). By choosing between thesis and antithesis evangelical higher education indicates whether its interest lies only in defending its positions, or in realizing as well the triumph of the truth.

In the struggle for the minds of modern men, there are some feasible and practical ways to discharge evangelical dedication to the triumph of truth.

1. By pursuing full regional accreditation, all evangelical liberal arts colleges will assure themselves of at least minimal academic standards and will enable graduates seeking higher degrees to continue their work at outstanding secular universities.

2. Each fully accredited college could distinguish itself by specializing in a given field of undergraduate and graduate studies.

3. Cooperative summer institutes of graduate studies could offer concentrated studies in special areas, such as Christian philosophy, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of education, and so on.

4. Qualified evangelical scholars from both Christian and secular faculties can prepare joint literary symposia that are not only serviceable to evangelical colleges, but also acceptable in secular schools as “viewpoint books.”

5. Qualified evangelical authors in the various departments of learning must prepare textbooks for publication by standard secular publishers.

6. A rotating faculty selected cooperatively from several leading evangelical colleges could provide specialized instruction on several campuses at one and the same time.

7. A particularly strong evangelical college could develop a specialized institute of graduate research and studies.

8. An international, interdenominational Christian university is not only desirable but imperative.

9. Translation of evangelical textbooks into other languages would augment intelligent understanding and communication among evangelicals.

10. University extension campuses manned in part by mobile and in part by resident faculty could be established in countries like Japan, Switzerland, and India.

These are but some of the ways to realize evangelical dedication to the triumph of the truth. Let us be heartened by the fact that evangelical Christianity more than any other movement believes in the triumph of the truth. But let us be sobered by our failure to practice effectively what we believe in this regard. The three main cultural forces of our time are Communism, which believes in the triumph of the proletariat; political democracy, which believes in the triumph of representative government; and scientism, which believes in man’s triumph over nature. Christianity has always affirmed, and even in these turbulent times still affirms, the triumph of the truth. To assert that God’s interest in the triumph of truth is limited only to the life to come is as profoundly unbiblical as to insist that God’s interest in the triumph of virtue is entirely future. The final and complete vindication of truth and righteousness awaits our Lord’s return, of course. But it would be nothing less than tragic, even pathetic, were evangelicals to allow this sure sense of the far future to justify intellectual and social indifference, particularly when secular forces, imbued not with the true but with a false view of triumph, struggle day and night to conquer this world for their cause.

The Sins Of Sodom—1963

The sins of Sodom are the sins of the world today, and like the inhabitants of Sodom, we stand in danger of a far-reaching judgment by a holy God.

Had there been paperbacks in the days of Lot, we can imagine the shelves of newsstands and bookstores filled with books such as are to be found all over America today. Had there been movies, many of the current “realistic” and “adult” films would have been main attractions.

Lest we continue in a smug complacency, we will be wise to remember the words of our Lord; “I tell you … except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

The Ministry And The Church’S Consent

One anxiety voiced by independent evangelicals over the ecumenical movement is that through sheer size it may acquire coercive power over smaller constituencies. Churchmen making much of the corruptive potential of corporate power in social ethics seldom apply this thesis to the ecclesiastical realm. But the Bible is replete with illustrations of misuse of religious authority.

Evangelical circles are in fact not themselves immune from perils of the kind they sense in ecumenically inclusive agencies.

The World Council’s Faith and Order Conference in Montreal raised the subject of ecclesiastical controls in a variety of contexts. In plenary session the report of Section III on “The Redemptive Work of Christ and the Ministry” was challenged for its statement that “in any case the exercise of the special ministry requires the consent of the Church.” Dr. Hillyer H. Straton, pastor of First Baptist Church of Malden, Massachusetts, put the question: “Consent of what church? Should we understand the word ‘church’ with a small or a capital C?” Then he scored his point: “Roger Williams found himself driven into the wilderness because he would not bow to the ‘consent’ of a local church in Massachusetts. Under such control John Wesley would never have been able to make his witness that has so blessed the church. Nor could Dwight L. Moody have carried his gospel message around the world.” Dr. Straton noted that while the report acknowledged the guidance of the Holy Spirit, such a restriction actually constricts the Spirit’s work. He might have noted also that Jesus’ refusal to bow to the ecclesiastical authorities of his day was one of the factors leading to his crucifixion.

In Section III, devoted to the discussion of “Christ and His Church,” one delegate, emphasizing the answerability to the Church of all who are called to preach, declared that the World Council ought to curtail unaccredited seminary training that feeds into the “store-front churches”; he contended, moreover, that an ecumenical responsibility exists to make impossible the existence of such movements. Since the speaker was a Negro serving on the theological faculty of a Methodist institution, this display of intolerance was quite surprising. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake immediately countered the suggestion, declaring that the ecumenical movement must avoid any impression that by unity it intends a monolithic authoritarian structure that would repress all independent expression. While the wide variety of preaching is one of the prices the Christian church is paying for its divisions, he added, the Christion church must be willing to risk such possibilities.

In the years ahead questions such as church-relatedness and church-consent are sure to come in for increasing ecumenical discussion. It would be well for all Christian bodies, whether in or out of the ecumenical movement, to consider them both constructively and critically. The special ministry doubtless requires the Church’s consent in some sense. But no recourse should be taken against those who act without such consent. For preaching without the Church’s consent is but another aspect of the right of conscience, of the right to protest as well as to preach, and perhaps, in some instances, of the right to be wrong. It would be a worse wrong, however, to undo the right to preach by ecclesiastical force.

Scripture And Tradition: New Horizons

Recent developments indicate that on the questions of the authority of Scripture and tradition the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church may now be moving toward each other at clearly discernible if not rapidly accelerating rates. Some WCC leaders, enamored of modern theological traditions, had lost the Protestant concern for sola scriptura long before the admission of Orthodox bodies at New Delhi in 1961, with their renewed emphasis upon ancient tradition. At the Montreal Faith and Order Conference, for instance, sole traditione at one stage came near to replacing sola scriptura in the theological reports, and even in the final revision the Gospel was designated as the Tradition.

Within the Roman church, noted historically for its emphasis upon ecclesiastical tradition, a new feeling for Scripture appears to be emerging, involving (according to Karl Barth, who writes for the current issue of The Ecumenical Review) increased interest in the Gospels and renewed emphasis upon the Bible in the Church.

To the Christian who acknowledges the supreme authority of the biblical canon these developments are hardly reassuring. Despite the possibility of a renewed concern for Scripture within the church of Rome, the continuing centering of revelation within the teaching office of the Roman hierarchy restricts the freedom of the Word and discourages its critical application to prevailing doctrines. Within Protestantism, the World Council of Churches’ drift from sola scriptura evidences a progressive abandonment of crucial theological credenda.

Scripture does not tolerate coexistent sources of authority. The earliest mention of tradition in the New Testament—“the traditions of the Elders” (Matt. 15:1–14 and Mark 7:1–13)—soundly condemns all attempts to add the opinions of sinful men to the commandments of God. And Paul, who admonishes his churches to continue in the Gospel tradition, does so on the basis of that tradition itself being set forth in Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3). Traditions must not judge the Scripture. It is Scripture which shall judge traditions. Those who love the faith once delivered unto the saints can rightly deplore any position short of an authoritative New Testament canon and can see abandonment of sola scriptura as possible prelude to an eventual melioration of the Reformation’s other great and unfluctuating standards—sola fides, sola gratia.

The Washington March And The Negro Cause

With conflicting emotions Washingtonians watched from office windows as multitudes of demonstrators swarmed through their streets for the “march on” the nation’s capital. Were these the convulsions of a new age in which all Americans would freely recognize one another’s rights irrespective of color? Were they rather a portent of revolutionary mob pressures that presage the decline of a republic, and possibly a time of bloody violence?

Any sure answer to those questions seemed exasperatingly elusive. The massive demonstration was more orderly than its critics prophesied, less constructive than its champions contended (see news coverage, page 34).

But there were other questions not wholly without an answer.

What does the Negro want? What racial aspirations are legitimate and illegitimate? He wants only “what the white man has”—so the word goes. An easy reply is that nobody has the right to demand automatically what another qualifies to achieve. But there are larger considerations: has not the white American also set the Negro American an example of seeking economic equality and social status above all else? Assessed by such superlative racial aspirations as moral integrity, spiritual power, social justice, and creative contribution, how does the white American measure up? Is he now perhaps paying part of the penalty for setting an example of putting first things second? If the Negro mimics the white man, is the Negro alone to blame? And if the tide of history catches up with an accumulation of discrimination, is it wholly incredible that the Negro even thinks in terms of simply reversing the process of discrimination?

While Negro spokesmen have sought effectively to stir white conscience, the rising momentum of pressures and demands has also adversely affected some who normally would be sympathetic. In the military a new directive indicates that promotion will be based not simply on effectiveness of military command but also on efficiency in breakdown of racial discrimination in one’s sector—so that military officers are required to become agents of community sociological change. Although President Kennedy disavows a racial-quota approach to job appointments, some government departments have circulated a directive that no opportunities exist for the additional employment of whites, but that there are opportunities for Negroes. If jobs are filled on the basis of race proportions within the population, not on the basis of qualification alone, private business will be required to meet the same quotas once government accedes to such pressure. In view of the chronic unemployment problem, such demand for jobs on a racial basis, and the consequent cancellation of universal work opportunities, is likely to prove far more explosive than the integration of schools and communities. The groundswell of sympathy for Negro rights has a furrow of anxiety over what seems also to be a demand for preferential treatment.

From our tenth-story window view it appeared that the marchers were moving much too fast to accomplish their sociological objectives. There were two tragic elements to the Washington spectacle. One was the optimistic reliance of powerful ecclesiastical leaders upon political mechanisms to promote a new social order. The other was the failure of evangelical Christians at the grass roots to anticipate and help to resolve a crisis in the life of the nation along spiritual lines. All is once again quiet on the Washington front. But evangelical churches across the nation must look into the future and ask themselves what they can and must do to create a helpful and constructive interracial climate.

The massive demonstration was void of official evangelical representation. “Our folks are sympathetic with solving the race problem,” one top evangelical leader observed, “but we feel that this wasn’t the way to go about it.”

But what is the way? Have evangelicals offered any constructive, creative guidelines to curtail oppression of Negroes? Does it not bother the evangelical conscience that there are parts of the country where a traveling Negro cannot even find water?

Wcc And Religious Liberty

For five days just prior to the August meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in Rochester, New York, a group of some twenty theologians and church leaders met in the same city to ponder the perennially knotty problems of religious liberty. The WCC Committee on Religious Liberty is to be saluted for convoking the consultation. Liberty of no kind is ever to be taken for granted. Moreover, some twenty centuries of Christianity have not arrived at a common solution of certain theological problems involved. And attending this inconclusiveness, all the while, has been a multiplication of historical problems as to application of theological principles to specific instances.

No finality was expected from the Rochester gathering—its discussions and findings were not for publication. For this was but the American version of a series of continent-hopping meetings—Europe last June, Asia and Africa hopefully yet to come—preparatory to a worldwide meeting of the Committee on Religious Liberty in 1964. Forthcoming from the latter is to be a final statement on the nature and basis of religious liberty as understood by Christians, which could be submitted for approval to the next Central Committee meeting in January, 1965.

The 1964 statement will doubtless be of major interest to Christians, and not alone because of the timely importance of the subject. For the World Council embraces within itself a rather staggering number of theological and ecclesiological traditions. Americans are reminded that their zeal for church-state separation is not shared by all. Greeks are reminded similarly with regard to forbidding of proselytism. Then there are the Russians.… And what is to be the stance toward Roman Catholic views in a day of ecumenical gains in relations with that church?

The problems arising from the current trend of Afro-Asian nations to adopt state religions deserve special attention.

The Rochester consultation discussed statements, many of them the fruit of previous WCC meetings, which form the concluding chapter of a newly released book, The Basis of Religions Liberty (Association Press, §3.75), by A. F. Carrillo De Albornoz, head of the WCC Secretariat on Religious Liberty. Points of agreement and points of difference among ecumenists are noted. Syncretism is banished in view of the uniqueness of Christianity.

Primary concern revealed thus far is the relation of Christianity to state and society rather than its internal relations, although one background paper touched on the New Testament view of heresy and its restraint. It is to be hoped that the 1964 statement will distinguish between a true liberty to be extended to all persons in the body politic and a false liberty which would allow error or heresy free entry into the Church. Such free entry results in the exit of true freedom. Such false liberty is the strangulation of true liberty, found only in the Gospel.

Choices are like the fork of a road. There is a point where there is no discernible difference between one road and the other, but once the decision is made and one is chosen it leads off to a different destination.

There is not a day but what all of us make choices—most of them of no great importance, necessary but not determinative to any great degree.

We all know that in creating man after His own image God gave to him the right of choice. No automaton, man has the privilege of decisions, even to the point of disobeying God’s commands.

But with this right of choice there exists man’s gravest responsibility. On choice human destiny depends. The Holy Spirit woos, the Gospel calls, the circ*mstances in which we find ourselves all combine in their effect, but man chooses, and from the human standpoint the die is cast.

We are all familiar with Lot’s choice. Confronted with the necessity of separating from Abraham because of a conflict of interest, and offered a choice between the rocky hills of the west or the well-watered and fertile valley of the Jordan, he chose the latter. This was based on personal advantage. Water has always been a problem in Palestine and an abundant supply, even to this day, difficult to come by.

But in the Jordan valley there is water in abundance, and the land brings forth an abundance of anything planted. For a herdsman this was like an oasis in the desert. It offered every material advantage. The one disadvantage was the wickedness of the men of Sodom.

Lot’s choice was obviously the one to make if personal advantage was to be the determining factor. He may have considered the evils of Sodom, but they did not deter him. In fact, he moved his family to the very outskirts of the city, later becoming a resident and apparently one of the “city fathers.”

Thanks to the record in Second Peter we know that Lot was a “righteous” man and became greatly distressed by the licentiousness of those about him.

But Lot’s choice did not affect him alone. The biblical account makes it clear that his children were deeply affected by the evil all about them; and his wife’s backward look was certainly in part an unwillingness to leave her home.

When did this family debacle begin? The day Lot made a decision based on personal advantage despite the moral dangers involved in that decision.

Centuries later the aging Apostle Paul, in a letter to Timothy, spoke of his former companion in labor: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica” (2 Tim. 4:10a).

Demas made a choice, a choice between staying with the imprisoned servant of God and sharing in the opprobrium, hardships, and dangers of that situation, or exercising his freedom of choice and movement and going to the safety and attractions of the worldly city of Thessalonica. He chose the latter.

Many of our choices today are made at the point of personal pleasure. There is a way which seems narrow and there are crosses of self-discipline which, when looked at in the context of the immediate, seem so unnecessary. And there are so many attractive things in the world, things which appeal to the appetites and senses and which are indulged in by most of the people around us.

There are advantages which come solely from money, and we are often confronted by a choice which means more money and less of spiritual values; the decision becomes even more difficult if we sense a need for our children to have these advantages.

“This present world” probably dictates most of our choices. Seen from the standpoint of immediate advantage and without consideration of the ultimate effect, so many of our decisions seem natural, even “smart,” to the world; but they are utterly foolish in God’s sight.

Many choices are made on the basis of status—the regard and influence which will accrue to us whereby our place in the world will seem more important in the eyes of others. This can be a deadly choice because self-glory and not the glory of God becomes the dominating influence in our lives.

Choices are as varied and as numerous as the individuals who inhabit the world. While many avenues of choice fall into familiar categories, each person is confronted by the opportunity or necessity of making decisions which are personal. That the ultimate effect involves his relationship to God makes the matter of choice of such vital importance.

The Bible is replete with stories of those who exercised their right of choice, some to their undoing and others to their eternal good.

Basic to the matter of choice is the attitude of the individual. If the attitude is one of obedience to God’s revealed will, the choices will be for His glory and for our good. But if self comes first, choices can have a devastating effect.

The Apostle Paul points out how true Christians can make grievous mistakes of choice. Writing to the believers in Corinth he likens his own ministry to the work of a skilled master builder.

He affirms his own task as preaching Christ, the only foundation.

Then he speaks of the kinds of lives men can and do build on that foundation: “gold, silver, precious stones,” all materials which stand the stress of time and the testing of fire. Or “wood, hay, stubble,” none of which have any permanence in themselves, and all of which are subject to destruction by fire.

Paul then looks forward to the final day of testing and tells how some will be found to have constructed buildings which will endure, while others will have a life’s work wiped out even though they themselves are saved by the grace of God.

The far-reaching effect of choices will never be fully known this side of eternity. But it is our privilege to know the God of eternity and follow his revealed will.

Central to our decisions is the attitude of obedience. The first sin came through disobedience, and we dishonor God and amplify our own problems by the same route.

God has not left us without guidance. He guides through our prayers, his Word, the indwelling Spirit, circ*mstances—in a multitude of ways we can hear him saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isa. 30:21).

If we will be honest with ourselves we will admit that the spiritual problems we now face usually stem from wrong choices. We have not listened to God’s revealed will. We have permitted a multitude of secondary considerations to influence our choices. Again and again we have looked back to a time and place in which we disobeyed God and went our own way.

Fortunately the grace of God is so great that even now we can make another choice—to repent, confess, and turn again to Him who can yet make all things new.

Washing Out A Few Things

A book that has had a good sale (and it is hard to figure out why) is The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. It is light summer reading about a gunboat on the China rivers; one gathers from the blurbs that McKenna, having served on such a boat, knows what he is talking about.

The great thing about the story is how the crew regained its self-respect by being forced to do its own work, and this under the pressure of a life-and-death situation. Among other things, when all the Chinese cheap labor had run away the sailors had to do their own washing, and McKenna has a nice touch when he tells of the deep satisfaction the men had in folding up and putting away the washing which they had done themselves. I think there was a therapy in this little accomplishment which was a kind of turning point for the whole story. If there is one thing more than another wrong with our society, it is that we have lost too many therapies. This is the point at which the gifts of our machines can be a curse. It is no surprise that institutions put us on “hand work” when our nervous systems have fallen apart. The pity is that so much of this is “busy work.”

A preacher friend of mine tells me he would like to take a job laying bricks for about a year so as to get again a sense of clear-cut accomplishment—so many rows of brick laid in so many hours. Lacking bricklaying, he seeks out little definite things to do in his broad and crushing ministry as his own private therapy.

Everybody is after us to think about world problems, to solve issues in the large, to worry ourselves practically insane over troubles we can’t do a thing about. This is not to say that we can be unconcerned about the large issues. It is to say, however, that it is possible to hold very wise opinions on large issues and be senselessly negligent about our own front steps.

“If any man would be my disciple, let him take up his cross.…”

The way to pull the crew together is for everyone to wash out a few of his own things.

EUTYCHUS II

Challenge Of Latin America

I want to write expressing my very great appreciation for the July 19 issue as it deals with the Latin American missionary endeavor. It has been very helpful.…

Our society began work in the Province of Cordoba in 1909, and has had a continuous missionary service in that land since that time. Our most successful work in Argentina has been during the last ten years. We have some twenty different missionaries serving, with four families in the Buenos Aires area. We have some twenty-five different congregations. We have had a very successful Bible institute for many years, presently located at Almafuerte. We have some very successful radio broadcasts. Just recently the large station in Buenos Aires told our missionaries that we have received more mail from the listeners than any other program on the station.

In Brazil, we have had a very successful missionary program in the lower Amazon valley. This dates back about ten years. We hate successful work at Macapa, Icoaraci, Capenema, and on several islands in the mouth of the Amazon River. We have three Christian day schools functioning and with a very effective ministry.

General Secretary

Foreign Mission Society

The Brethren Church

Winona Lake, Ind.

In your article on “Latin Americans in the United States” it is stated that “there are eighteen Protestant refugee centers, all related to Church World Service.” Our church has maintained such a center in Miami since the beginning of the refugees coming to that city, and our center is not related to Church World Service.

This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is outstanding.…

General Director

Board of Home Missions

National Association of Free Will Baptists

Nashville, Tenn.

Your editorial concerning “Evangelical Coordinating Agency Needed for Spanish Work” was brought to my attention since I staff the Committee on Spanish American Work in the Division of Home Missions of the National Council of Churches.

A study undertaken by the Bureau of Research of the National Council, a few years ago, concerning Spanish American Work … gathered most of the facts, including the number of congregations or mission stations of most of the Protestant communions (both those belonging to NCC and non-NCC). This data was classified state by state. The researchers recognized in the introduction to the study the data difficulties mentioned in your editorial, but insofar as Hispanic peoples could be identified from social data, this information was also listed for each state. Only 100 copies of the study were printed from page proofs, since the pre-publication inquiries indicated little demand for the information. However, although the 100 page-proof copies, unbound, sold for $6 each, they have all been gone now for some time.

The missionary education “home theme” for 1964–65 is “The Spanish American in the U. S. A.” This mission study program is developed by the Commission on Missionary Education of NCC. Study books are prepared for each age level on the selected theme. The study will be introduced at twelve World Mission Study Conferences next summer which are held in a number of places throughout the country (North-field, Massachusetts; Silver Bay, New York; Evanston, Illinois; Williams Bay, Wisconsin, etc.).

I have read advance copies of all of this study material and can assure you that this study will surely accent item 3 of your editorial suggestion. On the basis of past experience, the Commission on Missionary Education expects to print and sell 150,000 books on the home theme.

You are perhaps aware of the existence of the Council on Spanish American Work which accents the concerns of the Southwest; this council has been in existence for fifty years. The Protestant Latin American Emergency Committee (P.L.A.E.C.), now officially related to the Miami Council of Churches, is giving very much attention to the Hispanic population in Miami (both Cuban refugees and other Spanish peoples)

Assoc. Exec. Secy.

Div. of Home Missions

National Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

Sincere thanks for your excellent reporting and unusually perceptive analysis of the Latin American evangelical church.

Danforth Gospel Temple

Toronto, Ont.

Your issue on Latin America is terrific—one of your best issues ever.

Religion Editor

The Miami Herald

Miami, Fla.

I was impressed with the introductory article … by W. Dayton Roberts. In speaking of the “Challenge of a New Day” in Latin America he declares, “Protestant Christians cannot in scriptural conscience wash their hands of the enormous social problems facing Latin America.” Again he says, “… the Latin American is discovering that he cannot be unmoved by the problems of social justice.”

These observations are significant in the face of the character of those churches which are dominant in the evangelical movement in Latin America. These churches are those which in Protestant America have been most vocal in decrying the concern of “theological liberalism” for social reform. Perhaps their insight of their responsibility in Latin America will awaken them to their social responsibility in Protestant North America.

Director

United Presbyterian Center

Frenchburg, Ky.

My sincere congratulations on the excellent issue dealing with Latin America. Mr. Dayton Roberts and his colleagues have done a masterful job summarizing the conditions and developments in Latin America. We can only hope that churchmen, especially pastors and mission leaders, will realize the value of the material presented here and keep it available for study in the churches.

We thank God for this encouraging picture of this great area to the south.

The Committee on Spanish American work of the NCC Home Missions Division has been making a real effort to do something about the situation as far as their own missions are concerned. As far as I know, this has not touched any of the evangelical agencies, and these are considerable, perhaps as many or more than the NCC has. So I would think that the suggestion by CHRISTIANITY TODAY is justified. Evangelicals ought to get together in the home missions framework and set up such a council. I will make a suggestion of this at our joint retreat between IFMA and EFMA this fall.

Public Affairs Secy.

National Association of Evangelicals

Washington, D. C.

Black, White, And Gray

Thank you for your editorial on the murder of Medgar Evers, and the article by Dr. Bell on “Christian Race Relations” (July 19 issue). The politicians and others, on both sides, who have an axe to grind are distorting the whole thing and are likely to create more problems than they solve.

I am aware that Christianity has little to do with what is going on. But Christians have a special guilt. We have been saying that we must not do justice, because we feared that evil would come of it. Now this is a strange position if we believe in a God who loves the good and hates the evil. For we have been perpetuating an evil, and praying that good would come of it.

It seems to me that throughout, there has been a failure to distinguish between civil rights which are impersonal and inclusive, and social rights which are personal and exclusive. I fear that our failure to recognize this distinction, and to act accordingly, is going to exact a terrible price in loss of liberty and in social confusion.

Charlotte, N. C.

Concerning Dr. Bell’s article … in which integration is encouraged if not advocated, do you not know that President Lincoln, when speaking to a delegation of free Negroes in Washington, said to them that because of the great difference existing between the black and white races (greater than between almost any other two races) it would be well for them to keep separate?

In the light of Lincoln’s words, here and elsewhere, spoken truly and kindly, those who today desire to live separate from Negroes are not, I submit, justly chargeable with hate, prejudice, or discrimination.

Integration all too often has resulted in intermarriage and the undermining of race integrity, with unhappiness and tragedy for those concerned, and, therefore, is undesirable for both blacks and whites.

Long Beach, Calif.

L. Nelson Bell … supported the Life magazine symposium on race relations’ statement. This statement proclaims that “… all Christians are brothers in Christ,” as well as “… the urgent necessity of removing all barriers to spiritual fellowship in Christ, without at the same time trying to force un-natural social relationships.” This dichotomy between “spiritual fellowship” and “social relationships” is a tragic misunderstanding of the nature of the Gospel and is surely responsible for the “civil rioting” which Mr. Bell deplores. If “Brothers in Christ” are to serve their Lord, they must love and accept each other fully in all dimensions of their existence. It is as impossible to separate “social” and “spiritual” unity in the Lord as social and spiritual unity between marriage partners. The local Christian fellowship, as the family of God, is called to nothing short of complete openness and acceptance of all individuals, regardless of the color of their skin. The Christian layman is called to express the spirit of Christ’s love and reconciliation in his total life in the world. To fully accept one’s brother in all the varied aspects of human existence is “integration.” To love one’s brother as well is to be a “Brother in Christ.”

East Harlem Protestant Parish

New York, N. Y.

Mrs. Murray’S Indictment

Last evening I read in your “Worth Noting” (News section) in the July 19 issue a statement attributed to Mrs. Madalyn Murray.… Her words are an indictment against me and against too many other Christians. We have railed at her and other unbelievers for what they are trying to do. But we haven’t spent comparable time and effort asking God to convict her of her sin and save her soul. Or if we bothered to think along these lines at all, it was for the purpose of ultimately preventing her from changing the status quo rather than concern for her personally.

Bergenfield, N. J.

Neoorthodoxy And Its Progeny

Neoorthodoxy is not to be assessed merely for its weak view of Scripture. It is a philosophical unity which can logically be expected to bring forth certain consequences. Nor has it come from nowhere. Theologically it was the choice of desperation after the old type of liberalism became bankrupt. Yet it is not related only to what theologically preceeded it. When old types of philosophical rationalism failed, the currents of philosophy proper had previously entered this cycle. Art forms had already followed the same road; and even law had come to the same place in the United States in the twenties by the rise of “legal realism” with its pragmatic, relativistic legal emphasis. Thus, existential theology was the laggard discipline and had only walked the same road that philosophy proper and the art forms had already taken. Even the current application of the word “fundamentalist” in economics should remind us of the related curves in all these fields of thinking. It is well to be academically orientated in the differences among Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Niebuhr, Tillich, Richardson, Robinson, Fuchs, Ebeling, and others. But to know the differences without seeing the flowing stream is to sleep on the pillow of academic scholasticism. It is like knowing the differences in Roman Catholic theology among the different Roman Catholic orders at the time of the Protestant Reformation without knowing there was that which could be called “Rome,” and as such rejected with clear words as a unit by the Reformers. The Reformers certainly understood the differences between the orders, but their faithfulness to God rested upon the comprehension of the fault of the whole.

Equally, ambivalent judgments are not in place concerning neoorthodoxy. For anyone to think of neoorthodoxy as even a “halfway” return from liberalism shows no comprehension of neoorthodoxy’s heritage or direction.

The philosophic unity which neoorthodoxy is has natural “practical” results—ecclesiastical, cultural, and political. Should we not all long ago have known that neoorthodoxy would bring forth, with its relativistic, subjective base, what it is bringing forth in moral, psychological, and sociological areas? Should we not equally have known that it would bring forth in the denominations in which it is in control that which it recently has been bringing forth? Nor is this the case only in the United States: it can be observed across the whole international ecclesiastical, and Protestant and Roman Catholic ecumenical, spectrum.

Nor has this failed to have an influence on those evangelicals who have stayed in the denominations in the United States that are largely controlled by neoorthodox and post-neoorthodox thinking. It would seem to me that much of the organized and unorganized general evangelical framework, based on disowning or minimizing the principle of the purity of the visible church, has moved from its ecclesiastical contacts and practical contacts such as evangelism, to theological bridge-building that first accepts neoorthodoxy as a third force between orthodoxy and liberalism, and then champions the neoorthodox conjunction of “biblical authority” with “biblical errancy.” In this sort of an atmosphere it is not surprising that institutions and organizations which have been known as evangelical are now in a position where the full inspiration of Scripture has been minimized or set aside.

Huemoz sur Ollon, Switzerland

The Enlisted Man

Re your May 24 issue which attempted to cover, more or less adequately and realistically, the problem of ministering to the military: There was not one article or statement of positive testimony, or critical analysis by an enlisted man.… I fully realize that the military is not a democratic community and that it has long been standard operating procedure that testimonies of enlisted personnel are unnecessary, unlearned, and irrelevant (as well as sometimes irreverent). Yet to neglect totally the voice of the enlisted ranks in your issue is, it seems to me not only inaccurate, but evangelistically and evangelically unconscionable.…

Nine weeks at Fort Slocum does not prepare the average chaplain for ministering to enlisted men in a realistic manner. If the chaplain is to “minister unto” his men concerning Jesus Christ, how is it that denominational and military authorities do not require training in the enlisted ranks? If Jesus Christ came and suffered as one of us and became as we are that he might redemptively sympathize and empathize with us, as well as forgive us, how is it that the chaplain retires so discreetly from this life of identification?… Surely, a two-year tour of duty as an enlisted man, with all its frustrations, harassments, etc., is not too much to ask of a young man who takes his vocation as chaplain seriously.

Editor

The Northern Light

Northern Baptist Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

Description Disputed

In his letter in the April 12 issue, Prof. Martin mentions two books: Color Blind by Margaret Halsey and Without Magnolias by Bucklin Moon. Of the first he says, “The book Color Blind also contains obscene passages.…” Now, I defy Prof. Martin to cite one single passage, one single sentence, that could not be printed verbatim in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The fact is he could not, although CHRISTIANITY TODAY would probably prefer to abstain from using the common word for an illegitimate child which occurs once in Color Blind.

Without Magnolias is a different matter. It is an adult book written about adult problems and relationships. But it does not even come close to obscenity, and Prof. Martin’s characterization of the book as “… sheer, unmitigated p*rnography …” is ridiculous and absurd. The language is somewhat coarse in a couple of passages but not nearly as coarse as the language which the real-life characters would have used. The usual four-letter words which characterize obscenity are completely absent. The few love scenes in the book are most restrained, and details are left almost entirely to the imagination of the reader. In this respect, the book is in very good taste.

Both books are, however, guilty of what some people consider a sin. They are guilty of being critical of and antagonistic toward the policies of white supremacy and racial segregation. To the distorted vision of an individual who sees obscenity in a Negro man dancing with a white girl, Color Blind would appear obscene. But I doubt that the majority of us in this country share this view, regardless of our individual attitudes toward integration. Certainly the courts do not.

Berkeley, Calif.

On The Horns

The Rev. Mr. Bustanoby’s discourse, “The Right to Die” (May 24 issue), lent new intensity to the heat of the ethical and practical problem of the medical care of those persons who have been in one way or another deprived of their endowments of personality, intelligence, and self-knowledge. As a recently qualified physician seeking to practice the tenets of my faith in medicine the problem is intensely real to me.

I commenced to read the article in hope that he might expound a principle on which the Christian physician might [stand] in the face of this problem. I was disappointed. He very ably stated his personal philosophy, but I rather doubt that any doctor cognizant of his human limitation would even dare to exercise the prerogatives of judgment which the enactment would require. The burning bedside question would be, “Is this person any longer useful in Christian service?” And the theological sequel is another question: “If he is no longer useful to Christ on earth, then why does not God call him home? Is the Master forgetting about his worn-out servants nowadays, so that we physicians find it necessary to hasten the heaven-bound traffic?”

On the other hand, what shall we do about the ever-growing quantity of human husks: the bodies bereft of personality and self-awareness whose dying we are bound to delay because we dare not assume the judgmental function of the Creator?

I should like to think that my Christian commitment would give me a position of practical insight, but on this problem it has not thus far, and in fact, has only pinned me on the horns of a dilemma.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Whenever Bishop Azariah received candidates for membership in the Church of South India, he had them place both hands on their heads and say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel”—a dramatic reminder that each new member of the Christian church is to be also a messenger of the Good News.

Ever since the Madras Missionary Conference Christian leaders have been increasingly preoccupied with the meaning of Mission and Church. This concern reached its climax last fall with the publication of two significant books, The Missionary Nature of the Church by a Dutch theologian, Johannes Blauw, and Upon the Earth by an Asian Christian leader, D. T. Niles.

Conceived at Willingen ten years ago, these books reflect not merely the thinking of two church authorities but the wrestling of conference groups and consultations in many cities of the world. Evangelical readers will object to a few things, such as the soft-peddling of eternal punishment or the statement that only a few verses in the Old Testament have missionary significance. But such matters aside, the double-barreled thrust of these books is biblically oriented.

At the present time new books on mission theology are not hard to come by: they float like cream among the top echelon of the Church. But application of their truths is needed at the congregational level, both at home and abroad. Such “hom*ogenization” calls for some drastic changes.

The concept of the local congregation must be transformed. Principal C. H. Hwang of Taiwan aptly describes the prevalent pattern as the “active pastor, passive sheep structure.” Often evangelistic emphases have contributed to this misunderstanding. People are led to believe that they are saved to be served. This “only believe” theology does not build sound churches.

On the other hand, the suburban-type church has bred the go-getter, do-it-yourself kind of minister, who is jovial and an excellent mixer, and who can balance the budget besides. The sheep are curried and petted. But Jesus never recommended a “sheepfold mentality.” “Go your ways,” he said; “behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3).

A church true to the Bible, then, is a visible fellowship of people in a given geographical locality who have banded together because they have been saved from sin by Christ and are committed to sharing this salvation with all men everywhere. Through those who have become His, the indwelling Christ ministers to the world.

What God can do through congregations in which each member is a minister remains yet to be discovered. Pioneering in what a ministering congregation can do is the exciting prospect of those churches and ministers who heed the call to this new kind of missionary obedience.

The missionary congregation will be a ministering one. Christ shows compassion to the multitudes through such a congregation. It is there to help whenever someone is robbed and beaten on the Jericho road. Distant disasters or local trouble will find these ministering members sensitive to Christ’s leading.

The new congregation will be a witnessing congregation. Within witnessing distance of every believer in the United States are thousands of lost souls. To bring them to Christ is the job of each church member.

The entire church membership will become a missionary society, also. Together all members form a special kind of community like that of First Peter 2:1–9, a community of holy, kingly, priestly people who belong to God himself and exist primarily for broadcasting the excellencies of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.

That there are 42,250 Protestant missionaries at work abroad is no reason for boasting. Of these, 27,219 come from North America. In other words it takes the efforts of eleven churches—2,596 Protestants—to send out and support one missionary. A more desirable gauge of a congregation’s vitality, it is suggested, ought to be one missionary per forty wage-earning believers. Budget-wise, a good starting point is to spend no more for “us” than for “others.” Were the congregational pattern of missionary concern to operate in this way, there could be 422,500 missionaries at work overseas.

A New Image Of The Ministry

When everyone in the congregation becomes a minister, what happens to the pastor? He will be needed more than ever, but in a completely new role. Instead of ministering to a congregation in the usual way, he becomes its teacher and leader.

First of all, the minister in his new situation will use all his gifts of preaching and teaching to create a new image of the ministering congregation. Then small groups of convinced members will form for further guided Bible study and self-education in person-to-person witnessing. Next, each lesson will be applied to concrete situations in the community, and there will follow gatherings in which the experience thus gained is shared and discussed. Concurrently Christ will be indicating opportunities of service and calling attention to fields in urgent need of harvest hands.

Another form of fruitful activity is that of mothering new churches. Every town knows churches which are old enough to be mothers but which remain barren. While some are fifty years old and can point to no daughter church, many younger churches have already “mothered” a dozen daughter churches. Sheep which do not reproduce soon become mutton.

One way a congregation reproduces is by subdividing. Dinosaur churches are too ponderous to be effective ministering congregations. They need to subdivide. Groups of members in outlying areas begin to meet locally. They form a study unit or a prayer cell. Soon a Sunday school is organized, and the group grows into a ministering congregation.

Many local churches, however, will find that they cannot make such a beginning. Members and even ministers will agree with Hendrick Kraemer when he says, “Let us frankly say, by using the title of a well-known book, the first requirement for the problem of evangelism is ‘not a conversion of England, but a conversion of the Church.’ “Where people have no faith to communicate, they need first of all to hear the Gospel themselves. These are the sheep—sometimes whole flocks—who have strayed and need to be brought back to the joy of obedience.

The theological education of the trainer-minister will also be different. Missions courses, if they exist, are usually found on the last page of the seminary catalogue. What courses there are, are usually lumped with other optional classes. Now that missions is belatedly found to be a master of the house, however, it demands its rightful place at the center of study. At this point much prayer and prodding will be needed, for it is here that the low priority of missions in the local congregation has its genesis. No general upsetting of seminary chairs is called for, but rather, that all courses be taught from the point of view of the mission of the Church. Faculty meetings and forums need to concentrate on putting Mission at the heart of the curriculum.

To be effective in his new role, however, the minister-trainer will want special training in the techniques of the ministering congregation. He himself needs to become adept in personal evangelism. He must have courses in adult and Christian education, and must also acquire a knowledge of the theology, methods, and principles of the contemporary missionary movement. These are no longer electives; they are core subjects for every parish minister.

The impact of evangelical forces overseas is undeniable when contrasted with that related to the World Council. This strength can be traced directly to the missions emphasis in our Bible colleges and institutes. Moody Bible Institute alone accounts for 2,700 missionaries now on the field, and Prairie Bible Institute for more than 1,000. Much care should be exercised lest the current trend towards accreditation—while good—lead to a weakening of missions departments.

Worldwide Cross-Fertilization

The problems of leadership education are not confined to North America. Along with other patterns, we have exported also our image of the active pastor and his passive sheep. So even in the younger churches abroad the transforming of congregations into ministering and witnessing missionary churches must have first place on the agenda, and their ministerial training programs must move missions from the periphery to the center of study.

At present at least 411 members of the younger churches have left their native lands to become missionaries. Eighteen countries have not only sent but have also received such missionaries. This marks the beginning of a great Christian cross-fertilization. American churches likewise are using more and more ministers from overseas.

That such cross-fertilization can take place is due to the remarkable spread of the secularistic revolution. A leveling of culture peaks and an upgrading of valleys by popular education is making urban centers all over the world more alike than ever before in history. So long as the Christian has learned to make technology serve the cause of Christ (and the average suburbanite has not), he is a good candidate for a foreign tour of service. He will be able to bring a message of hope to those whose religion and culture cannot cope with the revolution. Christ calls those who know him as Saviour to go to those who have lost their moorings and are adrift. Unless they go promptly, millions of God’s children will be lost in a miasma of cults and ideologies.

Our present ratio of one Christian worker to 21,000 of the population is not nearly enough. Only as local congregations in city, town, and countryside are reborn in obedience to the Great Commission can Christ’s longing for souls be satisfied.

It would be wise for would-be Christian colleges everywhere to examine themselves whether they be in the Spirit of God or driven on by some unholy spirit.

There is one unholy spirit which has captivated higher Christian education again and again, beginning with the Christian university of Alexandria in the second century A.D.: the appealing, respectable, vitiating spirit of Christian accommodation to the traditions of men. I am not talking abstractions. This spiritual force caught me at college, and maybe it will catch you. It is the driving concern to combine Christianity with the best that has been said and thought in the world, the moving attempt to fuse into one grand product the Christian faith and centuries of general human culture. And this catholic, synthesizing spirit has a devastating influence upon a Christian education. How so?

This tempting, synthesizing perspective tacitly assumes that broad areas of human achievement are a religious no-man’s-land and thus can be safely tucked under an inviolate compartment of Christian truths which have the last word on supernatural questions. Synthesis presupposes a compartmentalization of reality, and therefore in education works with the idea of certain naturalized, neutralized fields of learning, having kicked Christian faith in God upstairs to an honorable presidency; and it is precisely this built-in split, the kind of separation behind the combination, that deranges an education committed to having all knowledge integrated in Christ. No matter whether you patronizingly “make room for faith,” as Kant said, or give God, theology, and ethics a solidly papal, authoritarian position above subordinated “natural” arts and sciences, the profaning damage is done to education: certain studies are conceived of secularly, as being extrinsic to religious commitment, while revealed truths and their human interpretations are elevated, isolated, and made over-rationally airtight.

Historically a willing Christian synthesis with “good” ideas and products foreign to Jesus Christ has always led to a synthetic Christianity, the biblical Gospel adulterated. When Clement and Origen, sincerely seeking to raise their Christian catechetical school of the second and third centuries above the level of sancta simplicitas and to make it apologetically attractive for unbelieving intellectuals, invoked the best of Greek philosophy as handmaiden, it was not long before the handmaiden took charge of the marriage; and the resulting gnostic philosophical theology plagued the Church for ages with Platonism, Aristotelianism, and general humanistic intellectualism.

So today, when the spirit of accommodation to the traditions of men infects a college (maybe when it grows big and successful?), you may expect (1) that the purity and power of God’s Word will be compromised by the reflection done upon it, and (2) born out of the fascinating robbery of gold from the Egyptians—especially if no “infallible” Roman church is present to draw the limits and curb the pride—will grow a vaunting intellectualism, an unlovely frontier of sophisticated elite, orthodox on demand, but proud of what man by himself apart from Revelation can do.

Freedom With No Compass

Another unholy spirit that creeps like Sandburg’s Chicago fog on cat feet over a Christian campus is the spirit of scientistic Modern Freedom. Conceived in Renaissance magic and anti-Scholastic science, this evil spiritual dynamic is frankly unbiblical and at heart revolutionary. It is our Zeitgeist, the contemporary dunamis, dynamite raging in the wind on all continents. Freedom to revolt! Freedom to be an existentialistic question mark. Freedom to sell your neighbor for scrap if it further the Uebermensch. Freedom to have a planned economy, planned marriage, planned birth, and planned euthanasia by 1984.

What is hard to understand is why those who live and move and have their being in the grip of such a spirit still wish sometimes to parade under the old opprobium “Christian.” If a church, if a college, if a person would really be free from nineteenth-century values, eighteenth-century hymns, seventeenth-century creeds, and the six-teenth-century rediscovery of a 2,000-year-old book of maxims, myths, and local histories, for a twentieth-century unitarian pottage, why not let a first-century name go, too? Would it not be more honest, parasites? Or is it more dignified to let the Latin biblical mottoes engraved on the cornerstones, like old soldiers, just fade away?

Students, understandably impatient to be caught up in our vigorous world and its mad problems, check your angels before you drop the parental traces. With all your getting at college, get Wisdom—let Wisdom get you, because the seductive whirlwind of Modern Freedom is a strong, beating wind, and it is suicide. That is what Santayana—no church father but a reprobate skeptic—said before the First World War: Modernism is suicide for Christianity. “It is the last of those concessions to the spirit of the world which half-believers and double-minded prophets have always been found making; but it is a mortal concession. It concedes everything; for it concedes that everything in Christianity, as Christians hold it, is an illusion” (Winds of Doctrine, Harper Torchbook, 1957, p. 57).

The Re-Forming Spirit

What perspective now envelops a college filled with the Holy Spirit? Can one say, “Here it is or there it is” (Luke 17:20, 21)? Shall not every designation fall prey to the factionalism of “this is of Christ, and the other is of Apollo, of Cephas or Paul” (1 Cor. 1:10–13)? We are under God’s command “test all things and grab ahold of what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21), not so much an identification of the elusive way God works as a call to reconsecrate all hearts in the revealed, foolish Wisdom of our undivided Lord. Are the fruits of the Spirit unknowable in education? Would you know what spirit drives a teacher and student held in the biblical vision that all life is lived before Almighty God, all life is religion in operation, all life including study itself is to be agape for Christ in action?

To be holy is to be set apart for God. To make holy is to call out, to re-form, joyously to present something specially for God. Those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, saints, holy ones despite sin, will charismatically be busy sanctifying, like Midas transforming whatever they touch (unlike Midas) into living sacrifices to Creator God. At least this will be the calling they recognize, the grounding, pushing motive power to their work. And everything lies there to be set apart for God: sex, race, chemical reactions. In fact, every creation of God is good, says Paul to Timothy, not worthless if able to be received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the creative Word of God and prayer (1 Tim. 4:4). To saints the whole world is a sacred burning bush where God speaks marvelous things, to be enjoyed. But human acts and products, institutions and traditions which have trampled God’s burning bush with their shoes on, twisted and profaned it, cannot be enjoyed by saints, not even tolerated as something “secular” next to what is hallowed, for what cannot be received with outright glad thanksgiving must be either rejected or re-formed out of the grip of sin, made holy again for God. And I pray, says Paul, that your love for Christ may flow over into your knowledge, every perception, more and more, so that you may discern the differences between what is holy and unholy (Phil. 1:9, 10).

This sharp double edge of love for the Holy One, the passionate thrust of this re-forming spirit involves more than evangelical witness to the unsaved sold and renewal of a sagging Church. Reformation is global in touch, that is, has intense concern for all creation groaning and laboring under sin, as Romans 8 has it, and understands as its reasonable service bringing all human activity subjected to the feet of Christ. Savonarola was not a reformer but a revivalist used mightily by God in fifteenth-century Florence to convict men of sin, to challenge the immoralities of Pope Alessandro VI, to get men to burn their paintings and quit godlessness. Like Savonarola Luther preached sin and salvation, stirred the self-indulgent to come alive in Christ; and he re-formed song—what a salvage ad gloriam Dei! John Calvin too brought God’s open Word to bear upon more than the Church in Geneva, disciplining, re-forming social, economic, aesthetic, and political life by the Word’s directing norms. The most sacred profession a man can choose, says Calvin, is politics, to become a civil magistrate, an “ordained minister of divine justice,” directly under God’s law protecting the poor, weak, and oppressed irrespective of their belief—this is truly holy work, governing the world as God’s vicegerent (Inst. IV. xx.4, 6).

The only ungrudging rationale as well as the necessary, qualifying characteristic for a genuinely Christian, full-orbed college education, I think, is this re-forming spirit with its cosmic outreach for the love of Christ as Sovereign Lord of the whole creation. Jesus himself asked no less of us. No one pours new wine into old wineskins, he said, for the new wine will burst the skins and seep away, and the skins will be worthless too; you ought to put new wine into new wineskins (Luke 5:37, 38). We Christians have the new wine. What needs fashioning are the new wineskins for sex in psychology, for race in sociology; re-formed wineskins in chemistry, too—or did you think the hydrogen bomb is not evilly ingenious chemistry? Difficult, certainly—partly because, as Jesus said, no one who is drinking old wine wants new wine right away; he says, “The old wine is good enough for me” (Luke 5:39). Yet teachers and students with whose spirits the Holy Spirit of God testifies (Rom. 8:16), how can they not be driven to make all things holy, acceptable to God?

Something Earth-Shaking

I once heard Karl Barth say, “The best apologetics is a strong dogmatics.” Or as Abraham Kuyper puts it: you forsake the richness of the Christian faith if all you do is saunter around in other people’s gardens with a scissors cutting off a piece here and a piece there to make your bouquet. For God’s sake! grow your own flowers! (De Gemeene Gratie, III, 527).

We Christians must not let contemporary unbelievers condition our culture; it is mistaken sympathy or policy or whatever to force our Christian insights, adjusted, down inside their confining vision. To trust too easily the glittering results of a disbelieving culture is to play the biblical fool. And being our brother’s keeper, that is, being called to genuinely understand him, to live sensitive to his predicament, must not make us forget that we Christians have something earth-shaking and important to say ourselves, which needs painstaking development and careful application.

Besides, since the work we do is our Father’s business, in covenant with Him who blesses us to the third and fourth and hundredth generation, all the theories and products we develop must conform to biblical specifications, no matter the measure of the day. The vocation of God’s people in education is to build a highway for our God straight out into the desert, through the wasteland and rubble, so that the glory of our Lord may be revealed. Christian college education is not missionary activity to the unsaved but a workshop where Christians trade on their talents to become worthy servants, administrators of the world to which their Lord will soon be returning. And this is what the heritage of us protesting catholic, reformational Christians has always witnessed to in art, science, and institutions; it is this God-oriented, Holy Spirit-driven, Christ-focused study of the world and society at which we believers today, constantly re-forming, touchstoning to the biblical vision, are to be a building.

A Septuagint Approach

Needed for the Septuagint approach of Christian education are at least, say, seventy-two scholars who with unbending rabbinic concentration upon the cast and purity and purpose of their message steadily work together at embodying it plastically for the faithful and the faithless to see and read as they run. The Septuagint approach breaks with the attractive but futile individualism of one Christian here and another there going off bravely to infiltrate the educating world. Education by its nature demands concentration. Christian education will flower only where the Spirit has hands and eyes and ears and feet—all kinds of specialists—who are competent (piety does not cover incompetence, whether it be the botched exegesis of a poem or a messy appendectomy) and united not only by a common faith and biblical commitment but also by their breathing excitedly and wholeheartedly this unifying, re-forming spirit I have mentioned. The weakness in Christian educational impact at a Christian educational institution comes from the wedges between albeit confessing Christians, the fact that every scholar does what seems right in his own evangelical eyes, because they lack this common sense of religious direction and academic attack aimed at holy scholarship. If the Christian college has as its task to praise God not only with hallelujahs but in the difficult, time-consuming construction of Christian social theories, a Christian aesthetic, mathematics that bears out its unique and limited theoretical service in the kingdom of God, it must have more than a single educator to accomplish this; a Christian college demands a singleminded (uni-versity), re-forming community of, say, seventy-two scholars.

Basic to such a program, I think, is the orienting architectonic of an outspoken if soft-spoken Christian philosophy—not philosophy in the sense of lingual analysis nor the traditional Satan-spired philo-sophia (trying to know all things, like God) but a Christian philosophy that is born out of Solomon’s God-fearing request, “Give me, Lord, an understanding, discerning heart so that I may lead your people” (1 Kings 3:9) in politics, art, physics, and the rest. An articulated Christian philosophical systematics—not just a viewy Christian outlook but a wissenschaftlich, worked-out ordering and systematic analysis of the interrelated meanings of things—is a beginning for a working Septuagint concentration because it helps all the various sciences on their communal way. Maybe, if evangelical and Reformed scholars dug more into this kind of scandalous study instead of seeking a rapprochement with liberal Christianity or taking dialectical fishing trips with secular scholarship for its kudos, maybe then the Lord would bless us in ways our little eyes of faith cannot even imagine seeing.

Let no one mistake Septuagint concentration for isolation. The offensive Christian Gemeingut which it is our burden to develop must be translated into terms understandable by the rest of the world. That involves our knowing their language and having carefully scrutinized what especially they are mistakenly getting at in God’s world at the moment so that we can catch the locus of their problems and without self-righteousness bring our answers to their needs. The difficult business is to learn the language without accepting their Problemstellung in order to bring our strange news to each in his own technical tongue. Septuagint translation is not monologue any more than it is dialogue; translation is prologue really, prolegomena, what gets said before the other learns to read the text directly with open eyes. I mean that the Septuagint echo to the blues is not more blues turned sweet nor a Bach chorale today but Mahalia Jackson’s “I’m goin’ to muv-up a littl’ higher”; the Septuagint response to Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll is not a Hollywood-censored Samson and Delilah plus moralisms somehow nor a silent censorship but maybe T. S. Eliot’s A co*cktail Party or an updated Scarlet Letter; the Septuagint answer to lingualized analytic philosophy is not more analytic philosophy Christianizedly twisted onto problems of “Grace” nor a nineteenth-century Hegelian idealism but a systematic investigation of created structures under God radically re-formed from the age-old traditions of men, which fastens upon the positive analytics’ little tempest with simple insight and then moves on to wrestle with more significant problems. I realize a twentieth-century Septuagint in most fields will sound to our contemporaries a little bit as Chaucer did to Francis Bacon, somewhat old-fashioned; but so far we can go, and then pray hard that the Holy Spirit will interpret those mumbled utterances to them.

Almost from the beginning of organized religious worship God has had a problem with what we today call ecclesiasticism. Amaziah, priest of Bethel 850 years before Christ, tried to stop Amos from proclaiming the Word of the Lord in Samaria. For all time Amos gave the answer of men who are consumed by a passion to speak God’s truth to the people: “The Lord took me from following the flock … and said to me ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’” (7:15, RSV). Two hundred and fifty years later Jeremiah accused both prophet and priest of proclaiming a false word (6:13; 14:18). The word of the true prophet, more often than not, has been a word of controversy and hardness.

The “doctors” in the temple whom Jesus questioned as a boy were in all likelihood learned rabbis rather than priests. His dispute with the organized religion of his day went back to the very beginning of his public ministry, when he identified himself with the protest ministry of John the Baptist by submitting to baptism. Out Lord was fully conscious that his proclamation of the free grace and forgiveness of God would lead him into conflict with the highest religious authorities. “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must … suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes” (Matt. 16:21, RSV). He even accused them of being twofold children of hell because they kept others out of God’s kingdom while not being willing to enter themselves (Matt. 13–15).

In the Apostle Paul’s dealings with the leaders in the early Church we have somewhat of the same struggle, but now there is a notable difference. Even though Paid had once bitterly persecuted the Christians, Ananias of Damascus was ready to receive Paul because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:10–17). Some years later at the Jerusalem conference (Acts 15) the ministry of Paul and Barnabas was confirmed, again through the Holy Spirit’s guidance (Acts 15:28). It is instructive that the Jerusalem church leaders had certain standards which they enjoined upon Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:28, 29). The church was exerting some “control,” and Paul accepted this in the best of spirit.

The New Testament Church was not a church of anarchy, with every man doing that which was right in his own eyes. The evidence indicates that there were standards for the ministry. The pastoral epistles are filled with injunction and instruction for the faithful minister of Jesus Christ. Not every claimant to apostolic witness or power was to be accepted; Peter’s controversy with Simon Magus in Acts 8 is clear proof. Christians were enjoined to “try the spirits” to see if they were of God. Early Christians were peculiarily open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Those established in the ministry wished to be assured that ministers following them would pass on as they had received “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” Paul warned against those who were perverting his Gospel (Phil 3:19). Ordination procedures with the laying on of hands from the older to the younger minister were a part of the process of “confirming” what the Holy Spirit had been doing in the life of the candidate.

The problem the Church has had in the past, has at the present moment, and certainly will have in the future is to find the happy medium between “control” and anarchy, between authoritarianism that denies the freedom of the Spirit of God in choosing whom he will to do his work and individual license in proclaiming every vagary that a fertile imagination or frustrated ambition can conceive. The latter type of “freedom” has led to various types of pseudo-Christianity in Africa. Standards are necessary, but they must be held in a creative tension that does not bind the Spirit. Factors certainly involved are: (1) the teachings of the New Testament; (2) the mind of Christ; and (3) God given intelligence. Some Christian thinkers would add the findings of the first four councils of the church, especially the Nicene and Chalcedonian confessions of faith.

In connection with number three above, I remember vividly an incident in the 1920s connected with the ministry of my father, John Roach Straton, who had a reputation in that day as a defender of the faith. A young man had come to him and said, “I want to preach.” My father in questioning him discovered that he had not finished high school, much less college or seminary. So his advice was to complete all three. The fellow replied, “But I believe that God will fill my mouth.” Father responded, “Yes, God will fill your mouth if you fill your head first.” Yet father did more to back the evangelistic efforts of Uldine Utley in New York City and environs than any other minister of that decade. To him as well as many others the Holy Spirit had “confirmed” the witness of Uldine, and this was the final touchstone.

The problem of “consent” arose in the recent meeting of Faith and Order in Montreal, and the writer had a small part in standing for freedom. A section report on “The Redemptive Work of Christ and the Ministry,” although acknowledging the guidance of the Holy Spirit, contained the words: “In any case the exercise of the special ministry requires the consent of the Church” (italics mine). This seemed a dangerous constriction of the work of the Holy Spirit. Roger Williams was driven into the wilderness because he would not bow to the “consent” of a local church in Massachusetts. Under such control John Wesley would never have been able to make his witness that has so blessed the church universal, nor could Dwight L. Moody have carried his Gospel message around the world.

There is no easy answer to the problem save eternal vigilance on the part of the people of God, who surely is on the side of freedom. There must be a place in the Church for those who will make their witness in unusual ways. It behooves Christian leaders to keep themselves open to the divine Spirit. While there must be standards, still the ultimate test is: “by their fruits you will know them.” When fruits are evident the church can “confirm” to its own blessing a ministry upon which God has already put his benediction.

FACING DEATH

Over the Red Sea going,

Tomorrow, or probably Monday;

Over the Red Sea going—

God takes care of his own.

Over the Red Sea blowing,

The way may open on Sunday;

Over the Red Sea blowing—

God makes way for his own.

Be it today or tomorrow

Moses raises his rod,

Stand we ready on this side,

Stands on the other side—God.

Safe is the watery pathway,

No one treads it alone;

Over the Red Sea going—

God takes care of his own.

EARL L. DOUGLASS

In ancient Corinth today, seven Doric columns look down upon the tumbled debris of a once great city. At Caesarea marble pillars lie desolate on the shore of a formerly magnificent harbor, waves gently washing the marks of the erosive eons. Above the ghostly streets of Ephesus soar the skeletal remains of a tremendous theater. Seats and stage are empty. No Greek drama disturbs the silence. Rather, the silence is the drama. Not far away the base of a column protrudes above swamp water just enough to whisper the transient glory of Diana of the Ephesians and her mighty temple.

The three cities slumber on in the deep, dreamless sleep of the ages, sharing a common silence which is broken only by the sounds of nature. The tongues of men have been stilled. But the cities share something else, which centuries after their death is causing men to look to them once more. In striking contrast to their noiseless present, each of them, with Jerusalem, holds a common memory of that strange and lively phenomenon of the early Church—the practice of speaking in tongues other than those commonly heard in their streets. And today Bible scholars, theologians, ministers, and laymen are scrutinizing the New Testament passages dealing with these occurrences. Not many months ago these same people showed relatively little interest in the subject despite a half-century of aggressive promotion on the part of the Pentecostal movement. For the movement was outside the historic, main-line denominations. Now it is within, and clergy and laity have been driven to a probing of the Scriptures and church history for answers to questions and explanations of phenomena pressed hard upon them by fellow ministers and parishioners. And assessments are about as varied as the phenomena.

Ecumenical leaders have shown increasing interest in the Pentecostal movement, known as the fastest-growing segment of Protestantism in the Western Hemisphere, where approximately one of every three Latin American Protestants is Pentecostal. While many of these churchmen have favored courting Pentecostal churches on behalf of ecumenism, they had never dreamed of the possibility of considerable numbers within their own denominations incorporating Pentecostalist experience and doctrine. They are reacting quite gingerly to this—the new penetration.

Nearly all the major denominations have been affected by what is called the charismatic revival, Episcopalians and Lutherans preeminently so. Greatest strength of the new penetration is in Southern California, but in past months reports of developments have come in from across the nation:

Two ends of the ecclesiastical-cultural spectrum come together in Springfield, Missouri, as officials of the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Assemblies of God (largest of the Pentecostal bodies) converse on the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church today; some 2,000 Episcopalians are said to be speaking in tongues in Southern California (these Episcopal developments calculated to give fits to Vance Packard’s status-seekers); also speaking in tongues are upwards of 600 folk at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, world’s largest Presbyterian church; James A. Pike, Episcopal Bishop of California, confronts the practice in the Bay Area to the accompaniment of front-page headlines in San Francisco newspapers; a journal relates that in the entire state of Montana only one American Lutheran pastor has not received the experience of speaking in tongues; Dr. Francis E. Whiting, director of the Department of Evangelism and Spiritual Life of the Michigan Baptist Convention (American Baptist) speaks in support of present charismatic works of the Spirit at a Northern Baptist Seminary evangelism conference, declaring the choice is Pentecost or holocaust; a Minneapolis Evangelical Free Church splits over the issue: a United Presbyterian minister who wishes to ask youth to repent and receive the Holy Spirit at the First North American Reformed and Presbyterian Youth Assembly is stopped by a church officer before he reaches the Purdue University stage and is escorted out by a campus policeman; members of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at Yale speak in tongues, as does also a Roman Catholic student, a daily communicant at St. Thomas More chapel; and echoes of penetration come from evangelical institutions and organizations such as Fuller Seminary, Wheaton College, Westmont College, Navigators, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

In the midst of all this, the question is increasingly heard: Do we confront a new Pentecost or a new Babel? Most common response is: Neither one.

On the day of Pentecost when the assembled disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, they “began to speak with other tongues [“lalein heterais glossais”—cf. the term “glossolalia”], as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Jews of the Dispersion who were then gathered in Jerusalem were amazed to hear God’s praises in the languages and dialects of their own lands (Acts 2:1–12).

In Caesarea, tongues accompanied the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the first Gentile converts (Acts 10:44–46; 11:15) (and was perhaps one of the external manifestations of the receiving of the Spirit by the earliest Samaritan believers [Acts 8:17, 18]).

In Ephesus, the phenomenon appeared again among a group of disciples who had apparently not heard of Pentecost (Acts 19:6).

Protestants often interpret this visible evidence of the giving of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost as an endorsem*nt of the reception of new classes of believers into the distinctly cautious young Jewish-Christian church. Most commentators, though not all, believe that the tongues spoken at Pentecost were foreign languages. And many believe this to be so in the other references in Acts because of parallels in terminology.

But when it comes to the Pauline treatment of the subject in relation to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 12–14), the weight of biblical scholarship favors identification of tongues not as foreign languages but rather as ecstatic (“glossolalics” themselves differ as to the propriety of this word) and unintelligible utterances: “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.… Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue” (14:14, 19). Thus for instruction, tongues were valueless apart from interpretation (v. 13)—an added gift which was not required at Pentecost. In Acts the phenomenon appeared to be an irresistible, initial experience which was temporary, while at Corinth its nature was that of a continuing gift which was controlled by the recipients, not all Corinthian Christians possessing it (14:27, 28; 12:10, 30).

Paul spoke in tongues himself and valued the practice as a gift of the Spirit, primarily for worship but also for a sign to unbelievers and, when interpreted, for edification of believers (14:5, 18, 2, 14–17, 28, 22).

But commentators have generally concluded that the total effect of Paul’s instructions in chapters 12 through 14 is to play down the relative importance of this gift, despite vital appeals to this passage of Scripture by Pentecostals. For the Corinthian church was in trouble—spiritually, theologically, and morally. Its very setting was a serious handicap, for the name of Corinth had become synonymous with vice. A wealthy commercial center, its pleasures and high cost of living were famed across the Mediterranean and beyond. The summit of Acro-Corinth behind the city bore a temple of Aphrodite served by a thousand priestesses. To describe an evil life, the ancients coined a new word: “Corinthianize.”

The church at Corinth had not risen heroically to the challenge of its environment, nor had it fully withstood the pervasive temptations. And though rich in gifts (1:5–7), the saints there had indulged themselves in the more spectacular of these, notably tongues. Their excesses perhaps echoed a pagan background wherein Greek oracles made ecstatic utterances with consciousness of priest or priestess in complete abeyance and subsequent explanation being needed. A gift of the Spirit could thus be abused by the immature Christians of Corinth to serve as a vehicle for their divisiveness, pride, and self-glorification, the result being confused scenes of profit neither to believer nor to unbeliever.

So the great Apostle to the Gentiles lays down guidelines for use of the gift that “all things be done decently and in order” (14:40): Not more than three are to speak in tongues at a single service; they are to speak not simultaneously but in turn; in the absence of an interpreter, they are to remain silent; women are not to speak tongues in the church (14:26–36).

Paul’s deemphasizing procedure does not stop there, for he compares the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy to the disadvantage of the former (14:1–6). He seems to strike at Corinthian axiology as twice he puts tongues last in his listings of the charismata, the “grace-gifts” (12:4–10, 27–30; in a similar listing in Romans 12:6–8, he omits tongues completely). And soaring above all the gifts of the Spirit is agape, celebrated by Paul in his great hymn to love which is First Corinthians 13—introduced by the words: “… covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.…” He speaks of the fruit of the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22, 23—love is first named), which has precedence over the gifts of the Spirit. Love remains even when the gifts pass away (13:8).

Duration Of The Gifts

The question being echoed and re-echoed today, as in every period of glossolalic manifestations, is: How long do the gifts remain? Answers vary greatly, and explanations of the same answer also vary. Perhaps the most common view relates the gifts of the Spirit to the founding of the New Testament Church, their cessation during the fourth century taking place after it was well established under the authority of the completed New Testament canon. Presbyterian theologian B. B. Warfield believed the charismata to be given for authentication of the apostles as God’s messengers, a sign of apostleship being possession of the gifts and the ability to transmit them. Gradual cessation of the gifts thus came with the death of those who had received the gifts through the apostles (see his Miracles: Yesterday and Today). For W. H. Griffith Thomas, the charismata constituted a testimony to Israel of Jesus’ Messiahship and thus ceased at the end of Acts with the Jewish rejection of the Gospel (The Holy Spirit of God, 1913, pp. 48, 49).

Other scholars respond that these theories fly in the face of history. But then to darken matters further, commentators duly remind us that the degree of similarity between the New Testament phenomenon of glossolalia and later manifestations (e.g., current ones) is uncertain. New Testament scholar Leon Morris points to the obscurity of present-day understanding of the exact nature of some of the gifts, such as “helps” and “governments” (1 Cor. 12:28): “We may make … conjectures.… But when we boil it all down, we know nothing about these gifts or their possessors. They have Vanished without leaving visible trace.” On tongues he says: “Despite the confident claims of some, we cannot be certain of exactly what form the gift took in New Testament days. We cannot feel that the Spirit of God would have allowed this state of affairs to develop and to continue if the gift were so important” (Spirit of the Living God, 1960, pp. 63, 65, 66). Even as early as the fourth century, Chrysostom (A.D. 345–407) expressed puzzlement at Paul’s account of the Corinthian situation: “The whole passage is exceedingly obscure and the obscurity is occasioned by our ignorance of the facts and the cessation of happenings which were common in those days but unexampled in our own.”

Any tracing of tongues phenomena through church history faces the hazard of the common lack of clear-cut distinctions between tongues and prophecy, and between use of foreign languages and ecstatic utterances. Before the apparent cessation which Chrysostom mentions, Irenaeus in the second century makes reference to some who speak “in all kinds of languages,” and there is evidence of glossolalia among Montanists in the same period, when the practice was attacked by Celsus. This Platonist wrote of Christians who spoke gibberish and claimed to be God. In the third century, Origen associates the phenomenon with the Gnostics.

Some occurrences are reported in the Middle Ages, but to G. B. Cutten the surprising thing in “this age of wonders” was their infrequency (Speaking with Tongues, Historically and Psychologically Considered, 1927, p. 37). It is recorded that Francis Xavier and others possessed the gift of languages, used in missionary labors.

In the modern era, prophecy and languages are claimed for persecuted French Huguenots called the Little Prophets of Cevennes—very young children sharing the gifts. There were also outcroppings among Jansenists and Shakers. Mother Ann Lee, founder of the latter sect, which regarded her as the “female principle in Christ” with Jesus being the “Male principle,” is said to have testified in seventy-two different languages before Anglican clergymen who were also noted linguists. Certain emotional phenomena among early Methodists and Quakers have been linked to glossolalia. In contrast to the twentieth century, with its fast-expanding Pentecostal movement, the nineteenth century was relatively quiescent, presenting only the Irvingites and the Mormons, the latter tending to discourage tongues because of ridicule thus provoked.

The trail of glossolalia through church history is slender and broken. It is generally absent from the mainstream churches, but rather tends to be found in enthusiastic sects particularly in times of persecution. An apocalyptic aura is often present, and the trail leads frequently to heretical byways.

Glossolalia is not to be thought confined to Christian groups and offshoots. This emphasizes the fact that the practice is not self-authenticating. It occupied an important place in ancient Greek religion. Plato discourses on the phenomenon. Many Asian and African cultures afford examples of the practice.

Origins And Growth Of Pentecostalism

The modern Pentecostal movement is often traced from an eruption of tongues in a mission on Los Angeles’ Azusa Street in 1906, though Pentecostals also point to origins in revivals of the late nineteenth century. Due to common emotional excesses, Pentecostals were frequently made unwelcome by the old-line denominations and formed their own groupings which often fragmented. Their virility, in recent years particularly, has aroused the wonder of the church world, and they form the largest segment of what has become known as the “Third Force in Christendom.” Apart from Pentecostalism’s largest group, the Assemblies, the movement encompasses such bodies as the numerous independent Churches of God, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel—founded by Aimee Semple McPherson. (There are well over a hundred sects in America which practice glossolalia, not all Pentecostal, e.g. Father Divine’s Peace Missions.)

Common to all Pentecostals is the one basic belief that “the baptism in the Holy Spirit” is an experience subsequent to conversion—all believers should have it, and the initial physical evidence of this baptism or infilling is the speaking of tongues. For proof, one is pointed back to Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Ephesus. Tongues as initial evidence is distinguished from the gift of tongues (1 Cor. 12:10), which was not granted to all.

Exponents of classical Protestantism counter that: (1) The few historical accounts of tongues in Acts, in comparison with the other Scriptures, provide a flimsy foundation indeed upon which to erect a doctrine of the Christian life; no directives for normative Christian experience are contained in these passages. (2) Not all references in Acts to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit speak of an accompaniment of tongues. (One could as well argue from the accounts the necessity of laying on of hands of an apostle, as recorded in Acts 8:17 and 19:6.) (3) Pentecostal use of the terms “infilling” and “baptism” of the Spirit in connection with tongues is unsupported by the texts cited. Only one of nine references to the terms “filled with” or “full of the Holy Spirit” in Acts (not to mention four references in Luke’s Gospel) is directly connected by Luke with the expression “speaking with (other) tongues.” This referred to Pentecost, where the tongues were apparently foreign languages. Key passage for baptism of the Spirit is First Corinthians 12:13: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” All Christians are thus by definition baptized into the body of Christ, being thus constituted members of the body regardless of race or social status. Unlike the filling of the Spirit (Acts 4:31), there is no second baptism. (4) There are indications that tongues are associated with spiritual immaturity (see 1 Cor. 13:11; 14:20). Those recorded as speaking in tongues were recent converts. Paul possessed the gift in great measure but stated his preference for intelligible words (14:18, 19), and there is no record of a specific instance when he used the gift. (5) New Testament tests of the Spirit’s presence are the glorification of Christ (12:3) and the ethical fruit of the Spirit, preeminently love. (6) Dearth of Pentecostal biblical scholarship highlights an overshadowing of exposition by experience.

Traditional Pentecostal fears regarding higher education are slowly waning in some quarters. For example, evangelist Oral Roberts has announced the opening in 1965 of the Oral Roberts University, a $50 million liberal arts institution in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for 3,000 students. Some observers cite the difficulty of getting enough Pentecostal scholars with earned doctorates, especially since the Assemblies are divided in their views on Roberts.

Of significance to current discussion of Pentecostalism is the presence in the United States of a single copy of an M.D. dissertation, Glossolalia, by L. M. Van Eetveldt Vivier for the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Temporarily in possession of New York’s Union Seminary, the sympathetic treatment contains results of a number of psychological tests taken by a test group of Pentecostals who had spoken in tongues. Two control groups of similar educational and vocational standing took the tests as well. One was comprised of Pentecostals who had not spoken in tongues, the other of Reformed Church members whose pastor believed tongues had ended with apostolic times. Psychologically the latter group ranked highest, followed by the Pentecostals who had not spoken in tongues. The glossolalics were discovered to have had, psychologically, a poor beginning in life characterized by insecurity, conflict, and tension, which led to a turning from the orthodox and traditional to “an environment of sensitiveness for emotional feeling and a group of people … clinging to each other for support” toward the goal of being freed from themselves.

But what of the new Pentecostals who remain within their main-line denominations and purpose to make these Pentecostal in experience? They are generally recognized as standing on a much higher plane intellectually and culturally than the old Pentecostals. Spearheading the new penetration is The Blessed Trinity Society, whose leaders travel indefatigably to spread the message of charismatic revival. Chairman of the Board is Dutch Reformed minister Harald Bredesen of Mt. Vernon, New York, who testifies to a transformation through a Pentecostal camp meeting. He has spoken in tongues over California television and claims to have witnessed to foreigners in their own languages, unknown to him (such as Polish and Coptic Egyptian). But he believes most of the current glossolalia is unknown languages. A group of government linguistic experts sought to analyze for CHRISTIANITY TODAY a tape of his glossolalia but found it unrecognizable, though one said it sounded like a language structurally. A Christian expert states that it is usually impossible to identify a given utterance as a language inasmuch as there are 3,000 languages, many of them unknown.

A director of The Blessed Trinity Society is David J. du Plessis, Pentecostalist from South Africa who believes he has a call to take the message to ecumenical leaders. In his opinion, the “Pentecostal revival” within the ecumenical movement may become greater than that outside it. His ecumenical activities have led to a severing of his ministerial relationship with the Assemblies, by the latter.

Personable Jean Stone, wife of a Lockheed Aircraft executive, is a board member and the editor of the society’s attractive, Episcopal-tinted quarterly, Trinity (paid circulation: 4,000; print order: 25,000, many of which go to churches by the hundred), published in Van Nuys, California. Episcopalian Stone contrasts the new penetration with the old Pentecostal movement as follows: less emotion in receiving the gift of tongues after which they are spoken at will—their private use more important than public, more oriented to clergy and professional classes, more Bible-centered as against experience, not separatist, more orderly meetings with strict adherence to Pauline directives, less emphasis on tongues.

The new penetration as a definitive movement is usually traced to Sunday, April 3, 1960, when the Rev. Dennis J. Bennett, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal, Van Nuys, told his congregation of his Pentecostal experience which had its roots in the October previous. He was asked to resign, did so, and the event gained national publicity which drew attention to beginnings of the penetration already under way.

But apart from tongues, leaders cite evidence to support their claim that all nine of the gifts of the Spirit listed in First Corinthians 12:8–10 are manifest in the movement, including miracles and healing. Episcopal leaders are divided in their response to the penetration, but the general mood is one of caution and forebearance, which is generally true of most other denominational leadership—there being little desire to force the new wave of Pentecostals from the churches as was done half a century ago. Yet they are somewhat fearful of divisiveness resulting from glossolalia.

Conservative Protestant reactions range from participation in the movement to warnings that tongues can be Satanic. Some tell of the love, joy, and peace found in meetings, and the increased zeal for Bible study and power in witnessing manifest in those who have “received” the manifestation of glossolalia. Accounts multiply of nominal Christians, casual churchgoers, being transformed into vital believers, many experiencing conversion. Christian Life magazine is actively promoting the charismatic revival.

Some approve of the tenor of the movement in certain places, Yale for example, but speak of excesses in others, along with divisiveness and pride of possession. Criticism has been directed at the commonly used method to induce tongues in after-meetings: those wishing to receive the fullness of the Spirit are told to offer their voices and make noises, during the laying on of hands. It is feared that the physical sign is unintentionally given priority over the infilling of the Spirit.

Critics point also to self-confessed spiritual immaturity of the majority of those heard from by way of testimony. Prior to their experience of tongues, many were formalistic Anglo-Catholics, church members in name only, or backslidden evangelicals lacking a warm devotional life. Echoes of Corinth?

There is also a confessed lack of theological leadership, and evangelicals have been disappointed to note a resultant drift to the Pentecostal doctrine that tongues are the outward manifestation of the baptism of the Spirit. Possibly the majority in the movement now believe that non-glossolalics have yet to receive the baptism or fullness. When one reflects upon the work of such non-glossolalics as Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Carey, Judson, Hudson Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Moody, Spurgeon, Torrey, Sunday, Graham, he would perhaps, if desiring to do a great work, ask the Lord to excuse him from the baptism of the Spirit—which is of course unthinkable save on Pentecostal terms.

Probably most evangelicals who are informed on the subject are sympathetically waiting to see the fruit of the new movement, not wishing to quench the Spirit, but sensing a need to try the spirits. They generally believe God is working in and through the movement but are questioning how close it may be to the biblical ideal. They are grateful for spiritual awakening.

And a salutary facet of the whole phenomenon is renewed and widespread study of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit—if His ministry is properly fathomed, the issue is the exaltation of Jesus Christ, glorious fruition indeed.

It has come to me on good authority that my IQ is, or was, 152. I report this to you not with any pride nor with undue modesty, but only to be able to say that I get about as much out of my theology reading as the next fellow; and what I get I do not necessarily understand; and I grow depressed sometimes by the endless assignment, and the confusions and alarums.

The mass of material in modern theology is utterly appalling. For fifteen years I taught theology in a seminary, and even now I try, as they say, to “keep up.” For three weeks steady this summer I have been swatting away again at Tillich, and I am not only incapable of keeping up, I am incapable of catching up. “Everybody talking about heaven ain’t going there,” and I am getting highly suspicious of some experts I know, and especially of recent seminary graduates, who speak authoritatively and glibly about Tillich, Bultmann, Barth, Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, and the like. I do not believe (a) that they read these men in quantity and (b) that they have studied them enough to make valid judgments. There simply isn’t and hasn’t been enough time.

I think we have reached a very striking plateau in theology. John and Don Baillie have passed on, as has Richard Niebuhr. Bonhoeffer was destroyed years ago by Hitler. Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, H. H. Farmer, Whale, Flew, Raven, Dodd, Micklem, Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr are nearly all well into their seventies, and a couple of them are in their eighties. Back of these men who have dominated theological thinking I look in vain for those who are filling up the gaps. Here and there I hear of a great new “find” in theology, but I see nothing comparable to what we have known in the last thirty years. It is easy to misjudge one’s contemporaries, and it is easy to believe that the former days were better than these. The fact remains that nothing of the order of Barth’s commentary on Romans, or Bultmann’s notes on demythologizing, or Brunner’s battle on natural theology, or Niebuhr’s excellent insights built around the idea of the sinful man in a sinful society—nothing vaguely resembling the challenges of this sort of theology is within purview.

In my opinion we are in for a long period of adjusting and shaking down and criticizing. (Just think of all the Ph.D. degree theses which are yet to be written on Barth’s dogmatics!) And what can we more say about John Oman, P. T. Forsyth, Mackintosh, Streeter, Wheeler Robinson, Warfield, and all the men we were reading with such profit and delight before the experts of our own age. This says nothing of the exegetes, the textual critics, the church historians, the liturgists, the musicians, the architects, the dramatists, the scientists, the novelists, the philosophers, the sociologists—“one simply must keep up, you know.”

All this sets me to pondering over the many theological experts in our midst. “Knowledge is proud she knows so much; wisdom is humble she knows so little.” Meanwhile our bright ones come forth from our sophisticated seminaries ready to give us every word but the wonderful words of life. I don’t think they know enough about theology, not to speak of life, to sound off with the profoundness which they try to exhibit. What they are giving us is too often out of their big fat notebooks taken over in big lumps from a professor who is trying desperately to “keep up,” and in many cases isn’t quite making it.

Modern theology is not only faced with the mass of material which makes reading and understanding the primary sources alone an almost endless task; it is not only wrestling with masses of secondary source material more or less valid in comment and criticism; it is not only faced with an endless stream of pseudo-experts who, I think, could not possibly have mastered the material; in addition to all this, it is also faced with serious critics and these not necessarily in the conservative camp, so that the easy enthusiasm for Barth and Bultmann (a pose which is easier than mastery) gets badly shaken by trenchant criticism.

I like what Van Dusen says in “Liberal Theological Reassessment” (Union Seminary Quarterly Review, May, 1963). He doesn’t name names, but you have a feeling about his target:

“Let us recall that the Reality which has served the Christian Movement as a determinative norm has not been the scholars’ biography of Jesus, or the theologians’ construct of Christ. It has been the figure portrayed in the Gospels. In every age, and not least our own, the plain man, picking up this plain tale in his pitiable ignorance of critical principles and theological presuppositions, has found himself gripped by a living man of history who not only stands out upon the records with remarkable clarity but reaches forth from the records to conscript the devotion of his soul.”

At the same time the “assured” scientific presuppositions are being wondered about.

Nels Ferre, in “Christian Theology in Higher Education” (Andover Newton Quarterly, March, 1963), says:

“Nineteenth century ideology tried to explain creation as evolution from below. This was true of Darwin in biology, of Marx in history, and of Freud in psychology. Mid-twentieth century we begin to see … that as a description of method, how creation took place, evolution had much merit, but as explanation it is sheer faith, an incredible mystique. And yet hard-headed thinkers fell prey to such a gullible faith in the name of science. As an ideology, educators themselves are now beginning to see the stark and startling nature of this faith, but in the meantime education trained away from the church countless millions, who swallowed this mystique truth” (italics mine).

What honestly is the residue of all modern theology—and what honestly do we really know about it?

HOPEFUL BEGINNING—The limited test ban treaty initialed in Moscow could be a cautious step in the right direction, an expression of the yearnings of millions throughout the world, and a glimmer of hope for the future.… Whether or not the treaty will lead to further reduction of East-West tension will not be known for some time. Meanwhile the hairtrigger military face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union continues.—San Francisco Examiner.

TAKING A CHANCE—There is only a very small chance that the Communists will honor the treaty. But we, as Christians, should take that chance in the interest of reducing fallout and the possibility of a nuclear war. At the same time, we must be aware of the potential danger. The Communists may be using it to weaken us and to place us in a state of unreadiness with the objective of upsetting the balance of power and gaining an ultimate victory.—LT. GEN. WILLIAM K. HARRISON (ret.), senior United Nations delegate at Panmunjom, Korea.

OF MEN AND BEASTS—There must be convincing reassurance that the U. S. can detect violation and is kept continuously prepared to test on short notice.… The familiar lines of Rudyard Kipling … still have validity …: “There is no truce with Adam-Zad, the bear that walks like a man.”—New York World-Telegram.

STOCKING THE ‘PEACE’ ARSENAL—Both the treaty and the “nonaggression pact” Russia wants may become weapons in the Soviet “peace” arsenal—to line up Asia and Africa against the “war-mongering” Chinese Communists and to soften up the West.…—The New York Times.

NOBODY IS FOOLED—The average citizen of the Communist-dominated countries sees in this treaty-making a political maneuvering that doesn’t change the ultimate objectives of either side.—ANDREW HARSANYI, editor, Magyar Egyhaz (Hungarian).

ESTABLISHING THE TYRANTS—Whereas the dominated peoples behind the Iron Curtain welcome a treaty with the West as reducing the chance of a nuclear war—because it would destroy their countries—nevertheless they recognize that for the West to negotiate a treaty with the leaders of Communism has the effect of establishing those leaders in power and strengthening their hold upon the dominated countries.—WLADIMIR BOROWSKY, executive secretary, Ukrainian Evangelical Alliance of North America.

PREDICTION OF DISASTER—This is my third major prediction of disastrous plunges by U.S. leadership into Soviet Communist traps.… The other two predictions were the Soviet betrayal of the first test ban, a prediction made five months in advance, and Soviet conversion of Cuba into an offensive base against the U. S., made 14 months in advance.… The so-called “limited” test ban deal … will freeze the U. S. in second-place to Russia in the technology of strategic nuclear weapons. U. S. nuclear strike capability will be reduced so fast relative to the Soviets’ mushrooming superweapon strength, that within 18 months we will have lost our power to deter a Soviet surprise attack, or to retaliate effectively.…—REAR ADMIRAL CHESTER WARD, USN (ret.).

SILENCE ON A FREE WORLD—Nikita Khrushchev … at yesterday’s signing ceremony … observed that the Communists are committed to avoid nuclear war, but this does not mean they will halt their struggle for a Communist world.… We can make a similar point. “Peaceful coexistence” and the test-ban treaty do not mean we will relax our efforts to secure a free world. It is regrettable that, in the flow of champagne toasts and fancy words, neither Dean Rusk nor Lord Home made this point in replying to Mr. Khrushchev.—New York Herald Tribune.

BANS USEFUL TESTS ALSO—What is wrong with the test ban is that it bans useful tests of nuclear devices that probably diminish the chances of war and would make war, if it occurred, less horrible.—Boston Sunday Herald.

IN BRIEF—PRESIDENT KENNEDY: not the millennium … but an important first step—a step toward peace; PRIME MINISTER NEHRU: a turning point in our present-day history; East German Communist leader WALTER ULBRICHT: a significant step towards the lessening of tensions in the world; OSWALD KOHUT, foreign policy expert of West Germany’s Free Democratic Party: I have little use for treaties when the parties lack mutual confidence.

A COMMUNIST CHEER—Let us hail those heroic men and women who braved the scoffing, the pessimism, and the redbaiting to petition, picket and march for a ban on H-bomb testing.… But the victory … is not completely won.… All the trickery and cunning of the ultra-Rights, the Democratic white supremacists, the reactionary Republicans, the self-seeking middle-of-the-roader will be employed to sabotage the H-ban pact’s approval.—The Worker.

IMPORTANT FOR SECURITY—Recognizing the balance of risks, the limited nature of this treaty, and the need for caution, ratification is important for security, political, economic and also moral reasons.—J. IRWIN MILLER, president, National Council of Churches.

A GODLESS ALLY—A nation which professes to believe in God and which must depend upon God for His help violates the law of God when it makes an agreement with a godless power which has vowed to destroy us.—CARL MCINTIRE, president, International Council of Christian Churches.

CHRIST THE SOURCE OF PEACE—Every evangelical longs for peace because our Lord put a special blessing on peacemakers. But we seriously doubt the value of a treaty with Russia, which has violated 50 out of its last 53 treaties. Our hope for peace is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the ultimate setting up of His kingdom.—CLYDE W. TAYLOR, public affairs secretary, National Association of Evangelicals.