Page 5652 – Christianity Today (2024)

Both Dr. Young and Ms. Elliot wish to portray in concise form the meaning of Israel as understood by them. Dr. Young does so from the vantage point of personal witness, since he has been living in Jerusalem for many years, while Ms. Elliot’s eye-witness experience amounts to a mere few days. This difference, apart from many others, clearly shows.

I should like to add two vital points to Young’s forceful presentation: The Jewish belief in the Messiah is intricately bound to the return to the ancestral land. This belief is as central to Judaism as the Sabbath. The second point concerns the return itself, which Young states was produced by a combination of biblical promises and the treatment by non-Jews and which then resulted in the modern Jewish immigration into the Turkish province of Southern Syria (Palestine). This is not the full story. It could convey the impression that Jews did not begin to move back home until some eighty years ago. In fact, small groups of Jews, sometimes even individuals, did set out, time and again, generation after generation, on the arduous and risky journey to “Eretz Israel,” the land of their forebears. Some of them made it and they then joined other Jews who were living there already.

Now to Elliot. Zionism is as old as the Jewish dispersion. The idea certainly did not start eighty years ago—the organized movement did. The 1947 partition was not “an act committed by powerful nations,” but a recommendation by the United Nations General Assembly, by majority vote, most of whose members were, and are, small, often poor, and certainly powerless nations. The inhabitants of the country were consulted, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, not once but on numerous occasions, by British Inquiry Commissions, by the Anglo-American Committee, and by a special UN Commission. What led to war, in 1948 and since, was the basic Arab aspiration to have the whole country, or else. That “the Jews wanted above all else” Jerusalem is sheer nonsense. What they wanted was a concrete chance to rebuild their national life in the land of their ancestors. It was an extremely painful decision at the time to accept this chance and challenge in partitioned Palestine and without Jerusalem. But accept this they did. That things turned out differently, and that Jerusalem is now Israel’s capital, as of old, is due to the intermittent Arab warfare and Israel’s ability to repulse the attackers.—MICHAEL PRAGAI, advisor on Church Relations in North America, Consulate General of Israel, New York, New York.

Suppose,” an old Arab said to me when I was visiting Jerusalem, “Just suppose you have eight little chickens. You have watched them hatch, you feed and care for them, they are your pets. One night a neighbor comes and cleans you out. He takes all eight of your baby chicks. Next morning he reaches his hand toward you across the fence. Will you shake hands? No, you cannot. Even if I have lost only little chickens, it will be hard to give my neighbor my hand. But what if I have lost my lands, my olive groves, my orchards, my vineyards, my house, my job, my money? What if I have lost even my children and my wife? Yet the world says ‘Why are the Arabs so stubborn? Israel offers them the hand of peace, but they will not reach across the table.’”

Jerusalem, according to an Arab proverb, is “a bowl of gold full of scorpions.” But popular opinion notwithstanding Jews and Arabs have lived together for centuries in relative harmony. The present enmity is only as old as Zionism, a movement started in 1896 for the purpose of gathering Jews from all over the world and recreating their national life in a “homeland” of their own. The British expressed sympathy for the movement in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which called for “the establishment in Palestine of (not of Palestine as) a national home for the Jewish people” clearly stating that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” That the Arabs, who formed the majority, should be mentioned only as “non-Jewish” was to them an exceedingly sore point. Churchill assured them, however, that the Balfour Declaration did not mean a Jewish government to dominate Arabs. The United States liked the idea as well as the British had—after all, it would cost us nothing. It was never suggested that Connecticut, for example, be donated as the Jewish homeland.

Seeing their country populated by an ever-growing number of Jews made the Palestinians uneasy and tension built up until the partition of Palestine, a high-handed act committed by powerful nations who did not so much as consult the residents of the country. This led to war in 1948, and the war of 1967 finally got for the Jews what they wanted above all else, all of Jerusalem. It is not unreasonable to wonder whether that victory was what Isaiah meant by the “redemption” of Jerusalem. Neither is it unreasonable to those who read Bible prophecy to expect that Israel will continue to expand from the Euphrates to the Nile. Those to whom the Bible is nothing will shrug and say, “That’s over. The Jews won it, didn’t they?” or perhaps, “The Jews deserve it. They’ve got to live somewhere, haven’t they?”

I saw the joy of the Israelis in their victory in 1967. It was hysterical. Many, from rabbis to military men, spoke of it as a miracle. Others resented any suggestion that the miracle might have been divine. Israel had done it—why say it was God? (Moses once thundered against the people of Israel for a similar refusal to recognize the source of their power.)

“We are gods!” a Jewish girl said to me. “We will work things out. We will fulfill prophecy.”

American Christians wrote to the Jerusalem Post, “The victorious events in Israel accelerate the coming of the Messiah”; a minister in Ontario quoted Isaiah 52:9, “Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem.”

An Arab woman, sitting in a chilly living room from which most of the rugs and furniture had been removed lest it be confiscated, said to me, “Of course there are some who see in this victory the hand of God, and there are many Christians who are sure he is responsible for it, but what am I, an Arab and a Christian, to make of it?”

This is a question not sufficiently considered by many Christians whose views on the Arab-Israeli situation are a farrago of superficially interpreted Old Testament prophecy, glibly accepted propaganda, and uncritically indulged sentimentality. Before we can conclude that the nation of Israel is a literal fulfillment of prophecy, that present-day tensions between Arabs and Jews are just another episode in an ancient history of unmitigated hostility to each other, before we conclude that there is no question about the morality of providing a homeland for a persecuted people by persecuting another people who are already there, we need to probe a little deeper.

I sat in St. George’s Cathedral as the congregation sang “Jerusalem the Golden, with milk and honey blest.” I heard the canticle from the first chapter of Luke, “Blessed be the Lord God for he hath visited and redeemed his people … that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us … to remember the oath which he swore to our father Abraham.” The bishop who read these words was an Arab. Most of the congregation was made up of Arabs. Who, I wondered, are “his people,” spoken of in that passage? Who are the “enemies”? How would the bishop answer those questions?

“This is a time for us Christians to ask, What is this Israel?” the abovementioned Arab lady said. “I saw this nice neighborhood being looted, bombed, and shelled for three days and nights without respite. My Lebanese neighbor lay on the floor of the corridor with me and my children while our cars were smashed by the tanks like beetles. She lifted her head from the floor and said to me, ‘There is no God. If there is, he is a Jew.’”

This touches perhaps the knottiest question of all, and the one that must be answered before any prophetic equations can be formed. Who is a Jew? I asked it of many Israelis. One of them, a Ph.D., shrugged and lifted his hands and his eyebrows: “Ask three Jews, get five opinions.”

It is not, Israel officially proclaims, a racial question. There are Jews in every anthropologically-defined “race”—from the black Ethiopian to the Chinese orthodox Jew. It was Hitler who denied Jews any rights as Germans or Poles or Hungarians. He determined to “purify” the Aryans, make them the “master race,” and this required the segregation of Jews, labeling, and finally extermination.

It is not a religious question. Probably fewer than 10 per cent of Israelis are orthodox Jews, and many are not only not religious, but are militantly anti-God. “Not many of us observe,” an Israeli girl said to me when I told her of the purification ceremonies I had witnessed at the Pool of Siloam on Yom Kippur.

“Not many?” I said, “But I saw thousands in Jerusalem alone, going to springs and brooks.”

She waved a hand. “You saw thousands—so you saw them all. We are two and a half million. We have much to do. Who has time to keep the past alive? Tourists want us to be quaint or pious or something. Even Jewish tourists.” Her tone changed to a sneer. “Why should we be pious when they aren’t?”

To be Jewish is not a linguistic question. Over seventy languages are spoken in Israel, even though Hebrew is the official language and strong efforts are made to encourage everybody to learn it.

It is not a cultural question. Some Jews, desperately casting about for a definition that would satisfy me, said that Jewishness is a “cultural consciousness.” I found this inadequate when I watched Oriental Jewesses in Arab dress at the Simhat Torah celebration, keening shrilly and lifting their arms in ecstasy, alongside a Jew from New York’s East Side, and a Sabra (an Israeli native) born in a kibbutz.

“Any attempt,” wrote I.A. Abaddy in the Jewish Quarterly, “to seek the common denominator in terms of either ritual or speech or outlook is bound to prove hopeless.”

Is Jewishness then a political category? Israel is a political state, but there are millions of Jews who are not Israelis. There are thousands of “Israelis” who are not Jews—every Arab now “assimilated” into the nation of Israel by conquest is officially an Israeli, and Arab school children are given a textbook, I am an Israeli.

It is a very confused line of thought that construes Zionism as theologically based, failing to recognize it as a political and economic movement, or that equates the modern state of Israel with the Israel of God.

The Israeli government has had to define a Jew in order to implement the “Law of Return,” which allows any Jew to immigrate to Israel at any time and automatically become a citizen. The best definition they have offered is a genetic one (which seems a strange contradiction when they so vehemently deny that Jewishness has anything to do with race). They ask, Who is your mother? Anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish. The question as to what makes her Jewish has no answer. If your father is Jewish, if he is even a rabbi, it will not help you at all. Nor will a man’s profession of faith in Judaism be of any use to him in seeking citizenship, for Judaism does not court converts and Israel does not want citizens who are not Jews. Even if a man commits himself to Jewish faith against all discouragements he is seen in Israel as a non-Jew.

The apostle Paul, a “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” offers little help toward a working definition of Jewishness. “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly,” he wrote, “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal.”

Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner writes, “The haunting words of the prophet ring in our ears: ‘You are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and I am God.’ Is this not what we are being told by all the terrors of history, and all the follies of man? Does this proclamation not sweep aside all our fumbling attempts to define the Jew—nation, race, or religion—and hold before us that divine demand which alone determines our being?”

When God chose the Hebrews as a people to bear his name, he charged them with the responsibilities of privilege—to look out for the welfare of the stranger within their gates, to do justice to the foreigner—and warned them that his promises were contingent upon their obedience. Disobedience would reduce them to destruction, to slavery, and even to cannibalism (Deut. 28).

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, Amend your ways and your doings and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the LORD.’ For if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place. From prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 7 and 8).

American Christians in the hundreds of thousands pour into the Holy Land on tours that, although often sponsored by Christian organizations in this country, are arranged largely by Israeli tourist agencies. They are shown the Shrine of the Book where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept, the Hadassah Hospital with the Chagall windows, the Hebrew University, and the Herzl Museum. The Christian holy places, of course, are included in the itinerary, and tourists gaze with wonder at the plains of Sharon and the Galilee where the desert, they are given to understand, has blossomed under Israeli cultivation. They look then with dismay at the barren hills of Moab that the Arabs have failed to bring to life. The evidence seems conclusive. Israel “deserves” the land. But what these tourists do not remember is that the plain of Sharon and the Galilee have always been the choice land, fruitful for thousands of years. Jaffa oranges were cultivated by Arabs who never had the millions of dollars in foreign aid that Israel now enjoys. But these fruitful sections were portioned out to Israel back in 1948. Thousands of acres of olive groves and vineyards, on the other hand, have dried up for lack of Israeli knowledge or inclination to preserve what had been cultivated and terraced by Arabs with wooden plows and donkeys since before Christ. Israel has yet to realize her hope of becoming an economically sound industrial nation.

The free world demands justice. It deplores totalitarianism. It champions the cause of the oppressed and the exile—up to a point. But those who most vociferously called for withdrawal from Viet Nam are often the same who now most vociferously call for support of Israel and seem oblivious to the plight of the Arab. The problem is not new. Isaiah wrote, “The fire of the LORD is in Zion, and his furnace is in Jerusalem.” Whether or not all the fires there have been of his kindling only he knows, but there have been Egyptians, Jebusites, Hebrews, Babylonians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Britons who claimed the city as their own, before present-day Israelis got there. Prophecy seems to have been fulfilled not once, but again and again and again. It is common among American Christians (I am told that it is uncommon among European or English ones) to insist upon a chauvinistic and fanatical interpretation of the state of Israel as a literal fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. We need to step back and consider other data. We are blinded by sentiment, disabled in our judgment by the stories of the concentration camps, the torn Torahs and the cakes of soap made of the fat of Jewish bodies, which are on display in Israel’s museums. Hannah Arendt, in her report on the Eichmann trial, wrote, “Among the constructs that ‘explain’ everything by obscuring all details we find such notions as … the collective guilt of the German people, derived from an ad hoc interpretation of their history; of the equally absurd assertion of a kind of collective innocence of the Jewish people. All these cliches have in common that they make judgment superfluous and that to utter them is devoid of all risk.”

Sentimentality is an idol. It has eyes, but sees not. It stands in the place of truth. To raise any question at all nowadays about the ethics of Zionism or the nature of Israel (Is it, for example, a racist state? Is there religious freedom there? Is their treatment of the Arab just?), to ask, Who is a Jew? is to arouse cries of anti-Semitism, or accusations of utter lack of sympathy or sensibility. To ask for sympathy or for even a moment’s cool consideration of the Arab is to be branded at once as an opponent of Israel. When Harper & Row Publishers asked me to go to Jerusalem and write a book about what I saw and heard there they accepted my manuscript (Furnace of the Lord, published finally by Doubleday) at first. They paid for it, advertised it, included it in their catalogue, and six weeks later informed me that it was not publishable. My inquiries produced only one answer: You have treated a sensitive subject insensitively. My observations, it turned out, were “controversial,” not because I had taken sides but because I had not taken sides.

I remember looking across the Valley of Kidron and up to the temple mount where the golden dome rose beyond the sealed Golden Gate. Solomon’s question came to me: “Will God dwell indeed with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built! Hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men).”

He who walked in the furnace with Daniel’s friends walks yet in his furnace of Jerusalem, in the devastated streets of Lebanon. He sees the truth of every man, he knows the contrite heart, whether of Jew or gentile, and he will not fail or be discouraged but will ultimately fulfill his purposes for us all—for he was wounded for our transgressions. It is for us to watch with him, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, to ask that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

When we talk about Israel, we must keep in mind that we are really talking about three Israels. The first is ethnic, or historic, Israel, the seed of Abraham after the flesh, who count their descent through Isaac and Jacob, to whom the promises were given, through whom the Messiah came, who figure in the whole sweep of biblical history and prophecy from the patriarchs to the culmination of the age. Second are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, those who share his faith. This is not an ethnic group. It does not include many people who are physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or who are bearers of Jewish culture, and it does include many who are not part of ethnic Israel. The third Israel is the modern political state, which was established thirty years ago in the ancient homeland of the Jews.

What is the relationship betwen these three Israels, so far as God’s program is concerned? Is God still interested in ethnic Israel? Does ethnic Israel still play a significant role? Have the spiritual descendants of Abraham acceded to the position and prerogatives of ethnic Israel and so displaced it? Do the promises made to ethnic Israel automatically accrue to the present political state of Israel or to the present regime in power there?

First, let me set down a double-barreled assertion: God still has a part for ethnic Israel to play in the drama of redemption, and the modern political state of Israel could be act one in the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. Both of these assertions have been strongly challenged. Some people maintain that modern Israel cannot be the Israel that God predicted would return to the land, for, they claim, if God’s hand were in this return to the land and in the setting up of the present Israeli government, all the war and bloodshed we see and read about would not be taking place. The claim, however, that a warlike Israel cannot be the special focus of God’s purpose will not stand up in the light of God’s pronouncements during the immigration under Joshua. God instructed Moses to tell the people that “… LORD hath said unto me …, He will go over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them.… And the LORD shall do unto them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and unto the land of them, whom he destroyed” (Deut. 31:2–4). The immigration under Joshua was a conquest, not a bloodless coup, and God is not shut off from again making the violence of men serve his purposes.

Others say that an Israel that does not accept the Messiah, which modern Israel does not, cannot be the Israel of prophecy. Yet God, speaking through Ezekiel, indicates just the opposite: “I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you.… A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.… And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God” (36:24–28). Note that the return to the land in verse 24precedes the redemptive events outlined in verses 25 to 28.

Other people claim that the Church has replaced Israel and that present-day Israel has no particular biblical significance, either today or in the future. Yet we find in the New Testament a note of expectancy concerning the future of Israel. James, in summing up the Jerusalem council, states that “God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: ‘After this I will return and rebuild the fallen house of David’” (Acts 15:14–16, NIV). By the phrase “after this” James is referring to the calling out of a people for God’s name from among the Gentiles. After this is done, he says, God will rebuild the fallen house of David. Note that “after this” (Greek, metà taûta) is James’s interpretation of the connection and is not a translation of Amos’s phrase “in that day” (Hebrew, bayyo̅m hahû’), nor is it a quotation of the Septuagint’s rendering. Gentiles in the church join with believing Jews of all ages in constituting the spiritual progeny of Abraham (Gal. 3:7). But Abraham’s spiritual descendants do not displace God’s interest in and intentions for ethnic Israel. The descendants of the Israel of old have some important biblical future.

Parenthetically, it might be important to remind ourselves that Abraham’s seed through Ishmael, today’s Arabs, are, like us, “Gentiles.” They can be related to Abraham only as we are related, by having his faith, even though they are, unlike us, in the Semitic family of nations. The promises of the land and the spiritual covenant were reaffirmed to Isaac (Gen. 26:3–4), to Jacob (Gen. 28:4), and to Joseph (obliquely in Gen. 50:24). Ishmael was born of Hagar and Abraham. God had said, however, that the seed of which he was speaking would be born through Sarah, and through her line his promises would be fulfilled. Ishmael was also to be a great nation, but separate from Israel. His lot was to live in the wilderness of Paran south of the biblical Negev. After his death we hear no more about him or his descendants in biblical history. Further, the Abrahamic line that was to carry the blessings went through Jacob and not his elder twin, Esau. Esau married into Ishmael’s line and others outside the promises, and his descendants eventually became Edom (Gen. 36:1). Yet, although ethnic Israel is heir to the promises, it is not the exclusive object of his concern. Note the way Isaiah ends his nineteenth chapter: “In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage’” (24 and 25).

Perhaps most important of all is the often-heard allegation that because Israel forsook the Lord, God’s promises to it have been abrogated. Israel, so it is said, lost out on the promise of the land of Palestine as “an everlasting possession” (Gen. 13:15; 15:18; 17:7–8) because it failed to obey God. Some people argue that “everlasting” (Hebrew, ‘ôla̅m) can mean either “a long period of time” or “forever” and what is meant must be determined anew for each context. But this is a dangerous and arbitrary approach to exegesis, unless the context itself contains an indication that the meaning of the word is limited. In Genesis 13; 15; and 17 there is no indication that the promise of the land was for a limited period. In Genesis 17:19 God uses the words “everlasting covenant” to refer to the covenant fulfilled in Christ. This “everlasting” refers not to the land but to salvation, and the covenant was forever. Why should not the promise of the land to Abraham’s descendants—both promises sometimes occur in the same verse—also be forever? The land covenant was not abrogated but interrupted; it was interrupted by the diaspora but not set aside forever by it. The promises of Deuteronomy 30:3–5 and of Jeremiah and Ezekiel look forward to a time when the descendants of Abraham will be back in the land at the end of days, after diaspora: “I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezek. 11:17).

If the Bible indicates that God has a continuing place for historic or ethnic Israel in his plans, what of the present state of Israel? What gave the Jewish people the idea to return to Palestine? How did modern Israel acquire the land? Is this present Israel a fulfillment of prophecy? Is it a sign of the end times? Must we support Israel even if it performs unjust acts?

Two factors, above all others, contributed to the decision of the Jews to return to their land: their view of the biblical promises and their treatment by non-Jews. Every Sabbath for centuries they had read the promises of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others. In all those centuries, they prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Irrespective of how some Christians interpret the Old Testament passages, the Jews took them at face value. And in all those centuries, from Constantine to the Reformation, from Luther to Hitler, the Jews were restricted, downtrodden, and massacred by both ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

A turning point came at the end of the nineteenth century when Theodore Herzl saw how an enfranchised Jew, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was made the scapegoat in France for a military scandal. He was later proven innocent. However, Herzl and others asked themselves, if being a full and respected citizen could not protect a Jew, what hope was there for Jews to continue in “foreign” countries?

These two factors combined finally to produce a return to Palestine, a return that continued, so that about fifty years after the Dreyfus affair, Israel became a state and was accepted into the United Nations.

At first immigration was small, some 2,000 a year. By statehood in 1948, the immigrants still numbered only 670,000. In the early days all land occupied by the Jews was purchased on the open market. Nothing was “taken,” as some people allege. They bought whatever was available. Most of it was malaria-infested swamps, like the Huleh and Jezreel valleys, or marshes, sand dunes, and denuded hilltops. In the United Nations’s partition plan of November, 1947, some additional land was allocated to Israel, and Israel gained another 2,000 square miles after the 1948 war and the Rhodes agreement subsequent to it. Remember, Israel did not start the 1948 war. As the result of another war, which again Israel did not begin, it has, since 1967, been administering areas on the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai, pending a peace settlement with the nations that attacked it then.

But is this Israel either a fulfillment of the biblical prophecies or a sign of the end times? As for the first part of the question, the Bible mentions three diasporas. The first lasted for 400 years in Egypt, from the time of Joseph to Moses. The second, mentioned by Jeremiah, covered seventy years. The third diaspora was predicted to be world-wide in character. Specific lengths were foretold for the first two, but no specific duration was mentioned in the prophecy of the third. The present Israel could be the opening movement in the fulfillment of God’s promise to regather the Jews from the third, world-wide diaspora. It is also possible, however, that the present Israel will be totally destroyed. God knows which is right; we will not know for sure until the action is over. But note that if the present state and nation of Israel were to be destroyed, another Israel would have to replace it, for the Lord’s return will be to a world in which there is a regathered Israel. Israel will be here when the “full number of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25–27, NIV, and Jer. 31:31–36; readers should particularly note the final verse in the latter passage).

In considering whether Israel’s existence today is a sign of the end times, we have to remember many instances in which long periods of time elapsed while God was preparing his “fullness of time.” The time it took to get everything ready for the sixteenth-century Reformation and the preparation for the birth of Jesus are cases in point. We should not presume to set dates, even in so general a way as to say that modern Israel is a sign of the end. It may be, but we have no word from God about it. His times are in his hands, and he does not always move at our rate of speed.

What of the question that is sometimes asked: Must we support Israel even if it performs unjust acts? Certainly there are charges of injustice. They take a number of forms and are leveled by various groups, including the Third World, the Communist Bloc, and the Arab World. The charges may point the finger at crime in the “land of the Bible,” the plight of the refugees, “retaliatory” military acts such as those in Karome or Lebanon, “inhuman” treatment of an occupied people, or any one of a number of other anti-Israel charges. However, there are two sides to the story. In discussions of the Middle East, the hard facts of history are all too frequently by-passed and attention is focused on emotionally stirring but relatively isolated hard-luck stories.

I will limit myself to two illustrations. Some people assert that the Jews have not allowed any refugees of the 1948 war to return to their homes in Israel. The fact is, however, that “70,000 were accepted back into Israel under a Reunification of Families program after the 1948–49 war. Israel offered in August 1949 to take back another 100,000. The offer was rejected by the Arab states. Israel released ten million dollars of the blocked bank balances held by Arab refugees without any conditions or quid pro quo. All UNRWA proposals for refugee resettlement were rejected or blocked by the Arab states. The proposal of Eric Johnston, special envoy of President Eisenhower, for the irrigation of the Jordan Valley to allow resettlement of 240,000 refugees was also rejected by the Arab League in October 1955.…” We should also remember that “the U.N. has passed a considerable number of resolutions on this issue, urging either resettlement or compensation for Arab refugees, without once concerning itself with the more than one million Jewish refugees from the Arab countries. And it is precisely the unwillingness of the Arab refugees to live in peace with and accept the existence of Israel that has been the obstacle to any just peace and equitable settlement of the Middle East refugee problem as a whole.” (These two quotations are taken from the January, 1978, issue of the Bulletin of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, an organization for a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Arab states.)

The invasion of Lebanon in March, 1978, is the second illustration. This has popularly been called a “retaliatory act”; in light of the full history of the affair, it certainly was not. Israel had been saying for a decade that unless the powers could control the Fatah in southeastern Lebanon from which the constant raids into Israel were launched, Israel would have to do so itself. Yet the PLO-Fatah spread all across southern Lebanon, massacring the Christian population and launching violent raids into Israel. The blowing up of an Israeli bus with the loss of thirty-five lives was merely the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The action Israel then carried out was not spur of the moment; it had been warning the United Nations and the world of it for years. Historical perspective puts a different complexion on the “retaliation” charge.

Finally, why are evangelicals so keenly interested in the nation of Israel today? First and foremost, because of the biblical promises. God has declared that the fortunes of historic Israel are dear to his heart. Without cavil, what God holds precious, Christians ought to hold precious, too. And, quite simply, the rebirth of Israel as a nation is the most significant development within Jewish affairs in this century. If God is still interested in the descendents of Abraham, then we evangelicals cannot help being interested in the nation of Israel.

A second reason is born of guilt. The ill treatment Jews received over the centuries at the hand of “Christians” and “Christian” nations was one of the important reasons for the return to Palestine. This shameful record is well enough known to cause deep concern and add to the interest many evangelicals show toward Israel. The silence of the world in general while 6,000,000 Jews were being massacred by Hitler merely because they were Jews (along with the slaughter of 1,000,000 non-Jews who tried to help them) and the inhumanity shown by the world at large in not wanting these world Jewish refugees in their countries prick the conscience of evangelicals and lend urgency to their concern.

Altogether apart from biblical and political considerations, there is a third reason, a cultural one. The heavy and unusual concentration of Jewish skill and Jewish talent in science, medicine, education, agriculture, art, music, literature, and other cultural areas in modern Israel should cause all men to be greatly interested in the full success of what is taking place in Israel today. Although it is for another time to judge the outcome, what may be seen in embryo in Israel today holds high promise. It is written: “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (Isa. 2:3). The Lord will once again bless the world out of Zion.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Question: You have been fiercely attacked by women who have not agreed with some of your views, such as the subordination of wife to husband. How has that affected you?

Answer: Whenever I’m attacked I am emotionally affected. I’m not at all thick-skinned. However, I try not to allow people’s opinions to dictate my behavior or color my doctrine. Instead I try to get my beliefs directly from the Bible. And if I feel that what I believe is biblical, I can’t pay a lot of attention to people’s feelings.

Q: Are you saying then that in the women’s liberation controversy you are convinced that you speak from a strictly biblical perspective?

A: Yes, I am. I often refer to Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12, which says don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold your mind from within.

Q: Do you think that the evangelical church today is being molded by the world rather than by Scripture?

A: I wouldn’t limit it to our day. The fact that Paul wrote Romans 12 indicates that it has always been a difficulty and something to fight against. Swimming against the stream is always hard and today’s mass media makes it even more difficult.

Q: Describe your daily schedule.

A: I like monotony and routine, like C. S. Lewis. Usually I read my Bible and pray before breakfast and do some light cleaning afterward. By 8:00 I’m almost always at my desk and stay until noon. This doesn’t mean I write for four hours. If I can’t concentrate on writing, I might look out the window, sharpen pencils, or clean typewriter keys. If inspiration should strike, I will be at my desk instead of somewhere else.

Q: What do you think is the ratio of inspiration to perspiration in writing?

A: I never experience inspiration. For me it’s always work. Actually writing is a matter of processing data from many sources.

Q: What contemporary problems require attention?

A: There is something dangerous, in my opinion, about this modern tendency to think of everything in terms of problems. I think that as a result of technology we assume that everything is a problem and, therefore, has a solution. That’s just not true.

Q: If your denomination should ordain self-confessed hom*osexuals, what would be your continuing relationship to that church?

A: I am a member of such a church and I’ll continue to be a member.

Q: How can Christians justify continuing membership in such a situation?

A: That raises the question about one’s view of the church. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. And it doesn’t belong to me or anyone else. It’s Christ’s church and it’s been in worse conditions than it is now and God ultimately gets glory for himself through it. Although I deplore and abhor what the Episcopal church has officially done, I don’t think it gives me the warrant to withdraw. I just don’t believe that is the meaning of being separate.

Q: So you will bear your testimony within that church in hope that you might change it?

A: I am not optimistic about the possibility of officially changing the church. All I can do is be a Christian and live in obedience within that framework, hoping that my obedience may bear witness to Christ.

Q: In the course of your talking with students, you have seen a good cross-section of American life. How do you regard today’s young people?

A: I’m disturbed by the fact that kids are unwilling to accept authority. When I get up to speak to a group of kids, I feel that their attitude is “I wonder if she has anything worthwhile to say and if she does, she better prove it.” I wonder if this skepticism has something to do with conditioning. Because of television, they have learned to tune out almost everything except an occasional something that really grabs their attention.

Q: Then in your judgment there is a crisis of authority?

A: Yes.

Q: What is your perception of the usefulness of the pulpit today?

A: There isn’t any substitute for it. I am upset to see the strong move from pulpit ministry to counseling. Everyone wants to go into counseling, which is easier and vaguer, with much less at stake.

Q: If counseling is not necessarily the answer, what should the church be doing about the tremendous number of divorces?

A: I think people must realize that we don’t operate on feelings. This idea that feelings are paramount and love is a feeling is one of the most diabolical notions that has entered the church. As long as you love, you stick together. And when the feeling dissipates, a couple has every warrant to separate. There just isn’t an understanding of commitment. Traditional marital vows have been eliminated and people are writing their own. What they actually are writing is a description of feelings. The reason the church had vows was that people need to publicly declare the course they intend to follow, not the feelings they expect to experience. To get divorced because the marriage isn’t working anymore is a total misunderstanding of marriage. When a woman marries and doesn’t take her husband’s name, she has no idea of the real meaning of marriage. At a feminist convention I heard a woman say that marriage and motherhood are like deaths. She deplored this. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. When a woman marries, she dies to her past, her name, her other commitments, her identity, and herself. Because of love she takes her husband’s identity. When she becomes a mother, she goes down into death to give life to another person. Jesus says he that loseth his life, shall find it.

Q: You enjoy order in your life. As you enter into another marriage, isn’t there some risk that your life style will be altered?

A: I’ve had long thoughts about this since my marriage in December. I traded my comfortable home in Massachusetts for a rented, furnished house in Georgia, a small house that’s not decorated according to my tastes. And I’m alone much of the time. However, there is no question in my mind that this is God’s next step for me. Every door that has opened has involved conscious risks and losses. But, by this point in my life, if I don’t believe that gain comes from loss, I’m in trouble. If I ask that the Lord teach me then I must be willing to pay any price for that knowledge. So marriage is a kind of loss. You lay down your life for someone else. That’s true for both husband and wife. The husband is exhorted to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, which means self-giving. And certainly a woman can’t give herself to her husband without renouncing everything else.

Q: Has relocating disturbed the pattern of your work?

A: Of course my work has been disturbed but I have been able to adjust. Actually it hasn’t been disturbed as seriously as it will later on if my husband is home every day. The fact that he’s gone five days each week means that generally the pattern is the same.

Q: Wouldn’t it be easier for you with your missionary background to adjust to changes than for someone who has never been exposed to a foreign culture, learned a foreign language, or served on a foreign mission field?

A: I think it would be easier. However, it isn’t my personality or temperament to make changes all the time and my personal preferences haven’t been changed by experience. I’m not the kind of woman who rearranges furniture or changes decor all the time.

Q: You have said your life is not what you expected and that God has surprised you. In what ways?

A: Many ways, again and again. I’ve often thought of the verse in Isaiah, which says that the blind will be led by the way that they don’t know. If I ask the Lord to be my shepherd, he chooses the path. I have my notions about how it’s going to work, but it just has not worked that way. For instance when I married Jim Elliot I considered myself a one-man woman. And when he died, my first reaction was, Lord, how could you do this to me?

Breaking up my categories is one of God’s methods of bringing me to maturity. I think of Wayne Oates who said the process of giving up false gods to worship the one true God is Christian maturation. This is part of what I was trying to say in No Graven Image. At that point I realized that every experience of life is a breaking down of some image and replacing it with God. But we keep making new graven images and they must be shattered. That’s what experience is. Sometimes it’s the image of ourselves, the image of the way our lives are supposed to work that has to be destroyed in order for us to worship the one true God.

Q: When people speak about making love they are usually talking about sexual relationships. Isn’t that missing the major point of agapé?

A: Yes. It is.

Q: How can we convey this to young people before they marry?

A: We have to teach them First Corinthians 13, which describes the behavior of Christian love. It’s action. They have to understand that romantic feelings are ethereal. And obedience to the objective truth is what will carry them through life.

Q: How can we put feelings into their proper place?

A: Paul said we should have a sane estimate of our capabilities and importance. The individual’s importance is exaggerated by our whole educational system, which teaches a kindergarten child that his opinion is equally valid with everyone else’s. The idea is that when he expresses himself, he is learning to think. But the opposite is true. If a child is asked his opinion of the sand table, homework, and supervised study halls, he is going to face the world believing that everything is a matter of taste or feelings. Of course, this isn’t true.

Q: Lewis’s Abolition of Man points out the heart of the problem in our educational system, doesn’t it?

A: Yes, marvelously. If we could get people to read Lewis, we wouldn’t need theological seminaries.

Q: Isn’t it remarkable that a man who was not a theologian in a technical sense could speak in a way that most theologians have not spoken?

A: It is quite meaningless to me to say that he’s not a theologian in a technical sense. What do you mean by technically? One doesn’t need a Ph. D. in theology to be a theologian.

Q: Could it have been an advantage to Lewis not to have had theological training?

A: Certainly. I think that anyone who seriously studies the Bible and prays is going to have a training that institutions can’t possibly give. A shining example is Luis Palau. With a missionary he trained on his knees for three hours a day, three days a week, for three years. Palau doesn’t have a theological degree, but look what he has done.

Q: There is a tendency to consider Lewis a saint with an aura that he himself would probably reject if he were alive. What do you think?

A: He was a saint with an aura. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m not saying that he was sinless. But I regard him as a man taught of God with a genuine and unarguable humility in the face of truth.

Q: You wrote a controversial book on the Middle East. Do you believe that few people in the Christian world are hearing the Arab side?

A: Yes, I think what I observed when I was there in 1967 is still true—that it’s difficult to learn the truth about the Arab side. There is some kind of Jewish media control. I experienced it when the publisher that commissioned my book didn’t dare print it. The book simply raises questions but was interpreted as damning. I discovered that certain questions are taboo in this country. For instance, we can’t question the morality of Israel. And although Israel is militantly a racist political state, we wouldn’t be allowed to call it that in print. Americans who are most vociferous about racism in this country seem to be in favor of a racist nation.

Q: How do you feel about the law passed against proselytizing in Israel?

A: When Israel claimed to have religious freedom, it was a contradiction. The truth is there is no such thing. And now they’ve admitted it by outlawing proselytizing. When I visited Israel the anti-God feeling of most Israelis shocked me. I understand that less than 10 per cent of the Israelis are religious. And they get furious when American Jews visit expecting to find religion. They ask “What has Israel got to do with religion? Absolutely nothing.”

Q: In other words, Israel is basically secular with little commitment to historic Judaism?

A: The Israelis don’t know what historic Judaism is and they don’t care. It is not a linguistic or religious category. If you ask them what a Jew is, no one can really answer.

Q: So they view the Old Testament simply as a historical book?

A: They don’t even know it. In fact, the religious Jews that I talked to knew nothing beyond the Pentateuch. That is the Bible. So, they don’t even know prophecy.

Q: Would you say that the Arabs are more religious than the Israelis?

A: Yes. This is generally true.

Q: It’s been said that previous to the establishment of Israel the Arabs were the only ones willing to allow the Jews to share their land. Do you feel that the Palestinians have been “kicked out for their kindness” and that evangelicals haven’t listened to the Palestinian cause well enough?

A: It hasn’t been listened to at all. Back in 1948 when Palestine was partitioned, it was an arbitrary decision on the part of everyone but the Palestinians who were not consulted. There is no ethical basis for Zionism whatsoever. Imagine what kind of reception there would have been if it had been proposed that New Jersey be the homeland for the Jews.

Q: Why do you think that evangelicals have accepted this situation?

A: They have an imperfect and naïve notion of the fulfillment of prophecy.

Q: Does God have a purpose for Israel?

A: Certainly. The ultimate purpose would be Israel’s redemption. But how that’s to be fulfilled and what signs we see of it in the nation of Israel today, I am not prepared to say. The promises of the Old Testament hinge on obedience. I don’t see that obedience at all.

Q: Do you think the consummation of history could be upon us in the foreseeable future?

A: Well, I certainly think it could be. However, all through history Christians have felt it was the last times. I don’t have any more reason to believe that this is more like what the last times will be like than in any other era.

No bare feet allowed, sir,

You can’t come in.

They won’t allow it down at Mac’s

So why should we at Bethel?

Then too your hair is much too long;

it’s not in style.

Short hair is what the ads now show.

You didn’t know?

And anyway it’s matted thick

with dark red dirt.

We couldn’t let you sit

near other folk;

they’d soon be sick.

Our people come to worship, sir,

not look at dirt.

No, no, young man, you can’t come in

—your feet all mud like that.

Look how your footprints spoil the steps!

Don’t you ever take a bath?

Not mud?

You say it’s blood?

it’s wounds in both your feet?

Then all the worse!

Our carpet’s new

and blood stains just won’t vacuum out.

A hospital’s the place for you,

most certainly not a church.

We can’t admit disgusting things

—it wouldn’t honor God.

We aim for things that please Him most.

So, no bare feet allowed!

EILEEN LAGEER

The American Constitution aims to restrict entanglements between Church and State. The reason for this is not that ethics and politics are unrelated, but rather that the concerns of each are potentially undermined whenever Church or State comes under the governance of the other. It is thus remarkable that our “secular” political culture is so profoundly vulnerable to appeals based on a civil religion that mixes Christian metaphors with nationalistic aspirations. G.K. Chesterton, the great Roman Catholic apologist, once remarked that America is “a nation with the soul of a church” and that it is “the only nation in the world founded on a creed.”

Because American civil religion relies so heavily on Christian metaphors for its expression, evangelical Christians are frequently beguiled into equating the civic creed with the Christian religion itself. Appeals to the Judeo-Christian traditions that broadly inform our national political conscience are interpreted to suggest that America is a “Christian” nation. Recognition that providence governs over the affairs of nations is perverted to the insistence that America has a “manifest destiny” that secures divine sanction for American national ambition.

The syncretizing of civil religion and historic Christianity shows itself frequently and blatantly in the relationship between some right-wing fundamentalist Protestantism and right-wing political fanaticism, though there are functional equivalents to be found in Roman Catholicism and Jewish Zionism as well. The anti-Christ of Revelation 13 is uncritically identified with the Roman Catholic Church, the Jewish nation, the Common Market, or the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The “remnant” who refuse to serve the “beast.” assured of the “righteousness” of their cause, recognize no restraints in combating the enemy. The division between the saved and the damned is transferred to the area of political policies and leaves no room for compromise, prudential adjudication of issues, or moral ambiguity. This radical fringe reflects a paranoid view of the world and views the powers that be as conspiratorial.

The theological controversies raging within evangelicalism between neoevangelicals, mainline evangelicals, and fundamentalists tend to reflect some of that paranoia and Manichean temperament. Black-white thinking that reflects an inability to distinguish between an inch and a mile in matters of heresy develops a temperament that can easily be transferred to political matters and provide good soil for extremist political views. (The fact that these remarks are being published in this journal suggests that evangelicalism has matured substantially in the last generation. It also illustrates that we are aware of the temptation to which we have too often succumbed and by which we are still beguiled.)

However, let us not be so naïve as to think that evangelicalism is tempted only from the right. The fact that evangelical Protestantism has gained social acceptance simply changes the nature of the beguilement. The civil religion of middle America represents an equally dangerous seduction. We need to remind ourselves that the City of God is not Peoria, Illinois. God’s chariots are not Chevy Malibus. His house is not split-level. Nor, might I add, is She black!

Rather than being tempted by paranoid fringe groups that were once so seductively appealing because they shared the same rejection of the general culture once characteristic of fundamentalism, modern evangelicalism is tempted to conform itself to the general culture befitting its newfound socioeconomic status. If that be the case, the only difference between old-line fundamentalism and contemporary evangelicalism is that the latter represents fundamentalism dressed up in a pin-stripe suit.

We must guard against the ever present temptation to syncretize Christian faith with the civil religion. But let us not make uncritical attacks on the value of civil religion itself. Civil religion serves as the public philosophy or the political culture by which our very heterogeneous population defines its values. Although the Judeo-Christian metaphors of civil religion can easily be abused, a civil religion that genuinely recognizes the Transcendent, the moral restraints on the use of political power, and the moral foundations of the state is infinitely preferable to one that makes no such claims.

All societies have a public philosophy and political culture to which their peoples appeal. The Judeo-Christian metaphors of the American creed are both a curse and a blessing: a blessing insofar as they accept some Christian truths, but a curse when confused with the historic Christian faith.

—PAUL B. HENRY, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Robert Willard Pierce, 1914–1978

Bob Pierce died last month after battling leukemia for several years. He was born in Iowa and moved to California when he was ten. In his twenties he was an evangelist and in his early thirties he joined with Torrey Johnson, Billy Graham, and others in the beginnings of Youth for Christ.

While on a YFC evangelistic trip to Asia in 1947, Pierce was brought face to face with stark human deprivation. He resolved to combine a ministry of aid to those who were suffering physically with the preaching of the Gospel and the discipling of believers. Pierce founded World Vision in 1950.

There is a long tradition in the church, which is often ignored, that combines care for men’s bodies with concern for their souls. Although this combination has never been eclipsed, in the past century or so there has been a strong tendency for religious leaders to focus on one or the other.

It is to Bob Pierce’s credit that he not only preached concern for men’s bodies but practiced it. Indeed, his intense concern for the needs of others may have interfered with the proper attention due to his own needs and the needs of those close to him. The strain was such that he had to resign from World Vision in 1967. However, unlike many organizations, it continued to flourish after losing its founder and is now many times larger. That, too, is a tribute to the foundation that Bob Pierce laid.

There’s considerable difficulty, it seems, in gauging the political currents. You know, the “Who is Jimmy Carter?” and “What’s he all about?” and “Does anybody care?” and “Whither America?” kinds of questions we’ll be increasingly subjected to in the months to come. Candidates already are limbering up for the Big Run, the political consulting business is booming, the journalists are out testing the political winds and divining the public mood.

Here, as a public service, free of charge to pollsters, pundits, politicians, scholars, sociologists, psychohistorians and just plain citizens, is the sure-fire, fail-safe survey of who we are and where we’re going as we head into the 1980s.

We are selfish, vain, narcissistic, insecure, introspective, overweight, ugly—and we don’t give a damn about politics. Self-improvement is our preoccupation, hedonism our philosophy, looking out for No. 1 our theme. That last trait especially speaks to what passes for the politics of the moment.

Evidence? you say. Why, it’s clearly spelled out for all to see each Sunday morning in the pages of The New York Times Review. That’s right, the elite, esoteric NYT Book Review, the authoritative journal of the book business, the Bible of the trade. There, carefully compiled from computer-processed sales figures covering 1,400 bookstores in every region of the country, are the latest best-sellers. They are, I submit, an incomparable guide to mass tastes, and to the real politics of the late 1970s.

Last week, for instance, the nonfiction newcomer to the best-seller list was entitled “Adrien Arpel’s Three-Week Crash Makeover, Shapeover Beauty Program,” a winner at 12 bucks offering us advice from the head of an international cosmetics corporation. It takes its place alongside such other timely tracts as “The Woman’s Dress for Success Book,” a guide to tasteful apparel, and “Designing Your Face,” on how best to use cosmetics.

Three best sellers on cosmetics and clothes alone. In keeping with them, stylistically, are the other self-improvement-at-any-price books: “The Complete Book of Running,” our No. 1 seller, competes with “Inner Skiing,” about improving your mental attitude, and “Arnold: The Education of a Body Builder,” which gives tips from the superstar of the film “Pumping Iron.”

Five of the remaining nine best sellers qualify as escapism: “All Things Wise and Wonderful,” the adventures of a Yorkshire vet, ranks in sales just above “Gnomes,” which is all about the little people, while “The Second Ring of Power” deals with a spiritual quest and encountering a witch, and “The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” presents—well, just what its title implies.

The last in this category is a rendering of Alaska, our final frontier. This one, John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country,” stands alone among all the books. It promises to become a classic, and to be read long after this dreary current list has been forgotten.…

Close to the top is a mod bit of introspective wrestling with self and intimate relationships from an author who previously cashed in with an account of women’s sexual fantasies. Now, Nancy Friday’s “My Mother/Myself” looks at how mothers and daughters relate, as they say. Presumably, it’s the other side of the Oedipus complex. Whichever way you look at it, sex still sells.…

For more than a generation, nonfiction books have been the big sellers in the hardcover book business. And, looking back on those lists, the topics that led to the most sales did reflect the public concerns of the times.

A few years ago the Watergate trauma inspired a plethora of successes, not only from Woodward and Bernstein but other players, major and minor: the Magruders and Deans, as husbands and wives in separate accounts, and Colson on conversion were among those who chronicled the Nixon years and fed the public appetite for insights on the scandals.

Before that the stream of Kennedy books dominated the trade in the years following the 1963 assassination. In 1967, for instance, William Manchester’s “Death of a President” outsold its leading fictional counterpart by nearly 2 to 1. During the Kennedy years, strong topical themes, with a flavor of reform and exposé on serious public issues, were nonfiction successes: James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” called the turn on black unrest and the prospect of urban violence while Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” sounded an alarm on man’s abuse of the environment.

Best-sellers of the Eisenhower era clearly reflected the period. Religious and spiritual themes won their way to the top with such saccharine books as Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking,” Fulton Sheen’s “Life Is Worth Living,” Fulton Oursler’s “The Greatest Faith Ever Known” and Catherine Marshall’s “A Man Named Peter.”

It was no time for experimentation; the public stayed with favorite authors, who struck familiar and safe themes. Those attitudes were in marked contrast to the war years. Then, the book-buying public had reached out in all directions, hungrily assimilating a wide range of serious works. As Time magazine remarked then, it was the most remarkable period in the history of U.S. publishing. In 1943, when serious, sobering books were being consumed almost as fast as they could be produced, the No. 1 publishing success was a political book—Wendell Willkie’s “One World.” The former GOP presidential candidate’s account of his trip around the world sold more than 1.5 million copies that year alone.

After the war, America retreated back into itself, and the book sales showed it. And now?

Now, it’s self-improvement—and watch out for No. 1. But a different sort of self-help: even the how-to-do-it sex books of such recent success appear to have lost some of their appeal. Now, it’s leave me alone. Just let me paint my face, slim my shape, dress in style, and look attractive. Then everything will be OK.

After all, it’s the facade that clearly counts.—HAYNES JOHNSON, staff writer, The Washington Post. © 1978. Used by permission.

One of the hardest things for a person who is in a parachurch or similar untraditional ministry is to explain what he or she does—especially to parents and siblings. It’s even harder for the Christian worker’s (worker’s?) children.

“What does your father do?” a neighbor asks the child of a Young Life staff member.

Now if he were older and alert to the treacherous trap, the child would probably answer, “He sells Amway products,” or “He blows out sewer lines.”

But being young and forthright he replies, “My daddy hangs around high schools.”

“Really?” And there goes the opportunity to be a Christian witness in the neighborhood.

Church people aren’t much different.

“What does your husband do?” someone asks an Inter-Varsity staff member’s wife.

“He visits college campuses and tries to get students to live and witness for Jesus Christ,” she replies.

“Didn’t he graduate from seminary?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then when is he going to take a church?”

If the wife is sharp (unfortunately most are kind) she’ll say something like, “Take it where?” or “Now I’ll ask you one: When is the church going to do the job that needs to be done with students on campus?”

But families are the worst problem, possibly because parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and everyone else end up on the mailing list of the organization that employs their relative. Constant appeals for support cause the family to think of how different it would be if the person were a pastor, D.C.E., or something else. Some workers come to hate the word supporter: You never speak of a pastor’s supporters—only a parachurch worker’s, a missionary’s, or a hernia victim’s.

I heard a story recently that sounds so apocryphal it must be true.

Francis Schaeffer’s mother was visiting L’Abri. One day she drew another guest aside and asked, “When do you think Francis is going to stop all this and get a job?”

Ah, Mrs. Schaeffer, you are the archetypal mother of a parachurch worker (worker?).

EUTYCHUS VIII

Refreshing Thoughts

Thank you for including John Warwick Montgomery’s refreshing comments on anti-Semitism (Current Religious Thought, “Luther and Anti-Semitism,” Sept. 8). True tolerance consists of loving acceptance of others as equals while frankly facing our differences. As for Israel’s role in prophecy, a number of nations have served as a focal point of God’s working in human history, but that does not necessarily mean he endorsed their national cause or excused their actions.

SIDNEY REINERS

Mizpah, Minn.

Spiritual Apartheid

C. Peter Wagner’s “hom*ogeneous unit principle” sounds to me like a subtle form of spiritual apartheid (“Should the Church Be a Melting Pot?,” Aug. 18). I was glad to hear him state that if this principle is not the way New Testament churches developed, then that is sufficient evidence to scrap it (p. 14), but his treatment of the biblical evidence was weak.…

STEVEN J. COLE

Cedarpines Park Community Church

Cedarpines Park, Calif.

I greatly appreciate the variety and depth of insight that your fine publication offers the Christian community. I especially want to thank you for the article “Should the Church Be a Melting Pot?” The dialogue between C. Peter Wagner and Ray Stedman clarified much of my thinking on cultural significance.… Churches may grow better when everybody is alike, but since everybody is not alike we may have to sacrifice church growth for Christian growth, which in the long run may be the best way to church growth.

FLOYD J. SANDERS

East Point, Ga.

The “hom*ogeneous unit principle” controversy is of very great theological and ethical importance today if the church is to retain (regain?) any credible position of influence in American society. I was glad that CHRISTIANITY TODAY devoted the lead article to a dialogue on the subject, a dialogue which helped sharpen the issue for those of us who feel it is very urgent to address it. I commend Professor Wagner for admitting that the hom*ogeneus unit principle as an ending point would be sub-Christian. I believe the church growth school has given us some valuable starting points, but we must find biblical methods for building beyond them. In our sophistication we dare not confuse science or effectiveness with biblical principles and faithfulness. We have an abiding mandate to be Christ’s agents of reconciliation, and reconciliation must work socially as well as spiritually.

FREEMAN J. MILLER

Diamond Street Mennonite Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

Whitewashing The Issue

“Meeting the Moonies on Their Territory” (News, Aug. 18), was a whitewash of the issue and a disservice to the Christian community. Hopkins wrote so objectively on what he saw and heard at Barrytown, New York, that Moon and Salonen must be sitting back rubbing their hands together and saying, “the money we spent to bring the ten evangelical ‘Christians’ here to see what we wanted them to see was well worth the expenses we paid.” When the Parent Teacher Association of the whole state of New York votes to educate the students of the dangers of the Moon cult and of Moon’s desire to destroy family life, I would think a real Christian would look a little deeper into the deceptions. Hopkins did not mention that the Unification Church is suing the New York PTA too. But, Hopkins, you are one that will not be sued, you wrote what they wanted. You played right into their hands. Yes, people like you and Harvey Cox are a real help to the dangerous cults.

JOHN J. CONROY

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Although I commend the efforts toward understanding through dialogue represented by the Barrytown encounter, I must take issue with the conclusions reached not only by the non-Unification-Church participants but also apparently by Hopkins and CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I cannot accept as true that Moonies experience and engender “real Christian fellowship.” Fellowship they may have, and real it may be, but Christian it cannot be, not so long as they “believe that Christ failed to achieve full salvation and that a Korean-born messiah—possibly Moon—will complete the task.” That belief alone excludes those who hold it from biblical Christianity, and I fear that to call contact with Moonies, however warm and personable, “real Christian fellowship” and to pray God’s blessing on them all may well violate the principle and command of Second John 9–11. Were there none of the “evangelical” participants who came away with more caution than those whose rather positive reactions were quoted in the article?

THOMAS J. KEEFER

Columbia, S. C.

Adopted Child

In addressing myself to John V. Lawing, Jr.’s preview of “The Long Search” (Refiner’s Fire, Aug. 18), I must say that I don’t feel like a beggar. Neither do I feel proud of any inherent goodness in me. Rather, I feel as one who has been adopted into the most respected and influential family in the whole world sharing in all of the benefits, power, and wealth of that family. My beggarly wraps were thrown out when the heavenly father gave me a robe from the closet of his only begotten son. Remembering the depths from which I was drawn by his tremendous love and mercy, it is, nevertheless, from my elevated position as a member of his family that I invite others to come and become followers of Christ and members of our heavenly father’s family.

ALMITA SHIVERS

Los Angeles, Calif.

The Tie That Binds

I read with interest Harold O. J. Brown’s article “Christians and Jews—Bound Together” (Aug. 18). Thank you for the candor regarding Jewish/Christian relations over the centuries. I would take issue with the notion that Justin Martyr’s Dialogue indeed “sets a high level for religious discussion.” There are those who would say that the Jew Trypho was a “straw man,” a sounding board, a straight man for a Christian broadside. It is debatable if it is a dialogue at all. Beyond this, I greatly appreciated the article.

WAYNE NICKERSON

Shadyside Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

I wish to compliment Brown and CHRISTIANITY TODAY for presenting both the dark and disagreeable incidents, as well as the constructive efforts and gains, in the Christian-Jew dialogue of around 1900 years.

HAROLD P. SPINKA

Chicago, Ill.

As a Jew and a Christian, I would like to thank you for Harold Brown’s article on Christians and Jews. I have found a sad lack of understanding among both Jews and Christians of the historical antagonism between them. I have also found that, although Christians want to win Jews over to belief in Christ, the church has for the most part failed to acknowledge its contribution to and responsibility for bad relations with Jews. Michael Green has an excellent discussion of this in Evangelism in the Early Church, Chapter 4. The church will not win most Jews to Christ until an understanding of how relations deteriorated is reached by both sides, and until Christians understand and are able to admit to Jews that the church has made some terrible mistakes in attitudes toward Jews throughout history.

(THE REV.) MARC L. LESTER

Denver, Colo.

Look, Listen, And Read

Before defending Ruth Carter Stapleton as being a misunderstood and misquoted evangelical (Editorial, “Don’t Believe Everything You Read,” Aug. 18) … perhaps CHRISTIANITY TODAY should check out her presentation to the Association for Holistic Health (AHH) at its symposium in San Diego, September 2–4, 1977. (See Spiritual Counterfeits Project Journal, August, 1978.) I’m not trying to judge her salvation; that’s in the hands of the Lord Jesus, but she definitely does not present the view of biblical Christianity, so please don’t imply that she might. Her philosophy reeks with undertones of Eastern thought. Read her books and study her claims before you defend her position, please. Diligently strive to keep the Gospel pure. Don’t compromise the truth, even on the smallest point.

TERRY STARR

Forest Park, Ga.

I must take exception to the editorial “Don’t Believe Everything You Read.” While I agree with the thesis of the editorial, I believe the defense of Mrs. Stapleton is unfortunate. She may profess orthodoxy but any discerning Christian could plainly see that the content of that orthodoxy is open to scrutiny and reproach. Many Christians have seriously doubted Mrs. Stapleton’s Christianity on the basis of her statement to Christian publications and on Christian television media and not merely the secular press releases.… Really, isn’t it about time we begin exposing some of this superficial, counterfeit Christianity exemplified in Mrs. Stapleton who, were it not for her brother, would never get such exposure and thus fool so many people?

JEFFREY K. JORGENSEN

The First Baptist Church

Canton, N. Y.

Correction

In our September 22 issue, page 15, the picture should have been of Will Norton, Jr. Instead, a picture of his father, dean of the Wheaton Graduate School, was printed. Will Norton, Jr., has just signed a contract with Doubleday for a book on Thomas Tarrants, which is to be published in 1979.

“The world prayed for the success of our efforts,” declared President Carter, “and I am glad to announce to you that these prayers have been answered.”

Peace will not come easy. Terrible social and political antagonisms seldom yield to simple solutions. But there is ground for hope. The goals of Jew and Arab are not mutually exclusive. The fundamental need of Israel is security. The bottom line for Egypt and its Arab allies is an autonomous West Bank for Palestinians and Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai. The agreements reached by Begin and Sadat provide for both these goals. Many sticky problems remain unsolved. Begin and his conservative Israeli supporters must come to see that even a divine promise of the land of ancient Palestine (with which many evangelicals agree) does not warrant unjust acts by man to bring about the fulfillment of that promise. Arabs, on the other hand, must recognize Israel as a Jewish nation and provide adequate guaranties for the integrity of her boundaries and for her full acceptance into the family of nations.

In this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents background for understanding what may well prove to be one of the major historic events in modern times—or another desperate gamble that climaxed in cynical despair.

Christians in the East-bloc lands are understandably cautious in speaking with visitors from the West. When a condition of trust is established, they do frequently speak of their limitations in being socially and politically prophetic, as believers in the free world dare to be. Yet, Christians have a recognized duty to express their dissent at public policies that are clearly incompatible with their convictions.

Such expression is, to be sure, regulated by the conditions of where believers live. Although making allowances for certain excesses, evangelicals don’t dare neglect, carelessly or in fear, this phase of Christian witness.

The prophets of Israel should instruct and inform our prophetic testimony. This aspect of our Western heritage is frequently taken for granted, and seems to be valued most when it is threatened. The problem is not whether believers should use the prophetic mode, but rather, where and in which issues.

Evangelicals must accept as commonplace that prophetic utterances of liberal theological thinkers and writers are far more vigorous against right-of-center issues and governments than against spokesmen and public policies on the left. We must learn to live with this and not let it goad us into rejecting the mandate to be creatively and consistently prophetic.

Thoughtful persons have sometimes been perplexed at some radical liberal prophecy: a case in point, the “new left” protests in the late sixties. At that time, a professor who was a guest in our land, the darling of the new left, proclaimed that the United States lives in a continuous prefascist condition and that all expressions from the right-of-center should be rigidly suppressed. I remember looking in vain for any criticism of this proposed denial of freedom of expression in the liberal religious organs.

It may be said that if evangelicals have at times been painfully slow in speaking prophetically to social, economic, and political ills, they have at least been consistent in their attitude toward systems of evident tyranny, for example. Certainly the principle of “A plague on both your houses” is preferable to a selective policy at this point.

There is a more current example. Liberal journalists condemn several countries, which are usually friendly to the United States and which are anti-Marxist, for the abridgement of human rights. Although such abridgements deserve criticism, there is also a place for consistency. These same journalists fail to criticize Marxist countries where human rights are systematically violated.

Such selective prophetic activity can scarcely be justified by quoting the conventional wisdom of Marxist rulers, whose familiar chant says that citizens have all they need so long as they all have the basic necessities of fuel, clothing, shelter, and employment. These are valid rights, but only the convinced materialist will hold that they constitute an adequate basis for the “rights of man.”

The lack of consistency upon the part of some churchmen does not justify a policy of silence or of inaction by evangelicals. Those people who profess to make the Bible a living basis for faith and action need to be positive about “the prophetic.” All Christians, and especially those of the First World, to be consistent must involve themselves, by attitude, by word, and by life style, with the poor of the world.

Although God is concerned for all persons, and although the poor sin just as do the prosperous, yet the thrust of the Old Testament prophets demands our deep and involved concern for the impoverished of the world. There is no justification for the gap between the living standards prevailing in the industrialized lands and those that exist in the lands of the Third World.

Again, it is difficult to understand the silence among affluent Christians about the massive and perverse forms of waste: for example, the annual rotting of 16 million tons (probably a conservative estimate) of cereal grains by the brewing and distilling industries in the United States. Or, scarcely less revolting, the grotesque and horrendous misuse of cereal grains, fish, and meat by the pet food industry. Surely God, whose heart beats with the hungry poor of the world, must revolt at these senseless forms of waste. Surely he will one day bring our nation, along with the other industrialized nations, to judgment for the existence of these and similar forms of destruction of the very resources that an underfed and hungry world needs so desperately.

Behind these more blatant forms of senseless waste is the pervasive distortion of Christian stewardship known variously as “our standard of living” or “our affluent life style.” We need vigorous, even radical, prophets to sear our comfortable consciences about the pervasiveness and tyranny of our system of planned obsolescence by which irreplaceable resources are squandered.

A discriminating and consistent prophetic stance will challenge an existing society in which a child born today in, say, the United States or Western Europe will in his or her lifetime lay upon irreplaceable resources of the earth a demand fifteen times as great as a child born at the same time, say, in an Indian village. Merely to thank God for our favorable placement without raising an effective voice against the inequities of our world will scarcely justify any claim on our part to be prophetic as Christians.

We are under obligation to be even-handed in our selection of issues to which we seek to speak prophetically. We must, further, make certain that the issues toward which we in conscience address ourselves are issues whose relation to biblical mandates is clear. But silence speaks loudly of indifference, something that a vital evangelical community cannot afford in the face of the world’s poor and disinherited.

Harold B. Kuhn is professor of philosophy of religion at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

When it came to choosing a papal title, the relatively unknown Albino Luciani showed political instincts that may explain his rapid election. The native son of sleepy Canale D’Agordo, remote village in northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, opted for John Paul I as the name he will carry as Rome’s 263rd pontiff.

Pope John Paul’s tastes for nomenclature symbolize a merging of two divergent attitudes toward change within the Roman Catholic Church, as represented by his two immediate predecessors, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Pope John was an unceasing agent of change, while Paul advocated controlled, gradual transition. Backers of each view were polarized.

That may be why earlier front runners cast in the mold of John or Paul lost out. And that may explain why the 65-year-old Luciani, whose record showed he could bridge the two factions, became the College of Cardinals’ choice.

At first view, John Paul I looked like a pope who would resemble Pope John’s charmingly simple, gregarious style, but Pope Paul’s firm traditionalism in faith and morals. But behind the balanced-equation image projected by his chosen name lies a personality much more complex, whose stamp on the office only time will reveal.

John Paul’s past points to an unpretentious, open pontificate that will identify with the daily problems of all classes, colors, and conditions of men. Alone among the Italian candidates, John Paul’s prior experience was almost entirely pastoral. He has served neither in the Curia (the church’s administration) nor in the Vatican’s diplomatic service, unlike any of his recent predecessors. This fact bode well for his election. The expanded number of progressive and moderate cardinals wanted a Vatican outsider; the traditionalists wanted an Italian.

Pope John in 1958 appointed cleric Luciani as bishop of Vittorio Veneto, a town at the foot of the Alps. One of Luciani’s first problems in that post was a scandal involving two priests and $10,000 in bad checks. At a meeting of the 400 priests in the diocese he announced that he intended to refund the missing money out of the revenue from church property rather than seek ecclesiastical immunity from Italian civil law.

Pope Paul made Bishop Luciani patriarch of Venice in 1969 and named him a cardinal in 1973. The bishop plunged into his work with enthusiasm—riding to mainland parishes by bicycle, doing away with official pomp and ceremony, and instructing parish priests to sell their churches’ gold ornaments to provide for handicapped children.

In 1976 he shocked archdiocesan officials by selling several works of art to raise money for retarded children. Lest others accuse him of selling only church property, he added to the auction two pectoral crosses of considerable material and sentimental value—gifts to him from Popes John and Paul.

Yet John Paul has a reputation as a stern conservative. He is said to reject birth control, abortion, divorce, and the concept of women priests, and to have little sympathy for the emerging grassroots movement in the church.

Several liberal Catholic observers suspect that Vatican traditionalists are deliberately utilizing the pages of the Vatican’s official organ, L’Osservatore Romano, to cast the new pope in a rigid conservative stance at the outset, and thus limit his freedom of action in the future. They insist that Luciani was part of the majority that recommended a loosening of the church’s birth control position, a view Pope Paul disregarded in issuing his 1968 Humanae Vitae encyclical. Not only did John Paul later maintain a discreet silence on the subject, they report, but he also substituted a milder explanation of his own on the ruling. Whatever John Paul’s true instincts, they often are modified by a nonprovincial outlook and a cultural flexibility that run deep.

The morning after his election, the new pope told the cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel, “We want to preserve intact the great discipline of the church.… We want to remind the church that its first duty remains that of evangelization.… We intend to dedicate our considered attention to everything that can favor [ecumenical] union, without doctrinal retreat but also without hesitation.”

The new pope has a demonstrated capacity for growth and change. At Vatican II, after considerable study and some agonizing, he moved to support the new position on religious liberty for non-Catholics.

Moreover, he hosted in Venice last year (see the August 12, 1977, issue, page 30) an evangelical-Roman Catholic dialogue on mission. Participating was an eight-member Roman Catholic team appointed by the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity, on the one hand, and an ad hoc international group of evangelicals on the other, that included Anglican minister John Stott, German theologian Peter Beyerhaus, and Fuller seminary president David Hubbard.

He has already hinted at cracking the doors to collegial rule. A move toward collegiality (sharing the pope’s absolute prerogatives with the church’s bishops in a more democratic manner) really amounts to a retooling of the papacy itself. And it is the obstacle of the papacy that has halted moves toward ecumenical union.

Outspoken Catholic columnist Andrew M. Greeley says that while “historically understandable,” the present “highly centralized, juridical, legalistic, and authoritarian papacy is by no means either necessary or normal.” He calls for the new pope to “change drastically” the style of papal administration by giving the synod of bishops real power and by delegating more responsibility to the church’s national hierarchies throughout the world.

The new pope’s first challenge may come from factions of the extreme right and left within his own church. French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre heads a worldwide band of traditionalists who believe it was a mistake to end the centuries-old tradition of Latin mass. In defiance of Vatican orders, Lefebvre insists on celebrating mass in Latin and ordaining sympathetic priests. John Paul must decide: Should Lefebvre be excommunicated, creating a rare case of formal schism?

In the early days of Pope John Paul’s pontificate, Catholic attention will shift from Rome to Puebla, Mexico, where the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) will meet in October. The issue there will be the theology of liberation, a doctrine that places the church on the side of the poor and oppressed (often in sympathy with Marxist views and opposed to established strong-man governments).

“At their Medellin [Colombia] meeting ten years ago,” explains the National Catholic Reporter in an editorial, “the Latin American bishops, representatives of the Church traditionally aligned with wealth, government, and military, aligned themselves with the poor.” That new alignment is being fought over in Latin America and in the Vatican, the editorial reported.

“If the new pope urges [the Latin American bishops] to hold to their course as champions of the poor and oppressed, no other Catholic hierarchy in the world will be able to hold back from doing the same in this century,” the liberal weekly predicted.

The Ramadan Riots

The rash of violent protests that convulsed Iran during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (August 5 through September 3) may cause severe repercussions in the non-Muslim West.

Last month, riots, bombings, and arson attacks culminated in the deaths of more than 400 in a theater fire in Abadan. The violence was more religious than political. The thirty-four million citizens of Iran are overwhelmingly Muslims of the Shia branch. During Ramadan, Muslims fast during the day and abstain from all sensual pleasures. When the lunar month falls in the full heat of summer, as it did this year, tempers and tensions can rise.

Leading the unrest are the ayatollahs, Muslim clergy who serve as conservative opinion leaders in most Iranian towns. They have long been unhappy with the wholesale violation of religious tradition that has accompanied Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi’s modernization drive.

The Shah faces the greatest challenge of his thirty-seven-year reign. If he should be toppled, the West fears that an unfriendly regime could shut off the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz—energy jugular for the West through which 50 per cent of its oil passes.

The current problem commenced in January, when police in the religious shrine center of Qom fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing at least a dozen of them. The killings caused an outrage in all the bazaars of Iran, and antigovernment feeling increased.

Since then, nearly every major city in the country has experienced mass rioting. Isfahan, Iran’s second largest city, is under martial law. Special targets of the ayatollahs’ ire were physical symbols of modernization and Western influence—particularly banks (a violation of the Muslim prohibition of usury), theaters (depiction of the human image), and luxury restaurants (drinking of alcoholic beverages).

Previous threats to the Shah’s authority have been primarily political. The present rebellion poses a greater threat to his rule because of the deep religious roots of his people. (Muslim countries have no traditional policy of church-state separation.)

The Shah’s most dangerous foe is Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled to Iraq for his criticisms of the Shah after religious riots in 1963. Tape recordings of his sermons are smuggled by the thousands into Iran and played at secret Muslim gatherings.

The Shah has bowed somewhat to the mounting wave of protest. He has switched prime ministers, from an American-trained technocrat to the more traditional Sharif-Emani, who immediately ordered a shutdown of all casinos and gambling houses. Observers question whether these cosmetic changes will suffice until next Ramadan.

Schism in Guatemala

An ultraliberal priest has broken with the Roman Catholic Church and founded an independent church in Guatemala. Cleric Jose Maria Ruiz Farlan, known throughout this Central American country as Padre Chemita, was twice an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Guatemala City; he has immense popularity in the slums, where he founded a number of schools and clinics. Padre Chemita has repeatedly accused the Guatemalan church hierarchy of siding with the rich and powerful.

Mario Cardinal Casariego—widely regarded as one of the most conservative churchmen in Latin America—ordered him to retract public statements critical of church authority. After he refused, Chemita was excommunicated. Then, Chemita publicly burned the decree and announced the formation of the Guatemalan National Catholic Church with eight priests.

“The reality of the Catholic Church in Guatemala is very sad,” the priest said. “The evangelical church is advancing here and the authorities of the Catholic Church don’t do anything about it. There are over a million evangelicals in our country because our Church is a conservative Church that lives in the past century.”

Many Guatemalans would agree with Padre Chemita’s assessment. Guatemala has one of the fastest growing evangelical communities in Latin America. Its 110 Protestant evangelical denominations make up an estimated 10 per cent of the six million population.

In contrast to the outspoken bishops of neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua (see following story), the Guatemalan Catholic hierarchy has been virtually silent, despite reports of human rights violations among the campesinos and peasant workers, assassinations and torture of prisoners, political corruption, and flagrant land-grabbing by public officials.

But recent events have opened the bishops’ mouths somewhat. Early this summer, army troops massacred more than 100 campesinos on a protest march against expropriation of their land by wealthy ranchers. Also, a priest who actively defended campesino rights and protested forced military service was murdered by a vigilante group.

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops and other church groups vigorously condemned the crimes and called for equitable distribution of land. In light of these serious crimes, many observers feel that the controversy that exists between rebel priest Chemita and the authoritarian cardinal only distracts the people from the real problems facing the country.

STEPHEN R. SYWULKA

Somoza Face-off

Roman Catholic bishops served as mediators between Nicaraguan President Anastosio Somoza and leftist guerillas who occupied his national palace in Managua last month. Members of the Sandinista Liberation Front took an estimated 1,500 hostages, including some fifty government officials, most of them members of the Chamber of Deputies. After securing release of political prisoners and receiving an undisclosed cash ransom, the Sandinists flew to Panama with only Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Primate of Nicaragua, two bishops, and Venezuelan and Panamanian envoys to guarantee their safe passage.

Earlier Bravo had spoken for Nicaragua’s six bishops when he called for Somoza’s resignation and the establishment of “a new socio-economic order.” Each step, he said, was needed to end the violence and unrest sweeping their nation.

Chinese Witness

Chinese evangelicals in North America must extend their witness to all segments of the Chinese community and to other ethnic groups as well. That was the call heard by 300 delegates to the third North American Congress of Chinese Evangelicals held last month in Toronto.

Professional people and students now dominate the memberships of many of the 280 Chinese congregations in the United States and Canada, and the report of a consulting firm warned that these congregations would become “middle class and affluent” if other Chinese groups were not brought in. Specifically, delegates were asked to evangelize the North American-born Chinese, the elderly, and the working class.

Congress chairman Ernest Chan also urged a stepped-up witness to the non-Chinese. Chan, pastor of a growing San Francisco Presbyterian church, said a broader missionary vision now is developing within many Chinese churches. Chan saw great missionary potential in Chinese students attending schools in North America who, if converted by the Chinese congregations here, could return to China with a Christian witness.

Chinese evangelicals, part of an estimated 750,000 Chinese living in North America, will meet in Los Angeles in 1980. The recently completed congress of the eight-year-old organization was held in a Chinese Christian stronghold; Toronto’s twelve Chinese congregations were described by congress chairman Chan as among the most flourishing churches anywhere.

LESLIE K. TARR

World Scene

Leaders of three major churches in India this summer formed a Joint Council that will represent three million Christians. Officials of the Church of North India, the Church of South India, and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church—already in full communion—took the further step to express common visible union though they agreed to respect each other’s heritage.

Refugees continue to flood into Thailand, according to a Christian and Missionary Alliance publication. Refugees totaled over 100,000 this year in the Southeast Asian nation. Housed in numerous camps throughout Thailand are 82,000 Laotians, 14,000 Cambodians, and 3,000 Vietnamese.

Archbishop Iakovos resigned as Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America but the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios in Istanbul refused to accept his resignation. Iakovos had been invited by President Carter to attend Pope Paul’s funeral as part of the American delegation. He did not attend, though, and the archdiocese announced that his resignation had been tendered “because of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s refusal to permit him to attend the funeral.” No reason was given for the denial of permission.

The seven Soviet Pentecostals, who for the last two months have camped in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, have been moved to an apartment elsewhere in the building (see August 18 issue, p. 34). Claiming religious persecution, the seven members of two families still refuse to leave until the Soviets grant them emigration visas, and their move signifies that embassy officials expect a long wait. U.S. officials also may want them out of public view; already an Armenian woman and her two sons have joined the seven (but for nonreligious reasons) in refusing to leave until emigration visas are granted them.

Catholic charismatics held two all-night prayer vigils for the election of a new pope at their annual weekend national conference at the University of Notre Dame. Gathered in a campus church last month, many of the 16,000 registrants prayed with charismatic leader Ralph Martin that the new pope be “not just a good and holy man, but one who has a clear and burning grasp of the whole message of Jesus Christ.”

Their prayers may have been effective since the leaders of this growing charismatic renewal movement of the Roman Catholic Church seem pleased with the outcome. Leo Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, the highest-ranking Catholic in the charismatic movement and the late Pope Paul’s overseer of it, said he was “very enthusiastic” about the election of John Paul I.

Suenens and other charismatics presumably prefer John Paul to a traditionalist from the Vatican hierarchy. Many Roman Catholics feared the possible election of a reactionary who would stifle the fresh breezes that have circulated through the church since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

That Catholic charismatics might endorse the efforts of the new pope would be no small asset for John Paul I. The charismatic movement has increasing influence within the Roman Catholic Church and has grown since its beginning.

The roots of the movement are buried in a 1967 student-faculty retreat at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. The retreat had been preceded by a deep concern of a few people over personal spiritual stagnation and powerlessness; many participants had been impressed by the influence of Protestant charismatics who had led retreat leader Ralph Kiefer into the Pentecostal experience known as the baptism in the Spirit. Included among the thirty participants were students with training from Campus Crusade for Christ and from the Navigators. During the weekend, a Pentecostal-style revival—complete with speaking in tongues—took place.

News of the retreat spread to Notre Dame, where students and faculty members launched a similar group with the aid of local Protestant charismatics. From Notre Dame, the revival movement spread quickly to other colleges, parishes, convents, and monasteries.

Traditional Catholic beliefs are often blended with evangelical theology. Tongues is not a requisite of being filled with the Spirit, contrary to mainstream Protestant Pentecostal teaching. Bible study is emphasized, and in recent years evangelism has become a major concern.

At the recent Notre Dame conference, Dominican priest and theologian Francis Macnu*tt declared, “Philosophy cannot convert. It’s the touch of Jesus Christ that can convert.”

Macnu*tt addressed more than 22,000 persons at the closing Sunday afternoon mass in the football stadium. The event was conducted by five bishops and 350 priests. The Christian Broadcasting Network and the PTL Network provided live television coverage of the mass to more than 200 stations.

An evangelist who specializes in an international healing ministry, Macnu*tt pointed out a group of two dozen barefoot men and women from the slums of Juarez, Mexico, who had been brought to the conference by an El Paso priest. Macnu*tt said Christ’s apostles probably looked more like the poor of Juarez than “the well-dressed preachers and church leaders of today.” The Juarez visitors later gave personal testimonies of their healings and of how God had saved them from a sinful past.

The main message of the conference was given by Martin, one of the movement’s founders and director of the International Communication Office. The Brussels-based agency oversees the global spread of the movement. Martin warned against diluting the Gospel. He said, “It is not true that the Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim religions are equally good paths to God. Jesus Christ is the only door to God.” Martin also said that false views of the Gospel have hurt evangelistic and missionary work.

A similar evangelistic tone characterized another summer conference of Catholic charismatics. Approximately 20,000 persons from eighty countries met in mid-June in Dublin, Ireland, for a four-day international conference.

Cardinal Suenens led seventeen bishops and about 1,500 priests in celebrating the final mass, which was carried live on Irish television. Speakers included Basil Cardinal Hume of Westminster (Klondon), England, Eduardo Bonnin, leader of a Spanish charismatic renewal movement, and Martin, who gave an address similar to the one at Notre Dame.

Larry Kelly of Belfast said that the growing charismatic movement in Northern Ireland has 5,000 Catholics and 2,000 Protestants actively involved. Kelly said these charismatics often meet together, and this unity offers hope for peace in the strife-torn nation.

Just prior to the Dublin meeting, about 600 priests responded to an invitation for the baptism of the Spirit, according to a spokesmen. They were part of the 3,300 participants that attended a three-day leadership meeting. The emphasis at Dublin was summed up by coordinator Tom Flynn: “This whole conference is designed to help us be better witnesses, better evangelists.”

A Stand With Substance

Members of a Georgia Baptist church have placed their $200,000 church building on the side of escaped convict Mosie Harriell, and law officials don’t know how to react. The Oakhurst Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, voted unanimously to offer their church building as security to cover a $30,000 bond for the recaptured Harriell, whose situation had aroused the 250 active members’ sympathy.

Harriell escaped from an Indiana prison ten years ago, after having served twenty-five years of a life term for the 1943 slaying of a Wabash, Indiana, policeman. Since that time, he had lived peacefully while working for a Conley, Georgia, construction firm. Harriell, who suffers from diabetes and heart problems, has married and lived under an assumed name since his escape.

Associate pastor Myron Weaver commented in an Associated Press story: “Looking at his [Harriell’s] situation, we feel that rehabilitation has worked in his case.… He’s been a good citizen for ten years. If he goes back, he’s likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

In a telephone interview, Weaver said that the response of the church to Harriell’s plight was “uniquely Christian,” rather than just “a humanitarian gesture with personality.” After hearing a sermon on “blessed are the merciful” the congregation donated $400, which will be used to pay Harriell’s bond in case DeKalb county officials don’t accept the bond security offer of the church. They are bothered by the question: Could the county foreclose on a church if Harriell should break bail?

Oakhurst has a history of controversy. It was one of the first integrated Baptist congregations in the South during the late 1960s—a costly move in a way, since active membership prior to that time was about 700 members, as compared to the current 200-to 250-member total.

The church has also encouraged a response to world hunger, and it is one of the few Southern Baptist churches to have ordained women.

Doctor Turns Dean

Dr. Sydney A. Garett was named dean of the Oral Roberts University Medical School last month, filling a gap left when Dr. Charles B. McCall resigned from the post after less than a year’s service, casting a cloud over the school’s projected fall opening. McCall cited differences of “administrative policy matters” as the reason for his departure. Although university officials described the parting as amicable, no explanation was offered on what those “policy differences” were. Garrett, a Pickens, South Carolina, native, was most recently a faculty member at Eastern Tennessee State University College of Medicine in Johnson City.

Pot Proof

A proof text for smoking pot? Arrested in Olathe, Kansas, for possession of the drug, Herb Overton based his defense on Genesis 1:29: “And God said, ‘I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth.…’”

Judge Earl Jones doubted Overton’s hermeneutics, however. According to a Chicago Tribune account, the judge told the Bible-quoting defendant: “As a mere mortal, I’m going to find you guilty of possession of marijuana. If you want to appeal to a higher authority, that’s fine with me.”

Billy in Mid-America

Billy Graham’s Mid-America crusade in Kansas City earlier this month was a first for black participation. John W. Williams, pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, was the first black chairman of a Graham crusade. He also serves on the board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

During the planning stages of the crusade, Williams’s fellow black ministers in the city held a special prayer meeting for Williams and his wife. Other blacks held key leadership positions, including chairmanships of the counselors’ committee, the laymens’ committee, and the ministers’ prayer committee.

Kansas City has over 1,000 area churches, which gives it a strong religious base. And it attracts many large conventions. A poll taken in the city about a year ago showed that 96 per cent of those interviewed believed in God; another 45 per cent professed to a born-again experience. The city also claims some of the nation’s largest evangelical churches, Sunday schools, and bus ministries; it seemed a natural for the Billy Graham crusade. Yet, the attendance was less than expected. The first eight meetings of the nine-day crusade were held in Kemper Arena, which has a capacity of about 17,000. The final meeting was held at the Kansas City Royals baseball stadium, which holds about 40,000.

When Graham held a ten-day crusade here in 1967, the average nightly attendance was 36,000 in the old Municipal Stadium (53,000 showing up on the final night). Cumulative attendance then was about 364,000, and more than 11,000 persons made commitments.

Crusade planners thought Kemper would be bursting at the seams. But overflow seating set up at the nearby Exposition Hall was never used. About 16,000 persons attended. By the third night, attendance had dropped to 11,000; attendance gradually increased during the week, though, reaching Kemper’s 17,260 capacity on the eighth and final night. Midway, the crusade was $100,000 in the red.

Questioned about finances and attendance, Graham said he was confident that before the crusade was over there would be a surplus. The local crusade committee originally had set the budget at $457,000, but this was cut back to $353,000 when the money came in slowly. Several reasons were given—among them, a late start by the finance committee and incomplete canvassing of churches and businesses.

Graham said that the week before Labor Day is a bad time for a crusade; this was only the second time in his career that he had held a crusade that week. Another detriment to high attendance, he said, was the presence of the winning Royals, which had a home stand starting about the same time as the crusade. “I’m a baseball fan,” he commented. “We went past the stadium the other night and it was a great temptation … to stop for at least one inning.”

Sterling Huston, director of all of Graham’s crusades in North America, also deplored the timing, but said, “We were not able to get Kansas City dates after Labor Day due to Graham’s international schedule [Scandinavia and Poland]. But Kansas City had been waiting for another crusade for a long time, and the leaders wanted it in 1978 even if they had to take less than optimum dates.”

John Corts, a member of the Graham team who served as crusade director, said that financial support from churches was very good and moderate from area businesses. He said that funds are raised mostly through donations, with the nightly offerings providing a secondary resource.

At the end of the crusade, as Graham had predicted, the budget had been met. The offerings from the final service helped pay for producing the meetings for television. Cumulative attendance for the nine days was about 143,500, and the total number of commitments was about 3,000.

About 29,000 persons attended the closing service on Labor Day; many persons arriving from out of town said that the holiday had made it possible for them to come.

A tragic sidenote: A bus from a local Baptist church carrying forty persons to the crusade apparently lost its brakes on a freeway exit ramp. The bus flipped over after crashing into a grassy embankment. Thirty-three persons were injured, some seriously. Witnesses at the scene said that it was a miracle that no one was killed.

HELEN T. GRAY

Just in Time

Last-minute donations rolled in just prior to an early September deadline, enabling the U.S. Center for World Mission to win full control of the seventeen-acre former campus of Pasadena College in suburban Los Angeles. The school received the final $650,000 needed to close out a $1.5 million downpayment on the property (it was still about $300,000 short just one week before the deadline).

Headed by evangelical missiologist and former Fuller seminary professor Ralph Winter, the Center is a research and development agency for Christian mission work to the world’s 2.4 billion “unreached peoples”—those not in contact with an indigenous church. The center’s academic arm on the campus, William Carey International University, which offers a unique one-semester program primarily to secular college students, gives a liberal arts and spiritual view of the Third World nations where most unevangelized people live.

Religion in Transit

None of the 170 delegates at a “Consultation on Presbyterian Union” held last month at Louisville Presbyterian seminary opposed union of the 2.6-million-member United Presbyterian Church and the 875,000-member Presbyterian Church in the United States. However, the delegates—handpicked by leaders of both churches for their differing viewpoints on the proposed merger—couldn’t decide how best to consummate the union. That didn’t matter since conference leaders said the three-day session was not designed to “produce anything” but to “foster a sharing of ideas and lively discussion.” Talks toward merger of the two churches, split since the Civil War, first began in 1969.

Financial problems plaguing the PTL Television Network have stopped construction of its $100 million Total Living Center near Charlotte, North Carolina. The general contractor of the 1,400-acre community housing project ordered a work halt until PTL pays more than $500,000 in delinquent bills.

Youth suicides have tripled since 1955, Public Health Service figures show. The suicide rate for 15 to 24 year olds has risen from 4 per 100,000 people in 1955 to almost 12 per 100,000 in 1975. An estimated 5,000 young persons commit suicide each year—the third leading cause of death for that age group.

Viet Nam War pacifist George McGovern startled many last month when he called for international military intervention in Cambodia to stop “a clear case of genocide.” Senator McGovern told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that up to 2.5 of the nation’s 7.7 million people have died of starvation, disease, and execution since the Communist takeover in 1975.

Sunday school enrollments have dropped more than 60 per cent since 1962 within the United Church of Canada, officials of the 2.1-million-member denomination report. United Church seminary principal William Fennell says the decline is reflected by incoming seminary students who often “are hopelessly ignorant of the Bible.”

The American Lutheran Church suspended from membership last month the Central Lutheran Church of Tacoma, Washington, which has appealed the decision. The grounds for the action: Two Central pastors, contrary to ALC bylaws, are not from the ALC clergy roster. Senior pastor Reuben Redal is president of Lutherans Alert, a conservative group that has charged the ALC with departing from “the historic Lutheran confessional position.”