Page 5995 – Christianity Today (2024)

One of the few surviving medieval tortures in England is the three-hour bus ride between Cambridge and Oxford. (Nationalized British rail has discontinued direct service between these intelligent connections.) Yet, for $1.50, the eighty-mile bus bounce is a real bargain in existential exhaustion, and is less exasperating than trying to get one’s new but malfunctioning Ford Cortina to live up to the glossy advertisem*nts.

At any rate, at a time when the flag of institutional Christianity in England seems to flutter at half-mast, the junket gave me opportunity to ponder some of that country’s loosely connected evangelical forces. While many of these energies are channeled into and through the regular established churches, their unswerving objective is the maintenance of an evangelical witness. Many other groups thrive independently.

Through an ingenious variety of approaches, though sometimes there is only a token effort, the Gospel penetrates almost every frontier of English life. One can only be impressed by the many ways concerned believers use to show Christ alive even in this time of spiritual decline. Continually breaking out of the routines of organized Christianity, they seem to remind the late twentieth century that not mere ecumenism but evangelism is the real lifeline of the Church.

My year in Cambridge has criss-crossed many novel features of British life, and I have encountered presentations of the Gospel in city markets, rural auctions, student bread-and-cheese lunches, house meetings, hotel suppers, and formal lectures for intellectuals.

Adjoining Cambridgeshire is Huntingdonshire, where Oliver Cromwell was born. By fifteen years ago biblical Christianity had ebbed to such a low point here that evangelical witness was practically non-existent. A number of concerned believers accordingly banded together for prayer and witness. Today almost every village in Huntingdonshire has an evangelical service on Sunday and a week-night Bible study; in some communities believers meet in churches or chapels, in others, in private homes. There are Christian book shops, special missions, and open-air meetings.

The witness to young intellectuals in England is an evangelical bright spot, although much remains to be done. My ride to Oxford was, in fact, taking me to a series of weekend addresses to OICU. This effort, together with the Cambridge CICU, is among Christian Union’s most rewarding intercollegiate ventures, at a time, moreover, when ecumenical student work is in retreat. The Saturday-night lecture at Oxford, on “The Christian View of Revelation,” was attended by 320 students; the related Sunday-night sermon, by 280. So far this academic year forty-three Oxford students have become Christians through person-to-person follow-up of such Intervarsity effort.

On Easter Monday, St. Ives, where Cromwell’s monument dominates the city square, holds a city-wide market, one of the largest in England. Here, jostling through the crowds, we suddenly heard singing. Following the sound of the music we found a group of young people who called themselves the London Team. In contrast to the local Anglican church that was sealed tight against the throngs, these young people had hired a market site to reach out to the multitudes with the Gospel. From a distance the amplified procedures must have sounded for all the world like auctioneering. But these young people who had experienced the reality of Christ would not be silenced in telling about him. When I thanked them for their witness, they promptly urged me to mount the soap box and speak my word for Christ.

This meeting jogged my memory to Long Island at a time when many churches were preaching only book reviews, newspaper-reporter days when I sometimes joined other Christians in a Saturday-night street-corner gospel witness. I recalled, too, how later during college years, in one of my last street-meeting experiences, a disgruntled listener kept shouting, “Where did Cain get his wife?” Finally, when I could no longer ignore him, I replied, “When I get to heaven I’ll ask him!” He shouted back: “Suppose he isn’t in heaven?” “Then,” I retorted, “you can ask him.”

Perhaps I’ve learned a bit more about interpersonal relationships since then. But for all that, I’ve never felt called to street-meeting evangelism. That Easter Monday at St. Ives I remembered, too, a stroll in London’s Hyde Park. Here among all the soap-box agitators I had noticed a father and son who took turns mounting a stepladder to preach the Gospel to an audience of hecklers. My word of commendation to them evoked the question: “Do you have a word for your Lord?” Some questions won’t take a negative answer, and I was soon introduced as a Christian from America and was given the stand. Hecklers spouted adjectives and adverbs by the bushel. Finally when I offered the challenge: “Right now, God will make you a new man, if you’ll kneel in repentance, and say, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner, and save me for Christ’s sake,’” one obvious buffoon ran to the foot of the ladder, knelt, and shouted in mimicry, “God be merciful.…” That just about wound up my meeting. Soon thereafter, while sauntering through the crowd, I overheard another heckler remark to a buddy, “That blooming American didn’t have very much to say, did he?”

Perhaps I didn’t have much to say at St. Ives, either, but at least I said it. And evangelicals in England, at a time when words have largely gone the way of the world, are learning to speak their word for Jesus Christ.

In Foxton a young married couple have several meetings in their home every week—for prayer, Bible study, testimony and discussion, Christian fellowship and fun. Recently through the conversion of a long-standing church member the Gospel has become a scandal in their village; conversion, say other churchgoers, is, after all, something that can’t happen to a church member.

Only two miles outside Cambridge, in Teversham, Spurgeon addressed his very first cottage meeting, and the spiritual rewards of such effort are not lost upon the scattered evangelical forces. In Cambridge I know a busy medical doctor who invites his patients to a monthly Bible study at his home, and a leading ophthalmologist who regularly has fifteen or twenty guests to Sunday dinner where Christians and non-Christians meet to talk. And in Oxford I know a lecturer whose home is open regularly on Sunday afternoons for student discussion of Christianity.

At a time when many great cathedrals in England attract but small audiences, evangelical Christians perceive both that their homes are one of the best avenues to the Church, and that unless it offers men and women a personal relationship with the Living Christ, the Church has had it.

Recently I have had to reconsider the approach to urban evangelism, because of invitations for campaigns in two metropolitan areas.

Many of the things a mass evangelism campaign would have going for it in a smaller or medium-large city are absent in the largest cities. No personality (excepting Billy Graham) has the same drawing power he would have in a smaller place; publicity is fantastically more expensive, yet less effective in creating awareness; the campaign tends to get lost in a myriad of events, both religious and secular, competing for people’s time and interest; costs of organizing are greater, yet the supporting Christian community is a smaller percentage of the total population.

After much thought and prayer three conclusions came to us:

1. The immensely multiplied problems of big-city evangelism must not make us back off from tackling it, if God so leads (God’s Word to Jehoshaphat in Second Chronicles 20:15 turned up in a morning Bible reading during the period we were considering the invitation: “Fear not, and be not dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s”).

2. Evangelism in the big city forces us to take seriously those basics that undergird New Testament evangelism. An evangelistic campaign in a smaller community might appear to “get by” lacking the power of the Holy Spirit, united prayer, the witnessing laity, the caring fellowship, if given enough personality, money, and organization; but such factors would be much less likely to give the appearance of “success” in metropolitan areas.

3. The courage and imagination with which we venture on urban evangelism may well determine the future effectiveness of all our evangelism; the raw need that shrieks at us in the large city puts us in a corner, forces us to face desperate spiritual realities that underlie every evangelistic situation but may be camouflaged elsewhere.

It is in the big city that the evangelistic battle will likely be won or lost. By 1980, it is estimated, 90 per cent of all Americans will live in great strip cities. A church that cannot effectively relate its Gospel to urban man is probably due to decline and become extinct.

A city-oriented strategy is directed by more than demographic shifts. Although we blandly assume that the Bible is hung up on sheep and green grass, these rural metaphors are balanced in the Bible by compassion for the city. Our Lord chose Jerusalem as a prime target. It is recorded that he wept twice: once over the death of his friend, Lazarus, and once over the death of the city that rejected Him. Paul based his missionary strategy on the key cities of his day. He chose to stay two years in Ephesus as a sounding board from which the Gospel could spread through the surrounding province. He had a restless longing to declare in Rome, the nerve center of the day, the same message he had made known in Jerusalem and Athens. John saw God’s future order coming down from heaven not as a garden but as a holy city! If only we could learn to reread our Bibles with contemporized eyes, we might overcome our tendency to assume that God’s work can be seen in the Grand Canyon but not at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

While thinking about the city I felt led to call several men who minister in New York City. Crossing age, denominational, and racial lines, they hold a common commitment to evangelism in the city. Each gladly shared off-the-top-of-the-head-and-heart reactions to these questions:

1. What do you see as the greatest area of need in urban evangelism? Answers varied from “the whole mass of lonely people” to the “hard-core ghetto resident.” Obviously, no generalization would be completely valid, but they agreed that the most needy areas were minorities in the inner city. Two men, independently, said they were shifting their focus from the teen-agers to the “little people,” the pre-teens. Another targeted both the inner city and the university as having strategic priority.

2. What is your biggest frustration or obstacle? “The lack of social glue,” replied a downtown minister. “It’s a full-time job to create any kind of network to reach people.” “Instant confrontation” and the “tremendous turnover,” said another. “You have no second chance with people.” Inner-city workers immediately pinpointed the institutional church as the biggest obstacle. “The institutional church is taboo to the younger generation,” said a youth worker. “My biggest holdback is trying to separate Christ from Christianity and Christianity from Western culture.” Others agreed, assessing blame both to “the myriad of storefront ‘bless-me’ clubs which don’t want the junkies down the block to come in and contaminate them,” and the Christians who, having fled to suburbia, “come in one day a month to paint the ghetto and whitewash their consciences.” On paper these indictments sound bitter. But they came from burdened, loving men, who for all their weariness and occasional frustration seemed to agree that the present revolutionary ferment in the city “is a perfect opportunity for preaching the Gospel, when people have come to the end of their resources.”

3. To what would you assign priority? Specific answers varied from an emphasis on “home churches” combined with use of “mass media” to a massive system of education to take advantage of parents’ concern for their children’s schooling and at the same time relate them to Christ. But basically all agreed that: (a) Christians are depressed and need to recover confidence in their Lord and radiance in their lives; (b) the urban church needs to redefine its mission, to reshape its structures around the needs of people, so that its verbal witness comes from a platform of action, “involvement but not entanglement,” with the world. “Our greatest need,” one minister commented, “is a balanced diet of love for all people. We need to devise some way of communicating the Gospel in as many languages as possible to as many publics as possible. But the key is whether people get the idea: This man believes what he’s saying and he’s concerned about me.” “It’s not until love is felt,” said another, “that the message is heard.”

In The Urban Crisis David McKenna throws out this challenge: “Maybe evangelical Christians should muster their forces to take on a strategic city in the United States and win it for God.” Perhaps this is the year to take such a suggestion seriously. The September U. S. Congress on Evangelism could be a divinely timed launching pad for such an effort. The Key Bridge Consultation, which is calling U. S. evangelicals to cooperate in a nationwide evangelism drive during 1973, might be the appropriate vehicle to zero in on one city as a demonstration of what can be done.

That the task might prove difficult, exhausting, even impossible for man is no reason not to obey if God is saying: Do it!

Roman Catholic membership in the World Council of Churches is “not envisaged at the moment, and is not likely to occur in the near future.”

With this statement on the eve of the June 10 papal visit to Geneva’s Ecumenical Center, WCC officials put an end to speculation. Pope Paul VI himself raised and answered the question again when, during his visit, he said: “In fraternal frankness, we do not consider that the question of membership of the Catholic Church in the World Council is so mature that a positive answer could or should be given. The question remains an hypothesis. It contains serious theological and pastoral implications. It thus requires profound study and commits us to a way that honesty recognizes could be long and difficult.”

Pope Paul’s visit to the city of Calvin was the result of an initial invitation for him to address the fiftieth-anniversary conference of the International Labour Organization, a division of the United Nations with strong Vatican ties. After accepting, the Pope indicated a desire to visit the headquarters of the World Council of Churches. An official invitation was then sent to Rome by the WCC general secretary, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake.

Predictably, there was opposition to the Pope’s visit, both in and out of Geneva. This caused the president of the Council d’Etat, M. Gilbert Duboule, to affirm: “Geneva is not denying her past. But her authorities are concerned that each person shows an open-mindedness and tolerance, in order to give the papal visit the dignity it deserves.” He added that the Pope himself had requested a public announcement that “he would wish to cause as little embarrassment as possible to those who do not welcome his presence.”

Swiss Protestants, led by the local Evangelical Alliance, staged a demonstration that, it was said, was “not [to] be interpreted in a spirit of opposition.” Some 2,000 met at the historic Reformation Wall to “reaffirm together, in good order and dignity, our attachment to Jesus Christ and the spiritual heritage of the Reformation.” Their Sunday-morning demonstration, two days before the Pope’s arrival, was referred to at a WCC press conference the following day as “an ecumenical action.”

Less “good order and dignity” was expected with the threatened arrival of Northern Ireland’s militant Ian Paisley. His promise to fly to Geneva with twenty supporters was accompanied by a letter bearing the name of one of his colleagues in which it was claimed that Switzerland’s “only contribution to culture was the invention of the cuckoo clock!” Swiss authorities tried to save the party the price of their plane tickets by warning that Paisley would be denied entry to the country. Still he came, but with an entourage numbering only five. After an impromptu press conference at the airport in which he denied knowledge of the “cuckoo clock” letter, he spent the night in the transit lounge. Came the dawn, and the group was put aboard the first flight to London. Their plane was awaiting take-off clearance as the Pope’s Swissair “Coronado” arrived from Rome.

Another objector, described by the Swiss press as a “well-known … archenemy of ecumenism,” failed to arrive. No official ban had been placed on Dr. Carl McIntire, but he was prevented from coming by problems of his own, according to a representative at one of two meetings at which he was scheduled to speak.

Having seen an end to such disquieting possibilities, the Swiss authorities set about organizing the Pope’s visit with the precision for which they are famous. Time, it is said, is the art of the Swiss, and they kept to the schedule with commendable punctuality most of the day.

A comparatively short and simple welcoming ceremony at the airport was followed by a processional drive direct to the Palais des Nations, where the pontiff fulfilled his primary obligation in addressing members of the International Labour Organization.

From here he went to meet with Swiss authorities, and later he received Catholic bishops of Switzerland and representatives of Catholic International organizations. His visit to the World Council of Churches came before he conducted a final mass for Swiss Catholics. Soon after this, he left for Rome.

In personal conversation the previous day, Blake emphasized to this reporter that “this is more than a mere courtesy visit. It is une rencontre de fraternité chrétienne [a visit of Christian fellowship].”

When the Pope arrived at the Ecumenical Centre, he was greeted by Blake and three others: M. M. Thomas, chairman of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Miss Pauline Webb, a vice-chairman, and the other vice-chairman, Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, who was embraced warmly by the Pope. Other officers were introduced to the Pope before he was taken into the building’s main conference hall, where the WCC’s honorary president and former general secretary, Dr. W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, welcomed him to the platform.

True to a Vatican spokesman’s promise that “the program will not only include speeches, but also a time of common prayer,” the Pope shared in a thirty-minute worship service.

In his welcoming speech, Blake told his honored guest: “By coming to this house … you remind the whole world of the rapidly developing joint efforts of the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches in the interest of justice and peace.…”

Contact between the two ecclesiastical bodies began nine years ago when Dr. Visser’t Hooft and the late Cardinal Bea first met in Milan. 1965 saw the beginning of a more concrete link with the creation of a Joint Working Group, which has already met nine times. The WCC and the Vatican have sent observers to each other’s major meetings, and Blake has visited Rome three times for discussion with the Pope.

In continuing his welcoming speech, Blake affirmed: “Your visit here further signifies the growth of the ecumenical movement, through which Christ is gathering his Church in our century. This house itself is both a reminder of the divisions in the Christian community and a sign of growing fellowship among the churches. This fellowship is not primarily based on the efforts of men but seeks to be a response of the churches to the action of the Holy Spirit. It does not seek unity at the expense of truth.…”

In response to this welcome, the Pope expressed his appreciation of the World Council, which he described as “a marvelous movement of Christians, of children of God who are scattered abroad who are now searching for a recomposition in unity.”

Then, almost immediately, he said: “Our name is Peter,” following the statement with a clear endorsem*nt of the apostolic succession he claims.

“The name Paul which we have assumed,” he added, “sufficiently points out the orientation which we have wanted to give our apostolic ministry.”

Speaking of ecumenism, he identified his primary concern as “more the quality of this manifold cooperation than the mere multiplication of activities.” “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion,” he asserted.

The Pope concluded his speech by quoting John 17:21–23, 26.

An unplanned and surprise incident was the presentation of an anonymous gift of $100,000 to the Pope for him to pass on to the leprosy work carried on through the World Council of Churches.

Private talks between the Pope and top WCC officials continued longer than scheduled so that he was late in leaving the Ecumenical Centre. As his heavily guarded black Cadillac sped across town to where some 60,000 were waiting for him to conduct an open-air mass, the expressed view of World Council leaders was that his visit represented “an important milestone on the long road which we still have to cover.”

Some may view such a milestone as more of a millstone. Those who are unenthusiastic about treading “the long road” may find themselves in a large company, according to the Rt. Rev. Andrzej Wantula, Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland. When interviewed concerning the Pope’s visit to the WCC headquarters, he had this to say about the ecumenical movement: “Out of hundreds of millions of Christians, there are only several thousand theologians and clergy, and a similar number of laymen, involved in the movement. Great masses of ordinary church people have not been moved by the movement. Most of them have heard only scraps of news about it, and many have heard nothing at all.”

Lutherans-Catholics Talk

Unity talks between Lutherans and Roman Catholics intensified recently when a group from the World Lutheran Federation called on Pope Paul at the Vatican to talk about unity and Catholic church structure. Leader of the group, André Appel of France, told his hosts: “We feel particularly desirous to deepen the dialogue with Rome.” In reply, the pontiff called the visit “a visible sign” of growing relations between Lutherans and Catholics. The two bodies have held yearly unity meetings since 1965.

Panorama

Trustees of New York’s Interchurch Center, which houses numerous denominational headquarters, secured a court injunction late in June to remove black militant James Forman from their building. Supporters of Forman, who is demanding $500 million in reparations from America’s churches, had occupied the building off and on since early May. Forman called the Protestant action “barbaric.”

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 70 per cent of America’s adults think religion is losing its influence. Only 14 per cent felt that way in 1957.

This fall Washington Bible College will move its main campus from the District of Columbia to a former Roman Catholic institution, Divine Saviour Seminary, in Lanham, Maryland. The seminary, to be purchased for $1.2 million, will help alleviate WBC growing pains (more than 250 students on a campus built for 125). The interdenominational school plans to maintain the Washington campus for adult night classes and other functions.

New York’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese claimed a $1.2 million operating deficit during 1968. In this first fiscal report ever made by the archdiocese, blame was laid on the rising cost of parochial education. The archdiocese is regarded as one of the richest in the world.

Regent College, a new school seeking to train college graduates in Christian thought and life before they begin professional careers, begins operation in Saint Andrew’s Hall, University of British Columbia, this month. This summer’s sessions include such scholars as Stuart Barton Babbage (Conwell School of Theology), W. J. Martin (University of Liverpool), and P. F. Barkman (Fuller Seminary).

Presbyterian Survey, official monthly magazine of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., will become a semi-monthly in September in an attempt to boost drooping circulation (see June 20 issue, page 30). It will have sixteen rather than forty-eight pages, with more emphasis on news. Inserts will be added to copies for persons interested in such areas as education, missions, and women’s work.

Duke Ellington and his orchestra will play a “sacred” concert at the National Council of Churches’ seventh General Assembly, to be held in Cobo Hall, Detroit, November 30-December 4. Dr. John Gardner, former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, now head of the National Urban Coalition, will deliver the keynote address. “Therefore, Choose Life” is the theme of the triennial assembly.

Prague’s “Singing Pastor,” Lubos Svoboda, a youthful Hussite minister, packs ’em in each night at a swinging little theater while he belts out original rock-and-roll renditions of biblical songs. Despite Czechoslovakia’s official policy of atheism, the priest is one of the country’s most popular entertainers.

World Parish

Because it is too busy publishing the “little red book” of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao, the Hong Kong Press has terminated a three-generation-old contract with the Bible Society there. Scripture printing will now be spread among several firms.

The saint-loving Church of Greece frowns at Rome’s recent decanonization of some forty saints. “Utterly uncalled for,” muttered an Athens theological professor. “A stab at the ecumenical council,” added the bishop of Sparta. An upcoming synod of bishops is expected to speak even more strongly.

Ecuador is the major target of this year’s Evangelism-in-Depth campaigns among Spanish-speaking peoples. Some 20,000 evangelicals are expected to be mobilized into Christian witnessing.

In Dublin, delegates to the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church heard their new moderator, the Rev. John T. Carson, plead that the church not substitute a justifiable concern about social improvement for the essential proclamation of salvation through Christ alone.

A clinic has been added to Faith Hospital in Glennallen, Alaska, by the Central Alaskan Mission. The hospital serves an area about the size of Ohio.

Canadian Presbyterians, meeting in Toronto, learned that their church membership declined by some 3,500 to 194,444 communicants this past year. The General Assembly opposed the appointment of a Canadian ambassador to the Vatican, agreed to continue sending observers to Anglican-United Church union meetings without actually joining the talks, and condemned law officials who resort to brutality in the name of law and order.

The New Testament has been published in the Somali language for the first time. Sudan Interior Mission staff members, who have been working in the eastern African country since 1945, also are nearing completion of an Old Testament translation.

DEATHS

FREDERICK C. FOWLER, JR., 67, United Presbyterian minister, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals; in Elk Park, North Carolina.

WALTER C. GUM, 71, retired Methodist bishop; in Norfolk, Virginia.

ELIZABETH STRACHAN, 52, widow of Kenneth Strachan, who was head of Latin America Mission and architect of the Evangelism-in-Depth concept; of a cerebral hemorrhage while swimming near Puntarenas, Costa Rica.

Personalia

According to a recent California court injunction, Kirby J. Hensley, head of the Universal Life Church and self-appointed ordainer of 17,000 ministers since 1962, can no longer issue mail-order divinity degrees—at least in his home state. “We’ll appeal,” he declared; but meanwhile the “bishop” will move his business to Nevada or Arizona—“whichever of them can mind its own business best.”

Controversial Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, San Antonio, has retired at age 78. The reason, he said, was his age, not the demand by fifty-one archdiocesan priests last fall that he quit.

Salvation Army Major Thelma Smith has become the first New Zealand woman to receive a United Nations fellowship. She is the matron of Bethany Maternity Hospital and will use the award to study the problems of unwed mothers and of adoption.

Dr. Chandu Ray, Anglican Bishop of Karachi for the past twelve years, has been named executive director of the Coordinating Office for Asian Evangelism. The office was created recently at the direction of the Asia-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism. Offices will be in Singapore.

Liberal Roman Catholic Bishop James P. Shannon has confirmed his resignation as auxiliary bishop of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, despite official church denials. Cause: his inability to accept the church’s ban on birth control.

The first Eskimo deacon of the Anglican Church of Canada was ordained for the Eastern Arctic region at Povungnetuk, Quebec. He is the Rev. Isa Kopekoalak, 51, only the sixth Eskimo in Canada ever to reach clerical rank.

It was like waiting for the storm that never really broke. There were distant rumbles of theological thunder before the opening of the 112th annual sessions of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans’ Rivergate Center. But somehow the dark cloud of division passed over without pouring any great disharmony upon the gathering.

The controversy seemed especially evident during two days of pre-convention meetings. Prospects of a liberal-conservative showdown on several issues and the possibility of an appearance by black militant James Forman were widely discussed and were probably part of the reason for the record registration of nearly 17,000 messengers.

While most messengers were meeting in five major pre-convention conferences, two dissident groups met to discuss issues and to plan strategy for bringing their concerns to the convention floor. The E. Y. Mullins Fellowship, named after a past convention president and former head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and composed largely of professors and pastors, expressed special concern over the doctrine of biblical authority as presented in a recent book by SBC president W. A. Criswell, Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True. The other group, Baptist Students Concerned, who made their first appearance by demonstrating at last year’s convention, voiced concern about a number of social problems. The groups met both jointly and in separate sessions and received considerable attention from the numerous newsmen on hand.

The Mullins group, which claims some 250 members, was especially unhappy with Sunday School Board publicity of Criswell’s book. They felt that the board implied that Criswell’s view, opposed by many in the Mullins group, was the official SBC position. The students, with thirty to sixty attending their meetings, proposed several resolutions (seeking economic aid for black Americans, implementation of the 1968 “Crisis Statement,” Southern Baptist literature reform, sex education in the church, church involvment in local issues, and greater participation in SBC planning processes at all levels by students and minority groups) to be presented to the convention.

Two major addresses delivered on the opening night of the convention set the tone for the sessions to follow. Dr. W. A. Criswell, SBC president and pastor of the 15,117-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, in speaking on the convention theme “Christ in Faith and Work,” pleaded for a balanced ministry of evangelism and social responsibility. He spoke of the Christian faith as a two-edged sword: “One is believing; the other is doing. One is evangelism; the other is ministering.” Criswell scored the New Left and called for firmness in dealing with militants.

Scott L. Tatum of Shreveport, Louisiana, emphasized that the authority of Christ supersedes the autonomy of the churches or the convention. He issued a strong call to social action but affirmed the priority of world evangelism.

The remainder of the convention found the messengers seeking to articulate and implement this balance between evangelism and social action. In addition, there was the ever present issue of biblical authority. The more liberal element emphasized the Baptist doctrine of autonomy and pushed for greater freedom to advocate the “historical-critical” approach to the Scriptures. Conservatives, on the other hand, called for tighter controls upon professors and writers of Training Union and Sunday-school literature, asking that they be required to sign statements affirming their personal belief in “the authority, the doctrinal integrity, and the infallibility of the entire Bible.”

This issue was clouded when the motion calling for tightening of control was displaced by a substitute motion instructing the convention to call to the attention of its agencies a doctrinal statement adopted in 1963 and to urge elected trustees of these agencies to make sure their programs are consistent with it. James L. Sullivan, executive secretary of the Sunday School Board, pointed out that the original motion would be impossible to implement.

Forman didn’t show up in New Orleans, and it’s just as well that he saved himself the trip. In a strongly worded statement the gathering rejected “in total the demands, principles, and methods espoused by the National Black Economic Development Council” and called its claims “outrageous.” Had Forman appeared, the messengers would have had to decide whether to hear him, and odds are that he would not have been heard.

In the same resolution in which they rejected the Black Manifesto, messengers expressed concern for social responsibility and called on individuals, churches, and institutions “to continue to work for the fullest possible freedom and fulfillment of aspirations for human dignity and personal worth for all people.” The resolution called upon all men “to work for racial justice, economic improvement, political emancipation, educational advancement, and Christian understanding among all peoples of the nation and world.” It also reaffirmed last year’s “Crisis in Our Nation” statement, which asserted the convention’s support of equal human and legal rights for all people and its refusal to be a part of racism.

The group rejected a part of the social-concern resolution that urged Southern Baptists to give continuing support to all governmental and social-service agencies working to help the needy. One messenger said the convention could not commit itself to “any hare-brained idea” that the government might come up with.

A statement by the Christian Life Commission condemning extremism on both the left and the right was received by the convention, but messengers refused to take action on specific recommendations based on the report. The strongly worded document condemned all extremism as “dangerous,” “insidious,” and “anti-Christian.”

In routine fashion the messengers approved a $27.1 million operating budget and elected Criswell to a second term as president. Criswell received token opposition from William C. Smith, Jr., a University of Richmond professor who is a leader in the E. Y. Mullins Fellowship; the final tally was 7,482 to 450.

A resolution calling for reaffirmation of a 1940 statement that “those who for reason of religious conviction are opposed to military service should be exempted from forced military conscription” was soundly rejected. This unusual action left considerable confusion as to the present status of the 1940 declaration.

In other resolutions the messengers:

• Noted a need for greater emphasis on family life and sex education in the churches.

• Called upon the convention to provide opportunities for broader participation by young people in all levels of convention decision-making.

• Opposed appointment of a U. S. ambassador to the Vatican and reaffirmed opposition to use of public tax funds for religious functions or institutions.

• Urged government leaders to make every effort to achieve an equitable settlement of the Viet Nam conflict, and expressed support of attempts to secure fair treatment of U. S. prisoners of war in Viet Nam.

• Asked Baptists to study carefully the contemporary application of the First Amendment (a resolution that grew out of a concern to return the Bible to public schools).

• Requested more use of Baptist church educational curriculum materials.

Other motions that passed:

• Called for a thorough study to provide the basis for a change in representation for the SBC.

• Requested mobilization to halt the spread of p*rnography.

• Expressed the feeling that “Quest” is unsuitable as a name for the Southern Baptists’ training program (an action that will involve removing the name from materials already in process of publication).

The threatening storm of controversy never really broke, but the divisions in the SBC remain. Although some of their measures passed, the “liberals” were generally kept in check. They were not satisfied with the convention’s stand on biblical authority and promised to be back next year to try to move the SBC away from what they believe to be an antiquated view of Scripture.

The conservative “backlash” could not find a way to express itself clearly, but there was an obvious mood of resistance against those who wished to move away from the doctrine of biblical infallibility.

Although the liberals will take another crack at it next year, perhaps Criswell was right when in a press conference he said of the liberal element in the denomination, “There is no doubt that it is very small numerically. Before it gets very large my generation will have to die.”

After Bitter Debates, The Positive Thinker

The Rev. Norman Vincent Peale’s goal for this year: Bring harmony to the Reformed Church in America, which recently elected him as its president. It’s a goal that probably will take more than mere positive thinking, for seldom has a church fought more bitterly in the name of reconciliation than did the delegates to the RCA’s General Synod in New Brunswick, New Jersey, last month.

“This has been the most unusual of many unusual synods,” said the Rev. Raymond R. Van Heukelom in handing over the president’s bell to Peale. “All the tensions seem to have heaped up and come together this year.” He referred to the fact that nearly every session sparked angry debate between Eastern liberals and Midwestern (or Western) conservatives; that delegates often muttered epithets at each other; that before it was over the synod had given serious consideration to a liberal-inspired dissolution of the 385,000-member, 340-year-old church.

Sharpest clashes centered on ecumenism and church unity. First came the final report that union with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) had missed the necessary two-thirds majority (23 RCA classes approved; 22 disapproved) and failed. Delegates, already aware of the result, seemed to sigh in resignation or relief. But the sigh was deep, evoked from bitter feelings.

Hence: an outbreak of intense fighting and parliamentary maneuvering the next day when a committee recommended that the RCA join the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). Opponents argued that such a move would further split a badly divided church; proponents said current divisions resulted from “our unwillingness to try to love those outside our walls.” When the proposal lost (130 to 103), an Eastern pastor drew a gasp by shouting an obscenity, and the losers challenged the vote. Delegates were polled again two days later, and the proposal lost again, this time 133 to 126.

Next, in an extra Saturday-night session, delegates debated RCA membership in the National Council of Churches. The synod voted strongly to remain in the ecumenical body, but only after a long, impassioned plea by the Rev. Marion de Velder, RCA general secretary. “If we withdraw,” he warned his fellow churchmen, “I’ll not have any interest in serving this church any longer.”

Later in the session, after an Eastern minister had called for the church to rescind its widely accepted document on Christian unity “so as to overcome phoniness and hypocrisy,” the Rev. Harold J. Schut, the denomination’s immediate past president, moved that a committee be formed to draft “a plan for the orderly dissolution of the RCA.” The motion, regarded partially as shock technique, evoked the synod’s most heated debate when it came back to the floor on the final night.

“We have here a grave situation; it requires dire action,” said Schut. “We should face the fact of dissolutionment as well as unity to see what it means to live together.” In the end, however, delegates voted to set up a committee (with a $10,000 budget) that will use every means possible to bring reconciliation and then to consider the Schut alternative a year from now if healing does not come.

Social issues also served as irritants. Mildly controversial actions taken included a call for gun-control legislation, a refusal to condemn “all abortion laws,” a proposal to end discrimination in RCA business practices, endorsem*nt of Project Equality, support of anti-poverty programs, a refusal to urge unionization of farm labor, and a call for an end to the war in Viet Nam. More controversial was a decision to oppose draft exemptions for ministerial students and clergymen.

And most controversial of all was the debate over whether the General Synod should take possession of the draft cards of five RCA war-resisters. Supporters of the five said the church would fail to “put its actions where its mouth was” if it refused to become a repository for the boys’ cards. But after two hours of debate and some legal advice that such an act would involve the church in a crime, the synod refused to accept the cards, though it asserted that “the church has a responsibility to share in whatever way it can in the agony which these individual decisions involve.”

Paradoxically, another social issue—the demands of black militant James Forman—proved to be one of the few healing salves of the sessions. Forman, dressed in wrinkled dark-blue trousers and an open-necked powder-blue shirt, won long applause after an opening-night appearance. He demanded a complete list of the RCA fiscal portfolio, aid in developing a black printing plant, and an assurance of good faith in implementing the goals of his Black Manifesto (see May 23 issue, page 29). He was challenged, however, by the Rev. Levin West, a black RCA minister from New Brunswick. Said West: “You are attempting to strike a blow, not at the church, but at the democratic process. You have fooled no one.”

A committee appointed to study the demands said that God had used Forman to show the Church its false pride and its sins against America’s minority groups, but it categorically rejected his “ideology, plans, and tactics.”

At the same time, the committee recommended what was perhaps the most significant racial action of any church this year: establishment of a policy-making black caucus (Black Council for the Program of General Synod) within the RCA. The council would assume all church decision-making power in areas affecting minority groups, working with a $100,000 grant from the General Synod. A black elder called the move “the thing the black man has been looking for for the last 100 years.” The report passed with no dissent and much rejoicing.

In other action, the General Synod:

• Voted, surprisingly without debate, to initiate merger talks with the smaller, conservative Christian Reformed Church, which shuns COCU as well as the National and World Councils of Churches.

• Approved constitutional changes that would allow women to become deacons, elders, and ministers in the male-dominated church. Two-thirds of the classes must approve the move for it to take effect.

• Took note of the fact that giving for benevolences had decreased for the third consecutive year.

Another action expected to aid reconciliation was the election of Peale as president. In his acceptance remarks, he told the delegates that “if the church became a really praying church, we’d rise above all this and fuse to a great flaming, enthusiastic body in Christ.” Dr. Lester J. Kuyper, professor at Western Theological Seminary (Holland, Michigan) and new RCA vice-president, told the final session: “The stance I’d like to take this year is beneath the cross. As I look at those with whom I disagree I say, ‘My good brother, you and I are here before the cross; I don’t say you’re wrong and I’m right, but I see us both as forgiven sinners.’ Then we’ll turn and bow in recognition of one another.”

JAMES HUFFMAN

THE BEST MEDICINE?

One of America’s best-known pastors (Marble Collegiate Church in New York) … A best-selling author (The Power of Positive Thinking) … Friend of a President (Richard M. Nixon) … Prominent editor (Guideposts) … “Poppsychologist.” That’s the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale. And now he has become president of a badly split denomination—the Reformed Church in America.

How does he plan to bridge the church’s chasms?

If his performance at the RCA General Synod offers a clue, the short, mildly stocky, 71-year-old minister will make good use of at least three aspects of his personality: humility, humor, and humanity.

Humility. On accepting the new office he quipped that though he knew some delegates felt uneasy about his election, none felt quite so much so as he. He won enthusiastic response, while presiding one evening, when a delegate rose to dispute the chair and apologized for “being discourteous.” “Don’t worry about that; you can treat the chair just as discourteously as you like,” replied Peale, grinning—and he seemed to mean it.

Humor. Presiding over an evening session, he fractured most of Robert’s rules, sparking what one minister called a “laugh-in tonic” in the process. A delegate called for a point of order and Peale barked, “I’ve already got one over there.” A New Jersey minister could not remember the argument that had brought him to his feet and the chairman replied, “I can only say, ‘Praise the Lord.’” The audience burst into laughter over a Peale quip and he immediately scolded: “There’s too much levity in the house.” At another point he noted: “If, after I pass out of this world, I get to a place where I have to raise money all through eternity, I’ll know exactly where I am.”

Humanity. Asked how he hoped to heal the church, Peale told of being assigned to a Methodist charge where the congregation was “divided down the center.” “I’ll do what I did there,” he said. “I’ll just preach love. If we could just Jet love loose in our church it would heal our factions.” At the synod’s closing session be told of an old judge who proposed tearing apart the wedding picture of a couple seeking divorce. “Can you imagine taking a pair of scissors and cutting down through the Reformed Church in America?” he demanded of a rapt audience. “Sure, we have differences; that’s as it should be. So let’s Jet the better elements of our natures take over—and not cut the picture apart.”

Who knows what the combined powers of God’s spirit and positive thinking may accomplish?

The well-known Miracle on 34th Street was the imagined suspension, in the interests of the Christmas spirit, of the famous rivalry between Gimbels and Macy’s, New York’s biggest department stores. It provided the theme for a movie and book, and later for a Broadway musical, Here’s Love. Last month the Christian spirit was bringing about a more authentic miracle in the heart of the Manhattan shopping district. A 50-year-old Billy Graham was preaching not only God’s love but also his truth and justice to a crowd of 20,000 each night in the new Madison Square Garden.

“Jesus came the first time as the gentle Saviour,” Graham said. “Next time he comes as the judge of all the earth.”

At the close of each service, about 1,000 persons were responding to the evangelist’s invitation to commitment. Among them was a 31-year-old sandwich-shop waiter of Latin background who had left the Roman Catholic Church years ago. He came to the crusade at the invitation of a Christian boss—and found Christ as Saviour.

A Lutheran girl from New Jersey (she told her counselor she was 13½) who stepped forward to receive Christ said she had never realized that God loved her personally. She had known only that he loved the world as a whole.

Then there was the unemployed presser with the African haircut. He said he was a Baptist but never went to church any more. He had come forward, he explained, to show his determination to begin a closer walk with the Saviour he had met years ago.

Many of the others who responded to Graham’s message he never saw and perhaps in this life never will. They were members of the vast television audience that stretched from Minneapolis to Miami. An hour’s portion of each service was put on color videotape and aired later the same evening in seventeen major metropolitan areas.

To counsel those responding to the televised preaching, the Graham organization rented Box 8000 in New York’s Grand Central Station post office and turned it into a huge clearing house for spiritual problems. Thousands of letters were pouring in.

Graham and emcee Cliff Barrows also appealed to the television audience to help pay for the air time, $50,000 a night. The ten-day New York crusade itself had a budget of $850,000, according to Graham. The biggest expense was the $25,000-a-night rental of the airconditioned Garden, a relatively luxurious arena perched atop the new Penn Central railroad station.

At the half-way point in the crusade, sour notes seemed to be well in the background. A few ministers complained to the press that the crusade held little prospect of adding numbers to their congregation. A mini-skirted smirking teen-ager stalked out of the counseling room in unbelief. She said she had belonged to a prestigious Manhattan congregation but had thrown her faith overboard, adding that she doubted that her minister really believed what he preached. The minister was among those who told a reporter that Graham’s sixteen-week crusade in New York in 1957 had had no effect upon his church.

The evangelist often acknowledges that many a seed of gospel truth falls on stony ground. But much of the miracle of Manhattan was that the seed could even be sown in such profusion. The city is so preoccupied with present social problems that few of its citizens ever seem to take thought of tomorrow.

“God commands all men everywhere to repent,” Graham said. “Nothing else counts in this life or the life to come unless you have obeyed that one great command: Repent!”

The evangelist was nonetheless sensitive to social issues. He preached on great biblical themes such as the cross, the blood, and judgment. But in each forty-minute sermon he made reference to rebellious youth and racial tensions. “Man without God is a violent man,” he emphasized.

Graham went out of his way to recognize the concerns of black people. Three of his musical soloists were blacks. Three black associate evangelists were on hand. Numerous black churches participated in the crusade, and among the crusade executive members was Dr. M. L. Wilson, a local pastor who is Chairman of the Board of the National Committee of Black Churchmen.

Religious News Service estimated that Negroes made up one-fifth of the opening-night audience. During that service the evangelist declared forcefully that “there is no superior race.… Black is beautiful, white is beautiful, yellow is beautiful, red is beautiful, if Christ is in the heart!”

Mid-June had found New York a bit uneasy. The stock market dipped to new lows for the year. Political conservatives won both the Democratic and Republican mayoral primaries by pledging restoration of law and order. The crusade began on a muggy weekend, but the humidity eventually gave way to a cool spell that cleared the air.

Sidelights of the crusade included a school of evangelism for seminary students from all over the country. The under-25 crowd gathered after each service in a “coffeehouse” nearby to hear folk and rock music with biblical lyrics.

Note:CHRISTIANITY TODAYwill carry more news coverage of the New York crusade in the next issue.

Speaking To The Issues

Here are salient excerpts from Billy Graham’s sermons in his June 13–22 crusade at New York’s Madison Square Garden:

On death:

“I don’t think anyone knows how to live unless he knows how to die.”

On race:

“The Bible says there is no superior race.… Black is beautiful, white is beautiful, yellow is beautiful … if Christ is in the heart.… We’re of one blood.

… Christ can give the supernatural power to love a person of another race.”

On tolerance:

“We don’t want God telling us how we ought to live. We don’t want God laying out the road to heaven. We want to go some other way. ‘There is a way that seemed right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.’ The Bible says the road to heaven is through a narrow gate, and a narrow road, and we don’t like to be narrow. We think of ourselves as broadminded and tolerant—except in science. Suppose those men going on Apollo 11 to the moon in July have some men at the control center down in Houston, and they’re broadminded and tolerant, and they say, ‘Well, we’re way off course.’ ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘it’s all right. There are many roads that lead to the moon. Just take the one you’re on.’ But there are many people that say that about the way to heaven. Many roads! Jesus said there’s only one road, there’s only one way. He said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me.’”

On Satan:

“There is a power of evil in this world, and you cannot explain all the evil that is going on in our world today unless you understand there is a supernatural force back of it called the devil, that Jesus referred to time after time.”

On Christ’s blood:

“I’m going to heaven, and I believe I’m going by the blood. I know that’s not popular preaching. You don’t hear much about that any more. But I’ll tell you it’s all the way through the Bible. I may be the last fellow on earth who preaches it, but I’m going to preach it, because it’s the only way we’re going to get there.”

Conservative Broadcasts: A “Fair” Death?

Conservative religious broadcasting—on the way out?

Probably not; but the possibility seemed real to right-wing broadcasters in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous decision upholding the “fairness doctrine” of the Federal Communications Commission.

Among other things, the doctrine, which had been opposed by all major networks, requires broadcasters to give free rebuttal time to any person or group whose honesty, character, or integrity is attacked on the air.

Main target of the fairness doctrine, according to a brief prepared for the court by several ecumenical church bodies, was a far-right “fourth network,” which includes such conservative, often fundamentalist programs as Carl McIntire’s “Twentieth Century Reformation Hour,” H. L. Hunt’s “Life Line,” and Billy James Hargis’s “Christian Crusade.” And these are the groups now feeling the decision most deeply.

Fine as the word “fairness” sounds, Hargis (chief target of the court for an attack on liberal writer Fred J. Cook) contended that the FCC’s “one-edged sword” could eventually cut the arteries of all conservative broadcasting. “My experience,” he said in his Tulsa, Oklahoma, office, “is that the commission is much harder on conservatives than on liberals. Frankly, unless Congress or the people rise up, I can see an end to commercial religious broadcasting.”

“You see,” he explained, “it’s not just me it hits. It’s all fundamental—uh, I mean evangelical—radio programs and conservative commentators. And if this were carried out fully, when someone spoke against adultery, the station would have to look up the local harlot and have her speak.”

Justice Byron R. White, writing the court’s 7–0 decision, argued that the “fairness doctrine,” while creating some problems for stations, did more to encourage free speech than to hamper it. Both Hargis and the networks disagreed, however, on the grounds that the difficulty of enforcement will merely lead stations to carry fewer controversial broadcasts, so as to avoid rebuttals.

Spiritual Revolutionists: Capturing The Media

Today’s mass communications threaten to transform man into “a puppet, a receptacle, or an echo,” warned the executive director of the International Christian Broadcasters at the first Space Age Communications Conference last month. Since “the Gospel is not compatible with mediocrity,” added Abe Thiessen, Christians must gain control of mass media and “earn the right to be heard with complete confidence.”

That evangelical forces largely have failed to make use of the incredible opportunities of today’s mass media, and that time is fast running out before depraved and Communist-inspired radicals overthrow American society as we know it, were often repeated themes at the week-long conference sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ International at its 1,735-acre foothill headquarters in Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. Four other conferences also were in session at the sprawling Arrowhead Springs property (once a Hilton luxury hotel and health spa).

The media—especially newspapers and “the idiot box”—took it on the chin from most speakers as being the major purveyors of evil, and a prime catalyst for what they see as the crime-drug-sex-Communist-takeover syndrome of America’s sickness.

“Who controls the media?” Crusade president William R. Bright asked the 150 communicators (many from overseas) attending the gathering. His answer: Those “dedicated to overthrowing our country” deliberately planned media subversion a generation ago, while “we who are Christians have remained strangely silent.”

In a well received session, U. S. Armed Forces Information Agency director John Broger presented a multi-media study of how electronic circuitry, pop posters, rock music and the underground press involve—and subtly influence—youth, and wedge the generations further apart.

Significantly, the conference was said to be the first to bring together Christian communicators representing radio, TV, literature, films, tapes, and computers to share technology and ideas. During the week they saw a prototype-showing of a “breakthrough” said to rival the development of the long-playing record, CBS-Motorola’s Electronic Video Recording. This compact TV “transmitter” can be plugged in to any TV set and used to play video tapes through the set.

The EVR (cost: $795 for the player) will be on the market next July, with a color model available a year later. The device was touted as having far greater appeal to the younger, TV-oriented generation than films and slide presentations—a claim doubted, however, by some conferees.

Even in this marvelous electronic age, the usual technical difficulties—such as a burned-out projector bulb and mike failures—jinxed some sessions. But the presentations showed imagination and reflected Crusade’s urgent desire to communicate the Gospel to this secular age by all possible means. A Bright idea for Crusade’s expanding horizons includes training young men and women to hold key media posts and “claim them for Christ.”

“If our world is to be changed,” he told an approving audience, “it will largely be through a reversal of the kind of material fed to the public, especially students.… We need a revolution of love rather than hate or destruction.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Movies And The Moral Flux

America’s movie industry began last year to regulate itself with a voluntary rating system. Family-type films are so marked, as are more racy, lusty movies. That way everyone knows what to expect beforehand.

But under the code violence, sex, and strong language have bombarded moviegoers as never before in American history. The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (NCOMP) recently protested that almost one-third of the 111 films it has reviewed since January 1 have grossly exploited sex and violence. Only one-fourth, it said, have been fit for family viewing—and just one-tenth were “recommended” for general viewing.

NCOMP director Patrick J. Sullivan said he had not “lost faith” with the decision of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to regulate itself rather than face governmental censorship. But he questioned whether movie evaluators were handling classifications properly.

What makes this reaction significant is that the NCOMP (along with the National Council of Churches) took pains last October to endorse publicly the self-regulatory system by which all movies are rated G (general audience), M (mature audience), R (restricted), or X (no one under 16 allowed). “We’ll not make a definite evaluation yet,” Sullivan said, “but if parents are concerned about current film fare, statistics suggest that their complaint is amply justified.”

Two questions arise. Have the codes increased the amount of sin on the screens? How are these movie ratings actually established?

To the first question, MPAA code administrator Eugene G. Dougherty, in a CHRISTIANITY TODAY interview, answered a quick and loud “No!” Admitting that a “few unscrupulous, fastbuck operators on the fringe” may try to exploit the code “for short-term gain,” he heatedly maintained that the majority of movie-makers actually moderate their films in order to secure more generally-acceptable ratings.

How then did he account for the explosion of sex and profanity on the screen? “America is in a state of incredible flux,” he said. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves. When the whole world tuned in to a guy orbiting the moon hears him use profanity, when a religious magazine like Commonweal uses sex-related four-letter words, when all our major newspapers use these words, you can expect a reflection of this in the movies.

“We didn’t invent war, hippies, or the mini-skirt, but we make movies about them. If anything we’re behind the times.”

On the question of how movies are rated, Dougherty explained that two or more members of the MPAA’s code commission view each film submitted to it (90 per cent of America’s theaters now accept only MPAA-rated films) and give it a rating. These members include two former film-producers, a former religion editor of the Los Angeles Times, a mother with a Ph.D. in psychology, and a lawyer whose specialty is obscenity law.

Asked why there were no ministers on the board, the administrator cited divisions within America’s religious communities. “If we were to put a fundamentalist on the board, we’d really have trouble,” he said. “And if we put on a man like the author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus? (Episcopalian Malcolm Boyd), we’d really be in hot water.” The raters do, however, consult periodically with the NCOMP’s Sullivan, as well as with leaders of the National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission.

Dougherty was quick to add that this consulting did not mean that the MPAA intended to follow all the suggestions. “They don’t run us,” he said. “In fact, the Catholic standards are changing so rapidly that they themselves often seem inconsistent.”

JAMES HUFFMAN

Our readers are quick to catch changes that are sprung on them unannounced. During the summer months we normally skip one issue of the magazine. We will do so again this year, but instead of keeping readers uninformed for one month we will print two issues three weeks apart. Therefore the summer issue dates will be July 18, August 1, and August 22. We will go back to the normal two-week schedule with the September 12 issue. The summer change enables us to schedule vacations better and catch up on things we have missed during the winter season.

How to understand and interpret the current scene in the light of commitment to Christ is our perennial problem. This issue of the magazine goes to press against a backdrop of the Pope’s visit to Geneva, Nixon’s conference with Thieu and the promise to bring home 25,000 servicemen from Viet Nam, the occupation of the National Council of Churches’ offices by James Forman, the end of the Warren Court, and the singularly unproductive Communist summit meeting in Moscow with Red China and Czechoslovakia much in the limelight.

In all of this, humility dictates that we confess our own puzzlement about the turn of events, acknowledge that we don’t always make sense out of things as they are, and at the same time reaffirm our conviction that God is the Lord of history. He knows what’s happening, and he is bringing about the consummation.

One characteristic of our day is confusion—confusion between nations, within nations, and in individual lives. An affirmation of one day is refuted the next. A position taken by some is rejected by others. A philosophy dear to one group is held up to ridicule by another.

Behind this confusion lie diverse sources of reference. What is good to some is evil to others. What someone regards as vitally important is unimportant to someone else. That which one person considers relevant could hardly be more irrelevant to another.

There is but one way to abolish confusion and to substitute peace and unity, and it is offered by God. As the Apostle Paul affirms, “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33a).

The God of creation and redemption has a plan for every man, and confusion results when he goes any other way. The obvious cause of the world’s unrest is that so many are outside the will of God. Those who would cure the world’s ills by any means other than through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all that it implies are therefore adding to the confusion, not lessening it.

I can hear someone saying that little good comes from oversimplifying a problem. True, but it is not an oversimplification to recognize that God has a solution for every problem of mankind. The Creator of the universe, the author of our redemption, the One who can take all the intricate aspects of the lives of every single person who loves him and so operate upon and control them that they work out for good—surely he has not only the answer to the confusion of men and nations but also the power to carry out his holy designs!

In that the world system is at variance with God’s most holy purposes it is like a dislocated joint. There is pain, distress, and loss of function. As a dislocation needs early reduction to relieve pain and restore function, so the world needs God’s cure in the person and work of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. To offer this cure is the Church’s calling.

A wise patient realizes his condition and quickly seeks relief. Surely the Gospel, God’s remedy for a confused world, requires haste by those to whom it has been committed!

In a social order torn by strife and seething with unrest, man needs to hear the voice of love: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).

O that ministerial sociologists within the Church would change and become preachers of the unsearchable riches of God’s mercy and grace! O that those who yearn for social justice and righteousness would realize that this must be a matter of the heart, rather than of legal compulsion! O that those who, acutely aware of the evils of poverty and discrimination, try to remedy them by governmental edict and money would realize that there can be no lasting solution to these or any other problems aside from the transforming power of Jesus Christ in the lives of individuals!

And I might add: O that those who are so acutely sensitive to the composite sins of society might be equally sensitive to the personal sins that are a stench in the nostrils of a holy God. Corporate sins are real, but they are no more real than the individual sins of the flesh and the spirit.

Does not our Lord speak to us today, calling us to repentance for our personal sins and to faith in him before social reformation can have the seal of his blessing? We are taking entirely too much for granted, not only with the young people in our churches but also with adults, for within the churches there are many who have never entered into a personal relationship with God through faith in his Son.

For this reason we are, as the Chinese say, trying to “carve rotten wood,” and with disastrous results. There is confusion within the Church because the content of the Christian faith is not stressed. And there is confusion outside the Church as unbelievers see in Christians little to commend the faith they profess, while the person and work of Jesus Christ are pushed aside in the frantic attempt of some to become “relevant” through social activism.

Suppose a patient should come to a physician with symptoms that proved to be cancer. But the doctor also notices a disfiguring harelip and gives it top priority. For a time the patient might look better, but he would still be dying of cancer.

Many in the Church ignore or play down the fact of sin and its resulting separation of the sinner from God. There is much talk about Jesus as a “revolutionary” and his burning “social consciousness” with little or no mention of the fact that he came into this world to redeem sinners, and that until he is Saviour he cannot be Lord.

But, you say, what about poverty and hunger? Are Christians to ignore the plight of the poor and destitute? And further, how can one effectively preach the Gospel of God’s saving grace to the poverty-stricken? The answer is that this is not an either-or problem but rather one of priorities. When the Church concerns itself chiefly with secular and material needs, it neglects the one thing that can eventually lead to the amelioration of both. Unless the Church keeps its eyes fixed squarely on its God-given task, it will continue to add confusion to a confused world.

When the Church’s interest began to swing away from the central message of the Gospel, it swung toward civil rights. At the moment it is on poverty, and tomorrow it will probably be on peace. What the Church needs to recognize is that without Christ in the hearts of men, civil rights may be no more than a mirage, poverty a continuing blight, and peace an unattainable hope—all because, like a rabbit-chasing bird dog, the Church has left its primary mission and calling.

Furthermore, all the major denominations are now caught up in the movement toward ecclesiastical union, in which organization takes precedence over the content of the Christian faith. Lip service is given to doctrine—but only as a matter to be dealt with after organic union is achieved!

Little wonder that confusion continues. How can there be an effective witness of the Church without clear affirmations about the person and work of Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.

But see what happens if one insists on his virgin birth, his miracles, his vicarious atonement for our sins, his bodily resurrection, and his coming again!

If for the sake of unity these are ignored or played down, will such a union be blessed? Will it not add to the confusions of the world?