Page 5755 – Christianity Today (2024)

From the very first, the Church testified that Jesus Christ belonged to the realm of divine reality as truly as he belonged to the human. But by confronting the world with the news that in the God-man Jesus Christ holy God and sinful man are reconciled, the Church found itself compelled to think through what it meant in saying this. Just who is this Christ, this one through whom man encounters God? If it was to present this Christ to a philosophical, critical, and unbelieving world, the Church had to uncover the deep meaning of its faith in him. And it had to find words to express this meaning.

The need to formulate a doctrine that would take full account of the person of Christ as at once human and divine was all the more pressing because some within the Church itself were confused. They were undervaluing either his divine or the human side, or both. The attempts of the Church to state with ever greater precision what it believed about Christ culminated in A.D. 451 in the council of Chalcedon.

This gathering of church leaders produced an elaborate statement, the Creed of Chaleedon. The creed is widely known, but it is couched in highly technical and metaphysical terms such as “hom*oousion,” “physis,” and “hypostasis.” Just what did Chalcedon achieve? Did it preserve the essential meaning of the Gospel, or did it lose it in a maze of philosophical abstractions? Did it merely focus attention upon the ultimate mystery of Christ’s person without trying to explain that mystery? Do its high-sounding phrases simply show that metaphysical terms are inadequate to express the doctrine of Christ? These questions may be funneled into a larger one: What is the significance of Chalcedon for us today?

For some, perhaps for many, Chalcedon says everything for all time. This is, according to H. E. W. Turner, the “classical theory,” the theory that the Creed of Chalcedon preserves “unsullied and undefiled” the whole of the Christian doctrine of Christ. W. H. Relton strongly criticizes those who would dismiss the “enormous labours and the acute thoughts of those many minds of the early church” who at Chalcedon sought to make explicit the Church’s faith in Christ. For him, Chalcedon is the grand climax of Christological thinking and the touchstone for all later statements.

At the opposite end of the scale are those who contend that Chalcedon says nothing for any time. The result of this radical view, much in favor today, is that “modern Christologies” tend to reduce Christ to something much less than what Chalcedon held him to be. They take their point of departure from below and never get beyond that. Bultmann took objection to the confession of the World Council of Churches that Christ is “God and Saviour.” The formula “Christ is God” is, he declared, false in every sense. Tillich was equally emphatic in saying that a Christology based on the term hom*oousion (“of the same essence” [with the Father]) is a “Christology of absurdities.”

Professor Maurice Wiles thinks that traditional Christology rests on a mistake. “It arose,” he contends, “because it was not unnaturally yet nonetheless mistakenly, felt that the full character of redemption in Christ could only be maintained if the person and act of the redeemer were understood to be divine in a direct and special sense.” In his view, Chalcedon gave Christ a status far from the thought and need of the apostolic church.

Between these two opposing positions—that Chalcedon says everything and says nothing—are more moderate views. For example, some say that Chalcedon did say something to its own time. It did try to put into contemporary language what the Church from the beginning thought about Christ, and for this the Fathers of the 451 creed are to be commended. But the mind of the fifth century differs so greatly from that of the twentieth that we are no longer able to build a meaningful Christology using Chalcedon’s outmoded terms.

Two attitudes follow from this understanding of the Chalcedonian formula. On the one hand are those who think that Chalcedon can say something to our time. Barth, for example, says that Chalcedon’s declaration of two natures in the one person of Christ does not explain his person but rather underlines its mystery. It was the best the church fathers could do, given the prevailing static view of the concept “person.” But now that the idea of person is understood dynamically, it is better, in Barth’s judgment, to substitute for the doctrine of two natures that of two states. This better describes the twofold movement of God to man and man to God, uniting in the God-man. Norman Pittenger contends that no Christology can be finally acceptable if it is not faithful to the “intentions and objectives” of the ancient symbols. Wolfhart Pannenberg states his unhappiness with the Chalcedonian formula “truly God, truly man” because he cannot see how two complete beings can be supposed to come together to form a single whole. He therefore opts for the idea of “selfconsciousness to replace that of person.” Karl Rahner thinks that we must view Chalcedon “as end and as beginning.”

But others assert that Chalcedon has nothing to say to the present time. In a totally secular age in which the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, the spiritual and the profane, no longer holds, there is no context for a Christology. The myth of transcendence has been outgrown. The God-concept is no longer a necessary metaphysical glue for holding the universe together. Therefore Christ can no longer be related to any transcendental, divine realm. God is in fact dead; all that remains is Christ as the “man for others” and the pattern of universal and revolutionary “love.” Christ must be understood as part of the only reality known to exist, the natural and the secular.

My own view of Chalcedon is that the ancient creed does have much to say to all time. Not everything, of course. Chalcedon does not gather into its definition all that the New Testament says about Christ. It worked from only a handful of biblical texts. We may even say that it failed to express adequately either the human reality of Christ or his cosmic significance.

At the same time, Chalcedon did seek to get down to basics. Neither the view that Christ merely demonstrated godlike deeds in the largest measure nor the view that he merely showed human qualities of the purest kind reaches what Christ really is. There is something else to consider, and Chalcedon did so.

What Chalcedon sought to express is that in the one person of Jesus Christ two conditions overlap: Godhood and manhood. And in seeking to say that, Chalcedon is saying no more than what the New Testament says about Christ. Long before Chalcedon, Christians lived in the faith that Christ was, and must be, essentially related to God and man. Chalcedon did not depart from the Gospel, nor did it add to it. What was stated technically at Chalcedon in A.D. 451 was known implicitly at Corinth in A.D. 51.

The Church cannot merely repeat a string of words that carry with them the mystique of tradition and the mustiness of age. It always has the duty of communicating its Gospel in terms that its contemporaries find understandable and meaningful. But it is healthful and necessary for the Church to keep an eye on past formulations of doctrines in order to secure an anchorage in history. The great creeds of the Church arose out of a living awareness of God’s revelation in Christ. They are the Church’s confession of its discovery of, and faith in, God in Christ.

Despite the positive value of the ancient creed, the findings of Chalcedon are in a sense negative. Its statements may be likened to buoys on the river; they prevent the boatman from losing the necessary depth of water and becoming grounded on either bank. Chalcedon did not solve the ultimate Christological problem: how the two separate natures can be said to coincide in the one person of Christ. In a sense all subsequent views of Christ that profess to adhere to what the Bible says can be said to be attempts to solve this problem.

We can say more about Christ than Chalcedon says, but we dare not say less.

The Definition of Chalcedon

THEREFORE, FOLLOWING THE HOLY FATHERS, WE ALL WITH ONE ACCORD TEACH MEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE ONE AND THE SAME SON, OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AT ONCE COMPLETE IN GODHEAD AND COMPLETE IN MANHOOD, TRULY GOD AND TRULY MAN, CONSISTING ALSO OF A REASONABLE SOUL AND BODY; OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH THE FATHER AS REGARDS HIS GODHEAD, AND AT THE SAME TIME OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH US AS REGARDS HIS MANHOOD; LIKE US IN ALL RESPECTS, APART FROM SIN; AS REGARDS HIS GODHEAD, BEGOTTEN OF THE FATHER BEFORE THE AGES, BUT YET AS REGARDS HIS MANHOOD BEGOTTEN, FOR US MEN AND FOR OUR SALVATION, OF MARY THE VIRGIN, THE GOD-BEARER; ONE AND THE SAME CHRIST, SON, LORD, ONLY-BEGOTTEN, RECOGNIZED IN TWO NATURES, WITHOUT CONFUSION, WITHOUT CHANGE, WITHOUT DIVISION, WITHOUT SEPARATION; THE DISTINCTION OF NATURES BEING IN NO WAY ANNULLED BY THE UNION, BUT RATHER THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH NATURE BEING PRESERVED AND COMING TOGETHER TO FORM ONE PERSON AND SUBSISTENCE, NOT AS PARTED OR SEPARATED INTO TWO PERSONS, BUT ONE AND THE SAME SON AND ONLY-BEGOTTEN GOD THE WORD, LORD JESUS CHRIST; EVEN AS THE PROPHETS FROM EARLIEST TIMES SPOKE OF HIM, AND OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF TAUGHT US, AND THE CREED OF THE FATHERS HAS HANDED DOWN TO US.

Ascetics view it as the essence of sin; playboys think it is the heart of the good life. Pleasure: good or evil? Is Christianity for it or against it? The ancient Epicurean philosophers said, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Pleasure is essence of good, pain the heart of evil. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham translated this into a hedonistic formula: the good of any human action is determined by the quantity of the pleasure over pain it brings to the greatest number of people. An action is good if it maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain for most people. Intellectual pleasures are better than physical pleasures, Bentham argued. Cultured pleasures are preferable to uncultured ones. Because of this, he contended, it would be better to be an unhappy man than a happy pig. The right action, then, is the one that brings the highest quality of pleasure to the greatest number of persons.

Many other philosophers take exception to the idea of calculating the good of life by the pleasures it brings. The Prussian thinker Immanuel Kant contended that the good is not always the pleasurable thing to do. One is under the categorical (absolute, unconditional) imperative to do what is right whether it makes him happy or not. Duty should be done for duty’s sake and not for the sake of pleasure. A masoch*st receives pleasure from abusing his own body; a sad*st may take delight in tormenting children. But neither of these pleasures is right or good. The good life is not the life of pleasure but the life of duty.

Other philosophers ask: Does not even Kant obtain a deep sense of satisfaction from doing his duty? Is not this a kind or moral pleasure available only to those who do what is morally right?

Such questions led to the somewhat different discussion of what is called the summum bonum (Latin for “greatest good”). All philosophies of life, including the moralist’s, are in quest of the greatest good. Whether it is called pleasure, happiness, or satisfaction is not important. The fact of the matter is that there is a yearning in every human heart for a sense of fulfillment, for peace and joy.

As Aristotle pointed out, all persons act for an end or goal. This goal is their good, and their ultimate goal is their greatest good. No one acts simply for the evil he sees in something. Even suicide is deemed a “good” by the one who commits it; it is a solution, a way of resolving an intolerable predicament. Of course, not everything that a person thinks is the best for him really is. “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12).

If all persons naturally seek satisfaction, or happiness, or pleasure, then why does the Bible seem to warn against pleasure? Proverbs says, “He who loves pleasure will be a poor man” (21:17). Jesus warned about being “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). Paul admonished his readers not to be “slaves to various passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3) and not be “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4). Loving pleasure, it would seem, is a taboo for the Christian.

But the Scriptures also speak of pleasure as good. God is said to be at work in every believer “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). There are things in which God “takes pleasure” (Ps. 147:11). “In God’s presence there is fullness of joy, in his right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11). We can add to this what the Bible says about “joy.” Jesus’ desire for his disciples was this: “That my joy be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11; cf. John 10:10). Paul prayed for the Roman Christians, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace” (15:13). John spoke of “complete” joy (1 John 1:4).

If the Bible both warns against pleasure and holds it out as a great and even eternal good, then there must be different kinds of pleasure. Apparently some pleasures are good and some are evil. The former should be enjoyed and the latter should be avoided. So far, so good. The danger is in the next step. Christians sometimes oversimplify and draw the conclusion that the good pleasures are the “spiritual” ones and the evil pleasures are the “physical” ones. This pious asceticism has been the source of much harm in the Christian Church.

In contrast to this Christian kill-joyism, the Bible teaches that physical pleasures are God-given. Often throughout the Old Testament, eating, drinking, and merriment are said to be from God. The Solomonic kingdom blessed by God is described as one where the people “ate and drank and were happy” (1 Kings 4:20). After the dedication of the temple the Israelites engaged in a week of feasting from which they were “sent … away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the goodness that the LORD had shown to David and to Solomon and to Israel his people” (2 Chron. 7:10). Solomon himself wrote, “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; also that it is God’s gift to man that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil” (Eccles. 3:12, 13).

God is not a celestial Scrooge who hates to see his children enjoy themselves. Rather, he is the kind of Father who is ready to say, “Let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:24).

What the Bible teaches is that God is the author of every good thing in life. “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above …” (Jas. 1:17). Sexual pleasure, for instance, was created by God (Gen. 1:27) and is to be enjoyed as a gift from God to those whom he joins in loving marriage (Matt. 19:5).

Nothing is evil in itself

A point seldom fully appreciated by Christians is that everything in God’s creation is good. It is, in fact, “very good”; we have the Creator’s word for it (Gen. 1:31). The apostle said, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom. 14:14). Again, “Everything created by God is good …” (1 Tim 4:4). “To the pure all things are pure …” (Titus 1:15). The external world and all of the pleasures that are a part of it are not evils to be shunned; they are goods created by God for man’s enjoyment.

If everything in creation is good, then what is evil? Why are Christians told that those who are friends of the “world” are enemies of God? (James 4:4). Why are we exhorted, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15)?

The answer is in the next verse. The “world” referred to here is not the external world. Rather it is the “world” of lust and pride within the human heart. “For all that is in the world,” continued John, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (v. 16). The evil world from which a Christian is to separate himself is not “out there” but within his own heart. “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Matt 15:11). And it is because of this that a man misuses the external world.

The key to true pleasure

Real pleasure is not found by separating certain external acts and spheres from others and labeling them good or evil. It is found only as one receives everything, the physical world included, as a gift from God. The enjoyments of life are all gifts of God to be received, not evils to be avoided. But one cannot be happy by clinging to the gift and neglecting the giver. Things are not an end in themselves; they are a means to the end. Satisfaction is found in God alone. As Jesus said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

One cannot truly enjoy the good things in life unless they are subordinated to God. “Seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness,” said Jesus, “and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33). Those who worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator cannot be blessed of God (Rom. 1:25). Solomon wrote, “Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them … this is the gift of God” (Eccles. 5:19). True pleasure is found not in things as such but in things as gifts from God. Without the recognition that temporal pleasures are from God and that eternal pleasure is found only in God, there is no true satisfaction.

The hedonist’s problem is that he seeks to find eternal happiness in a temporal world rather than through it and from God. He vainly attempts to fill an infinite capacity for satisfaction with finite things. As St. Augustine noted long ago, “The heart is restless until it finds its rest in God.”

Solomon’s great experiments

Perhaps no one has ever experimented more widely with the various means of satisfaction to be found in this world than did Solomon. He searched out everything under heaven for satisfaction.

Solomon said to himself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself” (Eccles. 2:1). First, he tried to find happiness in intellectual pursuits. He said to himself, “I have acquired great wisdom … and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my mind to know wisdom …” However, he continued. “I perceive that this also is but a striving after wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (1:16–18).

From wisdom Solomon turned to wit as a source of satisfaction. It too was vain. “I said of laughter, ‘It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ‘What use is it’ ” (2:2).

From the hollow sound of laughter, Solomon turned to the delights of drink. “I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine … and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few days of their life” (2:3). At the end he found only frustration, not satisfaction, in this alcoholic path of pleasure. For as he noted elsewhere, “wine is a mocker, strong drink raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1).

From the follies of over-indulgence in wine he turned to more constructive activities. “I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools …” (2:4–6). But the joy of building faded as soon as the projects were completed.

When the projects paled, Solomon turned to wealth. “I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any one who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces” (2:7, 8). But with all his wealth he found no happiness. Later he observed, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain; this also is vanity” (5:10).

From silver, Solomon turned to sex. Women were high on Solomon’s pleasure list. “I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man’s delight” (2:8). But a thousand wives and concubines (1 Kings 11:3) could not satisfy Solomon. In fact, they led him astray. “For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4).

But sensual satisfaction did not truly satisfy. So the sage sought worldly recognition, “So I became great,” he wrote, “and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem” (2:9). The Queen of Sheba had heard of Solomon’s fame and came from the end of the earth to declare, “The half was not told me.” But here too there was no permanent happiness.

From fleeting fame Solomon’s heart turned to worldly pleasure. “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure …” (2:10). But in all of this he saw that “all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (2:11).

The sum of the whole matter

When Solomon comes to “the end of the matter,” when “all has been heard,” he ends with God, apart from whom there is no lasting satisfaction. God gives us our goal: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ” (Phil. 3:14). Christ alone is the eternally satisfying bread and water of life. He alone could say, “I come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The physical pleasures of sound and sight and smell and taste and touch, the spiritual pleasures, the mental pleasures—all are good gifts of God, who “richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). And each is given to be enjoyed not ultimately in itself or for its own sake but as a gift from God, who alone is to be enjoyed in himself and for his own sake.

Christian eyes have turned often to Africa in recent years. The growth of the Church on the African continent is one reason. Another is the much discussed search for theological identity there. A third is the great material need in many African countries. Institutional Christianity will focus its interest on Africa later this year when the World Council of Churches holds its fifth General Assembly in Nairobi.

To briefCHRISTIANITY TODAYreaders on opportunities and problems in Africa today, the Editors recently interviewed Dr. Byang H. Kato, general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar. Dr. Kato is a citizen of Nigeria. He attended schools of the Sudan Interior Mission, went on to London Bible College (England), and earned the Th.D. in the United States from Dallas Seminary. Before assuming his present post he served as general secretary of the 1,400 churches associated with the Sudan Interior Mission in Nigeria.

Here is the edited distillation of the interview with Dr. Kato:

Question. Dr. Kato, is it true that, as some experts have predicted, Africa will be a Christian continent by the year 2,000?

Answer. Christian growth in Africa has been phenomenal. In many areas the Christian population is doubling every four or five years. In my home town in central Nigeria there was not a single Christian seventy-five years ago. Even when I was a boy a very insignificant percentage called themselves Christians. Today you will find about 65 per cent of the townspeople attending places of worship each week. But sometimes the growth figures are exaggerated, and other aspects and dangers are not taken into consideration.

Q. What do you mean?

A. I mean, for example, that there is a lot of nominal Christianity in Africa along with the real thing.

Q. The statisticians get a little carried away?

A. Well, you just have to understand that in Africa many people put up their hands and want to become Christians and are automatically counted as Christians. If you go to the market place and preach and then ask how many want to receive Jesus, many listeners would put up their hands. It doesn’t mean much in the heart, but it is indicative of the desire.

Q. And what are the dangers to which you refer?

A. Look at the independent church movements. Admittedly there are probably some born again Christians in their midst who have got the teaching, but many of them don’t know the meaning of the new birth and the doctrine that leads on to conversion.

Q. How about Christian accommodation to African religions?

A. There is an emphasis on cultural revolution. Today it is a live issue. Many Christians do not think it wrong to take on many of the pagan practices, like dancing to the pagan gods, and offering libations to ancestors. You also have some liberal theology coming into the continent through some intellectuals who have been trained in liberal schools in North America and Europe. So there are forces at work that cause us concern. We need to work really hard so that the quality of true Christianity may be seen.

Q. What are the theological issues in Africa?

A. I would say the primary thing in Africa today is a search for identity. The African has been exploited and oppressed over the years, and he is asking to be recognized. He wants to assert himself as a first-class human being, but unfortunately in the effort to assert people are going beyond what the Bible teaches. Even Christians are comprising in order to assert their identity in Africa. One thing that is gaining ground is black theology. It originated in the United States and now has gained prominence in Africa.

Q. How do you conceive black theology?

A. My understanding is this: They say that white theology has exploited the black man. White people came to us about a God who is up there and about a life to come. Many black people do not differentiate truly born again whites and the pagan whites. The white man says, “Don’t be concerned about what happens in this world. Such things as money, cars, and good food are of this world. Just enjoy poverty because it is a virtue and someday God will give you wealth.” When the white man told the black man that, the black man said, “Okay, I accept that theology” and began looking up to heaven and to the future, and while he was doing this the white man took hold of all that belongs to this life. Black theology wants to turn the tables. It calls for black economy, black power, and so on. It thus ideologically aligns itself with the Black Muslim movement, which is gaining some prominence among intellectuals in Africa.

Q. What is your response?

A. We must sympathize with some of these yearnings. It is true that many whites have abused Christianity and cheated the black man. Even in slave trade some white American slave dealers would quote Scripture to support this evil practice. We are now reaping what we have sown. The Bible and God remain true even though people are unfaithful. The vertical relationship must have priority even though the horizontal relationship was abused. While black theology raises the right questions, it lacks the terms of reference. It is not a black Christ or black God we need, but the same eternal God of the Bible speaking to the black man in his need. Christians should put to practice what they learn in the Bible.

Q. Is African theology the same as black theology.

A. It is not quite the same. It does not emphasize blackness as such. It argues that Africa has been Christianized, so now it is time to Africanize Christianity. African traditional religions are being revived on the theory that the worship they represent is of God, and only the means of worship is different. The gods being worshiped are even said to have been instituted by God. The idea is to pick out some elements of African religions and include them in Christianity. Syncretism is a real danger. My position is that I do see the point of expressing biblical Christianity in the context of every people. Biblical Christianity should be expressed in Africa in such a way that the African can feel at home in the Church of Jesus Christ. But we must realize that “forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven” (Ps. 119:89).

Q. How strong is Christianity in Africa right now?

A. There are said to be about 91 million Christians in Africa. That is out of a total population of about 350 million.

Q. To what extent are evangelicals a part of the Christian surge in Africa?

A. They are in the forefront. The organization of which I am a part has as its main purpose to establish the evangelicals’ identity and have fellowship and have them presented as a voice of Bible-believing Christians in Africa. This organization, the Association of Evangelicals in Africa and Madagascar (AEAM), is the outgrowth of the biblical message taking hold. The fundamental-evangelical missions opened an office in 1966 for fellowship. As they gathered African churchmen in meetings, the demand grew for a permanent fellowship, and now we have it. We seek to defend and propagate the faith. We promote sound biblical teaching. That’s why we have two commissions, one on theology and the other on Christian education.

Q. Would you regard the AEAM as competitive with the World Council of Churches?

A. It’s certainly different from that, but it runs as a parallel organization to the WCC presence in Africa, which is manifested in the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC).

Q. Are the concerns different in the two organizations?

A. Well, the primary objectives are different. While we appreciate the emphasis on social concern and political liberation today, we of the AEAM do not view that as our primary occupation. Rather, our emphasis is on evangelism and church development basically in the spiritual realm.

Q. How many evangelicals do you represent?

A. Put it this way: there is an evangelical cooperation in about twenty-seven out of the forty-seven countries in Africa. Our direct membership is about three million, but in the total evangelical constituency, there should be about ten million.

Q. Could you elaborate a bit on the AEAM purpose?

A. Well, as you know, we contend that the content of biblical theology remains the same wherever it goes; the change is made only in the expression of that content, translating it into the context of the people so that they can understand. This differs sharply with the presuppositions of regional theologies like the theology of liberation, which has its roots in Latin America but is being advocated for Africa. Its advocates see the fundamental problem of man as being class struggle, so they align with Marxism. AEAM does not only defend the faith, but through our Christian education we promote the teaching of that faith.

Q. How has the theology of liberation affected the African scene?

A. Some of our people in Africa such as Canon Burgess Carr, general secretary of the AACC, have reflected it. It may be behind his thinking when he advocates a theology of violence. He said at the AACC conference in 1974 at Lusaka, Zambia, that “in accepting the violence of the Cross, God, in Jesus Christ, sanctified violence into a redemptive instrument for bringing into being a fuller human life.” He called for the church to support the so-called liberation movements. He says he looks forward to the time when the church in Africa will be recognized as a major liberation movement. To me that is a violent distortion of the purpose of the death of Jesus Christ. He died to strike a final blow to sin, which is the source of violence.

Q. How do African evangelicals feel about the fact that the WCC has channeled money into the liberation movements?

A. You should be aware that even some people in the ecumenical movement would tell you that this money is being given not to buy guns but to buy food and medicine for refugees. And from the evangelical point of view, we are of course concerned for the needs of people who have been displaced for political reasons or whatever. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence that the money is not used for arms. The primary concern of the liberation movements is not relief but war of liberation through use of force.

Now regarding political liberation, I feel that Christians as individuals should be involved in their nations as citizens because we are citizens of both heaven and our respective countries. We should perform the duty we are called upon to do. I think individual conscience should be a guide to Christians’ response to the powers that be in their different countries. But for the Church, I don’t think it is the responsibility of the Church as such to be in the forefront of political liberation. And the main reason is that the Church has the primary task of bringing about reconciliation in the world, reconciliation first of all between man and God, and secondly between man and man. Both the oppressed and the oppressor are in need of the Gospel of reconciliation, the Gospel of peace. If the Church identifies itself with one sector or the other, then it is jeopardizing its right to conciliate the two parties, both of whom need the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I am not in favor of an ecumenical movement giving money to liberation movements unless there is sufficient evidence that the money given will be used for peaceful purposes. I would encourage the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations, the respective countries, and other secular movements to do what they can in this area. Justice must be done. As Christians, our primarily responsibility is the moral aspect, and of course we should preach justice and help through peaceful means. To clarify my position, I am also opposed to the Church as such aligning with an oppressive regime. In doing so, it forfeits its right to speak to the oppressed. But I don’t think that this is the number-one responsibility of the Church.

Q. You were an observer at the Lusaka conference, where there were demands for a moratorium on missionaries. What are the ideas behind that?

A. The main argument is that all missionaries and all resources, financial and otherwise, that are invested and used in the Third World should be suspended for four or five years. This is supposed to give the churches time to discover themselves. And after five years if the Third World churches feel they now need the money and the workers from the West, they will say so. Perhaps the best-known proponent of the moratorium argument is the Reverend John Gatu of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. He is its general secretary, and currently also the chairman of the Central Committee of the AACC.

Q. How do you feel about moratorium?

A. I really sympathize with the basic motive behind it. From what they have told us, it is a desire for the selfhood of the Church. They want Christians in Africa to be self-reliant, and I agree with that. I think Christians should learn to depend on what they can do and what the Lord is able to do through them, rather than be begging help from others outside. I think it is good stewardship. However, I feel also that the call for withdrawing resources and personnel is not necessary and unscriptural.

Q. Why?

A. It is unnecessary because I feel that while it is true that foreign aid could cripple initiative, it does not necessarily do so. Our situation in Nigeria has shown this. Today we have in one church denomination, ECWA, the church of the SIM, between 1,200 and 1,500 pastors and evangelists, and almost all of these are paid by the local churches in Nigeria. We also have a missionary society. We support about 120 families who are working in Nigeria and beyond, including the countries of Niger, Dahomey, and Chad. We have undertaken many other projects, too, and we have not had to call for missions to stop supplying resources before we could assume this initiative.

Q. Why do you say a moratorium is unbiblical?

A. Because of the universal nature of the Church. It is the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, and it is the Lord of the harvest who has the final say in sending people into his field. If it pleases the Lord to send Americans to work in Nigeria, or to send Indians to work in England, we just say “Praise the Lord!” and advise those workers not to have a superior attitude but just to see themselves as servants of God who are working together with the nationals to uplift the cause of Christ. Since the Church is one, we should not say, “No more personnel from this side.” In fact, we have missionaries from Kenya who are working in the United States today, two or three families. The churches in Africa sent them with the support of some mission organizations that come from North America.

Q. What are they doing?

A. They are involved in evangelism and helping people to understand the way of salvation. One family is working in the New Jersey area, mainly among black Americans. I think this give-and-take approach should be encouraged, and therefore I see no scriptural basis for moratorium. But I appreciate the motive behind it, and I think we should work hard to encourage self-reliance in our churches. Unfortunately, a superior attitude does perhaps come through in some missionaries. The call for moratorium also serves notice that we Africans have come of age; we want people to realize that we want colleagues, not masters.

Q. How do you look upon the forthcoming Fifth Assembly of the WCC in Nairobi?

A. It certainly is going to have a great impact, along with the second World Festival of Black African Arts and Cultures, which is going to take place in November and December in Lagos, Nigeria. When the WCC meets, I think there will be much emphasis on Africanizing Christianity. The cultural revival will be a vital issue. This involves bringing in some worthwhile elements, but it also runs the risk of a syncretistic Christianity. This would include dialogue with people of other faiths, and this is a major issue in ecumenism today. I wish that the idea of this dialogue was just to understand what others are saying. But many are seeking dialogue on an equal-to-equal basis: I have something to contribute, the pagan has something to contribute, and so we come and meet to contribute to each other. This stifles evangelism, because under this arrangement we would be offending the person from the other faith if we were to say that Jesus Christ is unique and that ours is the only way of salvation. The call for the uniqueness of Christianity must be played down because you want to give respect to other religions that are operative in Africa. And then there is the whole issue of unity.

Q. What do you mean?

A. You know, the theme for the WCC assembly is, “Jesus Christ Liberates and Unites.” They are going to push for the unity of Christianity in each country, and I think they will probably try to give impetus to governments that would choose to deal with Christians, all Christians, as one entity.

Q. Do you feel that the leaders of the conciliar movement are promoting this development?

A. Some are beginning to suggest that each country have a ministry of religious affairs, and that all churches unite and be treated as one by this ministry.

Q. What do you think about such a thing?

A. I would be for this approach if the unity were to be based on the Word of God. That is why I am working for the AEAM. I feel there are some divisions that are unnecessary within the body of Christ. But the most unfortunate thing is that the call for unity in ecumenical circles overlooks doctrinal differences. Their slogan is, “Where doctrine divides, services unite.” The feeling is, Let’s forget about theology but get on to practical service where we can work together.

I think this is disastrous. Biblical theology must have the prominence. If I come upon someone who is not born again and I will say, “Well, I mustn’t talk about the uniqueness of Christ but just talk from the fact that we are both Africans and that we are both black and let’s work together on this,” then I am not being fair to him because I am neglecting his basic need, which is new life in Christ. He may die without Christ, and I will be accountable before God.

A year ago the vast majority in the dissident “moderate” movement in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) said they would stay in the Synod “till death do us part,” recalled President Sam Roth of Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM). But last month some 2,500 ELIM members met at a hotel at Chicago’s O’Hare airport and voted unanimously to approve divorce.

The ELIM resolution stated flatly that the moderate movement “cannot afford to maintain a political battle.” It pledged support both to those who decide to leave the conservative-controlled 2.8-million-member LCMS and to those who decide to stay, whether in or out of ELIM and “in spite of the eviction notice served on ELIM” at the LCMS convention in Anaheim, California, in July (see August 8 issue, page 31).

After a “fruitless and frustrating” struggle, said Roth, the opponents of recent LCMS theological and procedural actions “have turned the corner.” Around the corner may be short-term organizational proliferation, confusion, and overlap. Eventually, however, Roth and others hope institutional unity will result for most of the nine million U. S. Lutherans.

The assembly urged those seeking a new alignment to form “clusters of congregations” for mutual support. Plans call for a meeting of representatives of these groups to meet in February to map future steps.

Delegates endorsed as a “promising alternative” a proposed “interim church body,” the Lutheran Church in Mission (LCM), which was formed as a standby organization earlier this year. ELIM executive C. Thomas Spitz, who heads LCM, announced that the organization will seek congregational memberships this fall arid will try to hold its first meeting of member churches in January. Whether the LCM becomes a separate denomination or a transitional holding body (pending merger, say, with another Lutheran denomination) remains to be seen.

At the Anaheim convention eight of the forty LCMS district presidents announced that for conscience reasons they could not abide by a resolution aimed at curbing Seminex, the rebel seminary backed by ELIM. The resolution forbade district presidents—on pain of discipline, including possible ouster from office—to ordain or place uncertified graduates of Seminex. In a statement at the ELIM meeting, the eight offered their “leadership in developing alternative forms of fellowship consistent with our Lutheran principles … if [our mission and ministry] cannot be achieved within the fellowship of the Synod.”

Six of the eight offered in a press conference few specifics or timetables for a proposed “parallel structure” to be created “within the Synod.” They declared that division is not their choice. It will come “when the harsh, arbitrary, and oppressive decisions of Anaheim” are implemented, they asserted. Action against one president would be “the handwriting on the wall” for the others, said President Harold Hecht of the non-geographic English District, a bastion of ELIM support. They made it clear that proceedings instituted against one would be construed as action against all. Roth estimated that 15 per cent of the 6,000 LCMS congregations will bolt if the disciplinary measures are carried out. As matters now stand, many of ELIM’s members are in churches still loyal to the denomination.

In the month after the Anaheim convention there were three ordinations or installations in violation of LCMS rules, and others were scheduled. (Several other planned ordinations or installations were postponed amid controversy by congregations in response to direct requests from LCMS president J. A. O. Preus.)

All eight districts, which together have about one-fifth of the LCMS membership, will hold special conventions or convocations this fall.

The Anaheim convention labeled ELIM’s activities as schismatic and instructed that they be ended. The ELIM delegates, however, unanimously recommitted themselves to those same activities and added a few others for good measure. The assembly:

• Declared full “pulpit and altar fellowship” with all Lutherans (the LCMS does not have such fellowship with the three-million-member Lutheran Church in America nor with other groups it disagrees with theologically).

• Pledged $860,000 of the projected $1.3 million cost of Seminex for the coming school year, up $300,000.

• Established a task force to develop alternative programs for the education of church workers.

• Told congregations they have a right to call and ordain as ministers “whomever they determine to be qualified”—including Seminex graduates. (Next year’s graduating class includes a woman who intends to seek ordination; the LCMS does not permit the ordination of women.)

• Reaffirmed that the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions are the only standards of faith and practice for Lutherans (a muted rejection of recent decisions requiring adherence to certain views of Scripture as a test of faith).

RENOVATING HEAVEN AND BRIGHTENING HELL

A church in southern England recently unearthed an ancient bill for repairs to its wall paintings, according to a Reuters news service story. The itemization:

“[For] renovating heaven and adjusting the stars; washing servant of the high priest and putting carmine on his cheeks; and brightening up the flames of hell, putting on new tail on the devil and doing odd jobs for the damned, and correcting the Ten Commandments.”

All for $23.

Post-Anaheim Problems

“Post-Anaheim casualties begin to mount,” blared a headline in Missouri in Perspective, a publication of the dissident ELIM movement in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (see preceding story). The tabloid contained stories of turmoil in several churches in the after-math of the recent LCMS convention, from the ouster of pastors to schism and heresy hunts.

Showdowns are expected on some campuses this fall. President Harvey Stegemoeller, 46, of Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, reaffirmed his pro-ELIM views in a letter to pastors and hinted he may resign now that the majority of his board members are pro-Preus conservatives.

Another casualty is the already strained LCMS treasury. Some churches now are withholding contributions from the LCMS in protest against the recent convention actions and are sending the money to ELIM instead.

Still another casualty is the Lutheran unity cause. President Robert J. Marshall of the Lutheran Church in America and President David Preus of the American Lutheran Church both chided the LCMS in speeches at the Anaheim convention. They suggested that too much emphasis was being placed on the doctrine of Scripture at the expense of Christian life and work, and they indicated that the main concerns of the LCMS do not coincide with the ones of their denominations.

Jacob Preus insists that the heart of the LCMS problem is theological and that inerrancy of Scripture must be upheld if the LCMS is to be preserved from liberalism. The eight district presidents (preceding story) have differing views of Scripture. Emil Jaech affirms that “the whole Bible is the word of God, even in the areas we don’t understand.” Harold Hecht believes that “God is inerrant,” but that “when it comes to the printed page, there are problems.”

Gutenberg Rediscovered

German librarians have confirmed that a book discovered in a pastor’s attic in 1958 is the first half of a two-volume Bible printed by Johann Gutenberg. The six-inch-thick leather-bound volume of 317 pages is the forty-eighth original Gutenberg Bible to be authenticated. It was first found when a former pastor of the Immenhausen church was moving out of a home, but appraisers who were consulted at the time failed to establish its importance.

Friedrich-Karl Baas, a school teacher who moved to the community in 1962 and later became a church officer, found the book on a church office shelf. He studied it carefully and found clues leading him to believe it was an original Gutenberg. One was an inscription at the end of the book of Ezra referring to a sermon preached in the church in 1523. It was not until this summer that he got experts to look at it. The fifteenth-century printer, who made his own paper and movable type, is thought to have produced no more than 200 Bibles between 1452 and 1456.

The well-preserved Immenhausen copy is thought to be worth over $1.25 million. However, the congregation in the medieval village of 6,600 people does not plan to sell it. It will be loaned temporarily to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. After proper facilities are provided at the Morhardsche Library in Kassel, it will be on permanent loan there.

Objectionable Clause

A reconciliation meeting between Christian and non-Christian Nishis from the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India broke down because of an anti-Christian clause in a proposed agreement. The 500 Christians at the meeting refused to sign because of an addition committing them to renounce Christianity. The meeting ended in an uproar, many were hurt, and the Christians fled once more into the jungles where they’ve been taking refuge from increasing persecution.

At a recent meeting of the North-East India Christian Council an appeal was issued calling for a government inquiry into repressive acts against the Christian minorities in Arunachal. In another action the council dismissed an allegation that foreign missionaries were conspiring to form a Christian state in eastern India.

ROGER DAY

Religion In Transit

A federal appeals judge and the Tennesee Supreme Court both ruled unconstitutional a 1973 Tennessee law requiring textbooks to present the biblical account of creation on an equal footing with evolutionary theories.

Jesuit priest John J. McLaughlin, 48, who served as a speech writer for former President Richard Nixon, was married in a civil ceremony in Washington, D. C., to divorcee Anne Dore. McLaughlin was absolved of his religious vows by Pope Paul, say friends, and the couple will be wed in a Catholic ceremony after the bride’s previous marriage “is annulled.”

Franciscan priest John J. Tirella, 55, received a suspended five-year prison sentence for helping seven major narcotics dealers escape from a federal jail in New York City last year. Tirella, a volunteer chaplain who delivered styrofoam impressions of jail keys to others, at first insisted to a grand jury that he was innocent, then in July pleaded guilty.

Episcopal bishop Robert P. Varley of Nebraska, 53, says he will resign. His announcement came two months after an Omaha World-Herald interview in which he described his recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction during a six-week stay in a Minnesota treatment center. He acknowledged that disagreements about his handling of finances and his leadership style have persisted among the sixty-five parishes and missions of his 18,000-member diocese.

United Church of Canada cleric Floyd Honey, 59, resigned after serving seven years as general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. A money crunch and staff cutbacks were blamed. Honey has over the years attracted the ire of many in the Council’s eleven member-denominations for his outspokenness and involvement in controversial political and social issues. This, say critics, is the reaon for the lack of support for the Council.

The first national meeting of Integrity, an organization of Episcopal hom*osexuals, was held at the Episcopal Church Center in Chicago. Spokesmen say the group, formed less than a year ago, has twenty-two local and regional chapters with 373 members. Speakers included clergyman Robert Herrick, a staff member with the National Gay Task Force in Washington, D. C., and Norman Pittenger, a former Episcopal seminary teacher now at Cambridge, England. “For the gay person it is best to be gay,” asserted Pittenger.

A task force to mobilize Protestant women “in defense of life” was announced by Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Evangelist Billy Graham, and two other women, Baptist Judy Fink, and Missouri Synod Lutheran Jean Garton. They were among twenty-five Protestants who met near Mrs. Graham’s North Carolina home to devise strategy to counter the nation’s pro-abortion forces and climate. Also on hand: surgeon C. Everett Koop, a United Presbyterian; Southern Baptist minister Bob Holbrook of Baptists for Life; and evangelical theologian Harold O. J. Brown, acting chairman of the recently formed anti-abortion Christian Action Council.

The ordination of women as deacons, priests, and bishops was called for in a resolution at the annual convention of the 3,500-member National Assembly of Women Religious, attended by 780 Catholic nuns. There was even talk about a woman pope someday.

Current regulations of the Federal Communications Commission exempts broadcasting stations with fewer than five employees from fair-employment reporting requirements. The FCC would like to change that to “fifteen or fewer,” a proposal denounced as “racist and sexist” by communications head Everett C. Parker of the United Church of Christ. Claiming the change would allow 78 per cent of all licensees to practice discrimination, he vows to lead a fight against it.

Some 300 delegates at last month’s eighteenth annual meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Anniston, Alabama, honored the memory of SCLC founder Martin Luther King, Jr., and passed a number of resolutions dealing mostly with improving the lot of the poor. There were calls to “get it back together again,” but the SCLC has been all but crippled by lagging finances and an exodus of key leaders.

Southern Baptist students on more than 300 campuses are cooperating with the American Bible Society in distributing Bibles to the estimated 227,000 internationals studying in America. So far, 51,000 have been given Bibles in their own languages, say officials.

Child Evangelism Fellowship will move its 100-person staff and headquarters from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Warrenton, Missouri, where it has purchased for about $2 million a Catholic seminary on a 660-acre tract. Plans call for the facility to be used for training hundreds of adult leaders each year.

No takers. Thus Trinity Parish in New York City took off the market ten commercial properties in lower Manhattan it offered for sale late last year for $14.6 million. The properties were assessed at $7.8 million.

The proposed merger between two seminaries of the United Methodist Church—United Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio—has been called off. Reasons: high moving costs, the minimal savings to be achieved under joint operation, and ruffled feelings. The plan was to close United, a former Evangelical United Brethren school, but former EUB members in the UMC pointed out that their seminary in Naperville, Illinois, had already been merged with the UMC’s Garrett seminary in Evanston. This time, they reasoned, the former UMC school in Delaware should be closed, and United should be allowed to continue.

Some 3,000 persons are expected to attend the evangelical-oriented Continental Congress on the Family in October in St. Louis, say organizers.

Church-state separationists are fighting the state of Pennsylvania’s latest effort to provide aid to private schools, a $31 million program providing “loaned” textbooks, other instructional materials, counseling, and speech and hearing therapy. The package, together with the free bus transportation provided parochial students, amounts to about $95 annually per pupil, says a state official. Public school districts get about $480 per pupil from the state, he adds.

The 1.2-million-member Knights of Columbus will pick up the tab for worldwide coverage via satellites of three major papal events annually (Christmas midnight mass, Good Friday activities, and an Easter sermon). The four satellites of the Intelsat system will be used at a cost of about $25,000 for each of the three ninety-minute live telecasts. Networks and stations must negotiate with Italian television, which operates a Vatican TV pool, for the right to pick up satellite feeds.

Attorney Reynell Andreychuck of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, was elected the first woman president of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Canada.

World Scene

The village leaders of Oberammergau, Germany, have decided to use a different script for the next performances (in 1980) of the celebrated eight-hour Passion Play. Written in 1750, the replacement—unlike the current text—blames the death of Jesus on Lucifier and makes little mention of the Jews. The switch came after pressure by Jews and Catholic leaders who alleged that the play contains anti-semitic references.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists won separate Greek court cases that accorded them status as “well-known” religious groups, a category enjoying a greater degree of religious freedom than otherwise under the constitution. One court established the legality of Witnesses’ marriages and baptisms. Another granted Adventist clergy exemption from military service. Some 16,000 Witnesses met recently in Athens for an annual conference.

The Christian Council of Lesotho, a kingdom of two million population surrounded by South Africa, appealed to the nation’s political leaders to govern responsibly. Political troubles have caused “the slaughter of many of its citizens, heavy property losses, the flight of hundreds of people into exile, and produced a reign of fear.” The Council includes the Lesotho Evangelical, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Assemblies of God, and African Methodist Episcopal churches.

The 100-student Belgium Bible Institute, the largest of the ten Bible schools operated by Greater Europe Mission, has purchased for nearly $1 million a Jesuit seminary in a Brussels suburb. The new facility can house 500 students, say spokesmen.

More than half of Sydney’s high school students have experimented with “the occult and Satanism,” according to a study commissioned by Anglican archbishop Marcus Loane. A number of students in other major Australian cities likewise were involved in “witchcraft and Black Masses,” said the commission.

Recently elected to the Hungarian parliament were a number of churchmen, including Bishop Tibor Bartha of the Reformed Church and Bishop D. Zoltán Kaldy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, according to Hungarian church press sources.

A seventy-five-day strike at the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, India, is over but the costs are still being counted: about $300,000 so far. The strike, marked by violence and involving 600 of 2,400 workers, occurred after several employees were fired for accepting bribes and falsifying admission records. The state and national governments took opposite sides in the dispute.

DEATHS

CORNELIUS P. HAGGARD, 63, in his thirty-sixth year as president of 1,200-student Azusa Pacific College, a Wesleyan-Holiness school, and a noted evangelical leader associated with the Evangelical Methodist Church; in Arcadia, California, following neural surgery.

E. LANI HANCHETT, 55, Episcopal bishop of Hawaii; in Honolulu, of cancer.

CLEMENT D. ROCKEY, 85, retired Methodist bishop who served in India, Burma, and Pakistan; in Eugene, Oregon.

Jesus Christ liberates and unites.” This theme will be brought to Nairobi, Kenya, when the World Council of Churches gathers there in November for its fifth General Assembly. The theme will be studied in six sections: (1) Confessing Christ Today, (2) Unity of the Church, (3) Search for Community (i.e., among persons of different religions, cultures, and so on), (4) Education for Liberation and Community, (5) Structures of Injustice and the Fight for Liberation, (6) Human Development (problems of technology and the quality of life).

This will be the first General Assembly with no section on mission and evangelization. There will be, however, a new section on dialogue with other religions—instead?

One might think that proclaiming the Gospel would now come under Section I, “Confessing Christ Today.” The collection of preparatory materials for this section describes the burning problems and different situations of confessing Christ today, but the situation of straight witness is not among them.

This packet of materials may show the main theological motives now steering the WCC. The basic principle is the idea that God is to be found at work in the world, in the “context” of the Church today. He is to be found, for example in other religions and in the political movements of our time, inasmuch as they aim at the “humanization” of man. The task of the Church is to discover and support Him in these “signs of the time.” The Church can recognize the voice of God in what men most long for.

This idea, popular in the WCC during the last decade, is supplemented by the more recent concept of “experience.” In dialogue with other religions, “experience” will be more useful than rigid doctrinal statements.

To these basic principles the two assembly theme words correspond: liberation, almost everywhere used in the political sense, and unity, of late used with the much wider meaning of the “vision” of unity of mankind.

The preparatory material shows, though, some elements of refreshing variation from typical ecumenical themes. An example is a remarkable report on a conference of orthodox theologians in Bucharest in 1974. These elements could serve as opportunities for some necessary corrections of ecumenical steering. So could the articles of the Lausanne Covenant, which has been accepted by the WCC to be used as conference study material at Nairobi.

Senior church leaders in Germany today harbor grave doubts whether after Nairobi it will be possible to keep ecumenical unity on a truly biblical basis. That these fears are not unfounded is shown by a 500-page documentary volume edited by W. Künneth and P. Beyerhaus. This new book ought to be translated into English immediately.

Nairobi may, of course, like Uppsala, provide by itself a critique of the WCC course. Nairobi will be different from Bangkok. It will be a plenary assembly of the WCC legislative body, which controls and directs the executive. Members of the assembly are not participants, as in Bangkok, but delegates and representatives of their churches. Their individual experiences at Nairobi will be secondary to their commission to represent the creed and confession of their denominations. They are not there as private persons, and the WCC is not a church.

Lending a hand to correct the WCC course will require clearsightedness and readiness to fight for the truth. To my mind these three major changes, among others, are needed:

1. The time has come to put the edge of sharp theological analysis to the religious poetry produced at Geneva and related places. What kind of liberation? What sort of unit? Precisely what experience?

Experience is a good word. Pietists will feel especially at home with it, as pietism began with the demand to combine doctrinal orthodoxy with personal experience and piety. Experience was to follow doctrine and was identified by it. Not every kind of religious experience would be acceptable—otherwise we would have to admit not only the experience of other religions but also the experience of the demonic as valid.

It is nonsense if those who drew up the preparatory materials for Section I think that some Christians hold to doctrine without experience and others hang to experience without doctrine. Doctrine must authorize experience, and experience must realize and give evidence to doctrine. Otherwise the road is open to all sorts of religious subjectivism. The Section I materials themselves show this well enough when they propose that the messenger is more important than the message. Think of what kind of unity this will produce!

Whoever refuses to allow his religious experience to be analyzed for the purpose of seeing whether it accords with Scripture comes under suspicion that he is out to push an unbiblical concept of his own.

2. The authority of Scripture must come to prevail again. Although mentioned in the WCC creed, it has had little prominence in recent years. Every concept has to be proved by the Bible. Liberation, for example, is a good term with biblical content if we understand it to mean release of the suppressed as shown in Isaiah 58, but not if it means violent self-emancipation as a Christian commission. Unity, too, is a proper Christian concept meaning the unity of those who have become disciples of Christ (as seen in John 17); but it is unbiblical if it means the “unity” of mankind without conversion and discipleship to Christ.

New concepts, new ways of expression, are always welcome, as long as they are authorized by the Bible. Under the authority of Scripture we will be delivered from that perilous slogan which sends us to seek God in any religious experience or political movement.

3. We need to come back to our primary theme: God. We have had enough of horizontal theology that interprets every biblical concept in a this-worldly way. For example, according to the Section I material, the death of the guerrillero is similar in character to the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh and blood and has to be remembered at the Eucharist. No! Make theology go back to its true and proper content: God, and God in Christ. Theology’s task is to inculcate the Great Commandment: to love God, and to love your neighbor. All attempts to reduce it to its second half alone must cease. Let us do away with the secret or openly admitted assumption that the theme of God must rest for a while in a time of social crises like ours.

The WCC’s reintroduction of religious experience signifies no improvement. Experience not clearly distinquished might be only this-worldly religiosity, the Kingdom of Man extended into religion. Nothing less than the reality and authority of God himself according to the Bible must become again the number-one theme of the World Council of Churches.

News editor Edward E. Plowman co-authored Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power, together with James Hefley. Believe it or not, God is at work in Washington. There are true believers in government and there is a dynamic witness in the world’s most powerful city. We need more Christians in government and more evangelism among Washington’s unconverted, plus prayer by God’s people everywhere for a nation in crisis. The publisher is Tyndale House; price $3.95.

Our lead editorial deals with the World Council’s Nairobi Assembly. My friend Donald McGavran in the July Church Growth Bulletin (can be secured at 3033 Scott Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 95050) has packed in it information about Nairobi that every Christian should read. A year’s subscription (6 issues) costs only $2.00.

The Jesus movement has vanished from news media attention, but its spirit lives on. Last month on Paul Mast’s potato farm near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, an estimated 30,000 gathered for Jesus ’75. It was the largest crowd for such an event since Campus Crusade’s Explo ’72 drew 85,000 to Dallas.

The three-day event was punctuated by rain, turning the main program area into a sea of mud at times, but the downpour failed to dampen enthusiasm.

Tents, trailers, and camper vehicles of every description ringed the meeting area on three sides. Four huge circussized tents flanked the outdoor platform. Two tents, each with a capacity of several thousand, were used for teaching seminars. Another tent housed a busy book and record shop (some 300 copies of Strong’s Concordance were snapped up, and books by Francis Schaeffer moved briskly) plus display booths rented by Christian colleges, mission agencies, and other groups. A supermarket of sorts operated in the other tent. Tank trucks brought in 5,000 gallons of drinking water every hour or so.

Major program attention was given to Bible teaching. There were series of seminars on family life, evangelism, and Christian living. In between, a bevy of musicians kept the program moving. They included Chuck Girard (formerly of the Love Song), Ted Sandquist, Phil Keaggy, and the Andrae Crouch group.

The trend today is for more teaching content and less music, commented one of the leaders.

Among the speakers: Evangelist Tom Skinner; Lutheran pastor Larry Christenson, a specialist on the family; youth evangelists Larry Tomczak (a Catholic) and C. J. Mahaney, a dynamic 21-year-old who was clearly the favorite of many young people; Loren Cunningham, head of Youth With a Mission; Philadelphia pastor John Poole; and Bible teachers Ern Baxter and Malcolm Smith. All but Skinner are charismatics.

The majority of persons attending Jesus ’75 appeared to be in their twenties. There was also a noticeable presence of family groups. Most were associated with established churches. They brought their Bibles and took notes at the teaching sessions. They were friendly but not bubbly or exuberant as they may have been at such gatherings three or four years ago.

The Jesus people have grown up, said an observer.

Jesus ’75 was the third Jesus festival sponsored by the Jesus Ministries of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. It is headed by Mennonite Harold M. Zimmerman, 48, a concrete contractor; United Presbyterian John Musser, 48, a construction foreman; and Mennonite Tom Hess, 36, a fruit packer. All are charismatics. They first became involved in the festivals when a band of Lancaster County Jesus people appealed for help with Jesus ’73. Two festivals will be held next year, one in Orlando, Florida, the other in Mercer, Pennsylvania, with the assistance of local committees.

Under the watchful direction of the three, the festivals have brought in enough money through registration fees and commissions to enable purchase of additional equipment and facilities (the group owns the necessary scores of portable toilets, for example) for use next time and to donate funds to youth mission work. An office secretary is the only paid worker.

Despite the heavy saturation of charismatic leaders and speakers, appeal was kept universal: no public displays of tongues, prophecies, or healing lines. Indeed, several speakers suggested that a need exists in charismatic circles for more reliance on faith and less on healing.

Jesus ’75 was centered on the theme of unity in Christ, a theme for which illustrations abounded. On one afternoon, about 2,000 Catholic charismatic participants attended a special mass conducted in one of the big tents by Franciscan priest Edward Dillon of Washington, D. C.

Cunningham challenged young people in his seminars to get involved in short-term massive outreach, whether overseas or in North America. Under his guidance Youth With a Mission (YWAM) has become one of the nation’s largest mission agencies, fielding thousands of young people worldwide for short-term missionary service. It has permanent bases in fifty nations. Cunningham plans to launch a cross-country bicentennial Christian witness campaign in January. Teams will converge on key East Coast cities in mid-summer—with an assist from a jumbo-jet planeload of overseas young people—and then proceed to the Olympics in Montreal for outreach work (YWAM helped to coordinate the efforts of 2,000 evangelistic workers at the Olympics in Munich in 1972).

As for the Jesus movement, it’s still going on, says Zimmerman, but it’s mostly in the churches now.

Episcopal Revolt

The bishops of the Episcopal Church have a revolt on their hands. At a meeting this month in Portland, Maine, they will discuss what to do about it.

Five more women were to be ordained to the priesthood on September 7 at the Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D. C.—against the advice of their own bishops and the wishes of the full House of Bishops. Resigned bishop George W. Barrett, 67, was to perform the ordination.

Earlier, the Washington church called Mrs. Alison Cheek as a part-time priest—the first woman to be employed as an Episcopal priest in America. Mrs. Cheek and ten other women were ordained by several retired or resigned bishops more than a year ago in a service in Philadelphia. The ordinations were subsequently ruled invalid by the House of Bishops, but the women have been celebrating Communion (a priestly act) at a number of churches.

In Oberlin, Ohio, Rector L. Peter Beebe is in hot water with Bishop John H. Burt. Beebe was found guilty by a church court of disobeying Burt in permitting two women to celebrate Communion in December, but he allowed them to do it again just forty-eight hours after the verdict was announced. For that Burt restricted Beebe’s ministry to his own parish and decreed that no one can officiate at church services or be added to the church staff without the bishop’s permission. The church’s ruling body had asked Beebe to call one of the women as a staff priest. Beebe says that as a matter of justice he will continue to permit women to celebrate Communion in defiance of Burt’s orders.

The rector of St. Stephen’s church in Washington is William A. Wendt, who was found guilty by a church court of disobeying Bishop William F. Creighton in allowing Mrs. Cheek to consecrate the Communion elements. He was told by the court not to let it happen again. He may be in deeper trouble as a result of the latest developments.

Creighton said he made it plain to Wendt and Barrett that the scheduled ordinations did not have his permission.

Barrett resigned as bishop of Rochester, New York, in 1970 to avoid scandal to the church resulting from the break-up of his marriage and subsequent remarriage, according to news sources. He now serves as executive director of Planned Parenthood in Santa Barbara, California. In conscience, said he in a letter to his fellow bishops, “I cannot refuse to act in this instance.”

The House of Bishops wants a moratorium on such ordinations until next year’s triennial convention of the denomination, when there will be another opportunity to act on the issue.

St. Patrick’S: Jesus At The Core

Four years ago, St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, a landmark just across the street from the state capitol in Providence, Rhode Island, was dying. Though 6,000 were on its parish roster, only a few hundred came to Sunday masses. Smith Hill, the parish neighborhood, was headed down hill; illicit drug traffic and aging, poorly maintained, multi-family houses were signs of the decline. Construction of an interstate highway physically divided the parish, destroyed much housing, and uprooted many parishioners. The church, in financial trouble, had to close its cherished parish school.

In the spring of 1971, two new priests were sent to St. Patrick’s. Father John Randall recalls that “many parishioners were convinced … that Father [Raymond] Kelly and I had really come to bury the parish.”

Today the mammoth St. Patrick’s church stands locked and unused, closed because building inspectors found it unsafe. But the church lives. The school is open. Most of the thirty staff members volunteer their services, receiving only $7.50 a week for personal expenses. The school auditorium and a classroom are now sanctuary and chapel, adorned with banners and children’s paintings. Worship attendance has tripled. The neighborhood still has its problems, but there are signs of improvemept, partly because of an active Christian social witness in the community.

Four years ago, Bob Fitzgerald, father of nine, was traveling around New England selling restaurant equipment. Now, with help from his family and others, he runs the Earthen Vessel, a busy used clothing and appliance shop. Fitzgerald charges what he thinks his customers can afford—nothing or a nominal sum. A banner on a front wall points up the biblical inspiration for the name: “This treasure we possess in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7).

The changes in St. Patrick’s and in individuals like Fitzgerald are related. Under Fathers Kelly and Randall, who had been active in a charismatic prayer group, St. Patrick’s has become a charismatic parish. Although not all of St. Patrick’s members would identify themselves as part of the so-called Catholic charismatic renewal movement, there is no vocal opposition to it. Besides the usual daily and Sunday masses, St. Patrick’s worship schedule includes three charismatic-oriented prayer meetings a week. The main Sunday mass is decidedly charismatic.

The charismatics reopened the parish school “with Jesus as the core curriculum,” as one parishioner put it. The 175 students in kindergarten through eighth grade are not subject to the uniforms and rigid discipline that have long characterized parochial schools. Their teachers come half an hour early each day for charismatic-style prayer together, and there are daily individual and group prayer sessions geared to different age levels. Parents are expected to complement the religious education the school provides.

Without central planning or constant exhortation, many charismatic families are moving into the low-income, residually Irish parish neighborhood, often from more affluent sections of the Providence area.

The parish includes about a dozen large communal “households.” For example, besides Robert and Helen Hawkinson and their two children, the household they head includes Gina, 30, who works in the diocesan media center; Ray, 27, who teaches French in a public school; David, 22, who teaches math and science at the parish school; and Terri, 18, who just finished high school. Although she has been away visiting relatives in California for several months, Evelyn, 27, a secretary, is still considered part of the household. A room in the three-story Victorian house is kept for her.

Both 45, the Hawkinsons are parish volunteers. He handles church finances; she works with Our Daily Bread, the food co-op. Only Gina and Ray receive regular salaries, which they pool to care for household expenses.

Parish activities have an ecumenical dimension. With the neighborhood Presbyterian and Baptist congregations, St. Patrick’s helps support and staff the Butterfly Shop, which sells handicrafts, and the Shepherd’s Staff, a family counseling center, as well as the co-op. An estimated one-third of the 600 to 700 people who attend Friday prayer meetings are non-Catholic.

Right after he got back from the international Catholic charismatic conference in Rome (see June 6 issue, page 45), Randall led a retreat for some Methodists and Presbyterians. Ten years ago, he said, he would have felt “schizophrenic” about that. Now he feels “at home.”

In many ways, the worship, Bible study, community action, and parish education at St. Patrick’s are not unusual or notably Pentecostal in style. Observers, however, are impressed by the wide range of the activities, the number of full-time volunteers, and the enthusiasm and informality with which parishioners work and worship. Outsiders come away speaking of the ease with which Christian principles are articulated and connected with all that goes on.

St. Patrick’s is not without problems. Discussion at an informal Saturday-morning Bible study suggested continuing problems in parent-child relations. As in many congregations, there are varying degrees of commitment, with many content merely to attend Sunday worship. But over all, the problems are those associated with life, not a dying church.

Critics of the Catholic charismatic movement accuse it of taking ecumenism too seriously, of deviating from traditional Catholic dogma. But St. Patrick’s seems firmly committed to mainstream, post-Vatican II Catholicism, including some very Catholic practices and beliefs with which many Protestants would be uncomfortable at best. Mainline Catholics on the other hand might have raised their eyebrows at a recent Friday prayer meeting where Randall used Peter as a figure for institutional Catholicism and Paul for charismatic Catholicism. “Peter and Paul,” he proclaimed, “stand together.”

TOM DORRIS

PREPARED

Retired Foursquare pastor Melville S. Taylor had often said that when it came time for him to die he wanted the Lord to take him while he was preaching. Last month he was guest preacher at Baseview Assembly of God church in Emerado, North Dakota. He said when he started to preach that he hadn’t realized until then what the Lord wanted him to talk about, commented Steven Robbins, Baseview’s pastor. “Then he talked about eternal life. He stated in his message that he loved his family, but that if the Lord chose to take him home he was prepared to go right now.”

A moment later, said Robbins, the 71-year-old Taylor collapsed and fell from the podium, apparently having suffered a heart attack. Attempts to revive him failed.

Taylor’s long-standing wish had been honored.

Getting Higher

Contrary to popular belief, illicit drug use among the young is increasing, according to some new university and government studies. Especially involved are young people in their early twenties, with marijuana (used regularly by 21 per cent) and alcohol (58 per cent) the most commonly used substances. Government studies show that heroin users have more than doubled, from 315,000 in 1969 to 724,000, and narcotics-related deaths are up 35 per cent in the same period.

Presidential Choice

William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, is the choice of the National Council of Churches nominating committee to be the next NCC president, according to Religious News Service. If the Council’s governing board accepts the nomination at its triennial meeting in October, the result will be two members of the same communion, both of them laypersons, in top NCC positions. The General Secretary, Claire Randall, is also a United Presbyterian and not ordained to the ministry. Thompson was a Kansas lawyer before becoming his denomination’s chief executive.

Gypsy In Jail

Gypsies are among those who have been involved in the revival-like movement that has spread throughout Romania in the past few years. One of them is Evangelist loan Samu, 31, a fiery preacher. Samu was arrested last Christmas for preaching without permission and for distributing unauthorized Christian literature, according to sources. His prison sentence of nearly four years was reduced on appeal recently to two years. One of the side penalties was loss of income for his family (his wife gave birth to their sixth child in May).

Samu, like many of the Christian Gypsies, gave up his nomadic ways and settled down after his conversion. He became a postal worker, devoting his spare time to evangelism. Prior to his latest arrest he had been fined stiffly several times for ignoring government restrictions on his preaching.

Détente With The Church?

Five Baptist women have been released from prison in the Soviet Union after serving only eight months of their sentences, according to Keston News Service, which is headed by authoritative researcher Michael Bordeaux of suburban London. The five were among seven arrested in Latvia last fall when Soviet authorities discovered one of the secret printing presses operated by the dissident Baptist movement in the U. S. S. R. (see December 20, 1974, issue, page 26, and April 25 issue, page 44).

Upon their release (reportedly in connection with International Women’s Year), the women wrote an open letter thanking Christians everywhere for their prayers and asking them to keep on remembering the two men arrested with them along with Georgi Vins, leader of the Baptist reform movement who is in a labor camp in Siberia.

Curiously, the Kiev church of which Vins is an elected officer has been registered unconditionally by the authorities, enabling it to function freely without the usual restrictions placed on unauthorized groups. According to the believers in Kiev, says Keston, this is the first instance of its kind in the Soviet Union. The 500 members, who have been meeting in the woods, now have a church building, and they were renovating it at last word.

Veteran Soviet watchers are wondering if the move is window dressing or if it represents a thaw in church-state relations. Earlier, the entire membership of the Pentecostal congregation in Chernogorsk (eighty-six members arid their families) issued appeals to President Ford. They asked his help in obtaining permission to emigrate from their homeland. Commented Keston: “They no longer wish to live in a country where there is no freedom of religion.”

Hardiness In Haiti

Baptist clergyman Claude Noel of Portau-Prince, Haiti, is the new—and first—general secretary of the Council of Evangelical Churches of Haiti (CECH). Noel was appointed to his post at the recent CECH annual meeting. Another Baptist pastor, Orius Paultre, who is also a physician, succeeded him as president. They plan to emphasize evangelism and community development. (Haiti reputedly has had the lowest per capita income of any western hemisphere nation; the needs are urgent on many fronts, from agricultural development and technical training to education, medical care, and safe drinking water.)

Formed in 1972, the CECH has eighteen member denominations and missions representing about 80 per cent of the 400,000-plus Protestants (the West Indies Mission and Unevangelized Fields Mission each have about 100,000 baptized members). Its member churches are among the fastest growing in the world. The remaining 20 per cent is composed of two denominations in the World Council of Churches (Anglicans and Methodists) and independent missions and churches.

CECH programs have included a national congress on evangelism, a series of church-growth workshops, and Theological Education by Extension (TEE) offerings.

Assemblies Of God: Record Growth

While many other American denominations were experiencing declines, the Assemblies of God grew a record 10.6 per cent in the last two years, according to reports released at last month’s thirty-sixth General Council, the AOG’s biennial convention. In the United States, AOG membership is now 758,348 in over 9,000 congregations. With 1,128 missionaries serving in ninety-five countries, the overseas constituency now exceeds four million.

The 12,000 delegates and guests were joined in Denver by thousands of other visitors at an outdoor rally to launch AOG participation in the nation’s bicentennial. General Superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman read a proclamation.

In addition to housekeeping actions, the delegates adopted a statement critical of sex education in public schools. They asked that such courses be voluntary rather than compulsory, that moral dimensions be added to teaching materials, and that parents and churches work to remove objectionable materials.

Brotherly Brethren

Canadians don’t always see eye-to-eye with Americans on important issues, but a strong sense of unity prevailed at last month’s triennial joint meeting of the Canadian and U. S. conferences of Mennonite Brethren churches. Held in Winnipeg, Canada, the denomination’s fifty-third general convention brought together 527 delegates. They represented 258 churches with 15,870 members and 18,663 in Canada.

Culminating efforts begun nearly thirty years ago, the body agreed to make Brethren Biblical Seminary of Fresno, California, the official seminary of both conferences. It was formerly under U. S. conference jurisdiction. Agreement was also reached on cooperative publishing plans.

A revised confession of faith, hammered out over fifteen years, was adopted as a “descriptive” (rather than “prescriptive”) statement of what Mennonite Brethren believe. A sample: “We believe it is not God’s will that Christians take up arms in military service.”

The denomination’s guiding board in spiritual matters presented a paper strengthening a 1972 anti-abortion resolution. “Deliberate abortion is sin,” said the board, insisting that state laws cannot serve as an “adequate basis for moral judgment for the believer.”

The delegates approved a resolution expressing “deep concern” over the Arab-Israeli situation and saying that endorsem*nt of either side easily leads to identification with militarism. Church members were urged to pray for the salvation of Arabs and Jews.

Approval was given for some new mission ventures: financial and personnel aid to non-Mennonite Brethren evangelical groups (like the Muria Synod Church of Indonesia) and personnel assistance to non-Mennonite Brethren groups not generally considered evangelical (some independent African churches). That neither program would involve establishing churches for the denomination did not appear to be a major concern.

A missions budget of $2.4 million was accepted for the coming year; it will rise 10 per cent annually over the coming triennium.

Most of the world’s 100,000 Mennonite Brethren believers live outside North America. These include perhaps as many as 20,000 in the Soviet Union.

DORA DUECK

The Disciples: Accommodating Cocu

Continued support of its ecumenical ties, especially with the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), was evident at the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) biennial assembly in San Antonio last month.

After a half-hour debate, the top legislative body of the 1.3-million-member denomination said it was willing to recognize the baptism and membership credentials of persons coming to it from other COCU churches. While the declaration is not binding on Disciples congregations, it was considered significant because for much of their history Disciples have insisted on believer’s baptism. Many of the local churches (some think at least a third of them) will not accept a person from another denomination if he has not been immersed as a believer.

Paul Crow, Jr., president of the Disciples Council on Christian Unity and a former general secretary of COCU, hailed the vote as “the most important step toward church union” since the 1832 merger in which the denomination was born. The action was taken at COCU’s request; the Disciples are the fourth COCU participant to comply.

Proponents of the action denied that it watered down the church’s historic position on baptism. Rather, they argued, it affirmed the Disciples’ traditional stance on Christian unity.

Delegates to the assembly devoted some attention to the Lord’s Supper during a Sunday-evening program that included a “mariachi mass” led by Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop P. F. Flores of San Antonio. Mexican musicians and ballet dancers took part. The communion elements were served only to the Catholic clerics who led the service. The convention newspaper reported, however, that some delegates had taken communion earlier in the day at a Roman Catholic parish where a visiting Disciples minister preached.

Various convention programs featured an ecumenical who’s who. Speakers included Eugene Carson Blake, retired World Council of Churches general secretary; Claire Randall, National Council of Churches general secretary; Jorge Lara-Braud, executive director of the NCC faith and order commission; and Burgess Carr, executive head of the All Africa Conference of Churches and the leading advocate of missionary moratorium.

Resolutions adopted included one that supports the NCC’s endorsem*nt of the boycott of California and Arizona table grapes and iceberg lettuce and of Gallo wines. Also adopted was a resolution opposing “any attempt to legislate a specific religious opinion or belief concerning abortion upon Americans.” The assembly voted down a resolution that would have condemned the 1973 abortion rulings of the U. S. Supreme Court. Approved was a statement putting the Disciples on record against “hard core p*rnography in all forms.”

In a “state of the church” address, Kenneth L. Teegarden, general minister and president, expressed concern about the “downward slide” in membership. The latest yearbook reported 1,317,044 members, a loss of 18,414 from two years earlier. Teegarden said the church should be challenged to show a 5 per cent annual growth for the next four years to correct the loss. Another denominational executive, Enoch W. Henry, Jr., told an evangelism meeting: “If current membership trends continue, the Christian Church would be extinct by the year 2000.”

Elected as moderator was James A. Moak, the Disciples’ general minister for Kentucky since 1967.

Cautious Concurrence

Cautious concessions to the influence of governmental agencies on Christian education were made last month at the biennial convention of the 390,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), held at Watertown, Wisconsin.

Under pressure from the U. S. Department of Labor to pay its school teachers equally, the synod passed a resolution that concurred “in the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work.” The vote came only after a committee proposing a new salary schedule assured delegates that “it did not concede that the U. S. Department of Labor had jurisdiction in determining or regulating the salaries paid by religious bodies to their called ministry.” About fifteen of the 275 day schools operated by WELS churches are subsidized by the synod. Technically, the new salary schedule applies only to the fifteen, but those run by the self-supporting congregations are expected to follow the guidelines.

Alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act occurred most frequently in the area of housing allowances. Male teachers generally were provided such an allowance, but women were not. Under the new schedule, housing is to be provided for all teachers “according to family needs without regard to sex.”

Even more cautious was the synod’s action on the question of accreditation for its Northwestern College, located at Watertown. After two hours of debate the delegates authorized the school to explore the possibility of seeking regional accreditation unless the school determines that the accrediting body’s requirements in any way “conflict with the Synod’s scriptural principles, or philosophy of education, or if the college finds any conflict with its purpose or program.” College president Carleton Toppe admitted sharing some of the fears of delegates but asked for a “first step” in order to try to comply with the University of Wisconsin system’s requirement that all unaccredited colleges in the state must start the process by September, 1976. At that time the university system plans to stop accepting undergraduate transfer credits from schools not seeking accreditation.

Subsidies for the synod’s four academies, its two colleges, and its seminary were included in the record budget of $16.1 million adopted without dissent for the next biennium. All seven of the institutions are maintained for the exclusive purpose of educating the denomination’s future pastors and teachers.

The budget for the next two years also anticipates the establishment of forty new congregations, including several on the East Coast. Among the thirty-four congregations admitted to membership at the convention were five from the now dissolved Federation of Authentic Lutheranism, a holding body made up primarily of former members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). The WELS Commission on Interchurch Relations expressed the hope that the conservative force within the LCMS “might yet win its confessional battle” with moderates, but the WELS panel maintained that the Missouri group is still guilty of “unionism” because of its relations with the Lutheran Council and with the more liberal American Lutheran Church.

Oscar J. Naumann of Milwaukee, synod president since 1953, was named to a twelfth term.

No shock or dismay greeted even the most aggressive claims made for technology at an interdisciplinary Conference on Human Engineering and the Future of Man. The conference drew 140 evangelical scholars and leaders to Wheaton College late in July. Their obvious aim was not to discredit but rather to motivate science, and to assess Christian duty at the frontiers of technology.

Evangelicals listened dispassionately to radical naturalists, confident that biblical faith was not being imperiled. They even welcomed the constructive aspects of human engineering. Long before the final day, when a paper by Senator Mark Hatfield underlined the importance of image in an age of mass communications, it was clear that modern evangelicals are not hostile to free inquiry and liberal education. As Dr. Robert Herrmann of Boston University School of Medicine helped remind the conferees, the Christian Church should oppose research only when it infringes upon biblical principles or is unworthy.

If anyone thought these positions were achieved by forfeiting basic evangelical loyalties, no one said so. In fact, participants insisted that science has indispensable (if often unacknowledged) theistic supports. Many of the scientists met daily for pre-breakfast prayer. No evangelicals veiled their faith in a miracle-working God. If any of the secular scientists questioned whether evangelical scholars can be earnestly dedicated to science, the caliber of the audience kept them from saying it.

Science often forgets, noted Dr. Herrmann, that “a biblical perspective forged its beginnings,” while Dr. Donald M. MacKay reminded everyone that the prestigious early modern scientists were overwhelmingly devout evangelicals. Emphasis fell on the Christian view of man and the crucial importance of the divine image in the human person.

Dr. Mackay, of the University of Keele, England, was the leading evangelical among the scientists who presented major papers. He is an internationally known specialist in analogue computing and brain psychology.

The conference procedure was to hear technological concerns presented by prestigious and for the most part non-evangelical scholars, then to hear broadly biblical comments by evangelical respondents, and then to divide into nine sections for group discussion.

Evangelical participants represented nine co-sponsoring organizations openly committed to biblical supernaturalism: American Scientific Affiliation, Center for the Study of the Future, Christian Association for Psychological Studies, Christian College Consortium, Christian Legal Society, Christian Medical Society, Evangelical Theological Society, Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, and Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto).

The main addresses were by Dr. Daniel Callahan, former editor of Commonweal and now director of the Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences, who spoke from a Roman Catholic perspective; Dr. MacKay, who recently delivered the Edington Lectures at Cambridge; Dr. Robert S. Sinsheimer, chairman of the division of biology at California Institute of Technology; Dr. Elliot Valenstein, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan; Dr. Perry London, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Southern California, and (represented by legislative aid Lon Fendall) Senator Hatfield.

Callahan’s verdict was that traditional Judeo-Christian values “still serve us quite adequately” but that we are driven to cope strenuously with new developments.

Sinsheimer’s paper was boldly naturalistic, viewing man as “half a creature of culture” who originated through blind and uncompassionate “laws of chance.” Advances in gene and cell technology, he said, will make it possible to control the sex of fetuses, overcome genetic disease and the birth of genetically defective children, and sooner or later, bring about cloning. Should we invite, he asked, the strains upon “our already troubled social order” that might follow from scientific intervention in the sex of fetuses and from cloning?

Sensheimer’s counsel was: “Go slowly and … reversibly; preserve human individuality; augment general qualities rather than specific talents.” But, he added, if we do not prevent genetic misfortunes “there will be a cancer upon our conscience.” Under questioning Sinsheimer did not clarify how conscience can be an objective moral imperative in a universe ultimately unstructured by personal values.

Dr. Valenstein deplored exaggerations about behavioral control by brain science. “Undoubtedly new drugs will combat depression and anxiety, elevate mood, increase mental alertness and perhaps memory,” he said, “but that is very different than controlling the specific content of thought processes or predicting how these changes in mood or thought processes will be expressed in behavior.” He rejected the idea that brain operations can control the violence as a social problem; for the foreseeable future, he stressed, we should increase rather than decrease “attempts to find social solutions for what are primarily social problems.”

Dr. Paul Feinburg of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School remarked that if we must turn persons into vegetables in order to eliminate evil behavior, then the production of a programmed robot over against God’s establishment of free agency involves an “improvement” we cannot justify. Dr. William P. Wilson of Duke University Medical School expressed doubt that “we’ll have useful private or public uses for brain control” and emphasized, instead, its deteriorating effects. “But,” he allowed, “we may intervene in mental processes of the radically insane if our experiments do no harm and can only hope to restore them.”

Dr. Perry London declared that “ethical and value problems [are] tails wagging the dogs of progress … What one should do with the technology of behavior … is finally a question of values.” The most important non-coercive control technology, he said, is conditioning through education; it is the one least obviously coercive, but most pervasive and least reversible. “The value issues of behavior control which require external legislation and regulation are those in which technology gives some people power over others whether or not for the benefit of those on whom it is exercised,” he said.

The question of what social deviation is permissible is therefore crucial. The West today is threatened by unprecedented ranges and expressions of individual freedom, but control technology, said London, makes it possible to engineer consent and conformity and eliminate personal license while preserving the feeling that one is free. This might simply “trade off one misery for another,” noted London, so that we are left with the question of how much power a good society can exert over its members. The future, like the present, he added, depends upon the values of society, not upon the potential of technology. London noted that a majority of American children “are now being raised by less or more than two parents, one or more of whom did not sire them.”

As indirect social effects of behavior control by psychotherapy and drugs, London foresaw a “shifting of individual morals and more increasingly in the direction of hedonistic goals” and a move from external morality to yoga and transcendental meditation at the expense of Judeo-Christian ethics. He noted that “practitioners in most private offices and out-patient clinics are liberal in their own moral judgments of sexual freedom, if not in their own private activities.”

Dr. Paul Clement of Fuller Graduate School of Psychology observed that London’s remarks were primarily descriptive and non-prescriptive. Dr. Allen Verhey of Calvin Seminary criticized London’s neglect of a straightforward analysis of justice. According to Verhey, the technology that once furthered the democratic ethos through literacy and the development of new tools available to multitudes now threatened that same ethos by promoting both illiteracy—in the sense of a gap between technological and unpopular understanding—and mystification, which makes controllers an elite cadre, set apart from the masses.

Conference planners scheduled no formal theological confrontation of the major papers, no full-scale exposition of the Christian world-life view in its implications and Christian ethicists who took part were invited for only fifteen-minute comments on major addresses.

Evangelical conferees clearly disowned situation ethics. At the same time the Bible was to be not a “casuistic book of rules”; it was said to give norms and goals, principles “that tug in different directions” and require reliance on the Spirit in correlation with the written Word. This would presumably achieve what Dr. Richard Spencer of Fuller Seminary described as a continual conformation of the Christian mind through revision of values in the light of new knowledge by exposure to changeless truth. The conference was at its weakest in its failure to define clearly how the Bible resolves pressing social dilemma.

Jesus Christ was frequently referred to as the explication of God’s purpose in the universe. A suggestion that cloning in Jesus’ image might be welcomed was countered with the thrust that physical image is not decisive and that virtue involves personal decision. Yet Clement spoke of a Christian use of behavioral psychology to produce the fruits of the Spirit.

Callahan asserted that “our generation is perhaps faced with the most critical decision human beings have had to make,” the decision about man’s own nature. This evoked no reference to John 3:3–5. However, Dr. David Allen of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health stressed that what one believed about man influences research, solutions, and the principles governing human community—whether, for example, to treat others as oneself and irrespective of status (color, class, and so on).

Dr. V. Elving Anderson of Dight Institute, University of Minnesota, pointed out that genetic diversity and human equality are not alternatives. To give full scope to both factors, he said, we must protect the freedom and responsibility of individuals in decisions, make the means of desirable genetic control available to all, explore equal opportunity for those with different genetic potential, define the criteria for judging equality, and respect individual worth despite genetic handicaps.

The large number of lay participants in the sectional groups somewhat diluted the conference’s more technical interests. Moreover, debate over theological warrants for arriving at particular judgments and lack of consensus on specific issues hindered intellectual productivity.

Agreement was on broad issues: that, for example, the Church should be the critical champion of science; that human engineering be viewed as potentially useful but also potentially hurtful: that behavoral modification is unacceptable if it oversteps limits that safeguard the image of God in man and man’s capacity to respond to God; that the danger of technology is not intrinsic but lies rather in ideological exploitation and political misuse; that correlation of faith and learning remains an academic imperative; and that Christians should challenge dehumanizing materialistic, mechanistic, and naturalistic theories, particularly the atheistic evoltionary view of man.

MacKay emphasized that the Christian way is that of “humility,” but this, he quickly added, is not synonymous with inertia. “God is the giver of new knowledge, and we are responsible for its use.” Callahan spoke of the duty not simply to avoid harm but to do good, however limited by human finiteness and sin; some scientific research he considered permissible but not obligatory.

To those who declared that technology has become for some persons the utopian religion of our age, Allen pointed out that its ethic is nonetheless utilitarian; emphasizing “the greatest good for the greatest number,” it tends to swallow up the individual in large aggregates and easily sacrifices the abnormal and powerless.

MacKay stressed the glorification of God and service of one’s fellow man as the top priority and the proper goal. While he spoke of biblical criteria, he warned that “the sanctity” and “the worth” of human life can easily become slogans by which one prejudges issues. Acknowledging that Scripture has little to say that can be considered a direct requirement of human engineering as such, he said that “we must consistently seek the positive good that can come out of technology” and went on to speak of “legitimate” human engineering for the glory of God.

The conference recognized the need for legislation in a fallen world. It noted Senator Hatfield’s exhortation that Christians involve themselves more fully and intelligently in public issues. Hatfield noted the moral rootlessness of our times, which enabled, among other things, brilliant twentieth-century scientists interested in a master race to promote forced sterilization of citizens and even the extermination of hundreds of thousands.

Said Dr. John Scanzoni of Indiana University: “Evangelicals have done too little to take the lead for humane practices in research, and they ought not to leave such concerns to non-Christian humanists.” They should cooperate, he added, with all in the public sphere who have humane objectives. Christians have a role in sensitizing the conscience of the nation, observed Carl Henry, but the Church must be the Church in a corporate way, and must witness by lifestyle and not only by lobbies.

Advance publicity envisioned an “international conference” issuing governmental guidelines; conference achievements were rather less. But the gathering was nonetheless profitable. It provided a forum for disseminating expert opinion. And it served as an arena for wrestling with enormously complex and urgent issues in a preliminary way, even if many participants remained unsure how to choose between particular options on biblical premises.

Conference director Craig W. Ellison, a psychologist at Westmont College, who had efficiently engineered the fifteen-hour-a-day program, prodded the twenty members of the conference commission—experts in genetic control, behavior control, brain control, and public policy—to draft a collective post-conference statement giving an evangelical perspective on theological concerns.

Billy Graham,evangelist

The theme of the upcoming World Council of Churches’ assembly, “Jesus Christ Frees and Unites,” should call all Christians to examine again the person and work of Jesus Christ as found in the Scriptures.

Three questions arise from this theme:

Who is Jesus Christ? The question echoes and reechoes throughout the New Testament, and is still the central question facing men today. The Christian faith is centered in the person of Jesus Christ. Who is this Jesus? We must guard against remaking Jesus to fit our own ideas. Too often men have attempted to remold Jesus and the Scriptures to make them conform to the concepts and presuppositions of contemporary secular thought. This can never be done, however, without undermining the Christian faith. There is only one Jesus—the historical Jesus of the Scriptures. In them we learn the good news of the Gospel, that God—the infinite, personal, creator of the universe—has invaded this planet in the person of Jesus Christ. Supernaturally born in a minor province of the Roman Empire, this Jesus lived a sinless life and through his actions demonstrated God’s love for all men. He was put to death on a Roman cross, but because of his bodily resurrection, believing men need no longer fear the powers of sin and death and hell.

What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ frees? We are both freed from something and to something. The Bible declares that man has rebelled against his creator and has become enslaved by sin. The effects of this rebellion can be seen everywhere, from the brokenness of human lives to the corruption of human society. Ultimately, all human problems—both individual and social—spring from man’s rejection of God’s plan for humanity, and man’s attempt to find fulfillment apart from God.

The good news of the Gospel is that God, in his love, has acted in Christ to free men from their bondage to sin and death and hell. The death of Christ on the cross was the most significant event in history. Through his sacrificial death, Jesus Christ made it possible for men to be freed from a life ruled by sin and freed to a life ruled by Christ. To all who will repent of sin and turn to Christ in trusting faith and obedience, the risen Christ promises in his grace forgiveness and life, both now and eternally. It is one of the glorious mysteries of the Gospel that man can only find freedom as he becomes a bondservant of Jesus Christ.

The freedom that Christ brings must never be confused with secular aspirations for political or social freedom, valid as they might be. The freedom Jesus brings is spiritual, and the Christian knows that this is the ultimate need of all men. Therefore, while fighting for social justice at every opportunity, the Christian will also seek to proclaim the release from spiritual bondage offered by Christ. Jesus rejected the radical schemes of the Zealots of his day, not because they were too revolutionary but because they were not revolutionary enough. He knew men could have political freedom and still be enslaved by sin and guilt. Only as men recover the purpose for which God created them can true freedom come.

What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ unites? The Bible says that one of the catastrophic effects of man’s prideful rebellion against God is alienation. This has two dimensions. Man is alienated from his creator and he is alienated from his fellow man. In Jesus Christ, however, God has brought about the possibility of reconciliation of both man with God and man with man. Through faith in Christ man is reconciled to God. He becomes a part of the Church, which consists of all people who share a common loyalty to the Jesus Christ of Scripture.

One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian is love. The Christian no longer is to see other men from a human point of view, whether those men be Christians or non-Christians. Instead, he is called to see men as God sees them, and to seek to minister to their needs in the name of Christ. He is called to be united together in purpose and love with all who are serving Christ. He is called also to declare by word and act the good news of the Gospel to those who are outside the people of God, beseeching them to become reconciled to God.

It is my prayer that this theme will cause all who bear the name of Christ to search the Scriptures afresh, and discover there in a deeper way “Jesus Christ,” the freedom-giver and uniter.

The World Council of Churches launched the good ship Oikoumene at Amsterdam in 1948. Now, twenty-seven years later, the passengers will hold their fifth docking at Nairobi in November.

We have studied the Ecumenical Review and the material prepared and sent to the delegates to evaluate the ship’s seaworthiness and to determine its course for the next decade. We pray that a new unity of purpose and objectives based on Scripture will be developed. The WCC should explain clearly where it stands on some basic issues. For example, will the World Council answer questions raised by the International Congress on World Evangelization that convened in Lausanne, Switzerland, a year ago? We thought the WCC intended to discuss the Lausanne Covenant, but the preliminary literature includes nothing substantive.

A year ago The Ecumenical Review, which is edited by Philip Potter, the general secretary of the WCC, devoted its July issue to the forthcoming assembly. Paul Verghese, former staff member and now a member of the Central Committee, wrote on the main theme of the assembly: “Does Jesus Christ Free and Unite?” In his article he clearly stated the basic issue:

Where, for example, do we locate the powers of darkness from which we seek liberation? If the primary positive element is personal belief in God and Christ, then the primary evidence for locating the enemy is the non-profession or denial of Christian faith. Thus communists, atheists, adherents of other religions, liberal Christians, secular humanists, and all others who refuse to confess Jesus Christ as personal saviour constitute the army against which the fight is carried on.

On the other hand, for those who regard socio-economic liberation as the primary positive element in the Gospel, the major enemy would be the oppressive and exploitative establishment at the world and national levels: the military-industrial complex, the multinational corporations, the capitalist system, the white racist domination of the world, along with those institutional churches which are linked and identified with the establishment [p. 369, 370].

The WCC must seriously consider what Verghese has said. We want to know who the real enemy is according to the WCC’s understanding. What we do is determined by what we believe about the identity of the enemy. If we follow Verghese’s first option it means evangelizing the world with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The acceptance of the second option presented by Verghese validates what was done by the WCC at Uppsala, and said at Bangkok: “Salvation is the peace of the people in Vietnam, independence in Angola, justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and release from the captivity of power in the North Atlantic community.…” Then we can follow the reasoning of Michael Knoch who wrote in the same issue of The Ecumenical Review:

Marxism regards the middle class as the bourgeoisie, an exploiting class which must be deprived of its role of leadership.… What the Church believes cannot be fixed once and for all … None of us can abolish socialism, Marxism or even atheism, as if they were phases which could be eliminated or reversed.… Perhaps we must revert from an explicit Christology to an implicit Christology, back to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, in order to build up a new form of Church based on Jesus’ life among the outcasts. Such a Church would include traditionalists and people with no religion, Christians and atheists.… The unity between religious people and atheists in a Church of this kind certainly cannot be fixed in the traditional statements of faith [pp. 439ff].

Verghese and those who wrote the delegates’ material assume that capitalism is the enemy and socialism the answer to man’s needs. Thus, for example, the document, Section V, Number One, speaks of the internationalization of the arms business “making the U. S. Government the biggest supplier in the world. Arms transfers by the superpowers are concentrated today upon a few areas such as the Near East and Indochina. Black Africa, Latin America, large parts of Asia and smaller European countries experience a heavy influx of military armaments produced in France, Britain or West Germany.” Number Two, Section V states:

Coordinated actions should be taken against exploitation by Japanese, American and European companies in Asian countries, and against national policies that induce exploitation and dehumanization.… The objective of people’s organization is the realization of people’s power.… This objective necessarily implies a transfer of power from the ruling classes to the masses.

Apart from one isolated reference there is no evidence that the leaders of the WCC find anything wrong with Communism. There is no mention of the people in slave labor camps in Siberia or of the multiplied millions of people who were murdered during the Chinese revolution.

We do not deny that sinful men prostitute capitalism and that certain wrongs need to be righted. But, as The Gulag Archipelago graphically informs us, Communism, too, is culpable. How can a theologian like Jürgen Moltmann say that “In, with and under capitalism, dictatorship (i.e. of the right), racism, sexism and nihilism men suffer finally from that deep-set primal anxiety which makes them so inhumane and aggressive.” Will the WCC be prophetic enough to hear and heed men like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov? Bring Solzhenitsyn to Nairobi. Let him tell the Church what oppression, slave labor, and loss of freedom of speech and religion really mean in the Soviet Union. The WCC cannot obtain a fully rounded picture of the world without providing a platform for the suffering critics of communism.

The Religious News Service reports:

A group of American Eastern Orthodox theologians have accused the World Council of Churches’ leaders of “conscious” onesidedness in selecting evils to be condemned in study papers for the Council’s Fifth Assembly.… The Orthodox Theological Society of America claims that the Assembly advance documents “severely” and “relentlessly” expose the evils of Western societies but ignore Marxist repression and political excesses in the so-called Third World.… We consider it to be a conscious policy of the leaders of the World Council of Churches to be selective in their choice of evils for criticism and condemnation.… We reject forthrightly this policy as prejudiced, dangerous, divisive, and supportive of human slavery.

The American Eastern Orthodox theologians are correct. But they are not alone. J. Andrew Kirk, theology teacher in Buenos Aires, writing in an Anglican journal says of the Nairobi documents: “Each dossier is almost totally predictable to anyone who has followed the increasing shift to the left on the part of the WCC executive elite.” The editor of the Churchman said that the WCC shows the tendency of modern theology “to be too man-centered, to concentrate too much on nature and too little on grace.” If the imbalance remains, he prophesied that the WCC “will be seen increasingly as an expensive irrelevance.”

We want to hear the WCC speak up about Marxism and about captive nations like Tibet, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. But if the WCC really believes that capitalism as practiced in America, Japan, and Western Europe is the enemy, and that the centralized, freedom-limiting nations are to be welcomed as the wave of the future let it say so loudly and clearly.

Verghese’s second option is important here: all men will be saved and all men, knowingly or unknowingly, are already in Christ. Indeed it was Verghese who in 1962 when he was Associate General Secretary of the WCC [see Ecumenical Review, Vol. XV, No. 1, Oct. 1962] wrote:

Will the unbaptized man be saved? God wills that all men be saved. And He wills as He ought to will. And His will is: “When the hour of destiny strikes, to gather together into one the whole Universe in Him” (Eph. 1:10). Can that will be thwarted? No, for His will is commensurate with His power. But how is His will to be fulfilled? That is a cosmic question. Our task is to learn the answer slowly, by the tragic method, by laying down our lives for the life of the world.

If all men are saved at last, then baptism no longer has crucial significance, which contradicts Syrian Orthodox theology and that of other churches that insist upon water baptism as an essential part of the salvatory process. So we also ask the WCC to tell us: will everyone be saved at last? Is there a hell? If all people are already saved spiritually, then Christians can and ought to spend their times and energies correcting economic and political oppression. But if all people are not saved, then we return to the priority of preaching the Gospel, which demands that believers exert redeemed energies to help heal social injustices; we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

At Nairobi the churches through their elected representatives can tell the WCC what it ought to be and how it ought to act. But if the bureaucrats continue the course they established at Uppsala in 1968, the ship Oikoumene may sail from Nairobi without a clear destination and without a steady hand at the helm. It’s time for the Christian masses to speak and for the elite to listen. In communist phraseology, the time has come for the “proletarians” in the pews to seize the helm, steer the ship, and make their masters obey some better commands.

Learning Fair Play

Third World churches have much to teach their “mother churches” in Europe and North America, but until now most of the lessons were thought to be in the area of evangelization. As unlikely as it may seem to some affluent Christians, churches in underdeveloped areas can also teach something about stewardship.

Some of the poorest people of Latin America have been organized into congregations of only ten families. And each of those congregations supports a pastor from the tithes of its members. Many North American congregations could take note of their faithfulness, even if the pattern could not be applied in all its details. Imagine what could be done for Christ’s kingdom if every church family tithed!

In how many of the “mission sending” congregations does the pastor’s salary equal the average income of his parishioners? A New York pastor wrote the other day that inflation has caused his family to give up most meat, restaurant meals, book clubs, and ball games. While these alterations in life style might not seem to be much of a sacrifice, they do show that his congregation has not adjusted his pay to keep up with the rate of inflation. And one wonders whether similar belt-tightening had been practiced by those parishioners who would stoutly defend Jesus’ assertion that “the laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7).

Many churches should take a leaf from the book of some of their fellow believers in the Third World: return to the biblical principle of giving the tenth to the Lord, and the church will be able to meet all its obligations. Adequate pay for the preacher is one of those obligations.

Beware Of Tm

Especially because Transcendental Meditation claims not to be a religion, Christians need to be extremely wary of this increasingly popular movement, founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Two best-selling books promoting the movement—The TM Book by Peter McWilliams, and TM: Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming Stress by Harold Bloomfield, Michael Cain, and Dennis Jaffe—attest to increasing interest.

TM is not taught in these books; one must go to (and pay) one of the authorized centers for the short instruction course. The emphasis is upon a technique that supposedly can be used no matter what the meditator’s religious beliefs. But TM is permeated with the Hindu life and world view. Although it does not call for the robes and the vegetarian diet of other Hindu imports, in the crucial concepts of God, man, sin, and fellowship between God and man and among men, TM is thoroughly Hinduistic.

For a thorough, readable, and accurate comparison of the differences between Christian and Hindu teaching on such matters, see What Everyone Should Know About Transcendental Meditation by Gordon Lewis (Regal Books, 92 pp., $1.45 pb). We hope that a mass-market paperback house will publish an edition, too.

Christians need to understand what TM really is so that they are prepared to challenge the infiltration of this religious movement into schools, government agencies, businesses, and even sports teams. TM proponents have the right to promote their beliefs in North America, just as Christianity has been proclaimed in India. They should, however, cease to pretend that it is not a religiously based movement. And Christians should take the offense against Hindu deceptions.

Haile Selassie

Few will deny that Haile Selassie showed statesmanlike qualities for most of his eighty-three years. He will perhaps be remembered most for the uncommon courage with which he stood up to Mussolini. But his leadership in Ethiopia was even more significant. He transformed the country and brought it to a place of order and stability.

Toward the close of his life Selassie lost considerable respect. Like many another monarch, he did not adequately prepare for succession. Stagnation and oppression characterized his country, and even Pentecostal believers were being oppressed. The best thing that can be said is that he stayed in power too long.

His Christian role was unique. Selassie traced his royal line to the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for which Selassie served as “protector” is traditionally thought to have originated with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Selassie made some efforts, especially in later years, to identify with Christians elsewhere. Most notable was his 1966 appearance at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, where he was warmly welcomed despite the sharp theological disagreements evangelicals have with the Ethiopian Orthodox. “This age above all ages,” he said then, “is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women.” He added that “however wise or however mighty a person may be, he is like a ship without a rudder if he is without God.”

Gutenberg’S Useful Beauty

When Johann Gutenberg printed his Bibles, about two hundred in all, he had more in mind than utility.

Of course, he wanted to make very usable Bibles of enduring quality. The discovery of the forty-eighth extant Gutenberg Bible (see News, page 67), missing only seven leaves and undamaged except for a few small work holes, shows that his Bibles have indeed lasted for five hundred years. But his Bibles also show that Gutenberg thought utility, or function, should be melded with beauty. As was done with hand-lettered manuscripts, most of the capital letters in this Bible were colored red or blue by artists. His use of the gothic typestyle is evidence that Gutenberg wanted to retain the beauty found in hand-lettered pages.

The vision of creating useful objects that are also beautiful is one we all need, whether we print books or cook and care for our families. Our lives and work, as with Gutenberg, should reflect the glory, the beauty, of God.