Page 5777 – Christianity Today (2024)

America’s foreboding future will rouse, if not rudely unleash, monstrous challenges for both the Church and the seminary. I call the future “foreboding” because of the enormous crises that many observers see developing. The future will hurl upon us the technology crisis: the dazzling achievements of science and technology, and the resultant disintegration in spiritual and moral conditions. Overarching this is the economic crisis: America’s commitment to economic growth, and the jarring social and ecological consequences of this growth. Furthermore, America will face the justice crisis: the sizeable social costs of eliminating inequalities, and the even greater costs of continuing them. Moreover, people will begin to clamor for more fulfilling social roles in their work and leisure, but such roles will become more difficult to find; the result will be an alienation crisis. Every level of human experience will be touched by these crises.

Some financial forecasters say that America will not recover from its present economic slump for at least two years. A few claim it may take as long as a decade. If either prophecy proves true, most seminaries will experience serious (for some, ruinous) financial difficulties, even if their enrollment continues to grow. As a consequence, the greatest influence upon the course of seminary education may emanate from the treasurer’s office. Some schools will die; some will merge; a few will cooperate in theological centers. Some seminaries may become “think tanks,” more research oriented, and survive through federal funding. Most, however, will weather the economic storm alone.

In the decades ahead the churches and seminaries will be pressed to evaluate social drifts and tides, to referee the conflicts between technical efficiency and quality of life, authoritarianism and participation, freedom and restriction, equality and disproportion, uniformity of belief/life-style and pluralism/diversity, tradition and change, nationalism and internationalism, and so on. Global, planetary, and even transplanetary problems such as the deterioration of life-support systems, world population and hunger, increasing genetic loads, and national claims upon celestial bodies will draw more deeply into our life patterns.

Unnerving questions will be explored. Shocking proposals will be suggested. Will parents be allowed to produce as many children as they desire in the light of world over-population? More disturbingly, people will begin to question the freedom of parenthood altogether on account of the ever increasing load of defective genes. Will the world’s scarce resources allow the small nuclear family structure to continue unchanged, or will some form of communal living, based upon sharing, be essential for survival? Toward the end of this century, the government may begin to consider regulating family size and taking a more active role in child rearing. Moreover, we may begin to see hints toward “death control,” i.e., killing newborn babies who have serious mental or physical defects. Evangelicals will be exercised by queries and prospects like these. In addition, seminaries will struggle with more specific theological challenges, from neo-evolutionary visions of some “Universal Process” to theologies of human extinction.

Theological educators will probably introduce students to the tools available for forecasting, designing, shaping, and evaluating Christian hopes for society in general and the Church in particular. Thus Futuristics may become as important as Histories in the curriculum of tomorrow’s seminary. And it will be helpful to determine, in light of current conditions, what parts of the recorded past are important for extended investigation. For instance, in view of America’s unwillingness to face its growth limitations and the disastrous consequences of this as outlined in various studies (the MIT work The Limits of Growth, for one), a review of the life of St. Francis of Assisi might be framed. This austere Christian believed that even to touch money brought spiritual contamination. He continually shared this world’s goods when he chanced upon another who was in need.

The seminary will gradually respond to the crises of technology, injustice, and alienation. Course content probably will not, in the future, be intended simply to over-inform a student about technical details; the aim will be to sculpture a well-informed person who, through the subject matter and the professor, experiences the presence and transforming power of God. For example, Bible professors will begin to cast aside the pronouncements of scholars dazzled by the historical-critical method. As neutral observers, teachers influenced by this approach prattled dispassionately about the Scriptures with but passing reference to its life-stinging power. Walter Wink, in his recent book The Bible in Human Transformation, speaks of “The Great Bankruptcy” in contemporary biblical scholarship, in which theories (“hard” facts) continually scramble uncaptured through the students’ minds. New academic paradigms, set within the affective and spiritual/valuative dimensions of human life (“soft” facts), will thus begin to emerge. The saving nature of the Good News will begin to transect courses that hitherto have been oriented toward a detached descriptive or analytical discussion of ideas and concepts.

Theological education will also be taught from the perspective of the world’s co*ckeyed manner of living. An attack upon the sins of self-centeredness and injustice will become more deeply a part of both biblical and general hermeneutics. As a result, courses will be transfused with a thrust toward fostering the moral and spiritual virtues that are found in the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ. The upshot will be that students and faculty members will be challenged to develop a compassionate faith, and then to test alternative styles of community life that emerge from that faith. These new forms of Christian living will exhibit an apologetic and evangelistic impulse. The many “extra-church” groups and organizations will continue to nudge seminaries in this direction.

General educational trends will affect the shape of the teaching-learning process in the seminaries. Theological education will, in all probability, become more field oriented. Experience in the field may even emerge as the center of the whole curriculum. It will concentrate on the actual problems facing people in the world. Students will be encouraged to practice their faith. Learning will then be organized around their experiences.

As a consequence, the conception of “training” for ministry may yield to one of ministry itself. The traditional minister-in-training approach in which the trainee imitated another minister or simply fulfilled specific jobs or operations may be significantly modified. Students will be less likely to link their sense of ministry to such mechanical functions and technical know-how. Their sense of vocational pride will emerge out of their participation in the evaluation and adjustment of the Church’s spiritual direction and institutional priorities. As a by-product, students will not be perceived by their professors and co-ministers as just trainees or apprentices. Rather, they will be seen as colleagues, or even as consultants, in ministry. This status breakdown between professor and student, besides changing the relationship between the two, will affect the “professional” gap that has existed between the roles of the minister and the lay-person as they take part in their common task.

The implications of practice-oriented education may reach far and deep into future structuring of theological education. The assumption that students ought to telescope their schooling into a three-or four-year block directly after college may change. Education will be seen as a life-long process. This may translate into greater emphasis upon developing various styles of continuing education. Multi-extended campuses and degree and/or certificate programs may proliferate, although learning will be seen as more important than credentials. It is not inconceivable that academic credit will be given for self-learning experiences in which students themselves design, teach, and evaluate their course work.

A problem-solving perspective may, as a result, fray the traditional patterns of dividing subjects into separate disciplines and teaching them in isolated courses. Students will be taught from the assumption that one studies problems by considering the army of data that surrounds them: the interplay of systems, policies, roles, laws, customs, power relations, aesthetics, ideologies, theologies, and psychological and social forces. All these are sprinkled with and organized by differing value sets. A narrow or isolated perspective could cause one to misconstrue the seriousness and complexity of a problem as well as the biblical-theological points that bear on its solution. As teaching becomes more interdisciplinary, professors will need to widen the boundaries of their fields of concentration.

A future course segment may, for example, entail an exegesis of selected passages in Romans 1–8. This might be preceded by an examination of specific paragraphs in works comparable to John Lambert’s The New Prometheans on the one hand and Lewis Yablonsky’s Robopaths on the other. The outlines of the present human condition given in these contrasting works might help to illuminate the general human situation and God’s response as Paul expresses it within the book of Romans. For instance, Romans 1:18 (“the wrath of God”) might be given greater prominence owing to the present spiritually and morally outrageous human condition of “robopa-thology” (the technological sickness of living, according to Yablonsky, a mechanical, compassionless life). Theological considerations would also intersect here, since a stress upon the angry or “outraged” God may return to the fore of future discussions. Students may then be asked to create scenarios that describe new and liberating life forms (following Romans 6:4, “walking in newness of life”). They might then design a church program that would be necessary to prepare people for such a life. Using their communication and organizing skills, the students would prayerfully attempt to implement these hopes in their field ministry.

The influence of general educational trends may be felt most deeply in the area of teaching methods. Tied to the push for both the integrative and the practical dimensions of seminary education will be the need for new teaching techniques that link the classroom experience with the student’s practical ministry. In a day when raw knowledge will be easily attainable and people will begin to rely even less upon someone else’s unification and interpretation of that knowledge, the lecture method may wane. It will not disappear, however, but will persevere alongside other teaching devices such as the case study, verbatims, simulation gaming, value clarification, team dialogue, action and discussion, and various media techniques.

Other tremors of change will be felt in the seminary environment. The contribution of blacks and women as students, faculty, and administrators will be increasingly felt. The seminary will also become more open about the structuring of course work. Students will be given the time and opportunity to pursue interests that may not be covered within the more formal curriculum framework. Moreover, students will participate more fully in decisions that affect them directly—the hiring of faculty, kinds of course offerings, field opportunities, and general spiritual atmosphere of the seminary.

Because of the practical-ministry orientation of the curriculum and the assumed counter-productive effects of competitive, punitive teaching, there may be great changes in grading and testing. These processes may be replaced by evaluative procedures based upon the student’s total contribution to the educational and ministerial experience.

Faculty members themselves will become more accountable with reference to their approachability and their enrichment of the learning process. It may become common for professors and students to work within an environment structured around continuing mutual feedback. Greater accountability will also float up to the administration and board. Policy-making and budget expenditures will become more open to and influenced by the school’s total constituency. Furthermore, the seminary as a whole will become more responsive to the churches and the community within which it serves.

The average theological school is likely to be unprepared for the sizzling shock of future realities, needs, and questions. For this reason seminaries will face great temptations. On the one hand, they may be enticed to “capitalize” upon people’s growing sense of alienation and moral apathy by advocating a dehydrated gospel of sentimental self-pity and inner escape. On the other hand, they may be lured to endorse uncritically any social movement that seems to promise ultimate answer to crises. Evangelical seminaries must continually renew their commitment to tradition as well as to vision—more precisely, their commitment to the tradition of vision, the Word of God. Then, whatever emphases and forms these seminaries may acquire, they will embody the Gospel in its redemptive, critical, reconstructive activity within human affairs. They may, with the power of the Holy Spirit, undergo a spiritual metamorphosis comparable to the social transformations that are to come.

This issue opens with a fine article by M. Whitcomb Hess on William Law, noted for his treatise “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.” Law never married, and perhaps you, like me, will wonder whether it is easier to live such a life if one is single. I must confess that the role of husband and father seems to complicate matters, as I’m sure that of wife and mother does also; but this neither diminishes my “serious call” nor excuses my failures.

I was moved when reading William Van Deburg’s account of “The Tragedy of Frederick Douglass.” He asks a hard question: Have white evangelicals really profited from the mistakes made in the treatment of this black brother, who was keenly hurt by the failure of Christians to live up to their profession?

D. G. Kehl tackles what he calls “subliminal seduction,” the shaping of our attitudes by the use of “sneaky stimuli” of which we have no conscious awareness. Kehl tells us how we can offset this pernicious practice so that the Devil will not get the advantage over us.

Happy reading to you all in an issue crammed full of profitable things!

Joe Parker is an Irish-born Anglican clergyman who from 1962 worked with The Mission to Seamen in Belfast. Ten years later, his fourteen-year-old son Stephen was one of eleven people killed when a car bomb exploded in a shopping center. Stephen had correctly guessed the car’s lethal load and tried to warn people. He was posthumously awarded the queen’s commendation for gallantry.

His father had a billboard erected in the city center, showing the number of casualties since trouble erupted in 1969. Several times a week he updated it; recently the grim total showed 1,136 dead, more than 11,000 injured. Underneath was the inscription: “No Cause Can Justify This.”

Joe Parker helped found the Witness for Peace Movement, now comprising 40,000 people who want to end the violence. His life has been threatened through letters and telephone calls. “Some people,” he says, “don’t have to take a gun or plant a bomb to keep the cauldron of hate boiling. Some culprits sit in the front pews of churches every week.”

He has forgiven those who killed his son, and testifies that his faith has been strengthened. But he can no longer live with the hatred of those who cannot forgive. He has taken a post with his Mission in Vancouver, and with his wife and family is sadly preparing to leave his native island.

To write about Northern Ireland is a sure way of escaping the woes destined for those of whom all men shall speak well. I return to the subject with the utmost reluctance. During a recent six-week stay in the United States, I was appalled by the anti-British slant of television news items about Northern Ireland.

Apart from the sizable segment of the electorate that is Irish-Catholic in origin, Americans generally are not very clear about what is going on in those six counties of the Emerald Isle that remain stubbornly British. There is a certain imprecision about the sort of banner headline I saw recently in Pasadena: “ENGLAND OUT OF IRELAND.” In the Sunday-morning service of one of the country’s largest Presbyterian churches, the pastor said that the headquarters of his denomination had sent a request for prayer for Northern Ireland. Then he went on to say: “There is a battle going on there between Presbyterians and Roman Catholics.” I groaned inwardly and scribbled a brief note to the pastor in the hope that he would reword the announcement for the main service an hour later. Either he didn’t get my note or he knows something I don’t, for he repeated the wording next time round.

Two comments are called for. First, Presbyterians are a minority of the total Protestant representation in the province. Even more important, however, we cannot understand Northern Ireland by simplistically reducing it to a religious war. Visits to the devastated areas of Belfast and Londonderry will confirm irrefutably that holiness has nothing to do with it.

Two books on Northern Ireland have come my way recently. One is The Bitter Harvest: Church and State in Northern Ireland, by Albert J. Menendez (Luce, 228 pp., $7.50), assistant editor of Church and State magazine. His book is packed full of revealing statistics. He shows how unpromising here is the ground for the planting of nonsectarian, liberal attitudes. Menendez is convinced that the “intensely discriminatory penal laws” against Catholics before 1793 so strengthened that church’s position that Irishness and Catholicism became synonymous, and Rome became identified with the cause of Irish freedom and independence.

On the other hand, he discusses the dwindling Protestant population of the Irish Republic, from 313,049 in 1911 to 130,126 in 1971—a factor closely connected with Rome’s attitude toward such matters as intermarriage, divorce, birth control, and abortion.

He quotes Joseph O’Connor of the United Ireland Publicity Committee (in America): “We are using every method possible to wage a full-scale civil war in the six northern counties.” Substantial amounts of money and arms reach Ireland from America—a country (Menendez did not say this) outraged when another major power tried to interfere in its sphere of influence in Cuba. This puzzles me: does it mean that it’s all right if your friends are the offenders, but not if your enemies are?

Menendez is right in pointing out that Protestant bigotry is more virulent and sustained than Catholic. His book reproduces many pamphlets, diatribes, and songs in support of this view. Some of them are positively hair-raising. No comment is given. No comment is needed.

The second book is Northern Ireland: Captive of History, by Gary MacEoin (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 338 pp., $10). A distinguished journalist and scholar who was born into a Catholic family in the Republic, MacEoin too is concerned to expose some of the myths that “become an element of misunderstanding.” He sees Irish Catholicism as little touched by the spirit of Pope John and appreciates the Protestant’s determination to have no part of it.

His book is more historically oriented than the other, and he is surefooted in guiding the reader through the intricacies of Irish politics. He is under no illusion about IRA brutality, but he is concerned also to detail the frightening implications of the Special Powers Act by which a detainee can be held indefinitely. “The police do not even have to reveal the fact that they hold him for forty-eight hours, and during that time he can be interrogated without the right to a lawyer.”

MacEoin, with some qualification, holds the Protestant community responsible for continuing injustices. Because Britain and the Republic are part of the problem, they cannot provide the solution. He would like to see cantonization after the Swiss model (the Turks’ original preference for Cyprus); this, he feels, would provide the necessary new factor in the situation.

Meanwhile this is still a fiercely Protestant province notably lacking in the fruits of the Spirit, a place where one’s opponent is not only wrong but damned, and where approved behavior and hatred are often in bizarre affinity. And yet—how many of us could stand proud under the glare of international searchlights? I for one am grateful and relieved that the world does not know all, and humbled that there are people in Northern Ireland who pray for me.

Sexuality and ordination is a much talked about—and fought over—topic these days. The main debates are about the ordination of women to the ministry and, more controversially, the ordination of hom*osexuals.

Last month the congregation of the 250-member University United Methodist Church of Madison, Wisconsin, voted 32–19 to support the ordination bid of self-described hom*osexual Stephen Webster, 23, a University of Wisconsin graduate involved for several years in youth work at the church. But the motion lost for lack of a two-thirds majority. (If it had won, other steps would have been necessary, including approval of the denomination.) Webster said he would plead his case before a meeting of the denomination’s policy-making body in April.

The thirty-member United Methodist Council of Youth Ministry last year announced it will ask the 1976 General Conference of the denomination to amend its Book of Discipline to read: “Sex, race, marital status, or sexual orientation shall not be a bar to the ordained ministry of the United Methodist Church.” The youth council stated flatly that hom*osexuality should neither be a bar to ordination nor be considered synonymous with immorality. This month the council issued a 700-word statement acknowledging the sharp reaction it has evoked throughout the denomination and urging the ministries division to deal immediately with the sexuality issue. (Faced with a budget deficit of $30,000, the council in other action dismissed half its six-person staff.)

Reaction has indeed been sharp. Charles Keysor, a leader of the conservative Good News movement within the denomination, warned that the campaign to permit ordination of hom*osexuals could be the most divisive issue since slavery split the church in 1847. A widely circulated editorial entitled “The Gathering Storm” in Good News, the movement’s magazine, listed storm warnings. Among them: a ruling in 1971 by the UMC’s highest judicial body permitting a Texas minister to apply for restoration after his conference suspended him when he affirmed he was a hom*osexual; a grant of $400 last year by the UMC youth council and one for $500 by the UMC global ministries division to the ecumenical National Task Force on Gay People in the Church; sympathetic treatment of self-avowed hom*osexual ministers in an article in New World Outlook, a UMC publication; and a UMC-backed consultation at Berkeley, California, in which the church’s position on hom*osexuality was painted as being wrong and hom*osexuality was portrayed as good. The editorial closed with an exhortation to fight the attempts to change the UMC’s official position. (The UMC in 1972 adopted a statement condemning hom*osexual practice.)

Keysor and UMC leaders point out that opposition is not against hom*osexual persons but against hom*osexual practice.

Thousands of church members in another denomination, however, do not think that distinction is a valid one, and they don’t think hom*osexual practice is wrong. They are members of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches—churches for the so-called gay community. It’s quite possible the UFMCC will get a lot of headlines this year and set off controversies in other denominations. The group reportedly is big enough now to meet the fifty-congregation, 20,000-member requirement to apply for membership in the National Council of Churches. Such a move would ignite reaction nationwide.

A vote on whether to apply for membership in the NCC may be taken at the UFMCC’s annual convention in Dallas in July, according to Pastor Lee Carlton of the main Los Angeles congregation of the UFMCC. But, said he, there is stiff opposition among the UFMCC faithful against membership in the NCC. “We have a lot of evangelical separatists in our movement who don’t want to have anything to do with the NCC, and a number of others think it’s a dead organization we don’t need anyway,” said Carlton in an interview. He says the UFMCC has about 20,000 members in seventy-eight churches, fourteen of them in eight foreign countries. (In March he will move to Australia to become the UFMCC’s director of evangelism and world mission.)

Carlton, 28, is a former minister of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and a graduate of the denomination’s Northwest Bible College in Minot, North Dakota. He describes himself as an evangelical and says many in his congregation of 1,000 (“about 75 per cent are gay”) have strong evangelical beliefs. He insists biblical injunctions concern hom*osexual lust, not hom*osexual love. Heterosexual evangelicals need to rethink the issue in a loving manner, he states, asserting there are thousands of hom*osexuals in evangelical churches who need acceptance and fellowship rather than condemnation.

The UFMCC’s big problems, says Carlton, is a shortage of qualified clergy courageous enough to “come out” (declare themselves as hom*osexuals). Another is opposition. Arsonists destroyed five churches in 1973 (thirty-two persons, including the pastor, died in a New Orleans blaze), and several other fires have been reported.

The gay-church movement was begun in 1968 in Los Angeles by Troy D. Perry, Jr., a former Pentecostal preacher from the South who got his theological training at Moody Bible Institute. On many doctrinal points he holds a fundamentalist position, but he deviates on the issue of sex. He performs “Services of Holy Union” for couples of the same sex, saying hom*osexual acts are sinful only if they are based on lust instead of love. He prefers long-term “monogamous relationships” but confesses his own love life has not been that exclusive (“God has a permissive will”). “I believe there can be loving experiences, even in a one-night stand,” he told a reporter recently. (Perry has served as full-time chief administrative officer of the UFMCC since 1972.)

In light of the explosive nature of the hom*osexual issue, the hubbub over ordination of women seems relatively insignificant. Nevertheless, the matter continues to command attention, especially in the Episcopal Church. Charges are pending against two priests for permitting women to celebrate communion in churches in Washington, D. C., and Oberlin, Ohio. If found guilty of disobeying church law, the men can be censured, suspended from duties, or expelled from the priesthood. The women involved were among eleven deaconesses who took part in an irregular service of ordination in Philadelphia last summer that was later declared invalid by the bishops. The bishops are trying to get the pro-ordination forces to cool it until next year’s general convention.

Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, New York, defied Bishop Ned Cole’s advice and called Betty Bone Schiess, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven,” to be priest-associate. Cole warned she is not licensed to officiate, but the chief diocesan policy-making committee affirmed her fitness for the priesthood.

An Arlington, Virginia, rector opposed to opening the priesthood to women appealed subtly to the people in the pews. Those receiving communion elements from women acting as priests, he asserts, have been given “only the outward sign of the sacrament but are denied the power thereof.” The “Real Presence” of Christ in the elements is forfeited because consecration of the elements can be accomplished only by a validly ordained celebrant, insists priest Kenneth Eade.

In a meeting in Nashville, nearly 200 United Methodist women ministers called on their own denomination to recognize and support the Philadelphia Eleven, even inviting them to become ministers in the UMC.

Meanwhile, in a twist of irony, opposition to ordination of women cost a United Presbyterian ministerial candidate his ordination. The landmark case involves Walter Wynn Kenyon, 26, an honors graduate of Pittsburgh Seminary and supply pastor at a suburban Pittsburgh church. In a split vote the Presbytery of Pittsburgh endorsed Kenyon for ordination. The only apparent hassle during his examination occurred when, citing Scripture, he stated he could not in good conscience ordain a woman to be a ruling elder, a key lay position in local churches. He said he would not, however, prevent another minister from performing the ordination, and he affirmed he would serve willingly with ordained women.

The Presbytery’s decision was appealed to the denomination’s highest judicial unit, which ruled that Kenyon could not be ordained. The judicial panel said a decision on ordination must be in line with the denomination’s constitution, which stipulates that men and women may be ordained ruling elders, deacons, or ministers. The action was believed to be the first time a presbytery was reversed on an ordination question.

A number of Presbyterian pastors are up in arms. “What about men already in the ministry who hold similar views?” they ask. Others point angrily to the approval without question of applicants with glaring doctrinal deficiencies.

Clearly, the battle lines are being drawn on several fronts.

FOR THE BIRDS

For more than a year a Toronto man has been searching for a minister to join his two mynah birds, Rajah (who appeared on a Johnny Carson TV show) and Rani, in holy matrimony. Finally, Pastor Lindsay King of the Willowdale United Church consented. Objections by his church members, however, forced him to cancel the ceremony. King expressed disappointment, saying the action would have made his church more “human.”

The birds’ owner said six big Las Vegas casinos and a Niagara Falls hotel were competing for sponsorship of the wedding.

PIPING DOWN

Beginning this month a lot of Puerto Rican churches will make some changes in order to comply with the government’s recently announced war on noise. In some cases, members will have to restrain themselves in singing and praying; in others, amplifiers will have to be turned down or off and instruments muted.

Last year the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled, after a fourteen-year delay, that churches cannot produce noise that will annoy neighbors and that they must limit the volume of sound. In April a dispute erupted over the noise produced by the Pentecostal Church of God in San Juan. Traditional Christmas masses were nearly canceled by a Catholic church in San Juan when a neighbor reportedly complained that the music would disturb his early-morning sleep.

Catholic and Protestant leaders alike are sounding off against the new regulations.

Yugoslavia: Marriage On Trial

Yugoslavia is setting up a network of marriage-guidance centers and enforcing a one-month trial marriage period before the wedding, according to a United Press dispatch. The new law is an attempt to deal with the nation’s increasing divorce rate (nearly 10 per cent), say authorities. They cite incompatibility as the most commonly stated reason for divorce. Many young people get married after knowing each other less than a week, they point out.

Under the new procedure, divorce will be harder to obtain and courts will have the right to order special counseling if they think a marriage can be saved.

Tough Times For Trinity

Trinity Parish in New York City, the nation’s largest and wealthiest Episcopal congregation, has offered for sale ten of its twenty-four commercial properties in lower Manhattan. Asking price: $14.6 million (they are assessed at $7.8 million). High vacancy rates were blamed for the decision.

Net income from real-estate operations is down by more than $500,000 since 1972, says a church spokesman, who declined to cite commercial-income figures. Trinity has had to trim its annual budget from $6.2 million in 1972 to about $4.8 million this year, he said. Sources indicate the real-estate operations account for 75 per cent of the church’s annual income. Despite the seeming affluence, Trinity has been registering deficits ($2 million in 1972, an estimated $500,000 this year).

The parish, chartered by King William III of England in 1697, traces its wealth to the gift of Queen Anne’s seventy-three-acre farm in 1705. The farm included much of what is now Greenwich Village, and over the years the church increased its holdings.

The parish is made up of Trinity Church and a half dozen chapels with a total membership of 3,900 (Trinity Church itself has 400 members).

Religion In Transit

Increasingly, church leaders are calling for a crackdown on TV programing. They’re complaining to network executives, advertisers, the Federal Communications Commission, and Congress about the profanity, vulgarity, violence, and sex that are spewing into living rooms all over America. Groups working for reform range from the United Church of Christ, which is organizing a monitoring program, to the National Association of Evangelicals. Congress and the FCC (active churchmen are among its leaders) are listening.

Twelve church-related colleges and universities in Arkansas have formed a cooperative council to press for financial support from the state. They include Baptist, United Methodist, Southern Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, Churches of Christ (Harding College), and independent (John Brown University) schools. Sources show thirty-nine states offer some form of aid to private colleges or their students.

The Church of the Nazarene emerged from 1974 in good health. “Substantial” increases were reported in membership (608,000 worldwide), Sunday-school enrollment (1.17 million), total giving ($134.6 million, with a 10 per cent increase in per capita giving), and college enrollment (9,800 students in twelve schools). Membership in Korea rocketed from 7,500 to 16,500, a 132 per cent increase.

A Gallup Poll survey shows that church attendance in the United States in 1974 remained at the same level as in the three previous years, with 40 per cent of adults attending church or synagogue services in a typical week. Other findings: churchgoing is less frequent in West Coast states than elsewhere; married persons have a better attendance record than singles; and young people with college backgrounds are more likely to attend than those who haven’t gone to college.

Pending approval of plans, the 53-year-old Central Presbyterian Church building on Park Avenue in New York City was to be sold for about $2.6 million to the Asia Society for use as an art museum. The Gothic structure, built by the Rockefeller family, originally belonged to the Park Avenue Baptist Church, which later became the Riverside Church. The 300-member Presbyterian congregation would merge with another church or share facilities elsewhere. Some members were opposing the sale.

A new 815-page interfaith hymnal was produced jointly by the Army, Air Force, and Navy under supervision of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board. Hymns are not segregated into Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish categories, as in the 1959 military hymnal. The new hymnal contains many gospel songs, folk hymns, and spirituals not in its predecessor. Total contract cost for the first printing of 558,000 copies was $1.07 million.

World Scene

Nothing certain was known at mid-month about the fate of Christians in Phuoc Binh, the 26,000-population South Vietnamese provincial capital overrun by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Two Catholic nuns from New Zealand who operated an orphanage and dispensary for mountain tribes-people remained, along with a Vietnamese missionary to the Stieng tribe (he is sponsored by the Christian and Missionary Alliance-related Evangelical Church of South Viet Nam) and other Vietnamese church workers.

The annual conference of the 150,000-member Methodist Church of Nigeria adopted a resolution decrying the state of national leadership, corruption, and filth in the cities. Conference president E. Bolaji Idowu, warning that the problem-ridden nation is headed toward disaster, called on government leaders to guarantee freedom of the press. Above all, Nigeria needs a Pentecost, he declared.

The working draft of a new Greek constitution guarantees a measure of religious freedom for persons not members of the state-backed Orthodox Church, but continues the ban on proselytism (evangelism), a prohibition against unauthorized versions of Scripture, and other restrictions.

A South West Africa newspaper, The Advertiser, reports “a full-scale revival” has rocked Tsumkwe, the main center of the Bushmen population. The paper says the spiritual movement began with the conversion of two tribesmen. People are praying aloud in the homes during the day and flocking to meetings at night, according to the account.

Yitzhak Raphael, Israel’s Minister of Religious Affairs, said a major Vatican statement on Catholic-Jewish relations doesn’t go far enough. It omits mention of Israel as a state, he said, and church leaders still believe Jewish spiritual leaders of Christ’s time were implicated in his crucifixion. Raphael rejected a proposal for joint prayer to help bridge the gap between the faiths.

Despite strong resistance by the Catholic Church and two opposition parties, a Socialist party-sponsored law legalizing abortions within the first three months of pregnancy became effective in Austria on January 1. More than 90 per cent of Austria’s 7.4 million population is Catholic.

Baptists in the African nation of Rwanda have grown from 1,500 in 1964 to 19,500 last year, a gain of 1,200 per cent, according to the Baptist World Alliance.

Dead at 80 in Beirut: Cardinal Paul Pierre Meouchi, Lebanese-born patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, who pastored churches in Massachusetts and Los Angeles before his elevation over the Middle East church body.

The Mormons now have 1,600 missionaries and 250 churches and chapels in Britain. Members there total 80,000, up from 9,500 in 1958.

DEATH

J. GORDON HOWARD, 75, retired United Methodist bishop, a former bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and a past president of the Ohio Council of Churches; in Winchester, Virginia.

On assignment in South Korea several months ago, News Editor Edward E. Plowman visited with a number of evangelical missionaries and nationals (both clergy and lay leaders). He quizzed them about the increasing church-state unrest. Some spoke freely about their own part in the dissent movement. Among them: a prominent constitutional lawyer who was ousted from the national assembly (congress) and jailed in a political crackdown by President Park Chung Hee. The attorney is a local leader of two international evangelical outreach organizations.

The following story, written by Plowman, is based on his interviews and research, on subsequent reports filed byCHRISTIANITY TODAYcorrespondents, and on accounts published by Religious News Service. In accord with national custom, last names of Koreans mentioned in the story appear first.

A year ago it was common for dissenters against the policies of South Korean president Park Chung Hee, even the dissenters in the Christian community, to be written off by their fellow Christians as Marxists or Marxist sympathizers. Not any longer. Among recent developments:

• The staunchly conservative 16,000-member Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Seoul issued a statement demanding in effect the release of persons jailed for dissent (they include clergy and evangelists), the lifting of restrictive decrees under which they were jailed, and a return to freedom of speech and press;

• Earlier, representing hundreds of thousands of Christians, ten prominent Protestant leaders who had not spoken out before sent to Park a statement with similar demands (the leaders, risking a death penalty, included Methodist bishop Yun Chang Duk, President Chi Dong Shik of the Korean Evangelical Church, Moderator Uyu Ho Joon of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, and Young Nak’s pastor emeritus, Han Kyung Chik (see photo)—a Park friend who prayed at the funeral of Park’s slain wife last summer);

• At an outdoor protest mass attended by about 15,000, Catholic bishop Kim Chae Deok addressed some sharp words to Park, after which several thousand attempted to stage a demonstration but were beaten back by police (many of the faithful were chanting for the release of Bishop Tji [or Chi] Hak Soun, arrested last August for giving money to a student group working for Park’s removal);

• On the eve of President Ford’s visit to Korea in November, scores of missionaries “out of deep involvement with our people” asked Ford to press for the release of political prisoners and the scrapping of Park’s martial-law constitution;

• American Methodist missionary George Ogle, a veteran of nearly twenty years, was deported last month for his identity with people in the dissent movement and with relatives of prisoners.

Ogle’s ouster may have had the opposite effect from what Park intended. Many church leaders and groups were moved to speak out against the government for the first time, and the tides of popular sentiment are now running vigrously against Park. Officials of the National Council of Churches of Korea voiced their concern. Leaders of the “Tong Hap” Presbyterian Church of Korea (representing 2,700 churches with 620,000 constituents) issued a declaration reaffirming a call of the denomination’s general assembly in September for amnesty for political prisoners (the assembly also spoke out against corruption in government). The leaders asked that Ogle’s deportation be rescinded, labeling it as another example of “the violation and inhuman handling of human rights.”

More revealingly, the Tong Hap leaders urged “that the continued, covert surveillance of religious activities which causes an atmosphere of fear be stopped immediately.” The group further urged “the restoration of a free democratic society where there is no suppression of creative, conscientious, and constructive criticism, because our church has received a prophetic mission from God.”

Ogle, a worker among low-income people and a university lecturer, was under heavy government pressure for weeks prior to his eviction. At an October prayer meeting in a Christian center he suggested those attending should pray for eight non-Christian prisoners given the death penalty for their dissident activities. Afterward, he was interrogated by authorities for nineteen hours and was asked to sign a statement promising not to criticize the Park government. He refused. On December 11 he received a standing ovation at the annual conference of the 310,000-member Korean Methodist Church; the delegates issued a statement of support for his ministry and lashed out at Park’s repressive policies. On December 14 he was hustled aboard an airliner. His wife and four children remained behind for the time being. A few days later Ogle told his story to a congressional committee in Washington.

A long-time missionary leader says Ogle has wide evangelical support even from many who feel Christians should not speak out on controversial public issues. But, observes the leader, missionaries are still divided over whether it is wiser to protest some injustices less in order to remain and utilize the many important freedoms still enjoyed by Christians: the freedom to evangelize, to assemble, to worship, and to nourish the church. “At what point,” he asks, “does the Christian’s duty to criticize a government for injustice become important enough to jeopardize these other freedoms?”

That question may or may not have figured in a serious schism at last month’s conference of the Methodist Church. Observers blame the split on a number of factors, including a power struggle, regional differences, and theological issues. Both warring factions had elected bishops, but reports were still sketchy this month. The schism occurred three days after Ogle’s appearance.

President Park’s troubles can be traced to 1972 when he proclaimed martial law, threw out the constitution, placed his opponents under arrest, and suspended political activity and freedom of speech and press. Next he introduced a new constitution giving him unlimited powers and tenure. He said the moves were necessary to safeguard against threats from North Korea and to hasten the coming of prosperity. Many Christians were among those who went along with his arguments.

Student demonstrations, however, broke out in late 1973, no doubt reminding Park of the student activities that led to the downfall of Syngman Rhee in 1960. (Rhee’s son is a scholar who resides in New York City. He recently joined with other Koreans in America in issuing a stinging rebuke to Park.)

Park responded to the demonstrations with a series of emergency decrees last year banning such protests and even the mere suggestion of a return to the old constitution. Penalties included fifteen-year prison terms and death.

Of more than 1,000 arrested, some 200 were convicted in closed military trials. They included former South Korean president Yun Po Sun, a Christian; Bishop Tji; Presbyterian pastors Park Hyung Kyu of Seoul and Kwon HoKyong; Yonsei University Seminary dean Kim Chan Kook; slum pastor Kim Dae Jung; Presbyterian evangelists Chin Hong Kim and Kim Tong-Wan; Chairman Suh Chang Suk and other officers of the Korean Students Christian Federation; and the nation’s leading poet, Kim Cha Ha, a Catholic. The elderly Yun was placed on probation but the others were given long prison sentences.

The day before Campus Crusade’s Explo ’74 opened, a young friend of poet Kim was given a death sentence for possession of a Japanese book on revolution in modern Asia.

Following the showdown letters signed by Pastor Han and the others last fall, Park lifted the decrees but said he would not release anyone arrested under them. Yet the spectrum of dissent ranges from Marxists on the left to evangelical Christians on the right (many of whom feel Park’s policies are weakening the nation and playing into the hands of the Communists), and with so much opposition by the Christians now, Park—who practices no faith—may soon decide to grant amnesty to most of the offenders.

Of South Korea’s 33 million population, 3.4 million are Protestants and 850,000 are Catholics. More than half the Protestants are Presbyterians who are scattered among four large Presbyterian denominations and several smaller ones, the result of a number of schisms—mostly over theology and ecumenical relationships—dating from about 1951. Another large body is the 202,000-member Korea Holiness Church, affiliated with OMS International, which last fall dedicated the largest, most modern seminary facility in Asia.

Christianity was introduced into Korea by Koreans. In the 1780s a band of Koreans in China embraced the Catholic faith, and one of them returned to spread the faith in his own land. Catholic missionaries followed in the 1800s, and despite waves of bloody persecution, 17,500 Catholics were on hand when the first Protestant missionary, physician Horace Allen, arrived in 1884. Eight years earlier a group of Koreans were converted in Manchuria by Scottish Presbyterians. They helped the Scots translate the New Testament, then smuggled copies into their homeland. One convert led to Christ most of his village north of Seoul, and he gathered together a congregation of nearly 100 the year before Allen’s arrival. Christianity has spread rapidly in Korea ever since.

With the Japanese gone after World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States failed to come to terms on Korea’s future, and the nation was divided. As Communists became more repressive in the north many Christians fled south. Among them was Pastor Han who with a handful of refugees built Young Nak into the world’s largest Presbyterian congregation.

Han was seated near Park at last spring’s annual national prayer breakfast as Pastor Sang Keun Lee of the First Presbyterian Church of Taegu directed some poignant points to the president. Sang said three patterns prevail in church-state relationships throughout the world: oppression of religion by the government, domination of the government by religion, and cooperation between the two for the good of all. “I wish you to become the Constantine, the Great of Korea,” he told Park.

DEAR JULIANNE, YOUR LETTER GOT THROUGH

Julianne Holland, 13, an eighth grader who attends St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, wanted to do her part for Jesus at Christmas. Without informing her parents, she addressed a letter to Jesus in care of the local post office. It landed on the desk of Presbyterian Donald L. Orner, 62, director of customer services at the postal center in Harrisburg.

“Dear friend,” wrote Julianne. “I am 13 years old. And you must think I’m weird for writing a letter to Jesus when everyone knows it wouldn’t get anywhere. But I wanted to give you a message.

“Every Christmas all people think about is getting presents. But that’s not the reason at all. I think Christmas means getting all your friends together and having a good time because Jesus is born, and that’s just the beginning of all the beautiful things he did for us. By being born he let love into the world, he let blind people see, let crippled people walk.… So for this Christmas don’t think about your presents. Just think about Jesus and all he did and try to spread the real spirit of Christmas.”

Replied Orner:

“We have no mail route to heaven, but I am sure that [Jesus] is aware of what you wrote, just as surely as if we had been able to deliver it to him. He knows our thoughts, our feelings, and … every thought and all the love in every line of your beautiful letter flowed out across all the miles that no mailman could ever travel and touched his heart.

“Perhaps, too, Julianne, some of those who ask for presents are really asking for love, but to know they are loved they need some physical object to show it.… You said your letter wouldn’t get anywhere—it touched my heart, and be assured, Julianne, he knows. May you have a happy Christmas, and God bless you.”

Somehow a reporter found out about the letters, and the Associated Press flashed the story around the world. Many newspapers ran the account, among them the Los Angeles Times, which featured it on the front page.

Upon A Midnight Drear

Churches sustained heavy losses as Cyclone Tracy stormed across northern Australia on Christmas Eve, virtually destroying Darwin (population 45,000) and leaving more than forty dead and 40,000 homeless. Churches destroyed or severely damaged include Christ Church Cathedral, the United Church (also ravaged and looted by vandals), and a Baptist church, all of Darwin. Also destroyed were St. Peter’s Church of England, the United Church, and a Baptist church in the Nightcliffe-Casuarina area. An Aborigines mission facility lay in ruins.

Among those who died were the wife and infant daughter of New Zealander Brian Williams, executive secretary of the United Church.

Three-fourths of the population was evacuated, but most pastors and other church workers stayed behind to help with clean-up and relief efforts. Post-Christmas services found some congregations sharing their battered, roofless facilities with congregations that had lost all.

Mcintire: At The Bank, On The Brink

Separatist leader Carl McIntire at the last minute was able to stave off forfeiture of his Cape Canaveral, Florida, complex with delivery last month of a $1 million check from “the bank of Heaven.” He bought the land and buildings (including a 200-room motel, a convention center, an office building, and a 300-acre parcel earmarked for condominium development) in 1971 with a $54,000 down payment, and he had made no further payments on the renegotiated $14.5 million price until last month. The balance is due over the next seven years, with the next big payment due in 1976. Under an agreement, the $1 million will enable McIntire to keep the Shelton College and Bible-conference center portion of the property even if he defaults on the balance.

McIntire says he wants to push ahead with construction of a twenty-acre, twenty-six-story replica of Solomon’s Temple as a tourist attraction.

The New Jersey minister is still not out of the woods. He indicates that nearly half of the $1 million was in short-term loans, and he has launched an appeal to raise this amount.

In an unrelated action, McIntire agreed in an out-of-court settlement to return $113,838 to elderly invalid James Scott of Wilmington, Delaware. McIntire, who got the money two years ago in exchange for an unfulfilled pledge to provide lifetime care for Scott, paid $18,838 in cash on the settlement, with the remainder due in installments over the next three years.

Many McIntire watchers wonder how long he can keep things going. At 68, he shows no signs of slowing down, and there is no heir apparent on the scene. He retains the position he has held for forty-one years as pastor of the mother Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, New Jersey, as head of Shelton College (half the faculty resigned last summer in protest against non-payment of salaries) and Faith Seminary in suburban Philadelphia (struggling to survive a recent schism and mortgage troubles), and as prime mover of the International Council of Christian Churches, made up of more than 200 mostly small, separatist groups.

Another View Of Salvation

God’s Strategy in Human History, by Roger Forster and V. Paul Marston (Tyndale, 1974, 296 pp., $5.95, $3.95 pb), is reviewed by Clark Pinnock, associate professor of theology, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

For some time evangelicals have had easy access to persuasive books that present a Calvinistic understanding of salvation (J. I. Packer, G. C. Berkouwer, J. Daane) but have not been able to turn so readily, especially if they are not part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition, to soundly biblical but non-Calvinistic treatments of this subject. Fortunately this onesidedness in evangelical literature is now being corrected, and people will be better able to assess the issues for themselves. God’s Strategy in Human History, whose authors are British, is a well-documented and scholarly book worth careful reading in the light of the Scriptures.

Forster and Marston agree with Karl Barth that traditional Calvinism was mistaken to limit the saving grace of God to a select group of people. On the contrary, the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ is universal in its scope though not in its efficacy. However, the thesis the authors choose to pursue is more Arminian than Barthian. It is their concern to uphold significant human freedom in the face of divine predestination, and to deny the predestinarian conviction that God’s will is always done, maintaining the view that God’s plan can be opposed and rejected by men; that is, the writers are more concerned with the predestinarian view of history than with the restriction of grace implicit in Calvinistic theology. In pursuing their theme they conduct an extensive study of biblical terms and texts that deal with this matter, and conclude that history should be viewed as a struggle between God and his rebellious creatures. Since the fall of Adam, the finite purposes of mankind have been in conflict with the divine plan; as a result, the previously harmonious movement of history has become increasingly chaotic, a warfare of purposes.

This theme, set forth in part one, is then developed along two lines. First, we are given a survey of biblical history in which the thesis is elaborated and considerable attention devoted to Paul’s theological essay in Romans 9–11. Second, a number of word studies are presented (chosen and elect, righteousness, harden, foreknowledge) that bear on this subject. Of particular interest is the treatment given to the biblical concept of election: emphasis is placed on corporate election and election for service, to the exclusion of any individual election unto eternal life. Undoubtedly the authors are right to try to correct a severe imbalance in the Calvinistic doctrine which usually overemphasizes the latter. But soteric election when it is interpreted as a corporate concept leaves the individual very much on his own. The only election that concerns his salvation is one that he himself decrees when he chooses Christ. This conclusion to which the book points can be circumvented if we consider the proposal that God has chosen all mankind in Christ before the foundation of the world for salvation, a concept that preserves both a soteric election and the universal salvific will of God, yet without necessitating universalism.

One particularly valuable feature of the book is a final appendix on the Patristic teaching concerning predestination where it is argued that Augustine’s view that God’s will is always done represents a “new theology” in the Church, and a shift from earlier Christian teaching. This excursus is welcome; there is a scarcity of historical studies of the enormous effect of Augustine’s theology upon the soteriology of the Reformation and of the existence of non-Augustinian thinking before it and alongside it.

In the foreword to the book Professor F. F. Bruce, though “an impenitent Augustinian and Calvinist” by his own description, states his approval of the exegesis of the writers, and admits to his own belief that God’s election is meant to exclude no one. It is a healthy sign to see a questioning and a loosening up of the Calvinistic assumptions that have exercised too great a dominance over evangelical thinking recently. The Forster/Marston volume show us that there is another quite different way of looking at the whole subject.

A Notable Commentary

Commentary on First and Second Thessalonians, by Ronald A. Ward (Word, 1973, 178 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by John W. Drane, lecturer in religious studies, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland.

The dust jacket of this commentary boldly declares that in it “Bible students of every kind will find valuable help”—a claim that is often made but seldom justified. A striking thing about this book by Ronald Ward is that it comes very close to achieving this aim.

The well informed preacher or theological teacher need only look at the extensive bibliography at the end of the book to realize that Ward has taken account of almost everything of any significance written on the Thessalonian epistles in recent years (the only commentary of any importance that is absent from his list is the French work of B. Rigaux). The commentary itself takes full account of the Greek text, often dealing with variant readings and other problems of critical interpretation. Yet at the same time, the Christian who has never given himself to serious study of the Bible need not think this book is only for scholars. The first page of the introduction to First Thessalonians sets the tone of much of the book, as it places the city of Thessalonica in its context in modern as well as ancient history, and compares Paul’s evangelistic strategy with that of the twentieth-century Christian businessman “gossiping the Gospel” in the course of his travels.

The way the teaching of the epistles is related to the life of the modern church is, in fact, one of the most helpful features of Ward’s work. Yet it is never done in the superficial way often found in books that claim to show the relevance of the New Testament to the twentieth century. Ward always works on the basis of a careful analysis of the biblical text, illustrated from contemporary life as well as the ancient world, and he sets the teaching of First and Second Thessalonians firmly within the context of the Pauline letters as a whole. Frivolous enterprises, like trying to identify the “man of lawlessness” of Second Thessalonians 2:6, are avoided; yet Ward is in no doubt that the eschatological teaching of these epistles has its message for the modern Christian.

There are only two points at which I felt the presentation of the material, and hence the reader’s enjoyment of it, could have been improved.

First of all, the absence of any kind of index is, I think, a definite disadvantage. Comments on individual passages are not confined to the major issues of the Thessalonian epistles but often contain wide-ranging and helpful discussions on Pauline theology in general. It is unfortunate that much of this will remain hidden from any reader who does not take the trouble to read the whole volume through from start to finish. An index of subjects would have been a great help to those who like to dip into a commentary rather than read it from cover to cover.

Secondly, it seems odd that there should be so extensive a bibliography when Ward does not usually refer to other commentaries in the course of his own exposition. In some instances, this is a disadvantage. For example, concerning “the restrainer” in Second Thessalonians 2:6, two possible interpretations are compared, but there is no indication of their origin or of which commentators now support them. Readers who are interested in further study of such issues would have found it easier had specific guidance of this kind been given, if only in a footnote.

Having said all this, however, I can warmly recommend this commentary, especially for the preacher who wishes to see how the New Testament is relevant for his own Christian experience and for his congregation. For this purpose, Ward’s commentary is probably more useful than the most recent comparable work on First and Second Thessalonians, that by A. L. Moore in the “New Century Bible” series. Any interested Christian who wants a readable, relevant, yet scholarly and reliable commentary on these New Testament books could not go far wrong in purchasing this volume. To get the most benefit from it, one should read it in its entirety along with the text of the epistles (the commentary is based on the RSV). It will prove to be a stimulating and thought-provoking book, and one that will undoubtedly whet the appetite of many a reader for more commentaries of this kind.

Neutral Study Of Religion?

The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge: Some Methodological Questions, by Ninian Smart (Princeton, 1973, 164 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Robert Brow, Anglican rector of Cavan, Millbrook, Ontario.

Departments of Religion have not been impressive in their claim to scientific impartiality. A few have been mere outgrowths of Christian theology. Most have become a hodgepodge in which each professor promotes his own religious or irreligious bias.

Ninian Smart defends methodological neutralism in the religious sciences. First, there is a clear distinction between doing theology, or say “buddhology,” and studying religion. Karl Barth was clearly a theologian. He spoke within a particular faith commitment. The study of religions must be pluralistic. Even in the West, religion can no longer be identified with Christian theism. Wittgenstein has also forced us to see that words like “religion” and “faith” cannot be defined with clear boundaries. Maoism and Nazism are ideologies, but how would we exclude them from religion? The allegedly secular status of Transcendental Meditation would be another case in point.

Secondly, the correct description of a particular religious grouping must capture the full force of its “organic web of doctrines,” sentiments, and practices. How then can an observer, who denies the truth of some of the claims made, still be neutral? Smart argues for a method of “bracketing” or leaving aside. Since every religion has objects of faith or focuses such as gods and states of nirvana, the observer must bracket them by neither affirming nor denying their existence.

To do this successfully he must reject the methods of Otto and Wach, because they assume some objective reality behind the experience of the numinous. And Peter Berger’s approach in The Sacred Canopy is faulted for reductionism. Smart holds that one must describe the sacredness of Mount Fuji without introducing the positivist assumption that nothing can be sacred. As an illustration of the method in practice, chapter six offers a sparkling, immensely learned account of the relation of bhakti to contemplation in the main schools of Buddhism.

There is a useful summary of the long debate on religion and rationality. Smart rejects the arguments that religious assertions are meaningless, unscientific, or pre-scientific. If I have understood him correctly he now accepts the autonomy of each religion in the tradition of Wittsgenstein, Peter Winch, and D. Z. Phillips. Whether the extreme Wittgensteinians (and I don’t include Wittgenstein himself) would grant that Smart’s “bracketing” is compatible with correctly learning a religious form of life is very doubtful. Incidentally, from Wittgenstein’s point of view it is quite wrong to call a complex form of life like Theravada Buddhism a “language-game.” Numerous language-games would be used to elucidate what is going on in even one area of a particular religion.

The book should be required reading for theologians involved in apologetics. It helps to show why we need to go out and demonstrate the need for commitment to Christian theism as a total organic system, as opposed to the many alternative religions and ideologies. There is so far very little to help us in that very difficult direction.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Concise Dictionary of Religious Quotations, edited by William Neil (Eerdmans, 214 pp., $7.95). Collection of over 2,500 quotes from Scripture and literature, arranged alphabetically by topics and thoroughly indexed. Handy reference tool.

Memoirs, by Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty (Macmillan, 341 pp., $10). The former Catholic leader in Hungary tells of his ordeals and why compromise with Communism is futile.

The Urban Mission, edited by Craig Ellison (Eerdmans, 230 pp., $3.95 pb). Twenty-three essays by evangelicals presenting biblical and historical bases, contemporary examples, and practical proposals for involvement with the centers of our cities. Highly recommended.

How to Build an Evangelistic Church Music Program, by Lindsay Terry (Nelson, 198 pp., $3.95 pb). Practical suggestions for the music director in structuring a complete program for all ages. Highly recommended, especially for non-professionals.

No Little People, by Francis Schaeffer (InterVarsity, 271 pp., $3.50 pb). Sixteen sermons on various topics that will be appreciated by an even wider audience than have liked his books.

Reasons For the Faith, by Oliver Barclay (InterVarsity, 143 pp., $2.25). A concise apologetical defense for the faith, designed for the questioning non-believer. Highly recommended.

Historical Atlas of the Religions of the World, edited by Ismail Faruqi (Macmillan, 346 pp., $12.50). Maps, graphs, and illustrations supplement the essays, which trace the major religions throughout history. Contributors come from diverse backgrounds and offer relatively objective reporting. Excellent library reference tool.

The Monastic World, by Christopher Brooke, photographs by Wim Swaan (Random House, 272 pp., $35). Pictorial and textual survey of European monastic structures and the art they contained. Focuses on A.D. 1000–1300. Impressive photography.

The controversial Schempp decision, in which the U. S. Supreme Court outlawed religious exercises in public schools, explicitly warned against interpreting the ruling as a victory for secularism. The majority opinion, delivered by Justice Clark, said the court was agreed that “the state may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.’” This observation reaffirmed an earlier judgment in which the court held that the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution “requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them” (Everson v. Board of Education).

Many Americans now think that this neutrality is being increasingly violated in public education, and that evangelical Christianity, or at least the value system that it represents, is the chief victim. Serious controversies have erupted not only in Kanawha County, West Virginia, but in Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Texas, and other states. “It’s not a few dirty books we’re objecting to,” said a spokesman for a protesting group in Maryland, “It’s the secular humanist philosophy that pervades the curricula, the concentration on what you think and what you feel, rather than academic skills and the basics.”

To be sure, there are those who are exploiting the current disputes for unrelated and even unworthy ends, and the way some of the protesters have attacked the problem is wrong. We deplore the use of violence. Those who stoop to it are hurting the cause. But we must not let these evil tendencies cloud our understanding of the basic issues. Some crucial matters are at stake.

Paul Cowan of the Village Voice, after an admirably exhaustive study, concluded:

The battle in Kanawha is a cultural revolution, in the strictest sense of the term: an effort by the rural working class to wrest schools—the means of production of their children—away from the permissive technocrats who now control them. It is a holy war between people who depend on books and people who depend on the Book [Dec. 9, 1974].

The dispute did not happen all of a sudden; it has been heating up for years, without much visibility. In many areas of the country where Christian parents became disturbed at what their children were being taught in the public schools, the “solution” was found in quietly setting up private schools. These have for the most part been avowedly evangelical, and they often use church facilities. They also are expensive, and are possible only where parents can afford to pay tuition in addition to school taxes. The income level in Kanawha County did not allow for that option, so the parents went at the problems in a different way.

The tensions are unlikely to be resolved quickly. Public schools may feel more and more of a pinch. And even in places where private schools have sprung up, there are bound to be controversies, especially in this time of economic stress. Parents who send their children to private schools may start asking ever more loudly why they should have to pay school taxes when the money is going for types of education of which they disapprove.

The Roman Catholic posture toward the problems is still unclear. It seems that the exodus of recent years from the parochial to the public schools has been tapering off, but long-range trends are hard to predict. One possibility is the rise of Catholic fundamentalism, which could change the whole picture. Pentecostalism is a major force in the Roman Catholic Church today, but it has not yet translated its concerns into the educational context.

The outcome of the textbook battle and related concerns will be determined to a large extent on how the federal government treats it. The only public inkling from Washington last year was a speech by U. S. Commissioner of Education T. H. Bell in which he urged textbook publishers to rethink current trends in content. “Parents have a right to expect that the schools, in their teaching approaches and selection of instructional materials, will support the values and standards that their children are taught at home,” he said. “And if the schools cannot support those values they must at least avoid deliberate destruction of them.” Bell is a Mormon.

Mrs. Alice Moore, who has given much astute leadership to the protests in West Virginia, feels that the federal government has been directly or indirectly responsible for recent trends in public education. She charges that funds provided by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare “are used to develop, promote and force on our schools these value-changing programs.”

If experience is a reliable prophet, educational administrators will take a pragmatic approach to the conflict. So-called alternative schools may be the result. Under this arrangement, parents can choose between a traditional type of school and an innovative, “progressive” variety. This route may save some violence in the short run and pull school boards out of their bind. In the long run, however, the effect could be to diminish the cultural unity that the American public school system has achieved.

Shared time, or dual school enrollment, as it has more recently been called, is another option, one that has been around for many years. There is a great deal of merit to the idea of attending one school for the more value-oriented studies and another for subjects in which moral dimensions are not nearly so crucial. Perhaps it is mainly logistical problems that have kept the idea from getting off the ground. A major crisis could bring on conscientious consideration and trial.

A Brighter Winter In Ulster

J. D. Douglas warns against trying to oversimplify the conflict in Northern Ireland (Current Religious Thought, page 33). The dispute is very complex; one risks being called a dreamer in voicing any hope for an early settlement. That being the case, the length and success of the truce that began during the recent holidays are a tremendously heartwarming answer to prayer. It became the longest respite in violence since the war began five and a half years ago. More than 1,100 lives have been lost in the bloodshed. The prolonged truce offers at last a glimmer of hope that tensions may be eased. It is of no small encouragement, too, to know that there are conscientious Christians working in both Britain and Ireland to bring about a lasting understanding between the parties in conflict.

Sharing Our Destiny

Speaking to the nation about its economic plight this month, President Gerald Ford was blunt, acknowledging that the situation can get worse before it gets better. The President also acknowledged that America no longer is in control of its own destiny. It has become a dependent nation. The oil cartel has proved this, and down the road it will be shown to be true with respect to other raw materials essential to the operation of an industrial society. Despite Mr. Ford’s prediction that by 1985 America will be self-sufficient in energy, it is apparent that neither this nation nor any other will ever again be able to go it alone. The myth of national independence should be laid to rest. America’s future is inextricably linked with that of other nations. Will this sense of dependency turn the nation to a firmer trust in God, who rules over all the nations?

Masters Of Sound

Within a span of five days this month, the Metropolitan Opera lost two of its most revered voices—one of a great performer, and another of a unique interpreter. The deaths of Richard Tucker and Milton Cross leave cultural gaps that may not be readily closed.

In Tucker, an orthodox Jew who was an ordained cantor, the world had perhaps its greatest tenor since Caruso. May God be thanked who in his common grace affords his children the privilege of hearing so magnificent a voice, which we can continue to enjoy through recordings. Tucker sang little outside of opera, which has limited appeal in our day even though humanity supposedly has attained a greater aesthetic sense. Thanks to the gifts of performers like Tucker, few who take the time and trouble to understand opera ever cast it aside.

Milton Cross will long be remembered for his remarkably successful efforts to interpret opera. His weekly commentaries communicated a sense of excitement and suspense that did more to popularize opera than any other one thing in America. To those who listened over the years to the Texaco broadcasts of the Met, Saturday afternoons will never be quite the same.

Mates And Martyrs

Thanks primarily to zealous merchants eager to sell cards and candy, Americans think of St. Valentine’s Day as a day for celebrating romance, a tradition dating back to the fourteenth century, when many came to believe that February 14 was the day when “every bird chooseth him a mate.” Originally, however, the day marked the anniversary of one or more martyrs of the early Church. That is an identification not to be lost upon Christians, for people are still suffering and even losing their lives for the sake of the Gospel. A great deal more concern needs to be shown for persecuted believers.

Lent begins two days before Valentine’s Day this year. Economic conditions being what they are, this year may find us more inclined than usual toward an austere observance of Lent. It would be highly appropriate to be particularly concerned about the needy and the oppressed during this season, especially in light of the Lausanne Covenant’s call for Christians in affluent circ*mstances to adopt a simple life-style.

No Dead Loss

Medieval times are getting a lot of attention these days, and not just from scholars. There has been a boom in academic study of the Middle Ages, but our new fascination with the period goes beyond that. Take, for example, the sudden popularity of stained glass: all kinds of do-it-yourself kits are now available. The average person can create some truly beautiful stained-glass objects.

Perhaps we are entering an era when the Middle Ages will come into better perspective. For far too long we have simply written them off as a time that human history could have well done without. The truth is that much of what evangelicals regard today as fundamental Christian thinking was developed during the Middle Ages. One has but to do a little reading in Augustine to become aware of this.

There was also a lot of error promulgated in medieval times, but much of the rich thought that arose out of those times is far more reasonable and Christian than the ideologies that are prevalent today.

The Battle Of Boston

There can be no doubt that on the whole black children in the United States get poorer education than white ones. The reasons may be debatable, but the fact is not.

This being so, do not Christians, who are expected by God to be concerned for their neighbors, share responsibility for corrective measures? We deplore the violence that the city of Boston has experienced in recent months over court-ordered busing. Busing is never an ideal solution; however, in at least some cases busing may be the only effective way to start to improve the educational opportunities for black children.

There is probably a good lesson in the Boston situation: here, in what was supposed to be the Athens of America, liberal abstract thought has failed miserably. But Christian parents have a responsibility that transcends gloating. If they are going to oppose busing, they should be putting even more effort into righting the educational injustices that brought it on.

‘Ferments Of Infidelity’

Pope Paul acknowledged last month the growing theological deviations in Roman Catholicism. In a thirty-four-page “apostolic exhortation” the pontiff noted that down through the centuries there have always been rifts, “but there appear equally dangerous … the ferments of infidelity to the Holy Spirit existing here and there in the Church today and unfortunately attempting to undermine her from within.” The Pope, as could be expected, expressed dismay at lack of obedience to official teaching. He lamented those who “cause bewilderment to the whole community, introducing into it the fruits of dialectical theories alien to the spirit of Christ. While making use of the words of the Gospel they change their meaning.” He also said that “the process that we have described takes the form of doctrinal dissension, which claims the patronage of theological pluralism and is not infrequently taken to the point of dogmatic relativism, which in various ways breaks up the integrity of faith.”

Such high-level recognition of theological problems is a welcome sign. Liberal Protestant Christianity has been showing this kind of discord for many years. More recently many Roman Catholic theologians have shown a similar bent. One result is that orthodox evangelicals have that much more within Roman Catholicism to dispute: not only the doctrinal differences dating back to the Reformation but now the liberal drift as well.

Not all thinking Roman Catholics are taking this route, for which we can be thankful. What evangelicals are beginning to realize is that the new Catholic pluralism is as much a problem for biblically oriented Protestants as the old issues, perhaps even more, and that there is more hope for fellowship with conservative Catholics.

Post-Victory Depression

The Prophet Elijah participated in one of the most stunning events in Scripture. In his confrontation with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah boldly proposed that both Jehovah and Baal be petitioned to send down fire from heaven to consume a sacrifice; whichever one did so would prove himself to be the true God and worthy of men’s worship. The priests of Baal, in their efforts to get fire from heaven, “cried aloud,” “cut themselves with swords and lances,” and “raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation.” But their crying and raving were in vain.

Then Elijah drenched his altar and his slain bull with water and called upon Jehovah. The fire fell, and the people said, “The Lord, he is God!” What a victory this was! How Elijah’s heart must have sung!

When King Ahab reported to his wife, Jezebel, that her priests had been slain by Elijah, she sent a message to the prophet: “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Although Elijah had just seen God do a mighty work, the word of this woman struck terror to his heart. He who had courageously faced the people and all the priests of Baal “was afraid and went for his life.” Moreover, in his post-victory depression he called on his delivering God to let him die—“Take away my life.” God was gracious: he sent the overwrought prophet away on a vacation and later “translated” him so that he did not experience death.

Depression sometimes does follow on the heels of a great triumph. In place of spiritual vitality there is apathy and even doubt. Could not Elijah’s God deliver him from Jezebel, too? Of course, but Elijah had lost his perspective on the problem.

Today many Christians are caught up in the prevailing mood of despair and doubt. The Church is beleaguered; the world seems to be in a shambles. But our God is one who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).

“I’ve really blown it now! I’m sorry, but what good is being sorry when it is impossible to pick up the pieces? I can’t go back and live that time over again. I wish I could—but time can’t be wiped out, the things I’ve done can’t be undone, the things I’ve said can’t be unsaid. I feel like a ghastly mess that ought to be tossed in the garbage pail. Life is just impossible.”

Have you ever said anything like that? Have you ever felt an overwhelming wave of finality as regrets washed over you, threatening to drag you out into a sea of hopelessness? Such feelings of worthlessness can turn into egotistical introspection for the Christian; he may forget that One who made the universe out of nothing is not limited, and does not look at any human being, broken as that one may be, and see a “blank” or a hopeless mess ready for the trash pile. God, the Creator of all things out of nothing, is a God of diversity and is without limit in his creative ideas. He can take any one of his children at any point and make an amazing work of art with what looks like “the end.” The end can become a surprise beginning when placed in the hands of an expert.

Listen to this true story. Some years ago a lovely girl named Jane was helping to prepare food for the weekend meals at L’Abri Fellowship. As we looked over the menus together I got out my favorite sponge-cake recipe for her to make while I rushed around doing other things. After a time a puzzled-looking Jane came to show me a strange mixture, yellow and sticky. “Is this what it’s supposed to look like? Shall I put it into the pan now?”

“Oh, no,” I said in a rather horrified tone. “Please don’t. It’s not right at all. You must have left something out.”

“No, I followed the instructions perfectly, I know I did.”

“Here, let’s look at the book. You must have forgotten something.” So we read and checked each item, once, twice, three times.

“But I’m sure it’s all in order. I mixed it just as it said. The egg was beaten high, but it just disappeared into the mixture and it all got heavy and sticky. Oh, dear, what’s wrong?” Once more we slowly read the book’s directions, and suddenly she remembered. “I didn’t put any sugar in it! Shall I throw the mess out? Shall I start with new stuff?”

“No, wait, we can’t afford that,” I said hastily, putting out my hand to take the bowl and protect the “mess.” “Let me think: egg, salt, baking powder, flour, water—hm-m-m, what can I do with that?” Suddenly I exclaimed, “I know!” While Jane watched I added flour, first a little, then a little more, mixing, kneading first in the bowl and then on a floured board. When the mixture would take no more flour, I got out the rolling pin and rolled it vigorously. Thinner and thinner the pale yellow stiff mixture spread out on the board until it was almost paper thin. “Now,” I exclaimed in satisfaction, “we’ll put some heavy weights—those cans will do—on the four corners and let it dry a while.”

After a time I took scissors and, folding the dry, paper-like mixture, cut it into fine, thin strips. They rapidly piled up in lovely heaps to be tossed with our fingers so they could separate and dry. There: not sponge cake but noodles, beautiful, fresh, home-made noodles. Home-made chicken broth, our noodles, and a dash of soy sauce gave us steaming soup to offer to thirty hungry people. “What fantastic chicken noodle soup! I never tasted such good noodles. May I have the recipe?”

I smiled at Jane across the table. “Not sponge cake but marvelous noodles, which are just as important,” I remarked. “Don’t ever forget this, Jane.”

Don’t ever forget what?

Don’t ever forget that if you can’t be a sponge cake because of having spoiled something you can’t go back and do over, the Lord can make you into marvelous noodles!

The Bible gives us a similar illustration to emphasize the wonder of what God can do for us as we put ourselves into his hands, letting him take over and do with us what he is able to do. In Jeremiah 18 we have the vivid picture of a potter taking a pot or a vase or a pitcher he had made and, seeing that it had been marred by something, molding it over again into something else, “as it seemed good to the potter to make it.”

“Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel” (Jer. 18:5, 6). The Lord is able to do what he will with his children if they turn to him and become clay in his hands, but he does not force any one of us. “Ye have not because ye ask not” is something to be thought of in this connection. The child of God is to turn to the Father when a mess has been made, to ask forgiveness and also to say, “Please take me and make me into what you would have me to be, now, at this point of history. On the basis of what I cannot be, make me into what you now want me to be.”

Listen to comforting words: “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:18, 19).

What wilderness have you been wandering in recently? What dry and dusty desert has been your walking place? Or, to put it another way, what kind of a gluey mess in your life has replaced the intended fine mixture? Are you about ready to give up? There must be a definite coming, as Jane did to me, and a turning over of the “bowl” of your life, asking for help, acknowledging you have made a mistake. “Please … I’m sorry. Do a new thing. Make me into the noodles of your choice.”

And what if the gluey mess is not just one life but a relationship, or a group that is ready to fly apart, or a church where things have gotten sticky? The two, or the group, or the church, ought to come together to the One who can take the whole “bowl,” the whole situation, and add the needed ingredients, whatever they might be. He is completely capable of making a whole church full of “noodles,” to be marvelously appreciated by those in the surrounding community who need to be fed.

“And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.… Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord” (Isa. 58:12, 14).

We are to be delighted with what the Lord has done with us, but first we need to let him do it. What if Jane had secretly thrown the mess away without asking? Be careful to own up to your need of help. Sponge cake? Or noodles? Or the garbage can?

New For Do-It-Yourselfers

The imaginative work of the noted Viennese physician Dr. Sigmund Freud sparked the growth of a medical specialty called psychotherapy. Unfortunately, the strictly academic and professional disciplines of psychiatry and clinical psychology require years of study and preparation, and their concepts and techniques are extremely difficult to master, or even to understand. This is not entirely without certain benefits, as suggested by the ballad of the era with its haunting refrain, “And this set of circ*mstances / Now enhances the finances / Of the followers of Dr. Sigmund Freud.”

But whatever the benefits to the followers of Dr. Freud and their patients, the sad fact was that there were too few of each—too few well-trained psychotherapists, and hence too few troubled people receiving the attention they desired. As a result, several methods have been devised for rendering psychological problems easier to understand and making their care and treatment more accessible to the masses. In the peace-loving people’s democracies, the emphasis has been on “re-education,” and several highly trained police and prison organizations have been developed to provide the general population with the necessary attention (cf. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). In the bourgeois West, however, with its emphasis on individual enterprise, such far-reaching state techniques are for the moment unavailable.

In the West, therefore, attention has been given to bringing psychology down to the do-it-yourself level. On the Christian side, Jay Adams has made a significant contribution with the concept of nouthetic (monitory or confrontant) counseling, while “Kaiser” Bill Gothard with his emphasis on unquestioning obeisance to authority has furnished the general public with easy-to-follow guidelines. But it is really a secular physician, Dr. Thomas Harris, who has paved the way for widespread amateurism in psychological analysis and behavior modification with his concept of Transactional Analysis (TA). TA, with its easy-to-understand concepts such as parent-adult-child, offers distinct advantages over orthodox Freudianism and its mystifying id-ego-superego.

Perhaps all that Transactional Analysis has promised, and more, may be accomplished by the newest school of popular psychotherapy, introduced by Swiss banker and psychologist Dr. Adolf Schnitzler in his now-famous book Mein Kauf (My Deal). As Schnitzler has shown, there is no longer any need to engage in the unnecessarily complex analysis demanded by TA, i.e., trying to understand, in a particular relationship or “transaction,” which element is the parent, adult, or child. According to his new program, Deal Analysis (DA), the only question that need be asked about any relationship is, “What’s in it for me?” Suitable attention to this inquiry, and prompt action based on the answer, will, according to Dr. Schnitzler, provide a simple, easily understood standard of values and conduct for everyone who can add up a column of figures.

Heartened by their earlier success in taking over and applying the principles of TA, several evangelical thinkers and businessmen have plunged into DA with enthusiasm, and we can expect the early development of a distinctively Christian approach taking full advantage of Mein Kauf’s secular insights.

Whatever Happened To …?

Klaas Runia’s article, “‘Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary,’” in the December 6 issue was very timely and much appreciated. Donald Bloesch’s “Whatever Became of Neo-Orthodoxy?” in the same issue was a great disappointment. Bloesch’s article impressed me as a frantic attempt to salvage too much out of so little. If the church today must listen to the prophetic voice of neo-orthodoxy, as Bloesch suggests, before it can be spiritually credible and socially relevant, we have come upon a sad day. To be sure, if it listens to the prophetic voice of neo-orthodoxy, it will be new all right, but it will certainly not be orthodox. I would like to ask, “Whatever happened to orthodoxy, the Machen variety as expressed in his Christianity and Liberalism?”

Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Tex.

A quick but hearty “thank you” is in order for the Klaas Runia article, “‘Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary’”; the Donald Bloesch article, “Whatever Became of Neo-Orthodoxy?”; and Eldon W. Koch, “Thanks to a Bible Ferret.” All three articles are of the highest caliber and reminiscent of the earliest and finest days of your magazine.

The Rev. EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Ohiowa, Nebraska

Were my definition of the term evangelical the one employed by your editorial staff, such a misleading article would never have been published in a “magazine of evangelical conviction.” Would CHRISTIANITY TODAY and/or Dr. Bloesch have the evangelical public believe that the “strengths of neo-orthodoxy counterbalance its weaknesses”? Any position having universalistic tendencies forfeits its right to be labelled historic, evangelical Christianity and therefore deserves stronger criticism than being termed “not sufficiently evangelical.” I urge you to sharpen your evangelical senses and allow publication of only those articles that clearly affirm, defend, or communicate the historic Christian faith.

Campus Director

Campus and Lay Mobilization

Erie, Pa.

For Better Music

Thank you so much for your excellent article in The Refiner’s Fire regarding Christmas music (Dec. 6). As a Christian musician, I long have prayed and worked for better music in our church and lives—and I found your article encouraging. I especially liked the list of works by Harold Best; they were intelligent, sensitive choices.

Beverly, Mass.

After taking a second look at my comments quoted in The Refiner’s Fire, I question the statement that “Handel’s Messiah … is perhaps the greatest piece of Christian music ever written.” The comments were based on a telephone interview and I think I probably characterized Messiah as “perhaps the greatest piece of Christmas music”; indeed, the next sentence says, “Bach, too, wrote some fine Christmas music.” Were I called on for an opinion regarding the greatest piece of Christian music, I should probably mention Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

The Refiner’s Fire is an excellent feature and is making a fine contribution to Christian understanding of the arts and literature.

Arlington, Va.

Two More

I have just finished reading Dr. Boice’s article entitled “The Great Need for Great Preaching” (Dec. 20). I agree wholeheartedly with his four requirements for great preaching. However, I would add at least two more requirements. First there is the need that the pastor know his people on a personal level and this requires a weekly plan of home visitation. The home visit will give the pastor insight as to where his people are as far as biblical knowledge and application are concerned. His expository preaching will be greatly enhanced as he comes to know his people. This is part of “shepherding the flock God has given him.”

The second additional requirement I see is a positive practice of Ephesians 4:11–16, in which the pastor becomes the instructor of Christians, teaching them to minister in Jesus’ name. When this is faithfully done, the preacher will have more time for his devotional life, Bible study, and sermon preparation.

First Baptist Church

Ballston Spa, N. Y.

Religion In Objects

What are the “Yiddish silver goblets” mentioned in “Crime in Church”? (Jan. 3). Your reporter apparently confused Yiddish, a language, with Jewish, an adjective describing elements of a religion, Judaism. Worse, he or she attributed religious characteristics to a cup, something unlikely in monotheism. What may have been intended is to describe goblets used by Jews in Jewish Sabbath rites to bless the “fruit of the vine.” The error is especially saddening because the crime may have involved Jewish-Christian hostility, as your reporter noted.

Religion reporter

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati, Ohio

• The goblets are as Mr. Kaufman surmises. We regret the inept description.—ED.

Less Than Happy

I feel that an otherwise excellent issue (Jan. 3) of CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been somewhat clouded by the editorial, “On Baring Our Souls.” It is difficult to know if you are just poking a bit of fun at the whole idea of footwashing as a biblical practice or have a serious intent in view. I have an idea that the thousands of earnest Christians who take this as a very serious part of their religious ritual will be somewhat less than happy about the article.

Since it is true as you say that the matter is only mentioned twice (John 13 and Tim. 5) I would call attention to the fact that in John 13 our Lord not only performed the act but also commanded his followers to do likewise: (ver. 15) and in Titus Paul commended it. In the light of these two Scriptures perhaps the practice has more going for it than many other things that have found their way into our Christian ritual without any scriptural example or commendation. (Incidentally, I am in no way associated with any of the denominations to whom this is a very sacred and holy matter.)

Springfield, Va.

• We wanted to encourage people who don’t practice footwashing to consider it seriously.—ED.

Many books and articles have been written on the question whether Christian tragedy is possible. The following writer claims that it is not, that “Cristian” and “tagedy” are inherently contradictory. For another approach see Leland Ryken’s new book The Literature of the Bible (Zondervan). In a few pages he persuasively argues that tragedy and Christianity are compatible.

A vast gulf separates the popular usage and the academic usage of the term “tragedy.” It is used in a popular sense to refer to any sad or calamitous situation. When used in a scholarly context, it refers to a literary genre in which a protagonist engages in a morally significant struggle ending in ruin or disappointment. Here the question whether a Christian tragedy is possible has teased the minds of scholars for decades. Does this profound literary genre lie outside the Christian experience? Can Job, John the Baptist, Stephen, or Christ be considered a tragic hero?

Forty-five years ago I. A. Richards proposed that “tragedy is only possible to a mind which is for the moment agnostic or Manichean. The least touch of any theology which has a compensating Heaven to offer the tragic hero is fatal” (Principles of Literary Criticism.) Reinhold Niebuhr expressed a similar idea in Beyond Tragedy: “Christianity is a religion which transcends tragedy. Tears, with death, are swallowed up in victory.”

Before discussing Christian tragedy we must define “Christian literature.” By this term I mean literature in which the hero embodies values consistent with the life of Christ recorded in the Gospels. For example, I would not call Shakespeare’s tragedies Christian, though some scholars argue that Shakespeare was a Christian and that his audience thought in Christian terms.

The term “tragedy” is slippery and ubiquitous. It is most frequently defined within a historical period: Greek tragedy, medieval tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, modern tragedy. Rather than working from a rigid definition, I would like to borrow two statements, one from Laurence Michel and the other from Richard Sewell, to provide a framework for examining the term “tragedy.” Michel states, “Tragedy is consummated when the dream of innocence is confronted by the fact of guilt, and acquiesces therein” (“The Possibility of a Christian Tragedy,” Thought, XXXI [1956], 403–28). Sewell provides a scope for the term: “Tragedy makes certain distinguishable and characteristic affirmations, as well as denials, about (1) the cosmos and man’s relation to it; (2) the nature of the individual and his relation to himself; (3) the individual in society (“The Tragic Form,” Essays in Criticism, Vol. IV, 1954, pp. 345–58). The tragic hero is caught in a conflict that carries him inevitably from the quest to be free to collapse and failure.

What, then, are the qualities of tragedy that can be used to compare Christian man and tragic man? There are several that have been a consistent part of the genre from Sophocles to Arthur Miller.

DESTINY. Christian man is committed man. His world view is tempered by his belief that life here is temporal and life hereafter is eternal. Like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress he seeks the Celestial City, committed to an ultimate destiny with God.

Tragic man is uncommitted to any ultimate destiny. He has no assurance of an eternity shared with God but only an uncertain hope that a cosmic justice will prevail in the end. He may acknowledge a higher order that controls the universe (as in Sophocles’ tragedies), but he sees the relation between man and cosmos as uncertain, tenuous, vague.

PESSIMISM. Christian man is buoyed by an awareness of the superiority of the supernatural over the natural. His access to an omnipotent God provides him with a sense of confidence that the universe is an orderly and regulated creation under divine control. His security is found in the promise that “he who believes in him is not condemned” and shall enjoy eternal life.

Tragic man is pessimistic in seeing the overwhelming proportion of evil to good, but optimistic in hoping that justice will ultimately prevail, though man may be destroyed. Tragic man recognizes a futility in his defiance of the anti-forces; yet his only course is to struggle, knowing he is caught in a web. King Lear’s cry of frustration, “I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” is the cry of tragic man. Job too was a tragic figure until he finally acknowledged, “I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted.” Then he became Christian man.

FREEDOM. Christian man is free. But his freedom is part of a paradox: only in bondage to Christ can he be truly free. He is free of guilt for the consequences of his sins, for guilt was absolved, once and for all, at the cross.

Tragic man hangs suspended between determinism and freedom, neither slave to fate nor a free man. He can blame neither himself nor God entirely; to fix the blame on either would relieve the tension and negate the tragedy.

SUFFERING. The Christian experiences suffering, not with a sense of futility and defeat, but with the assurance that God permits it and controls the outcome. First Peter 4 advises: “Rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s suffering,” while Romans 5 suggests that suffering produces qualities that draw the Christian closer to God. Like Job, the Christian may question the reason for his suffering, but he does not doubt the ultimate purpose of God.

Tragic man, proud of his humanity, cannot “curse God, and die,” as suggested by Job’s wife. His suffering requires him, like Prometheus, to protest against the forces that prevail against him. He stands alone, pitted against the cosmos; this protest is at the heart of the tragic struggle.

DEATH. The grim conclusions of dramatic tragedies from the ancient Oedipus the King to the modern Death of a Salesman stand in contrast to the biblical accounts of Job, John the Baptist, Stephen, and Christ. Christian man finds death not defeat but victory.

Although not all tragedies conclude with physical or violent death, all lack any suggestion of a regenerated life. A. C. Bradley suggests that the events in Shakespearean tragedies may become so transmuted that they cease to be strictly tragic. Still, the violent deaths of his tragedies, the grim endings of Greek tragedies, the futility and hopelessness of modern tragedies all have in common the pathos of a collapsing world. Macbeth offers little hope when he concludes that life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”

The Christian view of life, described in terms of literary genre, would seem to be most akin to comedy, most alien to tragedy. Sylvan Barnet says that “the Christian pattern moves from weakness to strength, from death to life, from innocence to bliss. Its form is therefore comic, and Dante writes a Commedia because he knows that a tragedy begins quietly but ends in horror, while a comedy begins harshly but concludes happily” (“Some Limitations of a Christian Approach to Shakespeare,” English Literary History Journal, XXII [1955], 81–92). To refer to the misfortunes of a Christian as “tragedy” is to ignore the resurrection of Christ. For the Christian, the terms “Christian” and “tragedy” remain forever irreconcilable.