Page 6212 – Christianity Today (2024)

The closest thing to an evangelical lobby in Washington is located in a modest mezzanine suite overlooking Fourteenth and G Streets. But influencing legislation is only part of the operation in these offices, for the man in charge is 59-year-old Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, who has had the dual role of public affairs director for the National Association of Evangelicals and executive secretary of the NAE-related Evangelical Foreign Missions Association. Taylor’s jobs and interests are so varied that he himself finds them hard to spell out. It was only logical, therefore, to tap further his colorful resources when a serious vacuum developed in NAE leadership.

NAE lost its general director at year-end with the resignation of Dr. George L. Ford. But Ford had given several months’ notice, and the NAE Board of Administration was grooming the Rev. W. Stanley Mooneyham to take over eventually. Mooneyham has been editor of United Evangelical Action, official NAE monthly, and has had church administrative experience as executive secretary and moderator of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. However, about the time Ford was moving out, Mooneyham announced that he too was resigning, to join the Billy Graham team.

The upshot was that the NAE board got the good-humored Taylor to take on the general directorship in addition to his other jobs. He will continue to reside in Washington, in a fashionable split-level overlooking picturesque Rock Creek Park in the Northwest section.

Taylor’s dedication and multi-faceted Christian service have earned him the respect of many as God’s handyman in Washington. His coming in 1944 gave NAE the distinction of being the first Protestant interdenominational organization to open an office in the capital city. Since then the operation has performed a myriad of services for U. S. evangelicals ranging from visa aid to tax counsel and chaplain placement. Taylor seldom fraternizes with Washington’s elite, but he holds the confidence of a host of knowledgeable contacts in echelons where most decisions are made. Perhaps the most dramatic in a long chain of achievements was Taylor’s successful intervention in behalf of a foreign student slated for deportation and almost certain execution for his Christian stand.

Taylor’s acumen on the Washington scene is surpassed only by his grasp of the complexities of the foreign missions enterprise. Chief coordinator for fifty-nine independent missionary boards comprising EFMA, Taylor represents a task force of some 6,100 missionaries. He has flown over 650,000 miles in the last decade and has visited more than 100 countries.

Taylor is a robust, towering (over six-feet-four) man. Born in Arkansas, ordained a Baptist, and educated at Nyack Missionary College, Gordon College, and Boston University, he served as a missionary in South America for thirteen years. Frugality was the rule in those lean years, and Taylor still counts his lunch money carefully, sometimes preferring to bring sandwiches from home.

He seizes every opportunity to brief the rank and file on the status of evangelical advance. In the heat of delivery he is sometimes given to overstatement, but those who know him best say it is almost inevitable in one who is such a vivid thinker. His latest thoughts are on NAE’s future: “We plan to re-examine our whole purpose and policy to see how we can have a more dynamic testimony in society.”

An appeal to the world’s political and religious leaders to protest against the persecution of Christians in Communist countries was sounded in London last month at an Epiphany service attended by Eastern Orthodox.

Participating in the service—held in conjunction with a Christian unity rally in Trafalgar Square in which Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and others joined—was Archbishop Antony, exarch in Western Europe of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

His presence created a stir, for it was believed to be the first time that a prelate of the Moscow Patriarchate had been publicly associated with complaints of Soviet anti-religious persecution.

Chief speaker at the service was Russian-born Archpriest Vladimir Rodzianko of the Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Sava in London. He declared that “we do not want to interfere with Soviet laws,” but “we appeal to [the Russians] to follow at least what they themselves set as their own laws” guaranteeing religious freedom.

Father Rodzianko also appealed to the United Nations “to reconsider again the question of religious freedom and liberty.”

Meanwhile, he added, “we the Orthodox gathered here in London, appeal to our Patriarchs and bishops, to the Holy Father of Rome and all his bishops the world over, to our host here—the Archbishop of Canterbury—and all Anglican bishops the world over, to all bishops and ministers of other churches, and to the World Council of Churches to show our Christian unity in this our common concern for our suffering brethren.”

The Orthodox service was held in the Anglican church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, with the permission of Dr. Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Canon John Satterthwaite, his secretary of foreign affairs.

“We all know,” said Father Rodzianko, “how Christians suffer under the persecution of the godless in Russia, in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, China and elsewhere. I myself—though I would prefer to remain silent on this particular point—stand today in front of you, a Russian-born priest of the Serbian church, as a witness. I was personally privileged to be brought to trial in Yugoslavia together with my church warden, members of the church committee, and some parishioners, for, as it stated, ‘illegal excessive religious propaganda.’ My church warden died in prison—he was beaten to death—and the rest served various terms. I spent two years in prison and labor camps.”

Declaring that although ten years have passed since then, the persecution of religion still continues, he said, “A terrible new wave has started again.”

He related details of a document describing the “dreadful persecution” of Russian Orthodox believers in Byelorussia and the Western Ukraine. The document was prepared by a group of believers and entrusted to some British tourists.

First made public last November, the papers related instances of forcible removal of children from religious instruction and church services, threats against seminary students, harassment of monks and pilgrims, diversion of church funds, and the closing of churches.

“Information we have received from other sources confirms the charges made by these fearless Russian believers who are asking help from the universal church,” Father Rodzianko said. “If we close our ears to that appeal, we will be siding with those who are called ‘the servants of anti-Christ,’ and thus destroying the unity we want to build. But what can we do? We can cry out. We can make the situation known throughout the world. The united Christian opinion throughout the world is a powerful weapon.”

New ‘Pauline’ Document

A Church of England report on deployment and payment of clergy says that under the present system most of the parsons are in the country while most of the people live in the towns. Main proposals of the 300-page document, authored by 58-year-old sociologist Leslie Paul, include direction of ordinands for the first five years of their ministry, creation of new parishes with a team ministry, abolition of patronage and of the anachronism that makes it all but impossible to remove a clergyman from his living except for criminal offenses or immorality.

Scheduled for discussion this month at the Church Assembly, the report quickly came under fire. An archdeacon referred to “a planner’s Pelagian paradise where administrative techniques are substitutes for faith in God and prayer.” Layman Ivor Bulmer-Thomas suggested the new proposals would bring about the reverse of much-needed revival in the Church of England, the decline of which he attributed to “clergymen denying the basic truths, from [Thomas] Arnold in 1832 to the Bishop of Woolwich and the Cambridge theologians in 1964.” But the report has influential supporters, including Dr. Kenneth Riches, Bishop of Lincoln, who insisted that the reforms are long overdue.

J. D. DOUGLAS

The Power Of A Curse

An unscheduled item at Morning Prayer startled worshipers this month in the rural parish of Bramber in Southern England. Dressed in vestments and with outstretched arms, 76-year-old rector Ernest Streete faced his congregation and declaimed: “I pronounce a curse on those who touch God’s acre in this churchyard. May their days be of anguish and sorrow, and may God have mercy on their souls.”

The clerical curse resulted from a raid on the church’s graveyard, variously attributed to vandals and to Black Magic devotees. A stone cross weighing a hundred pounds had been wrenched from a grave and propped up against the church door, tombstone angels had been beheaded, and black mass signs were scrawled on the porch. Attempts to break into the 900-year-old church itself had failed.

“My curse shall stand,” Mr. Streete said, “and I will not relent until they apologize and ask for forgiveness. What they have done is a tremendous insult to the Almighty.”

Next morning, finding that much of the damage had been repaired, he announced that he would arrange for the curse to be lifted the following Sunday. Though Mr. Streete later heard that police had done the repair work, he professed himself in no doubt of the efficacy of his curse.

This is not the rector’s first successful curse: in a former parish a similar malediction pronounced on thieves who rifled the church money boxes was followed by the return of most of the cash, anonymously.

The Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Roger Wilson, commented that the rector had done this on his own initiative, and added: “There is nothing in church ritual that allows this sort of thing.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Making It Legal

“It would seem that certain positions of influence are sometimes barred to men who are determined to remain loyal to the Prayer-Book,” said the Vicar of Islington, the Rev. R. Peter Johnston, in his presidential address to the 130th Islington Clerical Conference at Westminster this month. Illustrating the kind of action involved in such loyalty, he cited evangelical opposition to a bill, due to come up for final approval at the February meeting of the Anglican Church Assembly, which would legalize the wearing of Mass vestments (Anglo-Catholics have long ignored the present prohibition, which is never enforced).

“Granted that to many these garments have no doctrinal significance,” continued Mr. Johnston, “to some at least they are closely linked with Eucharistic teaching which undermines the doctrine of justification by faith.” Should this measure become law, evangelicals will experience increasing difficulty in playing their full part in the life of the Church of England. If the Church Assembly gives its expected sanction the bill will be submitted for approval to Parliament where, despite lobbying by the hierarchy, considerable opposition is anticipated.

Mr. Johnston summarized evangelical objections to the proposed Anglican-Methodist merger (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, March 15, 1963). He denied the implication in that report that episcopal ordination was essential for a valid ministry, and asserted that its view of the priesthood stemmed rather from the Oxford Movement than from the formularies of the Church of England. Mr. Johnston predicted that many Methodists would refuse to participate, and that opposition would close the door to reunion with the other English free churches for many years to come. He suggested that all the major denominations in England might explore the possibility of reunion along the lines of the Church of South India, a feature of which is the acceptance of one another’s ministries as they are. “We should do all in our power to avoid wounding the consciences of those who differ from us,” he concluded; “on the other hand, Tractarian principles must not be allowed to determine our relationship with other branches of the Church of Christ.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

A 42-year-old American missionary, Miss Irene Ferrel, was murdered last month by anti-government terrorists in the Congo. Three Roman Catholic priests from Belgium also were killed.

The slayings were part of a campaign of rampaging guerrilla forces reportedly led by Pierre Mulele, a 34-year-old former education minister in the cabinet of the late Patrice Lumumba. Mulele, also an associate of the imprisoned leftist leader Antoine Gizenga, recently returned from a period of exile in Egypt and Communist China.

Miss Ferrel and another missionary, Miss Ruth B. Hege, 57 years old, operated a church and a Bible school at Mungugu under sponsorship of Baptist Mid-Missions, an agency supported by the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches.

The wave of terror in the Congo—centered in Kwilu province—resulted in at least 150 deaths in all. Pilots of Missionary Aviation Fellowship who flew over the beseiged area reported that fifteen mission stations were destroyed or burning. As of the end of January a number of other American missionaries serving in the area had not been accounted for.

Miss Hege, of Wellington, Ohio, was taken to Leopoldville by United Nations helicopter after days of hiding and running from the rebels. She suffered an arm wound not believed to be serious. Earlier reports that she had lost a hand proved false.

Miss Hege told how she and Miss Ferrel heard noises outside their home at the Mungugu mission station at about 2 A.M. on January 26 and opened the door to a rain of arrows.

“Irene was hit right in the face by an arrow, over the nose, when we opened the door.… I was hit in the arm by an arrow,” she said.

“Irene was killed instantly. I was struck down first and she fell on top of me and they left us both for dead. The terrorists smashed up our home completely. I just lay there, not daring to move.”

Miss Hege said she somehow managed to crawl to a garage, hiding under leaves, until Christian villagers found her and took her to a nearby village. They then took her by bicycle toward safety, but were intercepted by more terrorists and returned to the mission.

“They left me there with a Congolese nurse,” she said, until January 28, when a United Nations helicopter arrived and took her to Leopoldville.

Before leaving the Mungugu station, she said, she buried Miss Ferrel.

Miss Ferrel, sponsored by the First Fundamental Baptist Church of San Diego, California, was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest H. Ferrel of Jerome, Idaho.

Miss Ferrel’s death was initially reported by another Baptist missionary, the Rev. Peter Buller of Mountain Lake, Minnesota, who was stationed about twenty miles from Mungugu. Buller said he had flown over the area on January 22 and had seen Miss Ferrel signaling for help. There was no place for the plane to land.

A number of other missionaries were evacuated following the uprisings. They included several from the Congo Inland Mission, maintained by the Evangelical Mennonite Church Conference of Elkhart, Indiana. Missionaries of the American Baptist Convention also work in the area, but there were no immediate reports of any casualties among them.

A Canadian U. N. officer, Lt. Col. Paul Mayer, was beaten up by Africans when he tried to negotiate the release of eight women missionaries and a man held captive at Kisandji. The group was subsequently evacuated, however, without incident.

An Amendment For Women

A majority of presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) have approved a proposed amendment to the denomination’s Book of Church Order providing for ordination of women. By the end of January forty-three presbyteries had voted favorably on the amendment and twenty-three had voted against it. Only forty-one were necessary for the measure to carry.

The amendment proposal was initiated by the denomination’s General Assembly last spring. It must still be enacted by a vote of this year’s assembly before it can become church law.

A Lack Of Accord

Two ecumenically minded Roman Catholic scholars were prevented from addressing the literary and historical society of University College, Dublin, according to an article in the society’s magazine. The two, both well-known Americans, are Father John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit, and Father Gregory Baum, an Augustinian. Murray was one of four scholars barred from speaking last spring at Catholic University in Washington, D. C.

Says the writer of the article, Anthony Clare: “Neither of these men could be regarded as adhering to views which would be dangerous or detrimental to the beliefs and convictions of the students. But they do hold views on certain questions within the Church not in accordance with views held here.”

Since both Clare and the UCD authorities made it clear later that no academic ban was imposed, only one possibility remains. No comment was forthcoming, however, from the office of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. The Republic of Ireland, neutral in World War II and separate from the British Commonwealth since 1949, is 93 per cent Roman Catholic.

Collector’S Item For Lent

The Anglican Church of Canada, trying to liven up its annual Lenten homilies, got itself embroiled in a hot controversy.

The trouble centers on the man the Anglicans asked to write their Lenten study book for 1965: Pierre Berton, a 43-year-old Canadian journalist and TV personality—and author of a disputed article on sex.

Writing in Maclean’s, a popular Canadian magazine with a circulation of 500,000, Berton said last May that “society is going to have to accept the fact that premarital sex isn’t always a bad thing; what is bad is the sense of guilt, shame and sin which keeps young people at arm’s length from their parents.… We must make much less fuss about virginity and continence and realise that while they’re okay for some people, they are not necessarily okay for all.”

In a curious sequence of events following the appearance of the article, Berton lost his job as a contributing editor with Maclean’s and a few months later was asked to write the Lenten study book.

Canadian Anglican officials have since backtracked, saying that Berton’s book will no longer be the Lenten study book, but one of several.

“I personally think it’s a poor choice,” said the Rev. Desmond Hunt, Archdeacon of Kingston, Ontario, and rector of St. James Church there. “One wonders if it doesn’t look like an endorsem*nt of all he said.”

“I don’t think it is,” he added, “[but] in the light of Robinson’s book¹The reference is to Anglican Bishop John Robinson’s book, Honest to God. At the Anglican Congress last summer in Toronto, a speaker was applauded after referring to the bishop’s “profoundly courageous” book. taking a liberal view of theology, and Pierre Berton taking a liberal view of morality, it looks as if the church is taking an accommodating stand.”

The church asked Berton to write the book because he is “a man of integrity and an outstanding writer,” said Canon W. E. Hobbs, director of the church’s Department of Information and Stewardship. “The church is interested in getting the lay point of view.”

The article in Maclean’s and the repercussions were “all known to the committee,” according to Canon Hobbs. The book will be about the Church in general, “not just the Anglican church,” he said.

Berton claims that his remarks have been distorted. The article generally denounced the inconsistency of public mores that outlaw premarital sex relations while tolerating petting and allowing sex to be presented to youth as “the key to everything.”

The father of six children, Berton does not balk at the implications of his views.

“At this point,” he wrote, “I fancy I hear a Greek chorus of well-intentioned old women caroling their slogan: ‘Would you want your daughters, etc …?’

“Well, I have several daughters, mesdames, and I must tell you that this is not a question that haunts my slumber. They are pretty levelheaded girls and if, in a moment of madness or by calculated design, they find themselves bedded with a youth … I do not really believe the experience will scar their psyche or destroy their future marriages. Indeed I would rather have them indulge in some good, honest, satisfying sex than be condemned to a decade of whimpering frustration brought on by the appalling North American practice called ‘petting.’

“Be that as it may, I pray one thing is clear to them: whatever occurs, they will always have the full sympathy of their parents.”

Berton emphasizes that he is not saying what stand the Church should take. “I’m just saying that it should examine the issues,” he says. “The Church has re-examined its position constantly [throughout history]. The Church of today is not the Church of the Spanish inquisition; it is not the Church of Martin Luther; and it is certainly not the Church of the first century.”

As to the teaching of the Bible on the subject, he says that one would have “trouble finding scriptural background to oppose” his views. He counters biblical injunctions against fornication by calling into question the accuracy of the translations of the original texts.

He adds that “the Bible says a lot that ministers don’t believe.”

Berton was approached about writing the book during the Anglican Congress last summer, and an official announcement from the church followed.

The Lenten book, which will be “constructively critical,” will deal with several social issues, he says, including “sex, race, and war.” Berton also plans to say something on the Anglican church service. Brought up in the Anglican church, Berton now “sporadically” attends services of the United Church of Canada.

Asked why he thought he had been asked by the Anglicans to write the book, Berton said, “They themselves are going through a period of self-examination. I think they wanted a Lenten book somebody would read.”

GEORGE WILLIAMS

A Subtle Message

The floor show beginning next week at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach will have an aura that is distinctly religious or anti-religious, depending on the point of view.

There in the very unsanctified setting of the La Ronde Room a shapely Hollywood trio will bump and grind its way through a series of gospel choruses familiar to evangelicals everywhere.²Such as “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart,” “Give Me Oil in My Lamp,” and the warhorse, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But pure motives are claimed by the opulently gowned trio led by Jane Russell, 42-year-old veteran of the screen whose appearance in Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw was one of the first skirmishes in America’s post-war sex revolution (see the editorial on page 26).

A dash of religion never hurt an act, say the show business moguls, and in this case it’s 50 per cent of the proceedings. And unlike many who sing of religion and couldn’t care less, these three performers are active in the Hollywood Christian Group, an interdenominational fellowship.

Singing with Jane are Connie Haines and Beryl Davis. They first joined voices impromptu-style at a benefit ten years ago in St. Thomas Episcopal Church of Hollywood, where Beryl attends. Later they made some recordings of gospel tunes, but they put off road tours until last summer. Appearance on national television shows thrust them on a wave of popularity.

In contrast to the usual run of nightclub entertainment, the act does not rely on seamy jokes or seamless costumes. Even so, the critics of the entertainment business have given it their blessing. “A trio of comely femmes with vocal chords to match,” said Variety of their stint at New York’s Copacabana.

The trio is unruffled because churchgoers consider its performance offensive. “The only reason we’re doing this is that it might do some good,” said Jane, without specifying the good. “We were kind of led to do it.”

British-born Beryl admits she had little to do with religion until she came to Hollywood and the two other girls got her interested in the Christian group.

Connie’s father was a Roman Catholic, but she was raised in her mother’s Baptist church where she recalls a “born-again experience” at the age of ten. She later sang at evangelistic rallies and enrolled at a Bible institute in Minneapolis, Northwestern Schools, planning to be a missionary. She changed her mind and decided that her mission in life was to sing “right where I was.”

Jane attends Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Sherman Oaks, California. Her mother is minister at a nondenominational chapel in the San Fernando Valley.

The message of the act is subtle, says Jane in a monumental understatement. “We’re not trying to beat them over the head.”

Keeping The Lord’S Day

Civil observance of the Fourth Commandment is a longstanding tradition in America, and one of the most active groups devoted to keeping it that way is the Lord’s Day Alliance, which celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary last month.

The alliance has two main targets: to make sure that Sunday is protected by law and—once protected—that it is meaningfully used by Christians. “Unless we use the day given to us for worship and religious education, we have no right to ask for legislation protecting it,” said Dr. Harold E. Mayo, former executive director and newly elected president of the alliance.

At its seventy-fifth anniversary meeting in New York, the alliance urged politicians to refrain from campaigning on Sunday.

Alliance leaders emphasize the results of a recent Roper poll showing that a majority of the people polled favored keeping Sunday for “the three R’s—Religion, Relaxation, and Relatives.”

According to the group’s chief elder statesman, Dr. Harry L. Bowlby, public support was not such an easy matter in the old days. He recalled an organized attempt to get Sunday observance branded as a “blue law proposition.” After a six-month battle that included public debates, the opponents conceded defeat.

The alliance, founded in 1888 as the American Sabbath Union, changed its name to the present one in 1908. Although its influence on the American religious scene is not widely felt, several denominations cooperate with it officially, and many other churches support it. The alliance was instrumental in securing Sunday as a holiday for mail carriers.

The alliance is not represented officially in each state. Among the state groups doing “significant” work, said Dr. Mayo, are the Pennsylvania Alliance, headed by Dr. Melvin M. Forney, who has written much of the alliance’s literature, and the New Jersey Alliance, headed by the Rev. Samuel A. Jeanes, which is currently sponsoring a “Go to Church on Sunday” billboard campaign.

The general program includes tracts, church bulletin covers, a motion picture entitled Triumphant Tradition, posters, and visits to churches by field representatives.

GEORGE WILLIAMS

A Palace For The Emperor

The Japanese government announced last month that it would build for Emperor Hirohito a $26 million palace to replace one wrecked by Allied bombs during World War II.

The decision caused a measure of concern among Japanese Christians and some speculation that such an extravagant expenditure focuses an inordinate amount of attention upon the emperor. Thus far, however, there has been no evidence of any overt break in the separation of religion and state. The emperor still performs his Shinto worship ceremonies at the Kashikodokoro (the Shinto ceremony shrines) in another part of the palace grounds.

Shinto sources insist that the emperor is a symbol of the nation and is not the Shinto high priest, an object of worship as in pre-war Japan.

“If there is deficiency of true learning,” says Geoffrey W. Bromiley in the article beginning on the opposite page, “it is not for any lack of the necessary tools.” Our spring book issue assesses the vast assortment of religious books that came off the presses last year and probes the outlook for 1964. Dr. Bromiley’s article and the two that follow survey the 1963 output. The “Spring Book Forecast” on page 16 lists what is coming, and the editorial on page 24 considers the current state of evangelical writing.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour (John 12:27).

The introduction reports a poll of twenty prominent people in America, some of them presumably Christians. When asked to list in order of importance 100 events in history, they accorded the Crucifixion fourteenth place. This life situation approach leads up to a message that no one can outline. Secure the book and read the sermon with the heart. What then do we really mean when we speak of the Cross?

I. A Unique Event in History. The Cross has changed the course of history, and may change the course of your life today. The Bible says that the preaching of the Cross becomes to the believer both the wisdom and the power of God. So on Passion Sunday we begin with the Cross, and we stay with the Cross. For the preacher it is inevitable, inescapable; and not only for the preacher. The New Testament writers—in Gospels and Epistles—return to it again and again as the compulsive center of their new-found faith. So it has been in the witness of the Church from the beginning. In every age the Cross looms up again against the Calvary sky, inevitable, inescapable, demanding a decision.

II. The Unique Word of Jesus Christ. As we see from the hymns, creeds, and prayers of the universal Church, authentic Christianity has always known that the Cross speaks the unique word of Christ, the climax of his teaching. The Cross is inseparable from his life. It is the point to which the whole Bible record leads and from which the Christian Church starts out.

The preaching of the Cross has overtones [so has this sermon] that can be heard in those depths that no simple ethics or logic can reach. [Here follows a poignant example from the war work of Chaplain Read.] For us the Cross was unavoidable. Its mark is set deep in human history, and our common life bears the scar of this divine sacrifice, this judgment, and this tremendous sympathy. But the question arises: Was the Cross inevitable for Him? Could Jesus have escaped his cross?

III. The Inevitability of God’s Love. [To this final answer the discussion leads up climactically. Over against certain impossible replies, the sermon quotes the text.] “For this cause.” With these words His destiny is clear. He came to die. The Cross that was now almost within sight would be freely chosen. Why? Because there was no other way in which he could reach to the depth of the human agony he came to endure, so as to “bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.” Because there was no other way he could draw upon himself the hopeless weight of our sins and absorb the evil that blocks us from the holiness of God.

“The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The only way the God of peace and joy can reach his suffering family is in this amazing fashion to share that suffering. The only way the God of perfect purity and goodness can reach his disobedient people is himself to offer the sacrifice for sin. What we see in the Cross is not the hideous outworking of blind fatality, not a tragic accident of history. We see the end-result of God’s redeeming love going out to seek us where we are. “For this cause came I into the world.”

This is why, for those who have ears to hear, the message of the Cross is the greatest message in the world, and why whenever we hear it we face a life-or-death decision. Faced with this demonstration of God’s love, do I yield myself to Him who loved me and gave himself for me? “If any man will come after me,” says Jesus, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”—From I Am Persuaded (Scribner’s, 1962).

Why does a growing minister preach better in each successive decade of his life? Partly because he keeps preparing every time as well as he can. Next week he strives to do still better. Except in vacation time he prepares a new sermon every week, new in content and in form. Alas, the converse often holds true. Many an able man preaches better at forty than at sixty. As every thoughtful hearer knows, the dominie has begun to slip. He has quit doing his best work on each sermon. Only a man’s best can begin to be good enough for God.

A wise man early forms the habit of writing out in full a sermon every week. Instead of writing two, he revises one. In preparing a sermon, as in penmanship, the more a man scribbles, the worse the end product. In making the first draft he sits down with everything needful close at hand. He writes straight through, as though speaking to friends in church. Then he asks his wife or teen-age daughter to read the message aloud, deliberately, to see if every part is as “clear as a cloudless moon,” as interesting as the facts warrant, as effective as he desires. If so, it all has a pleasing prose rhythm. When a man’s heart is moved his words flow. The next day he can revise the message.

What about other sermons and addresses, several in a week? After an apprenticeship, he can make ready to speak on the basis of a full outline. Seldom does a mature minister prepare more than one new sermon a week. Thus he has the advantages of making ready and speaking in two different ways. As for committing a sermon to memory and repeating it like a parrot, a typical pastor now does not have such ability. Neither does a church want that sort of sermon. However, with an exceptional man God blesses methods not ideal.

The immediate effectiveness of a spoken sermon depends on delivery more than on anything else. In a community where a given pastor speaks well but has little to say worthy of note, another has much to communicate but does not speak well. If both men do their best, the former has the larger hearing. This may be fortunate, since it is easier to excel as a public speaker than as a pulpit interpreter. Either one can do a vast deal of good with powers that he dedicates to God and people.

What does it mean to speak well? “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak …” (Isa. 50:4). Here our schools and books have rendered young men a disservice. We have taught them to admire a pulpit orator, who calls attention to himself, and a sermonizer, who directs attention to his message, often as an end in itself. In the Bible the stress falls on one whom I term a pastoral evangelist.

A pastoral evangelist aims to speak so that the layman will think about the Lord and about his own needs. From this point of view “the best preaching voice never is heard.” Neither by mellifluous beauty nor by a nasal twang should a minister’s voice call attention to itself and away from the Saviour. A man of God learns to speak so that the layman will fix the eye of the soul on the Lord, and part of the time on himself. As of old on the holy mount, other bases fade from view until a hearer sees the Lord and is transformed into His likeness, so as to serve.

As for ways and means, who can lay down rules? Would any reader make ready for Christ-centered, hearer-directed pulpit speech? Why not ask a wise layman to come in from elsewhere and on a tape recorder take down the morning service for a month? Then, alone with God, listen to yourself as a voice speaking for him to a layman who has come to church to find the Redeemer. In our sin-cursed, war-blasted, sorrow-stricken time, how can a pastor do more for his God than learn to prepare every sermon for His glory, and then deliver it so as to move every heart to resolve here and now to do His holy will?

A dedicated pastor never strives to prepare a great sermon, bringing glory to the speaker. He makes ready for a good message, bringing every hearer face to face with God in Christ, and leading the hearer to begin doing the will of God as it is done in heaven. Such a speaker looks on himself and his sermon as vessels of earth through which will shine forth “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (see 2 Cor. 4:5–7). Such a man prepares as though everything depended on him. All the while he prays, because everything depends on God, who alone can send the fire. He will if his servant prepares with faith and holy expectation. (See my book The Growing Minister, Abingdon Press, 1960.)

Pricking The Preacher’S Pride

Christendom Revisited: A Kierkegaardian View of the Church Today, by John A. Gates (Westminster, 1963, 176 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Jesse DeBoer, professor of philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

John A. Gates is qualified to write this useful little book. An earlier book of his, The Life and Thought of Kierkegaard for Everyman, was offered as an introduction to the work of the most important Christian writer since the Reformation. Having served as an ordained minister in a number of pastorates, he is familiar with the practices and attitudes of American Protestants. It is fortunate that in discharge of his present duties as professor of religion at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, he has had time to write out his reflections on how Sören Kierkegaard’s critique of the Danish State Church of his time may be restated in application to American Protestantism today. The project is worth doing, and the workmanship is sound; I hope that the book may stir American Protestants to read Kierkegaard and to ask themselves many disconcerting questions.

Let me present a few random samples of Gates’s Kierkegaardian observations in order to show the tendency and flavor of the book. Noting the contemporary neglect of discipline by ministers and officers, he says: “Now we do nothing except, perhaps, to erase the name of the erring member from the roll, and usually we do not even bother to do this. So far as we are concerned, they can go to hell.” The laxity veils a lack of love. Commenting on the motives from which a young man may enter the ministry, Gates provides a precious story: “… I recall one student who was very honest about his motives. He had lived across the street from a minister in his hometown, and had observed this minister’s daily routine—the easy hours spent on the front porch of the parsonage reading a book, waving to passing motorists, and chatting with pedestrians; the time available for golf; the fun had with youth groups; etc. He was well paid, liked by everyone, had enjoyable work and cradle-to-grave security. Where could one find a better deal?” (p. 58). Ministers are open to special pressures. “People don’t want their minister to be either a ‘fanatic’ or a ‘libertine’; they just want him to be a nice man” (p. 69). And it is not easy to consider one’s task before God when one has a wife and children. “As a middle-aged woman once said to me, ‘Ministers make such sweet husbands.’ So they do” (p. 64). Either “the soft arms of a blameless wife” (Kierkegaard’s words) or the normal desire not to disturb the public or repel approval, may lead a minister to forget what Christianity is. Then he may become an accomplice in perverting the truth, one who is posing, guilty of bad faith.

So with all of us: we “Christians” are interested in religious values; we want to get something from religion; we want God to satisfy our wants; we would like to use him. We insist that the faith must not make us uncomfortable or ask us to do anything costly or difficult (a close look at financial statistics is shaming). We avoid being serious about Christian education (“children and young people have known that it would be all the same whether they learned anything or not.… Their parents also know this and most of them prefer it this way” [p. 168]); in fact, we arrange to press the youngsters into full membership at an age when they cannot “realize fully what they are letting themselves in for” (p. 103). Is this in part because we know that if the decision were postponed to maturity there would be more resistance to pretending that one is a Christian? Do we like childishness?

Kierkegaard did not want to reform theology or church government. Gates says he was a detective (p. 158); I would add that he was a prosecutor. The visible church tends to lose sight of God’s demands, confusing Christendom with faith and obedience. Sören Kierkegaard charges that we do not want to see the lowly Christ, God in the offensive figure of a servant, dying in the status of a criminal. We do not really want to begin with despair over self, humility and trust, repentance and complete surrender to God’s offer. In his last two chapters Gates presents a fine interpretation of Kierkegaard’s account of how a man, by personal decision, can become a believer, and of his remarkable loyalty to the Church on earth, which, despite its being painfully weak and human, is still God’s appointed agent. His plea for honesty can stir us to more sincere acceptance of the Christian task.

I find one error in the text. “The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith. To believe that virtue is the opposite of faith leads either to frustration and renewed despair or to Pharisaism (which is also despair)” (p. 145). The second sentence should be amended to begin either with, “To believe that virtue is the result (or fulfillment) of faith,” or with, “To believe that virtue is the opposite of sin.” The second alternative makes better sense.

JESSE DEBOER

‘Wise Men Never Try’

The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan (W. W. Norton, 1963, 409 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Lars I. Granberg, professor of psychology, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

American society is being destroyed from within by a deadly hoax perpetrated upon its women. They have been infantilized (sic), yea dehumanized by the “housewife trap.” Seduced by the feminine mystique, a vision of feminine fulfillment through marriage, motherhood, and mutual org*sm, today’s women have repressed the wish to grow, to develop their full human capacities, to discover their identity. For the past quarter-century women’s magazines; advice columns; novels and television dramas; experts on marriage, child psychology, and sexual adjustment, along with their popularizes; and, most notoriously, the advertising world, have peddled the same phony image of ideal womanhood. The ultimates in life, they keep dinning into milady’s ears, are a home in the suburbs decorously filled with fine furniture and the latest labor-saving devices; four or five attractive, socially desirable children; and a devoted husband who is progressing in his profession. Live for your children. Be their confidant, social secretary, and psychotherapist. Don’t let yourself go to seed mentally or physically. Read the latest books. Be a good companion to your husband; keep his morale high; and keep him enchanted by being passive, frivolous, fluffy, and youthful. Above all, don’t neglect your physical allure! The transports of sex satisfaction are the ultimate in feminine fulfillment. So they said. And American women believed them. Result: dominated and sexually indifferent husbands; physically emasculated sons with a bent to sexual inversion; daughters who flee from the conflicts, pain, and hard work of growing up, into the solace of sexual adventuring or early marriage; and also “the problem that has no name.”

This is an angry book. Mrs. Friedan speaks with the voice of Amos of Tekoa. Women tried to be what America told them to be, she says. Submissively they tried to find fulfillment as good housewives. Now they suffer a deadly plague. They are tormented by a vague, nagging, guilt-ridden discontent (the problem that has no name). They poison the emotional climate of their homes. In droves they seek refuge on the psychiatrist’s couch. “For women of ability, in America today, there is something about the housewife state itself that is dangerous.… The women … who grow up wanting to be ‘just a housewife’ are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps” (p. 305).

Woe unto you, male editors of women’s magazines. You supplanted the image of the spirited career girl with the stultifying image of woman as housewife-mother! Woe to you, peddlers of the Freudian theory of femininity, spouting “biology is destiny,” shrinking women to childlike dolls who live only to love men and serve their needs, and stifling their protests over this caricature with, “Phallic envy.” Woe to you, functionalist educators, spawning rationales for the feminine mystique, seeking to adjust girls to the fraudulent, culture-sanctioned definition of femininity, and frightening them into repressing their desire to become full-fledged adults with cries of “Unfeminine!” Woe to you, Margaret Mead, who in Male and Female glorified the female sexual function rather than sharing your vision of woman’s great, untested potential. Except ye all confess your error, demolish the feminine mystique, and see to it via a national education program (similar to the GI bill) for women that the women deluded or cheated by the feminine mystique are re-educated, your sons and your daughters, your homes, and your nation shall all be destroyed!

Incredible, you say? The book is endorsed by such persons as Millicent McIntosh, Pearl Buck, Lillian Smith, Margaret Culkin Banning, and Ashley Montague, among others. But if Mrs. Friedan is right, how ever did American women, who are perhaps the freest and best educated in the world, embrace so monstrous a lie? Mrs. Friedan picks as reasons war-induced loneliness, a resurgence of anti-feminist prejudices rising from post-war competition for jobs, and subtle discrimination against women that kept them from being advanced according to their ability and drove many back to the home bitter over the injustice of it all.

The book is likely to bemuse the ordinary man, in whose lifetime women have so steadily encroached upon previously male territory that only the locomotive cab and pool hall are still sacrosanct (maybe we need a book on the male mystique).

Nevertheless, the book speaks to situations that concern many Americans. This past summer, for example, the World Council of Churches sponsored a four-day conference at the University of Rochester on the role of men and women in contemporary society. To me it seems undeniable that some women over-identify with the homemaker role to their own detriment and that of their family.

A few demurrers: It seems unwarranted to assume that any women, including women of ability, who love homemaking and the role of housewife are engaged in a neurotic security operation. Mrs. Friedan may well be right in her contention that the core problem for women today is a problem of identity. Many psychologists think this is true for men and women alike, in America and perhaps in Europe, too. Her insistence that the sole road to personal identity lies in training one’s abilities and applying them competitively against all comers for the betterment of society is a severely constricted view. A sense of identity is gained through how one does what he must do. While achievement done in a spirit of concern for human betterment can bring about a sense of identity, this is by no means inevitable; nor does it seem to me always the main road. I also wonder whether the emptiness she sees as the fruit of the feminine mystique may not instead have been a large factor in bringing about its acceptance. This is an age of deep metaphysical hunger. People seek either to fill their spiritual vacuum or to anesthetize themselves against its call. Could this be the reason why the mystique took so well?

Whether or not you find Mrs. Friedan’s thesis credible or her mode of argument convincing, you will find the book sprightly and compelling, with impressive evidences of scholarship. It deals with a topic of particular importance today. If you do not like her analysis or her answer, yours will be the better for having considered hers.

LARS I. GRANBERG

Deserves Thanks

Censorship: Government and Obscenity, by Terrence J. Murphy (Helicon, 1963, 294 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by E. Merrill Root, author and lecturer, Thompson, Connecticut.

This book explores what is at present a no-man’s-land torn by crossfire, where ignorant armies clash by night. It does us a service and deserves our thanks.

Grave, scholarly, logical, it explores the field temperately. It distinguishes between the bold vital frankness of the artist imaging areas of passion frankly, and the furtive salacious exploitation of sex and incitement of sex for commercial gain by p*rnographers. It poses the conflict of what it calls the “absolutist” and the “libertarian”—the absolutist being one who places social good and moral values first, the libertarian one who places utter (and sometimes indiscriminate) liberty first. The author, while reverencing the libertarian, favors the goal (if not always the mood and methods) of the absolutist.

The author sometimes seems (p. 124) to defend censorship for the wrong reasons: he says, “Many of the arguments raised against social reform legislation … are raised against government control of obscenity.” Such “reform” (he says) was called “creeping socialism”; but it was creeping socialism. And in ironic paradox, it is the Pharisees of “social reform” who now oppose social control of obscenity, whereas those who oppose the fiats of Caesar most question the trash and treacle of indiscriminate p*rnography. The paradox needs more exploration and explication than it finds here.

The author discusses Supreme Court rulings, which he rightly finds too lax and loose, and yet which (he finds) admit at least in principle the right of protecting immature and even mature minds, almost drowned in the tainted waters of p*rnography, from infection.

I wish he had made more clear that the subversion and dissolution of the Western soul, the destruction of values by indiscriminate cheap filth and by false art, is part of a conspiracy of the hidden persuaders of collectivism. But the book objectively and bravely explores a vexed limbo that must be mapped, and though it does not give the complete answer it raises the correct question.

E. MERRILL ROOT

Roman Debate

Scripture and Tradition: A Survey of the Controversy, by Gabriel Moran, F. S. C. (Herder and Herder, 1963, 127 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book is a sketch of the current debate within the Roman Catholic Church on the relative value and relation of Scripture and tradition. One group of Roman Catholic theologians insists that besides the Scriptures there is a “constitutive” tradition, which is defined as another and separate source of revelation, running from the time of the apostles to the present. They point to Mariology, and especially to the determination of the Canon, as examples of dogmas that are not based on the Scriptures alone.

Another group of theologians within the Roman church denies the existence of a constitutive tradition and urges that every dogma of the church has at least a seminal basis within scriptural revelation. Tradition for them is the church’s interpretation and development of a revelation contained in Scripture. This group is generally regarded as being among the “liberals” of Roman Catholicism, and most of its members have strong ecumenical concern.

Both groups agree that the original Tradition is the revelation that came through Christ and his apostles; but they differ on whether all essential revelation found its way into the Bible—so that the Bible is “sufficient”—or whether part was transmitted only by oral, unwritten tradition. Protestant ecumenical leaders have used this idea of an original tradition to make the general idea of tradition more palatable to Protestants, and have come to speak of the “Tradition and the traditions.” Neither group of Roman Catholics believes in the existence of a hidden esoteric revelation that originated in the apostles but was not made public until much later.

Both groups, interestingly, appeal to the Council of Trent for support; those who reject an extra-biblical constitutive tradition contend that Trent’s rejection of Luther’s “sola Scriptura” must be evaluated in the light of Trent’s intent in the given situation. Trent’s rejection of “sola Scriptura,” they urge, did not mean that there is another source of revelation besides Scripture. Trent only rejected Luther’s insistence that he be judged solely by Scripture (and reason), apart from the official, traditional stands of the Church (just as Protestant confessional churches sometimes in actual practice judge their dissenting members’ biblical claims by a mere appeal to their confessional standards).

Moran seeks to mediate the two positions and urges that agreement can be reached within a proper understanding of the unity existing among church, tradition, and Scripture. He contends that this unity can be understood only if the church is seen in her dynamic, historical function of conveying and interpreting revelation.

Whereas the basic question in this area for Protestants is: Is the Bible, is tradition, God’s revelation?, in Roman Catholic thought the equally basic question is: What transmits the revelation? In this function of transmission the church, no less than tradition and the Bible, is said to have her role; indeed the church’s role would seem to be dominant by virtue of her dynamic, continuous conveyance and interpretation of the revelation of God. At this point one can understand the considerable interest Roman Catholic theologians have shown in Karl Barth’s conception of revelation as an event, for the Roman Catholic conception is more congenial to Barth’s view than is that of conservative Protestantism, which states that the Bible is God’s Word.

In a foreword Roman Catholic George H. Tavard has high praise for Moran’s presentation of the debate but has only limited expectations for Moran’s mediating attempts. Tavard feels that each of the two groups has a different theological method, a different understanding of how the Roman church develops its dogmas; and that the real task lies in critically examining these, rather than in simply getting both sides together.

Protestants interested in theology will find this an interesting and profitable debate. They will discover what is going on theologically within the Roman church; they will also recognize problems that emerge in Protestantism, for it too has its traditions.

JAMES DAANE

Book Briefs

The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew, commentary by A. W. Argyle (Cambridge, 1963, 228 pp., $2.75; also paper, $1.65). The first volume in a series designed for schools, training colleges, and laymen. Informative, concise, with occasional historical critical leanings.

The Western Heritage of Faith and Reason, by Eugene G. Bewkes, et al.; revised by J. Calvin Keene (Harper & Row, 1963, 703 pp., $8). A revision of a college text whose merit explains its usage for almost a quarter of a century. Beginning with the religion of the Hebrews, the book deals with the interaction of Judeo-Christian religion and reason up to the present, and does so with considerable objectivity and great clarity. Almost any minister will find the reading of this text a wonderful refresher course in the basic problems of faith and reason.

The Voice of the Cross: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, by Marcus L. Loane (Zondervan, 1963, 127 pp., $2.50). Biblically grounded essays; scholarly and stimulating.

Champion of Liberty: The Story of Roger Williams, by Norman E. Nygaard (Zondervan, 1964, 159 pp., $2.50).

Christ and the Church: An Exposition of Ephesians with Special Application to Some Present Issues, by Dale Moody (Eerdmans, 1963, 153 pp., $2.95).

Romans: An Interpretative Outline, by David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963, 200 pp., $5). An outline treatment of Romans dedicated more to a vindication of the “five points of Calvinism” than to a full treatment of Paul’s thought.

The Big Read-To-Me Story Book, by W. G. van de Hulst, translated by Marian Schoolland (Zondervan, 1963, 178 pp., $3.95). A book of warm, gay, lovely stories of the wonderful world of make-believe. Written in language of literary grace; fine illustrations; well bound.

The Popes and World Government, by Emile Guerry, translated by Gregory J. Roettger (Helicon, 1963, 288 pp., $5.50). The story of the Vatican’s comprehensive program for a world order based on international law, with its rejection of the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty and its insistence that all national communities must recognize a trans-national universal moral law.

The Bible History Told to Our Children: Old Testament, by John Vreugdenhil, translated by Aileen Hamilton (W. M. Den Hertog [Utrecht, The Netherlands], 1963, 830 pp., $6). A soundly evangelical Bible story book which regretfully suffered greatly in translation from Dutch to English. The English is often wooden, the style prosaic, the sentences lumbering (the first has fifty-five words), the inking bad, picture captions microscopic; it is also marred by misspellings, verbosity, unattractive paragraphing, faulty syllabification, and an inelegant title.

God’s Covenants, by Donald Grey Barn-house (Eerdmans, 1963, 176 pp., $3.50). The late Dr. Barnhouse’s exposition of Romans 9:1 through 11:36.

Paperbacks

Preaching the Passion: 24 Outstanding Sermons for the Lenten Season, edited by Alton M. Motter (Fortress, 1964, 193 pp., $1.95). Twenty-four brief, readable, ethically orientated sermons of varying degrees of theological substance. By such men as R. Sockman, M. E. Marty, K. Haselden, G. Florovsky, D. H. C. Read, P. Scherer.

The Coming World Church, by James DeForest Murch, Clyde W. Taylor, John F. Walvoord, and John I. Paton (Back to the Bible, 1963, 70 pp., $.35). An unsympathetic critique of the ecumenical movement, whose goal is described as the creation of a super-church of doctrinal indifference. The proposed remedy looks to the mystical unity that already exists between Christians and to the return of Christ.

Church Growth in Mexico, by Donald McGavran, John Huegel, Jack Taylor (Eerdmans, 1963, 136 pp., $1.95). A valuable study of church growth and mission effort by men of evangelical theology and mission commitment. With graphs and statistical tables.

The Savior’s Suffering: Sermons on the Passion Symbols, by E. Kenneth Hanson (Augsburg, 1964, 80 pp., $1.75). Short, evangelical sermonettes; devotional, informative. Good reading.

The New Testament Witness to the Virgin Birth: Luke 1:1–12, by William C. Robinson (self-published, 1963, 16 pp., $.10).

Messages of the Helsinki Assembly: The Lutheran World Federation, a symposium (Augsburg, 1963, 128 pp., $1.95). Five significant, provocative theological lectures. They open a window on current Lutheran thought.

The Half-Known God, by Lorenz Wunderlich (Concordia, 1963, 117 pp., $1.95). A study of the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of life, which any adult could read with profit.

Saint Francis of Assisi, by John R. H. Moorman (Seabury, 1963, 118 pp., $1.25). A sensitive story of the great Francis of Assisi. First printed in 1950.

The “word” occupies a central place in the Christian religion. It was the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us; the Word that was crucified for our sins and raised for our justification. Though stilled by the Cross, it was sounded again by God himself through the Resurrection in all cosmic time and place. Though Protestants may differ with the theology of Karl Barth and with that of the Roman Catholic Church, Barth’s theology is a theology of the Word, and even the Roman theology of church, tradition, and Scripture, as understood by both its conservatives and its liberals, is a theology of the transmission of the Word.

Because the Word that became flesh was a Person, the highest form of Christian proclamation and witness occurs through persons. And because the most proper and appropriate form of Christian proclamation is the personal word, the minister of the Gospel has priority of rank over the academic theologian, over the ecclesiastical administrator, and over the author of books and the editor of a religious magazine. This primacy in the ecclesiastical kingdom does not exclude, however, but rather suggests that there are other legitimate and effective forms of witness to the Gospel. The Christian writer, whether theologian, poet, journalist, or novelist, fulfills a high and indispensable calling in the Christian community.

For a long time evangelicals had many preachers of the Gospel in pulpit and mission field but relatively few Christian writers. In their efforts to save souls they addressed the heart, leaving the minds of men to be addressed by the less evangelical sector of the Church. While they neglected the intellectual battle for the minds of men, they nourished themselves on the evangelical scholarship of the past, and evangelical book publishers were driven by the famine of evangelical writing to reprint what had been published in a more intellectually virile age. Much that has been written in the past should be reprinted, of course, for contrary to the pride of modernity, wisdom was not born with us. We may indeed be grateful to paperback publishers for making so much of our rich heritage available in inexpensive form. But the reliance of evangelicals upon older religious literature showed a lack of vital engagement with the world to which they preached.

Happily there has been a marked change in recent years. Evangelicals are beginning to rise to the intellectual task of the Church. They are beginning to sense the folly of losing by default the battle for the minds of men in and outside the Church. Anyone who scans what has come from the religious press in the last ten or fifteen years can see changes that bespeak better things. As book titles indicate, evangelicals are now addressing themselves to the whole complex of theological and ethical problems that engages the Church today on all fronts. A considerable amount of what is being written is superficial; much critical writing appears to have been forged from without rather than from within competitive theologies and ecclesiastical movements. Consequently, much of it is still ignored. But evangelicals are writing, and a substantial core of evangelical theological writing is far past the stage of slogans and shibboleths.

Book publishers themselves are aware of this, and many prosper as never before. They are also pleased to bring out not only reprints but new and exciting evangelical books of academic stature. Some of the established and highly respected secular publishing houses are today producing many conservative Christian works.

William B. Eerdmans, Sr., a well-known evangelical publisher, recently told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that “during the last decade American evangelical Christianity has made a promising advance toward Christian maturity in the area of publishing. It has become more informed and accurate, fair and courteous, honest and poised, communicative and relevant. For all this we rejoice and are grateful.” He expressed the wish that in the future “American evangelical writers will spend their efforts in honest defense and compassionate communication of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not only in the Church but also in the world.”

In a letter to us Dr. Eugene Exman, vice-president of Harper & Row, shares his experience: “When I began selecting religious books for Harper to publish thirty-five years ago, there were few top writers in the evangelical field. Of conservative theological writers Dr. Machen was one of the few luminaries in the literary skies who could brighten his star with intelligence, insight, and style. Today there are many more, and they represent a larger proportion of all authors of religious books than was true a generation ago. It is also true, I think, that the so-called fundamentalism of the early decades of the century was less concerned than evangelicals are today with scholarship and literary standards.”

And Lester J. Doniger, president of the Book Club Guild, tells us: “The past decade has seen a notable growth in both the volume and the quality of published evangelical works. A growing corps of dedicated scholars has emerged with a maturity and outlook that has gained attention, recognition, and approval even from non-evangelical circles. This observation comes from my vantage point in working with our book club known as Evangelical Books. By providing a larger market for evangelical writing we may perhaps claim a part of the credit for this upsurge of interest.

“In the early years of the club our judges, concerned with selecting books that are soundly evangelical and at the same time scholarly, experienced some difficulty in providing sufficient variety in reading fare. Today there is almost an embarrassment of riches largely because the evangelical movement through greater self-awareness and increased emphasis on scholarship has been able to develop a large number of writers who are equipped to be scholarly and interesting.”

Theology cannot develop in a vacuum, nor can it become mature overnight. It can grow into maturity, not in isolation, but within a community of Christian scholarship. Moreover, as Dr. Exman also says, “In a sense, writers like artists create their own public.” May the literary movement that has begun within evangelicalism continue and flourish under God.

A House Divided

“When the last of us has been driven out, the Church of the Province of South Africa will have declared itself an ecclesiastically lawless sect ready to slide into the lap of Rome.” These words of the Rev. A. J. Sexby focus attention on the curious case of his country, which has two denominations, each claiming to be the true Church of England established there in 1806 but divided in 1870 when Bishop Gray of Cape Town, a Tractarian, seceded to form the present Church of the Province. Now the larger denomination, the latter is in communion with Canterbury, while the evangelical “Church of England in South Africa” is not. The CPSA’s claims to have maintained the connection with the Church of England were rejected by Britain’s Privy Council (the supreme court) in 1884. Nothing daunted, this overwhelmingly Anglo-Catholic body has produced its own alternative Prayer Book, which omits the Thirty-Nine Articles and makes other changes of vital doctrinal significance. The present Archbishop of Cape Town reflects his church’s position in saying that on “major issues” the CPSA and the church of Rome have “generally speaking … found ourselves at one.” Within the CPSA, however, is a tiny evangelical minority, two of whose clergy have now been declared by their bishops ineligible for appointment, after their firm adherence to the 1662 Prayer Book (constitutionally the official book) and the Thirty-Nine Articles. One of these ousted ministers has recently joined the CESA. Though erroneously dismissed by the London Church Times as a “small schismatic body” (a smear unsustained by the historical facts), the CESA commands much support among evangelicals in England. Dr. Philip E. Hughes, editor of The Churchman and himself the holder of a doctoral degree from Cape Town University, suggests that the time has come for the whole matter to be investigated by an impartial tribunal headed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. In an ecumenical age it does not seem an unreasonable request.

Serpent In The $ Sign

There is in America a growing movement for national and state lotteries and legalized gambling in general. Christians should therefore be prepared for propaganda even now being directed toward making gambling acceptable in our society.

Already one state, New Hampshire, has voted approval of a state lottery. Other states may be tempted to follow. Some publications and radio stations are conducting public-opinion forums on the pros and cons of legalized gambling.

Some seemingly plausible arguments are being used: “Legalized gambling means tax gains for the government”; “It makes more money available for schools and other worthy objectives”; “People are going to gamble anyhow, so it should be legalized”; “Proper laws will make for proper supervision”; “People need the excitement and financial gain that come to winners”; “Other nations have national lotteries, why not America?”—and many more.

The arguments are insidiously persuasive, and they consistently evade the moral and spiritual issues involved. Legalized gambling is a sordid business. Moreover, along with it many other forms of vice crowd through the opened door. This is inevitable in areas where gambling is officially tolerated.

Gambling is not a sport. It is not entertainment. It is not recreation. It can become a deadly malady, claiming addicts as does alcohol and carrying sorrow and misery with it. This is being written in Las Vegas, where we have watched the hard, intent, and unhappy faces of hundreds surrounding the gaming tables.

Legitimate sport has its important place in our society. There are times when all of us need good entertainment. Recreation is a boon to be enjoyed. But gambling is a curse that breeds vice and crime as it grows in its power over an individual and a community.

Nowhere are the sins of the flesh more in evidence than where gambling holds sway. There one finds immorality, greed, licentiousness, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, envy, drunkenness, and the like. No talk about “profits” is relevant until it weighs the loss in terms of the moral and spiritual blight that settles as a pall over the whole sordid business. The Las Vegas coroner reported sixty-seven unnatural deaths such as suicides and murders for the first twenty-seven days of December alone.

Let us not succumb to the argument that legalized gambling has its financial advantages. In the fiscal year 1962–63 the total levied in taxes on gambling in the state of Nevada was $22,600,000, divided among the federal, state, county, and city governments. The total amount involved in gambling is not known exactly, nor are the astronomical profits of the gambling industry. Even from a monetary standpoint the “profit” from taxes was surprisingly low in Nevada, while the loss in moral and spiritual values beggars description. To no practice do the words of our Lord apply more clearly than to gambling: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Too High A Price

At the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism meeting of the World Council of Churches, held in Mexico City, the final report on “Witness” contained the following statement: “In all ages the church is called to be the sign of God’s purpose for His whole creation. This unchanging calling in the changing world is expressed in the eucharist in which the redemption of the whole world given in Jesus Christ is offered continually for and to the world. Thus if the eucharist is the sign of God’s redeeming work, its redeeming reality needs to be manifested within the broken world of contemporary neighborhood” (our italics).

It comes as no surprise to learn that this report, now definitely scheduled for publication, was challenged from the floor when read; but it was not changed. Why not, if this includes (as it does) the very thing that Protestantism repudiates? “He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people,” declares the Epistle to the Hebrews; “he did this once for all when he offered up himself.”

Ultimately we are confronted with the question: What price are we prepared to pay for ecumenicity? If what is demanded is an uncritical commitment that denies the “full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,” then the price is too great. For whom is the WCC committee speaking in this report which apparently gives a boost to the Roman Mass? The church of Rome’s attitude to the ecumenical movement is too candid to arouse false hopes. Far from the picture of a Rome dragged screaming into the twentieth century, this WCC utterance seems to be dragging Protestantism back to the sixteenth century—and with barely a whimper. Our world may be a very different world from that of the Reformers, but the battle is the same. It is not a battle for unity to be won by exchanging concessions (an essentially Protestant delusion); it is a battle for the souls of men that calls for clear witness to biblical principles.

Though with customary caution the WCC points out that this is not an official policy statement, it may be fairly regarded as a leading symptom somewhat like the camel’s nose in the door. The quest for unity is justifiable only as one manifestation of the quest for spiritual revival. Principles for which the Reformers gave their lives are not negotiable.

Ncc Pronouncements: Episcopal View

Many Christians will rejoice if the National Council of Churches gives heed to the Joint Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The commission’s report on its two-year study of the overall program of the NCC says some very significant things.

The NCC’s pronouncements, the report declares, “should avoid the impression that they offer the only specific Christian solution” to contemporary problems and “should be so phrased as not to bring into question the Christian commitment of those who do not agree.” A Christian who differs should not be given the impression that “he is less than ‘Christian’ in upholding his own convictions.” The commission further urges that when the NCC believes it necessary to speak on controversial political matters, “we expect our representatives to point out that dedicated Christians may be standing on either side of that particular question.”

The Episcopal study, while insisting that the NCC “should not stop making public announcements,” sees the proper value and function of these pronouncements in the “opening up of issues about which Christian people ought to be concerned.” If the NCC follows this admonition, it will lose considerable attraction for the secular press, which has little interest in theological reflections and materials handed down to churches for further study.

Less interest on the part of the secular press may, however, be salutary, for until the NCC can speak on social and political issues out of a real consensus of Christian conviction, it has no “word” for society. The report makes it clear that there is no such consensus; indeed, there is even disagreement about when the NCC may speak and what it may say in its public pronouncements.

A release from the Episcopal Church Center on the commission’s report suggests that “specific solutions to political, social and economic problems should be left to statesmen or to others in specialized fields.” Such a forthright statement rightly challenges the pretentious and indefensible notion that churchmen are automatically qualified to speak on the intricate problems of national and international life. In these areas they have too often said more than they know.

The Joint Commission vigorously denies that the NCC speaks on any matter for anyone. “It would be helpful,” it declares, “if a word other than ‘pronouncement’ were used since that word carries a note of authority that the statements do not possess.” The report continues, “The fact remains that the NCC by its constitution … has no real authority to issue authoritative pronouncements on any subject, theological, political, economic, or sociological.” Except for “rare occasions,” the “NCC should resist the temptation to make authoritative statements.… We would hold that when the NCC speaks to its member churches it speaks only in the sense that it conveys information and conclusions reached by the General Assembly and the General Board.”

If the NCC accepts this advice, it will learn how to speak within the limits of its competence and the boundaries of its proper function.

A Long Red Arm

This planet wears two faces. One is seen on travel posters. The other is reflected in political science texts, which outline the challenges and agonies of men’s attempts to govern themselves.

The cloistered Indian Ocean country called Zanzibar has been the worthy subject of many a daydream. It derives its income mainly from cloves, and their aromatic scent permeates the island. Nearby Tanganyika recalls Hemingway and the frozen leopard near the summit of majestic Kilimanjaro. To the north are the highlands of Kenya, and Uganda’s Ripon Falls at the source of the Nile. West lies the Congo at the core of Equatorial Africa with jungles, pygmies, and Watutsi giants.

But superimposed upon the idyllic scenes of nature is the human struggle for power and sovereignty. And no longer is the warfare confined to internecine tribal rivalries. The activities of leaders who often learn the tactics of revolution in places like Moscow, Peking, and Havana produce reactions in cities like Washington, London, and Paris.

To many Americans, the name of Zanzibar simply invokes memories of an old Bob Hope-Bing Crosby film, The Road to Zanzibar. What concerns American officials in Washington today is the road from Zanzibar, the possible exporting of the leftism of the newly installed revolutionary government. The Western powers now face the threat of another Cuba, a Communist dagger pointed at the heart of Africa. There is some evidence of Zanzibar’s influence in the recent revolt in Tanganyika, and there are suspicions of a Red link extending to the uprisings in Kenya and Uganda. The murder of missionaries in the Congo is a result of the guerrilla warfare being led by a leftist who recently returned from Red China.

Communists cannot be blamed for all the troubles of the world, but they rarely fail to capitalize on these troubles. The Red network is a restless one. During the test-ban negotiations in Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev was frank with Averell Harriman long enough to say: “From time to time we will stamp on your foot, and when you yell, we will apologize politely. Then, as we leave the room, we will stamp on your corns again.” By way of illustration, Latin America expert Adolf Berle asserts that the local Communist machine in Panama took part in the rioting there. And now comes the brutal shooting down of an unarmed American jet training plane over East Germany.

Further complicating the cold war is French recognition of Red China, followed by a coup in South Viet Nam by army officers who claimed to be thus thwarting French influence toward a neutralist reunited North and South Viet Nam. And the tension in Cyprus seems to be still another problem that will be with us for some time to come.

The conjunction of the idyllic and the turbulent in this world can well remind the Christian of two stupendous events—the Creation and the Fall. By the grace of God these lead on to redemption. Today behind the shifting lines of human strife, two figures loom. One is Karl Marx, in the atheistic trappings of an antichrist. Confronting him is the infinitely greater Christ himself, in whose face shines the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and in whose hand rests the ultimate victory. The mystery of iniquity is yet working, but so is the Gospel, which brings liberation to the human soul. A secondary but vital accompaniment to this liberty is the momentous fact that the depth of penetration by Christian missionaries is often the measure of the chances for survival of that most delicate flower—political freedom.

Another Expose Of U.S. Morals

It is possible that future historians looking back upon our times will evaluate the sex obsession that grips so many in our nation as even more far-reaching than the current race revolution. A cover story in Time magazine (January 24) describes in matter-of-fact detail this overturn in the private morality of millions of American youth and adults. It is not pleasant reading for those—and their number is not inconsiderable—who still believe that the law of the living God is not set aside by the disobedience of men no matter how widespread that disobedience is.

If ours is a day of sex obsession—as indeed it is—one reason may be the relentless, incessant exposure of the mind, through the printed page, through pictures, and through the latest adulteries of Hollywood idols, to the unrestrained sexuality Time reports.

The Christian ethic of sex is widely misunderstood by modern man, including the writers of the story in Time. Neither ascetic nor joyless, it is poles apart from the erotic fixation that haunts our society. And Christians need to be concerned lest by sheer multiplication of words and the overpowering weight of example contemporary paganism squeezes them into its mold of moral relativism and sex preoccupation.

Today, when adult sensual indulgence has by example and by the gainful pandering of sex stimuli debauched youth as never before in our national history, two things, among others, must be said by Christians with utmost emphasis, yet in love. The first is the ever relevant affirmation, bearing within it hope even for our wicked and adulterous generation, that Christ Jesus came into world to save sinners. The second is a question: By what right does this generation presume to think that it can break the laws of the living God with impunity?

The writer was once the unwilling witness of a city’s being taken over by diversionary tactics. After sporadic attacks over a period of eighteen months, a detachment of Japanese made a strong show of strength from the north, including air bombings, artillery barrages, and probing units of foot soldiers. Against all of this the Chinese put up a strong defense.

Then, during the night, while there was every evidence of a renewed attack from the north at daylight, a small detachment of Japanese soldiers rapidly advanced by a circuitous route; after quickly dispersing the Chinese guarding the outskirts of the southern sector, they stormed and took the city. The Chinese soldiers retreated in disorder to the east.

Individual Christians, and the Church, are constantly subjected to the diversionary tactics of Satan. This is not being written for those who deny the personality of the Devil or his devious methods of attack. It is written for those who by bitter experience are aware of his devices but who even so are prone to succumb to his wiles and in so doing find their minds and hearts diverted from Christian truth and objectives.

Only too often Satan shifts our attention to trivialities, or to the peripheral areas of Christianity, because of our own ignorance of the content of the faith. Christianity is a body of truth to be believed and a way of life, all of which centers in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If men can be turned aside from these truths, if the essential meanings of these truths can be perverted, if extraneous matters can bring us to ignoring them, if we become obsessed with anything that dims the primary object of our Lord’s intervention in the affairs of men—then Satan has won a major victory.

The Church (and this applies as well to Christians) can be diverted from her divinely appointed task by involvement with the cares of the world and the pleasures of secular living, by the deceitfulness of material things.

She can become enamored with the pomp and pageantry of ecclesiastical meetings and leave the Lord of glory outside the door.

She can confuse her message and forget that her primary task is not reformation, but proclaiming God’s plan of redemption.

She can forget or ignore her spiritual mission and become involved in secular matters to the eternal loss of countless souls.

She can become so intent on temporal welfare that she forgets the eternal destiny of man and fails to tell him of the way, the truth, and the life.

Satan has diverted us when we look for reformation without redemption, secular rather than spiritual values, immediate rather than eternal welfare. Unless eternity looms large in our thinking, human relations are out of perspective; social righteousness will not become a reality apart from lives transformed by the Living Christ.

Within the theological world there is always the danger of permitting theory to take precedence over fact, of setting philosophical reasoning over simple faith and human speculation above divine revelation.

The rose of the Gospel message can be destroyed by picking apart its content so that the petals of truth cease to have the fragrance of personal relevance. Simple faith must transcend presuppositions and men’s opinions.

Satan diverts whenever we permit the human element to take precedence over the divine, for not by “signs” or “wisdom” can spiritual truth be seen or become relevant at the personal level.

Once the Christ of man’s opinion is substituted for the Christ revealed in Scriptures one of Satan’s major battles has been won, for the Christ of man’s imagination then obscures the Christ of history and the Christ of personal experience.

We are fighting a battle that must be fought in every generation, although as the pace of life accelerates it seems as though the Devil is increasingly active. Can it be that John’s prophecy—“But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows his time is short!” (Rev. 12:12b, RSV)—is being fulfilled today?

We are confronted not only with the diversions of strange doctrines that subvert the faith of many but also with assaults on the citadels of decency, which go to the point of glorifying what is evil, even bestial. The words of Paul search and convict today: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (Rom. 1:24, 25).

Within the Church Satan diverts by substitution: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Matt. 15:8, 9). Our Lord’s quoting of this passage from Isaiah is echoed by Paul as he warned the Colossian Christians: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines?” (Col. 2:20, 21.)

The world has for centuries seen a Church in which accretions, assumptions, and distortions have had full sway. Today we are witnessing some changes in that system, and many Protestants, diverted from the distinctives of their own faith, are in danger of being lulled into an ever growing ecumenical heresy—that ecclesiastical organization takes precedence over Christian truth.

Paul speaks of “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of “diverse and strange teachings” (13:9). All of these are carefully calculated diversions of the Evil One.

With a continuing battle, with the cleverly devised diversions of Satan, how can the Christians stand? How can the Church continue true to her mission?

There must be a source of reference, an anchor of the soul, a divine revelation that is preeminent over every human thought and motive. God has not left himself without a witness. He has given us his Holy Word, the revelation of his Son in that Word. He has given us the Holy Spirit, and all around us we see the evidences of his eternal power and deity. He has provided the communicating line of prayer and the warning radar of minds and hearts surrendered to him and filled by the Spirit of the risen and living Christ.

The Apostle Paul was keenly aware of the diversionary tactics of Satan. He set his sights on Christ crucified, dead, buried, risen, ascended, and coming again; and because of this he could say near the end of life, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).

Every victory Paul won we too can win. But we must know the enemy and his tactics; otherwise we will be diverted from the way God has laid out for us.

‘CUIUS REGIO CUIUS RELIGIO’

The man with me was a psychologist, and I sometimes think he did it on purpose. We were waiting for a football game to begin. The band marched out on the field with all the majorettes prancing out in front, and he said, “There come the fillies to the post.” Ever since that day I have had a hard time construing majorettes.

A girl and her mother were on a train headed for the West Coast, and I was put at their table in the dining car. What with one thing or another, we fell into conversation, and it turned out that the girl was a student at one of our great big universities in California. “How are things going?” I asked. Her mother answered, “Oh, Wilma Sue had the most exciting thing happen to her. Her sorority picked her to hold one of the color cards in the stadium.”

Some people have all kinds of things to say about what they call the American Way of Life, and this will no doubt become more evident in election year. My own private definition is that the American Way is to take a good thing and run it into the ground. And we are just likely to take a good thing like this beloved land and run it into the ground by running into the ground things like majorettes and color cards.

These sobering thoughts have just afflicted me as I came from watching Texas beat the Navy. That in itself was a sad experience, but mostly I was saddened by all those girls from some junior college in Texas making like the Rockettes for a half-time show. Every once in a while we were given a close-up of a beautiful and vacuous face. They all wore sombreros, a kind of a hat invented to keep the sun off; and then because they had run out of ideas they put on part of their act with parasols. A girl in boots, shorts, and a sombrero is something to contemplate, but a girl wearing a sombrero and carrying a parasol tells us just about where we are as we set out in 64.

“So why do we spend money for that which is not bread?”

EUTYCHUS II

LIFE AND THE TEST TUBE

May I commend your magazine for printing and John R. Holum for writing the article “If Scientists Create Life” (Jan. 3 issue). I can imagine the consternation that this article will produce in some of your readers, but to me this was a breath of fresh air blowing into the public domain on a very ticklish subject.

One thing that bothers many people, both Christians and non-Christians, in the debate between science and religion is that they forget that science is basically the finding out of truths and knowledge about God’s creation. If we remember that this is God’s creation, then we can accept the fact that any truth found out concerning it will not contradict God, but rather will tend to affirm God even though it may contradict some of our cherished beliefs. If we can accept truth when it is discovered, then our faith, rather than being destroyed, will become strengthened and more mature. Then also we will see the futility of the struggle between science and religion. We will also be able to accept the fact that man may be the agent of God’s creation of a living substance in a test tube just as we now accept the fact that man is often the agent of God in mediating His forgiving grace to other men.

GEORGE M. SHELDON

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Salt Lake City, Utah

I am a lay preacher without academic theological training and a chemist by profession.…

Serious students of the Bible know that the Lord Jesus Christ who inhabits eternity (Isa. 57:15) is the only Creator of Life (Gen. 1:1; John 1:3), the only Redeemer of Life (John 14:6, John 20:31), and the only Sustainer of Life (Acts 17:28; Heb. 1:3). To entertain the possibility of man creating life in a test tube one would either have to be woefully ignorant of the Scriptures or to deny the infallibility of God’s eternal Word.

Taylors, S. C.

W. H. SQUIER

The lead article in your current issue elicited keen interest which, however, turned soon to an equal disappointment. Professor Holum has not at all answered the question implicit in his title, “If Scientists Create Life.” Instead he seems to have studiously avoided it. The minister’s son he mentions is still left with his perplexity, “If … [so], who needs God?”

Holum did make a contribution in showing the uncertain line between life and non-life at its lowest levels. But then he merely fell back, for his affirmations, on New Testament passages that were entirely irrelevant to the scientific issue. His Christian faith serves him—and the rest of us—very poorly when it precludes his carrying over into his religious thinking the same rigorous, critical methods without which his scientific work would not merit a moment’s attention. Surely religion is of such supreme worth that it deserves the best intellectual resources we can bring to it!

Since he has failed us, may I be tolerated if, devoid of his scientific specialization, I undertake an answer? Science has come so close to producing (not “creating”) life artificially (as indeed he admitted) that for purposes of religious significance we may consider it achieved. And this inescapably means that life on this planet began through operation of “natural” forces, presumably of physics and chemistry. It is a demonstration which Christian people should welcome with open arms. For, taken along with the great achievement of Charles Darwin a hundred years ago, it closes the last blank in the line of objective evidence for the soundness of the Christian faith. That inscrutable, mysterious “Something” which operated in flaming galaxies and systems, and brought to being habitable planets, also produced life and in course of time man himself, and man’s achievements, dreams, and vague apprehensions and longings. We live in a universe that is our home by right of heritage! The whole Christian episode and Christian faith are broad-based in the reality of things that are; that is, in the Mystery that in the aeons of its working had manifested purpose, intelligence, and good. One shrinks from the bald claim that science has brought us to a biblical faith; but the line of thought precipitated by the artificial production of life leads to conclusions not far removed.

Professor Holum’s half-apologetic hesitation reads too much like the opening salvo in a war of words such as disgraced both science and religion in the later nineteenth century. God forbid that we repeat that folly!

WILLIAM A. IRWIN

Emeritus Professor of Old Testament

University of Chicago

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Tex.

If … “science may someday create life,” I would be amazed at the feat, but I would, in no wise, think that “it would be fun” to be part of that future team. I would think, instead, that the prophecy of Revelation 13:15 was about to be fulfilled, and that the source of the “miracle” was not God, but Satan.

The Christian who is a true scientist must, in reverence for God and his Word, draw a line beyond which only the godless may go; and beyond which, in becoming “like God” they attain the goal first set by Satan in the Garden; only to find that they have not become “godlike.”

WILLIAM G. LOWE

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N. Y.

For many years, the scientists have been proving their solid ground of hard facts was unsteady. This is not to disparage what the scientist is doing. It does remind us that the best scientists have the most searching questions [about] the ultimate solidity of the ground on which they stand.

Dr. John R. Holum … has certainly earned the deserving applause of both the evangelical and scientific communities. He has ably demonstrated that the most solid ground upon which one can stand to view the world … is that of Christian faith.

TED MALLINCKRODT

Court Street Methodist Church

Fulton, Mo.

DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT

Your editorial comment, “Light Out of Darkness” (Dec. 20 issue), was probably inspired in intent, but it was also extremely shallow in facts. You have attempted to emulate the left-wing extremists by association of a tragedy with some sort of “national” sin.…

C. D. RIAL, JR.

Hayward, Calif.

The editorial “searches the heart and the mind” and says things that need to be said and heeded about repentance for our toleration of violence and extremism and our need to cleanse our hearts of hatred. Thank you for it.

CLYDE V. SPARLING

Cattaraugus, N. Y.

My husband and I had already read “Light Out of Darkness,” and this morning very early I read it aloud as part of Advent devotions. Congratulations …! I’m writing the editor of The Catholic World as well as our daughter, Sister Margaret Ann, S. N. D., about this special editorial and its perfect Christian message, its own shining in the darkness of these days.

MRS. JOHN A. HESS

Athens, Ohio

The various comments on the death of the President were quite interesting (Dec. 20 issue, p. 39). I was, however, quite disturbed by the comment of Eugene Carson Blake and Silas G. Kessler that “those who have been making irresponsible attacks upon [President Kennedy] and his policies are as responsible for his death as the one who pulled the trigger.”

Certainly, irresponsible attacks and statements are to be deprecated, but they do not cause the death of anyone. Former President Hoover was certainly the object of many irresponsible attacks, but they did not kill him. What caused the death of our late President was the bullet of the assassin, that, and that alone. Had that bullet not been fired, the President would have continued to live, no matter how many irresponsible attacks had been made. It has been a long time since I have read any statement as irresponsible as that of Blake and Kessler.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

I would like to disavow any guilt for the assassination of President Kennedy. It is the stated policy of the Marxist revolution of which Oswald was a part to “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble …” (quote from the Communist Manifesto).

I oppose Communism and its left-leaning apologists both within and outside of our country. I am openly opposed to the ideas and methods of Communism in whatever form and in whatever way they may appear. If the left wing would like to assume part of the blame for the dastardly act they may, but as for me, I disavow it. Why should one who opposes the devil be responsible for the devil’s treacherous deeds?

H. FEISTNER

Emmanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church

Oregon, Ill.