Page 5940 – Christianity Today (2024)

The cross was old—nailed together from junk-heap scraps two years ago by a young minister and his Hell’s Angel friend. And rugged—from the seven-month, 3,500-mile journey from Los Angeles to Washington, D. C.

But on a sunny Saturday morning in July, the ten-foot, 105-pound¹The cross was broken and splintered in a car accident in Joplin, Missouri. After it was bolted together with iron rods, its weight increased from 80 to 105 pounds. cross was carried proudly at the head of a block-long band of demonstrators parading around the Washington Monument toward the Capitol. Later the cross was placed on a shaded corner near the monument, marking the headquarters of a forty-day nation-wide campaign for spiritual renewal.

The moment of glory was noisy and happy: traffic stopped and passers-by stared as the cross advanced on the shoulders of the Reverend Arthur Blessitt and former black militant Jesse Wise. The crowd followed, filling one lane of Independence Avenue and chanting, “Solution: spiritual revolution.” Monitors with megaphones led other cheers: “Gimme a J—gimme an E—gimme an S.… What does it spell?”

“Jesus!”

“What does Washington need?”

“Jesus!”

“What does our President need?”

“Jesus!”

Waving signs with “Bridge over troubled waters: Jesus” and “Do you really care, Christian?” the crowd of some 800 was predominantly young with dress ranging from hippie to straight. But there were some elderly men in suits and mothers with strollers, and a good showing of middle-aged, middle-income America. For most of these it was their first demonstration. “Six months ago if you’d told me I’d ever walk in something of this nature, I’d have told you I’d have to be crazy,” admitted Dr. Kenneth Balthrop, a minister from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was national coordinator of the “Walk for Christ.” “But it’s worth putting your whole life on the line,” he added. A 76-year-old Washington man explained: “I’m for it—anything that gets the kids turned on for Jesus.”

After the march, the cross was leaned against a platform near the Washington Monument while the marchers spent twenty-four hours in prayer and fasting for national renewal. Sitting on the grass in groups of ten to twenty, some with guitars, they sang, prayed, read Bibles, and witnessed to the curious who stopped by.

Groups of hippies were attracted by 29-year-old Blessitt’s striped bell-bottoms, maroon leather vest, and gold Tom Jones shirt. “Are y’all saved?” he would ask them, pushing his long hair back from his sunburned face and grinning so disarmingly they couldn’t be offended. From there it was a simple, hard-line but hip presentation of the Gospel—and hundreds of conversions within two days.

Fanning out among the crowds in the monument area, the young people who followed him took the same aggressive and honest approach. “We ain’t rapping religion, man, we’re rapping a way of life,” one young hippie earnestly told another.

They were sitting around a candle stuck in the grass, with a large, full orange moon rising and the sharp white shaft of the monument etched against the dark sky. “When you have sex on mescaline, man, there can’t be anything better than that,” the unbeliever scoffed. “Look, I took it too,” answered a young man with gold-rimmed glasses and soft brown chin-length hair. “But this is like shooting up every morning—it’s like real truth inside your being.…” And so it went in clustered groups throughout the night.

The twenty-four hours ended Sunday, July 19, with a rally and challenge by Blessitt for all to go out in a forty-day evangelistic effort to “blitz the nation for Jesus Christ.” Heading the outreach to the capital were two young Southern Baptist ministers, Leo Humphrey, who runs a coffeehouse ministry in New Orleans, and Sam Tippit, who is starting a coffeehouse in Chicago.

Those gathered were from all parts of the country, including many led to Christ along the way by Blessitt and others such as the “Louisiana Seven” (including Tippit), who walked and witnessed, pushing a wheelbarrow of Testaments from Monroe, Louisiana.

Blessitt and his wife planned to fast and pray the entire forty days, sitting near the cross and a phone booth on a corner between the monument and the White House. They promised to answer the phone (Code 202-393-8893) around the clock, taking prayer requests. In addition, Blessitt called out sermons, and his group casually talked with those walking along the busy street. His approach with businessmen: a few minutes of conversation and then the polite but friendly question, “Are you a Christian, sir?”

“You don’t reach people unless you’re in the world that they’re in,” Blessitt explains, urging a revival on streets and sidewalks. “I grew up in bars and night clubs—in that world the message of Jesus Christ never came.” His mission has been to take the Gospel to these places ever since his conversion at the age of 7 and his first preaching at 15.

Ordained at 19 in a Southern Baptist church in Mississippi, he attended Mississippi College in Clinton and Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in San Francisco without graduating from either. “I haven’t had time,” he explains. Instead, he started churches in tough towns such as Anaconda, Montana, and Elko, Nevada. Now he operates a coffeehouse, “His Place,” on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, between a topless joint and a liquor store. After the fast, he plans to return there, ministering to the 400 to 1,000 young people who pass through each night.

Why the campout on the Washington street corner? Blessitt points out that Jesus and his disciples went into the wilderness to pray and fast. “And brother, let me tell you, there’s not a bigger wilderness in America than Washington, D. C.,” he says. To him it’s a “jungle of hate, violence, and chaos.”

The wilderness the evangelist and his team walked through was real, too. Along most of the way people were friendly, but some (especially in the South) were hostile, refusing to let the team buy gas or groceries. Some drivers yelled and cursed; others tried to run over them, laughing as the cross-bearers fell in the roadside ditch.

“This gasoline says that cross will never make it to Washington,” some young men threatened in Birdseye, Indiana. Hoping to burn the cross, they expected an angry confrontation with the travelers. “They were dumbfounded when we started sharing Christ,” Blessitt remembers. “They bought us a co*ke, and a few minutes later the guy with the gas can gave his heart to Christ.”

About 4,000 conversions were made during the walk on the highway, with evangelistic rallies and church meetings bringing the total to 8,000 or more, according to Blessitt.

In their exuberance, he and his group tend to see more of the lost being saved than evidence warrants. They reported that a radio announcer had called the publicized number, talked with an evangelist for twenty minutes on his night show, and given his life to Christ. However, Larry Glick of WBZ, Boston, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY he had allowed the evangelist to repeat the prayer of redemption over the radio, but had not prayed along and had no intention of becoming a Christian.

The five cross-bearers walked twenty-five to thirty miles a day, requiring up to twelve hours walking/witnessing time. In addition to Blessitt and Wise, they included James McPheeters, who accepted Christ while on alcohol and drugs at “His Place” two years ago and has since joined the Blessitt staff, and Daniel (O. J.) Peterson, once an alcoholic, later a condemner of “His Place,” and now a staff member for a year and a half. Ramsey Gilchrist, a student at Southeastern Louisiana College in Hammond, joined the group in Oklahoma. McPheeters, a Viet Nam veteran, says the walk was harder than anything in the Marine Corps but adds, “We’d rather burn out than rust out.”

Blessitt just may burn out. He says he has had five strokes. Doctors advised him not to make the trip, but he threw caution—and his medicine—to the winds (see July 17 issue, page 31). Although he felt fine on the trip, he became dizzy and nauseated with exhaustion two hours before he was to speak at the climaxing rally at the Washington Monument.

As he stood to begin his talk, he called to his side his wife, Sherry, and Wise, Peterson, and McPheeters. Leaning on them, he gradually gained strength. Tears streamed down his cheeks—and the cheeks of others—as, with hair disheveled, he prayed in a broken, catching voice: “God, we’d rather die for you than live for anything else. Help the people in the nation to see that.… Oh God, we must have America come back to you or we die.… We can’t live with our churches so cold, our preachers so dead, and our buildings so fine.”

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Riches Untold?

The appearance isn’t poverty, despite Pope Paul’s recent efforts toward such an image for the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, some observers see the Vatican wealth as $12.8 billion or more.

That’s a “fantastic exaggeration,” retorted the Vatican daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in an unusual denial on July 21: “In reality the productive capital of the Holy See, comprising deposits and investments alike, lodged in Italy and outside Italy, is far from reaching the hundredth part of such a sum.” This puts the figure below $128 million.

Until release of the 1,800-word, fairly detailed statement, the Vatican had remained largely silent on the issue—despite wide publicity of charges, especially since the publishing of The Vatican Empire by Nino Lo Bello in New York two years ago. The denial was seen as a response to speculative articles in Der Spiegel of Germany, the weekly Il Mondo of Florence, and translations of Lo Bello’s book into French, German, and Italian.

Controversy now centers on interpretation of the Vatican’s statement, generally held to be accurate but carefully exclusive; for example, wealth of the religious orders is not included. Semantics is also a problem: just how is “productive” capital defined?

The article specifically refutes charges that the Vatican controls interests in various Italian companies and seven Italian banks.

Those arguments are “misleading,” explains C. Stanley Lowell, co-author of Praise the Lord for Tax Exemption. The authority on church finance says that de facto control can easily be exercised by the Vatican.

“Why don’t they come out of the shadows … and just say exactly what they do have the way other churches do?” asks Lowell, echoing the demands of an increasing number of observers.

Meanwhile, the mysterious wealth remains a secret of the Vatican vaults.

Strange Company

The Reverend T. Sherron Jackson, head of the entangled Baptist Foundation of America, Incorporated, is optimistic about the future of his tax-exempt, nonprofit organization, but he is about the only person who is.

The 48-year-old president of the Los Angeles-based foundation was indicted last month on charges of grand theft, writing bad checks, and giving a kickback to a loan officer. In two years, more than thirty civil suits for $2 million have been filed against the foundation, which, since its inception in 1966, had an aura of respectability.

The Wall Street Journal blew the whistle on the organization—ostensibly founded to build hospitals for children, retirement centers for the aged, and other facilities—in its lead story on July 1. The Journal reported that the California Attorney General, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, the Post Office Department, and the Justice Department also were investigating.

Jackson, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Arkansas, formally organized the North American Baptist Association (now known as the Baptist Missionary Association of America) in Little Rock in 1950. It has about 200,000 members in 1,550 congregations. The Baptist Foundation of America’s nine-man board of trustees includes five other ministers. Jackson’s brother-in-law, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in La Verne, California, is vice-president.

The umbrageous dealings of the foundation are incredibly complex and devious. The ill-fated fund-raising venture appears to have been victimized as well as victimizing several well-meaning businessmen. Many of the transactions in question involve millions of dollars’ worth of promissory notes in exchange for assets and property—some of which apparently never existed at all, according to the Wall Street Journal’s intensive five-month study.

One unusual project was the reported purchase last year of the Global Baseball League for $3 million. The league never got off the ground, and its international teams complained of unpaid salaries and hotel bills.

A foundation director, the Reverend Ray Chappell of Santa Ana, told Los Angeles Times religion writer John Dart that Jackson is “a man of very high integrity” and that the charges won’t amount to anything “when all the information is in.”

In a striking contrast to the sluggish pace of the first week’s meetings, the fifth assembly of the Lutheran World Federation drew to a close July 24 with a last-minute flurry of resolutions and amendments. The whirlwind finish of the eleven-day event was blamed by some on the LWF general secretary, Geneva-based André Appel of Alsace-Lorraine, who appeared to regard the developments with a kind of urbane impartiality, but whose hand seemed to have been guiding the tiller in a predetermined direction at certain crucial times.

Two hundred twenty-one delegates from forty-four countries, representing eighty-two¹Two Asian and two African church bodies were received into LWF membership at the opening plenary session. Largest of the four is the Indonesian Christian Church, with 240,700 baptized members. member churches, debated policies and programs affecting the life and work of 75 million Lutherans around the world, easily the largest Protestant denomination. The highest forum of Lutheranism was held at the French resort city of Evian-Les-Bains on the shore of Lake Geneva—and the location itself was one of the most controversial issues of the assembly.

Opening plenaries were in large part devoted to lengthy discussion and explanations for changing the assembly site from Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, to Evian in France. As a result of the change, the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil withdrew its six participants. In a formal statement that church charged that the assembly “became an instrument of political movement at the moment it isolated the question regarding the location from the theme, ‘Sent Into the World,’ and made the decision in accordance with political expediency.”

Mounting irritation surfaced when thirty youth participants stood and put on black armbands to protest part of the keynote address by American Lutheran Church president Fredrik A. Schiotz. He cited reports of torture in Brazil, but also noted that the government had succeeded in its economic policies. The latter reference piqued the youth delegates.

The assembly was originally scheduled for East Germany in 1969, but was changed after the East German government withdrew its consent. During May of this year, mounting opposition to the Pôrto Alegre site was largely based on the grounds that the Brazilian government is dictatorial and uses police-state methods. Dr. Appel said the final decision to change the site hinged on the decision of the Brazilian church to invite the country’s president to the assembly.

Outgoing LWF president Schiotz several times expressed chagrin that threats of non-participation by some European Lutheran bodies had forced the change to Evian. On the opening day, Miss Apaisaria Lyimo of Tanzania vehemently criticized the location change as an injury to the brethren in Brazil and as another example of Europeans and North Americans claiming to know what is best for people elsewhere in the world.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent Harold O. J. Brown reported that the Brazilian church’s sense of injustice was no doubt heightened by the resolutions and discussions of the closing days which singled out Brazil for condemnation and investigation “while other nations with bloodier records were passed over in tactful silence.” There was speculation that the Brazilian church will withdraw from the LWF to preserve its self-respect.

Unequal standards seemed to be applied in criticizing governments and movements in various parts of the world; delicate tact was shown by the LWF towards the situation of churches in Eastern Europe, and toward problems in Russia and the “people’s democracies.”

Archpriest Pavel Sokolovski, a member of the Foreign Office of the Moscow Patriarchate, was much in evidence at the assembly and at press conferences. His contributions coincided with the position taken by Pravda, most notably when he arose to denounce attempts to discuss the rise of anti-Semitism in the USSR as “cold war propaganda.” The assembly rejected his demand that the situation in Soviet Russia be passed over. The final resolution on human rights expressed “concern” about the situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union, as well as regret and condemnation for racism in southern Africa and in the United States.

The Mideast issue and Israel’s right to live were cautiously skirted, perhaps out of deference to the interests of the Soviet Union there, and despite vigorous attempts by a few delegates to have them discussed in a plenary session.

Youth delegates were indignant that the assembly didn’t pass a resolution supporting the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), and had to be satisfied with one supporting Roman Catholic archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil for the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. The resolution described Camara as a “symbol for those who have devoted their lives to the struggle against oppression and inhuman conditions of life.” The World Encounter of Lutheran Youth had earlier asked the delegates to endorse Camara as “a symbol of resistance to imperialism.…” Camara has been sharply critical of the present Brazilian government.

Another link with Roman Catholicism was the endorsem*nt of continuing dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics. Delegates said their tradition and Catholicism should “strive for clear, honest, and charitable language in all … conversations.” Another resolution “gratefully acknowledged” the assembly appearance of Jan Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity. The cardinal, the first high-ranking Catholic to address an LWF gathering, praised Martin Luther and said that six years of Lutheran-Catholic theological discussions had helped the two churches toward overcoming their 450-year separation. But the prelate cautioned that doctrinal differences regarding the ministry, papal authority, and the role of Mary in salvation still remain unresolved.

Echoing Willebrand’s call for Christian unity was a prominent American Lutheran theologian, Dr. Kent S. Knutson, president of Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. Knutson (who removed complimentary copies of a new, theologically conservative Lutheran bimonthly, Sola Scriptura, from the assembly’s free literature table and hid them under the counter) told the assembly delegates that the positive attitude of Vatican II toward the world is a “good antidote to the negativism which we ourselves sometimes display.”

A highlight of the assembly was the decision to change the name of the Commission on World Mission to the Commission on Church Cooperation.

A delegate from India eloquently pled for retaining the word “mission,” saying that the Great Commission to evangelize and make disciples keeps the Church in India from being submerged in Hindu syncretism. Others argued, however, that the word implied assent to the destruction of the indigenous cultures of two-thirds of the world’s people. Dr. Paul Chauncey Espie of the Lutheran Church in America urged deletion of “mission” with the familiar logic that every aspect of the Church’s task is mission.

A walkout by some delegates was averted the next day after a proposal by Dr. Gunnar Stalsett of Norway was adopted, apparently alleviating fears that mission work was being downgraded. The statement asked member churches to “faithfully work for the proclamation of the Gospel to all nations.” Correspondent Brown reported that opinion differed as to whether the resolution truly represented loyalty to the Great Commission or was simply a sop thrown to the evangelically inclined.

Another significant action of the assembly was the urging of member churches “to declare … pulpit and altar fellowship with all member churches.” Theologians interpreted the request, which would mean mutual recognition and exchange of sacraments and preachers, as a major step toward the goal of worldwide Lutheran unity.

The LWF’s new president, Finnish theologian Mikko Elinar Juva, 51, stated that being a Lutheran means first of all being a Christian. Speaking in the assembly’s final hour, Juva, a professor at the University of Helsinki, said the greatest problem in the worldwide economic gap is the relationship between the poor and the affluent. Juva won on the first ballot the only contested election for the LWF presidency in its twenty-four year history.

LWF General Secretary Appel concluded that tension at the assembly was so high that the Evian conference would be the last of its kind. He said three basic questions remained unanswered: the reason for a Christian witness in the world, the political role of the Church, and the character of fellowship within the LWF.

Recognizing that the assembly lacked consensus—except that the Church should act to change social structures—U. S. staff secretary Dr. Carl Thomas suggested the federation can now move in one of two directions: “We can either recognize the existence of a true pluralism in political philosophy, or we can move in the direction of polarization.”

Chapel Tradition Unbroken

Chapel or church attendance at the nation’s three military academies is “an integral and necessary part” of the military training for future officers, a U. S. District Court judge ruled in Washington, D. C., last month, thus ending—at least temporarily—an attempt by two cadets and nine midshipmen to break a 150-year pattern of mandatory chapel services at the schools.

As a part of the Pentagon’s training package for officers, “its purpose is purely secular, and … its primary effect is purely secular,” declared Judge Howard F. Corcoran. The plaintiffs contended that compulsory attendance at worship services violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, and also constitutes a religious test for office.

A. Ray Appelquist of the Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel Commission told the court during hearings last April that mandatory chapel had an “adverse effect” on recruiting chaplains.

Judge Corcoran noted that the plaintiffs had introduced “forceful testimony …” but failed to show the effect “is anything but slight, insubstantial, and non-extensive” on the military school students. The case is expected to be appealed.

Stamp Of Approval

The spire of St. Phillips’ Church will be part of the design of a stamp commemorating the 300th anniversary of the first permanent settlement in South Carolina. The new stamp will go on sale at Charleston ceremonies September 12.

The stamp marks the founding of Charles Town (Charleston) by 150 colonists who arrived in the New World in 1670. A tercentenary celebration is in progress at Charleston this year.

St. Phillips’, the oldest Episcopal parish south of Virginia and a landmark of downtown Charleston, was erected in 1837. Among famous persons buried in its churchyard are Edward Rutledge, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and John C. Calhoun, a senator and vice-president of the United States.

GLENN EVERETT

“Why are we here? Because we have a mission and a ministry of reconciliation through Christ!” With these words, former Baptist World Alliance president Theodore F. Adams welcomed 8,556 Baptists from seventy-six countries to Tokyo’s huge sports palace, the Budokan, for their twelfth world congress.

Why had the delegates come? For the biggest Christian gathering ever held in Tokyo. For hand-shaking, back-slapping fellowship. For a week of addresses, discussions on the Church’s social role, workshops, top music, and evangelistic preaching.

By closing night (July 18), however, many delegates were still asking themselves just what—at least for this conference—that mission and ministry Adams referred to really involved. Despite a profusion of “name” speakers and the best musical talent from scores of world Baptist bodies, the prevailing mood as summed up in the conversation of one official on closing day was: “Almost everyone seems dissatisfied. Not one person has come to me and said, ‘What a great convention!’ ”

A major complaint was the overwhelming (and apparently often insensitive) American dominance of the congress. Nearly 6,000 of the delegates came from the United States. Nearly all speeches, songs, and announcements were in English; only major addresses were translated even into Japanese (1,300 Japanese delegates were present). A Haitian panelist commented: “While I am speaking about world peace, I have no peace in my heart, because I’m speaking in a language that’s not mine.”

Even the youth delegates, who spent much time in their group sessions demanding more representation in BWA decision-making, squabbled for nearly two hours one afternoon over American domination at the youth enclaves.

More significant to many was a seeming lack of seriousness about the conference as a whole. Most speakers stressed unity—“Reconciliation Through Christ” was the official theme, and debate was largely avoided. But in most cases it seemed to be a unity of indifference (or suppression) rather than of deep fellowship.

When Roger Hayden, an English pastor, sought to discuss the resolutions presented for congress action, he was quickly thwarted by deft BWA president William R. Tolbert, Jr., vice-president of Liberia. The resolutions passed without debate. When two panelists seemed to take opposite positions during a discussion of human existence, they quickly ended debate with the mutual remark, “But basically we agree, don’t we?” One delegate complained of the “bureaucratic tone” of speeches; a check of the program showed more than 100 church administrators on the agenda. Several blamed the “shallowness” on an agenda that packed eighty talks on nearly forty topics into only thirteen general sessions.

New World Baptist Head: Bringing Together 31 Million

V. Carney Hargroves sees the presidency of the Baptist World Alliance as a “kind of public-relations post” to bring together the world’s 31 million Baptists. As the new BWA president, the 70-year-old pastor, who has been at Second Baptist Church of Germantown (Philadelphia) since 1932, would like nothing more than to share that unity with Baptists in mainland China. “I think they’re still there,” he said in a post-election interview. “And I’d like most of all to go visit them during these next five years.”

Travel in Communist lands would be nothing new for the small, quiet-mannered American Baptist clergyman and former North American Baptist Fellowship president. He taught in Kiangsi province in the 1920s and was one of the first Americans to visit Russia after Stalin’s death—a trip that he likes to think helped open the way for extensive cultural contacts between East and West. He has traveled in every Iron Curtain land except Bulgaria and Albania.

Looking ahead, Hargroves sees himself as an activist, an “issues man.” One thing he would like to do is bring together the world’s confessional bodies, as well as non-Christian religious leaders to work systematically for world peace. Sensing current trends, he also wants to involve youth more actively in BWA leadership. And he wants to lead Baptists into broader ecumenical cooperation.

“I’m ecumenically minded,” he says. “I believe in cooperation. And I mean cooperation with Catholics, too. Above all, I pledge my efforts to achieve unity among Baptists. This is essential.”

Perhaps a member of the Tokyo host committee struck the root of the problem when he observed that “by far the delegates’ most predominant motive in coming to Tokyo was travel, not spiritual growth—a chance to see Expo 70 and the Far East.” Tokyo merchants recognized this. And one newspaper ad proclaimed a “Welcome to the Baptist and Urologist Conventioners.” Hundreds of delegates left Tokyo in mid-week to continue tours of Asia. Quipped evangelist Billy Graham on closing night: “I’ve never seen so many women delegates shopping as I’ve seen here … I think almost every one of you bought a camera.”

The congress did have lively, probing moments. Several evening sessions included strongly evangelistic addresses sandwiched between colorful pageants depicting Scripture passages and Baptist scenes around the world. Although a few speakers centered on either the social or spiritual role of the Church, most balanced the need to follow both of Christ’s commands—love God, and love man.

For example: Harold Stassen (a former American Baptist Convention president), even while calling for a revision of the United Nations charter to include all nations (including two Viet Nams, two Chinas, and two Germanies), said he prefers to be known as a “Minnesota farm boy who at the age of twelve accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour and tried only to follow that acceptance.” ¹Stassen, a former governor of Minnesota, was the youngest of seven United States drafters and signers of the United Nations Charter twenty-five years ago.

The official congress message urged “men to repentance and faith and the way of the cross,” while official resolutions dealt with social problems ranging from peace and ecology to poverty and racial justice.

Angie Brooks-Randolph, United Nations General Assembly president and an active Baptist laywoman from Nigeria, defended the Church’s historic teaching on salvation, then called for the Church to speed up greatly its work in areas such as seeking peace and fighting poverty.

Another unexpected, lively moment came when the nominating committee chairman presented American Baptist minister V. Carney Hargroves as its choice for BWA president—with the remark that “so great has been the spirit of unity that never in sixty-five years has there been a nomination from the floor.” Immediately another committee member rose from the floor to nominate former Southern Baptist head Herschel H. Hobbs of Oklahoma City.

Most delegates thought the challenge was an expression either of Southern Baptist (by far the largest BWA component) pique over being bypassed in the presidential nomination, or internal maneuvering by conservative and liberal Southern Baptist factions. Hargroves won, 841 to 636 (see story adjoining).

A call for Baptist churches around the world to participate in a world evangelistic effort of reconciliation between 1973 and 1975 was presented by Rubens Lopes of São Paulo, president of the Brazilian Baptist Convention.

For the first time, a commission presented a report on Christian unity, discussing ways Baptists can relate more closely to those of other denominations. Unity among Christians is one of the burning issues of the times, declared George Beasley-Murray of Spurgeon’s College, London.

By far the liveliest session came on the final night, when some 12,000 persons, many non-Baptist, turned out to hear Billy Graham preach on “Youth on the March.” Several Japanese youths (who had initially fought the holding of a BWA congress in Tokyo) protested the evangelist’s silence on Viet Nam by passing out leaflets, chanting briefly, and clapping their hands.

Their efforts were largely ineffective, however, as Graham preached faith in Christ as youth’s only genuine answer. He decided “on the spot” to issue an invitation; several hundred persons came forward to make decisions for Christ.

The very aliveness of the final night contrasted sharply, in the minds of not a few delegates, with the business-as-usual tone of most other sessions. Early in the week, BWA General Secretary Robert S. Denny had said: “Eight thousand of us are in Tokyo, spending $12 million.… This is good. Let no one say, ‘We should have stayed home and given money to something else.’ We would not have given the money.”

By week’s end, however, it was a point to ponder.

JAMES L. HUFFMAN

25 Years Later: ‘No More Hiroshimas!’

Twenty-five years after he crawled from the rubble of his office at a Christian girls’ college in Hiroshima, Japan, Takuo Matsumoto, college president, Bible translator, and Methodist minister, visited the United States with five other survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to observe the anniversary of the blasts—August 6 and 9. Speaking in Portland, Oregon, last month, his skin still discolored by radiation from history’s first atom bomb explosion, he said he bears no grudges against the United States.

Matsumoto, now 82, feels his life was saved through a series of miracles. He was knocked unconscious by the blast. After about an hour, he relates, he crawled out of the wreckage of his office “struggling like a ghost out of hell.” Minutes later the collapsed building burned to ashes. He said 352 students and eighteen teachers died, and his wife was killed also.

After dragging eight girls out of the wreckage of the chapel, he kept searching for more. Many were blown to bits; a few were blinded by the flash. He later came to the United States for treatment of radiation sickness.

Despite his age, Matsumoto is director of the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima. Reared and educated in Japan, he also studied at Ohio Wesleyan University, Drew Seminary, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago. He translated the New Testament from Greek into Japanese seventeen years ago; 40 million copies have been distributed in Japan. He is now helping with another translation into commonly spoken Japanese.

Matsumoto planned to see President Nixon August 6 and give him a message from the mayor of rebuilt Hiroshima along with a piece of polished black coral with a pearl in the middle crafted by A-bomb survivors.

“I got a Christian education in the United States. I owe so much to America,” he said in an interview. “It taught us Christian love, cooperation, patience, forgiveness. My father was converted to Christianity by an American missionary, and we learned from America what Christian love means.”

But declaring that war is “utterly childish,” Matsumoto added that it is hard for him to explain to non-Christian friends the apparent contradiction of the United States sending “tens of thousands of soldiers to destroy people.”

His mission in this country is “not to mull over tragedies but to look for ways to build a new world on peace and love.” He also said he hopes countries possessing nuclear weapons will dispose of them. “They have slaughtered enough innocent people,” he asserted. “Let us have no more Hiroshimas!”

WATFORD REED

Madalyn’s Manifesto

About forty men and women bent over green-checkered tablecloths drawing up a manifesto demanding historical recognition, acceptance as individuals, and an end to discrimination.

A task force of Negro or Mexican-American churchmen preparing demands for their denominational convention? Hardly. Rather, businessmen, merchants, housewives, educators, and farmers were attending the nation’s first state convention of atheists in Austin, Texas.

Described by mogul Madalyn Murray O’Hair as the “avant-garde of atheism,” the group adopted the “American Atheists’ Manifesto” in the only open session of the two-day meeting July 25–26. Newsmen were pledged not to identify participants.

Most sessions were devoted to problems atheists face, like being refused passports because they omit “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Mrs. O’Hair said conventions eventually will be held in every state, and urged participants to identify themselves to their families, employers, and employees.

Although the meeting was much smaller than the 150 to 500 persons anticipated, Mrs. O’Hair assured the convention that they represented 4 million atheists in Texas, based on an estimate that 40 per cent of the American population does not attend church. The manifesto, declaring reason as the supreme authority, will serve as a religious philosophy to gain tax-exempt status for the farcical Poor Richard’s Universal Life Church.

MARQUITA MOSS

Heresy At Concordia? A Matter Of Interpretation

Although Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president Jacob A. O. Preus intimated way last February (see March 27 issue, page 33) that he would move against liberal professors in the denomination’s seminaries, the declared “investigation” only began to stir up a hornet’s nest in recent weeks.

Amid charges, countercharges, and denials, several things appeared relatively certain early this month: (1) The probe will be carried out this fall and will involve perhaps a dozen faculty members who teach biblical exegesis at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; (2) Concordia president John H. Tietjen denies that his staff teaches anything contrary to Missouri Synod doctrine.

Whether Tietjen actually “welcomes” the investigation, as he told reporters, is doubtful, however. More realistically, he is whistling boldly, asserting that “It is not Lutheran to expect uniformity in interpretation of Scripture passages or agreement on the nature and authority of biblical texts.…”

Preus, who carefully avoids the epithet “heresy trials” when referring to the probe (it could result in the expulsion of faculty considered heretical), sees his constitutional responsibility for the “doctrine and life” of the church as a mandate for the action. He doubtless would prefer not to be the hatchet man, but pressure from the theological right leaves him almost no room in which to maneuver.

Said Preus in an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “The use of the historical-critical method, so-called, in dealing with the Bible is the root of the problem and needs to be settled and clarified. … The very fact that [it often leads] to the rejection of plenary and verbal inspiration as though it were a scientific impossibility is sufficient reason for investigating its application in our seminaries.…”

Do your own thing? It’s an often quoted phrase, but poor philosophy. Even hippies know that today’s world cannot afford that luxury.

Modern man tends to view more and more things with an eye to survival. He sees social problems slowly but steadily closing in. Any idea risks scrutiny for its potential to avert chaos.

So with evangelism. With the passing of the live-and-let-live-era, evangelistic efforts are increasingly being obliged to show how they alleviate the world’s ills. The Church rightfully defends evangelism as a mandate given by its Lord, but the world isn’t satisfied with that. Secular man wants a pragmatic rationale.

Christians need not back off at this point. A more than adequate case can be made for evangelism’s potential for social betterment. Evangelism has effects that can be seen and appreciated even by the unbeliever. We can take a cue from the words of Jesus, “Believe me … or else accept the evidence of the deeds themselves.”

How, then, do we show the world that the spread of Christianity is, as the politician would say, “in the public interest”? The primary answer lies in history. The positive social benefits of bygone revivals are well documented. The world’s best-motivated men have been Christians. One can legitimately point to Christianity as the greatest force for good the world has ever known. It is true that some horrible deeds have been committed in the name of Christianity, but no movement is fairly judged by its impostors. The best of Christianity eclipses the best of anything else.

Evangelism has a lot to show for itself on a more personal scale as well. Through Christian influence more lives have been rehabilitated, more homes restored, more charity extended, more disputes resolved, more friendships perpetuated, than by any other means. Christianity has been the greatest cultural inspiration the world has ever known. In short, Christians have a heritage second to none. History is on their side.

It is perhaps a result of this heritage that people question the social worth of Christendom today. We have a lot to live up to, and the world has been unconsciously conditioned to expect so much that it reacts abruptly when large-scale benevolence is not immediately apparent.

To be sure, when a man is converted things should begin to happen. That’s the way it has ideally been, and that’s the way it ought to be now. Evangelism that does not clearly enunciate Christ’s demands upon his followers is something less than biblical. The New Testament calls for individual repentance involving a radical turning around, the product of which is a completely different person whose love for humanity ought to become rapidly apparent.

The lack of interest in evangelism on the part of many church leaders might well be attributed not only to an ignorance of history but to a misunderstanding of evangelism in the best sense. They have erroneously regarded evangelism as irrelevant to the present human predicament. They have therefore gone on to other concerns that they thought were more closely tied in with things as they are. And in their preoccupation with the here and now they have presupposed that the Gospel puts its best foot forward when it identifies itself with corporate, often secular, schemes to make the nation and the world better to live in.

The folly of this neglect of evangelism is gradually being acknowledged, albeit indirectly, in the current revival of transcendence. Peter Berger seems to have begun it with Rumor of Angels in 1968, and New Theology No. 7 has it as its theme in 1970. Does this perhaps presage a fresh emphasis on evangelism during the seventies? It well might, for the idea of divine transcendence necessarily embraces the concept of the supernatural, and the supernatural eradication of sin is what evangelism is all about. A person’s commitment to Christ results in a divine, regenerative work that makes him a new being. Without this act of grace by God we do not have effective biblical evangelism.

Evangelism begins at home. It ought to start with one’s own children and other kin. It ought to be done among neighbors, school friends, and business associates as casually as it was by Jesus and his disciples. But a great deal can also be done at a group level, where coordination can be achieved and specialized apologetics used.

Christians in North America will soon have their greatest evangelistic opportunity ever on a collective scale. The Key 73 effort is a cooperative enterprise, with all the advantages of momentum gained from joint effort, yet one in which great latitude in method is provided for. Each denomination (more than three dozen already are active) will be carrying through its own program, augmented by coordinated promotion. Never before have so many evangelistically minded church leaders committed themselves to work together.

No evangelistic effort can promise to solve all society’s ills. The Christian message does not claim to be a cure-all, for in God’s plan the crooked will not be entirely straightened until Christ himself returns. The Bible shows not so much a way out as a way through. But the Christian Gospel can nonetheless be the most relevant factor on the contemporary scheme if it is examined fairly and preached fully. Christians need not be intimidated into thinking otherwise.

What we need to do is to demonstrate that Christianity works in the lives of those whom God has touched. Living epistles are as crucial today as they have ever been. True repentance and obedience will produce them.

This continent is overripe for evangelism, and Key 73 represents the opportunity for an abundant new harvest of souls. May an evangelical vanguard in every hamlet across North America begin work now. Evangelism is the one thing that can and ought to bring Christians together. Urge your denominational leaders to get in on the action. Let’s show the world!

The Gospel: Lutheranism’s Sine Qua Non

In many respects the fifth assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (see News, page 40) was like the World Council of Churches’ Uppsala assembly in 1968: There were the delegates of varying languages and hues, masses of papers and reports, press releases and conferences, and a general feeling that something exciting and important was about to happen. It never did.

There was a certain vigor to the denunications of capitalism, North American business, and police power in the United States. Such denunciations have become something of a badge of being “in” in liberal society and thus can hardly be compared with Martin Luther’s “Here I stand!” at Worms. But then Luther had a scriptural mandate for the changes he demanded, and the LWF’s fifth assembly, if it had such a mandate, did not present it.

An observer from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (not a member of the LWF) remarked at the close of the assembly: “Rome has its hierarchy and the Methodists have their discipline, but Lutheranism cannot live without the Scripture.”

Just so. The LWF assembly lacked power because it was conducted without Scripture, if for no other reason. There were many positive aspects to Evian-Les-Bains. Nevertheless, this Lutheran assembly, representing a constituency of nearly 54 million from eighty-two member churches, proudly bore the motto “Sent into the World.” The question remains: Can one be Lutheran without being evangelical? And, can one be evangelical without the Scripture?

Some things, in some circles, go without saying. But in a secular world, in a Lutheran assembly, it is not enough merely to avoid gainsaying the Gospel. The Good News can’t go without proclaiming.

Eve’s Second Apple

In the beginning, Eve bit into forbidden fruit and fell into subjection to Adam. Her descendants face a lesser temptation—equality with man instead of with God—but they are biting no less eagerly into their forbidden fruit. Although they finally won equal voting rights, women are still fighting for such things as equal pay for equal work. And the troops plan to muster next Wednesday for a strike in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the amendment that enfranchised females.

The potential consequences, if very many women go on strike, boggle the mind. We think, for example, what chaos would descend on this magazine if our women writers spend August 26 (a final deadline day!) composing picket signs that are transcribed by our secretaries, edited by our copy editor, proofed by our proofreader, financed (at least partially) by the distaff half of our advertising department, and circulated by subscription’s predominantly female staff.

And consider the effect on prayer meetings. If wives of clergymen who still conduct Wednesday evening services go on strike, those pastors will have to come to church after a day of house cleaning, grocery shopping, chauffering kids and refereeing their squabbles, cooking, and washing dishes. They won’t wonder why they nod during a sonorous prayer.

For a day, though, men could probably survive without ladies’ aid. But by the second day, havoc would surely begin to fall from modern Eve’s bite into the established order. Perhaps next Wednesday Christian women and men should strike out for the accord Paul advocated: “Be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind.… There must be no competition among you, no conceit.… In your mind you must be the same as Christ Jesus.”

Fidel The Failure

Before Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba he posed as an agrarian reformer hailed by many, including churchmen, as a healthy counteractor to the dictatorship of Batista. Castro overthrew the Batista regime, uncloaked his role of agrarian reformer and openly acknowledged that he was a Communist.

A few days ago Castro admitted in a long and plaintive speech that he had failed dismally, that Cuba’s economic situation is desperate, and that there is little hope for real improvement in the immediate future. Were it not for the Soviet Union’s imperialistic financial support that has propped up Castro’s shaky economic position, his government would collapse overnight.

It was pathetic to note that Castro blamed his failure not on the Communist system, but on the lack of cadres to carry it out. He ended by saying the revolution must go on. Where it can go from here is hard to say, and one must commiserate with the millions of suffering people who languish under the hand of this tyrant.

What Cuba desperately needs is Christianity and along with it political, economic and social freedom. A good healthy dose of some free enterprise would go a long way toward rescuing Cuba from its doldrums. Witness the remarkable economic improvement of West Germany, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia (before Soviet military might reversed the process) as they moved away from the chains of outdated, anachronistic, Communist thought toward the economic realities that have enabled Western democracies to offer their people a better life.

Fidel the failure apparently hasn’t learned much since he became Cuba’s dictator. What he needs to learn is that Christianity produces free men and free men do a far better job economically, politically, and socially than do slaves whose power to choose is curtailed and whose right to free speech has been abrogated.

From Holocaust To Hope

At 9:20 A.M. (Marianas time) a radio message was received at Tinian Island from the B-29 superfortress, Enola Gay. It said: “Mission successful.” At 3 P.M., the plane returned to Tinian and landed safely. As Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., alighted, General Carl Spaatz, commander of the Pacific Strategic Air Forces, pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on his jacket.

Hiroshima—the name blazoned to the world twenty-five years ago this month. The atomic age had begun.

Soon, Tibbets and his crew reported what was—up to that moment—the biggest man-made explosion in history. The men in the Enola Gay had seen the great red ball of fire rise and expand, as suddenly the whole city was ablaze with searing flame and boiling smoke. Then the monstrous pillar of atomic cloud spread into a giant white mushroom.

Three days later, August 9, a second atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered August 14. Because of the confusion after the explosions, the exact number of dead and injured will never be known; official estimates said there were 80,000 deaths and as many injuries in Hiroshima, and 45,000 killed and 60,000 injured in Nagasaki. The ethics of dropping the bombs has been and will continue to be debated for years.

But mankind’s attention soon turned from holocaust to hope: the peacetime possibilities of atomic power. Today, atomic power plants abound (despite frequent local uneasiness about their presence), and radioactive isotopes have benefited medicine, science, engineering, industry, and agriculture. Atomic-powered submarines are a well-known example of how the atom has been harnessed for useful purposes. Even archaeology has been aided by the discovery that there is a slight amount of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 in the atmosphere. This knowledge has enabled scientists to determine (although the accuracy of the method has been challenged recently) the age of many archaeological finds. And perhaps we still stand—even twenty-five years after Hiroshima—only on the threshold of the ultimate potential locked within the tiny atom.

That versatile writer, Isaac Asimov, has noted in his book, Inside the Atom:

Nothing in the history of mankind has opened our eyes to the possibilities of science as has the development of atomic power.… If only mankind can avoid destroying himself in atomic warfare, there seem to be almost no limits to what may lie ahead: inexhaustible energy, new worlds, ever-widening knowledge of the physical universe. If only we can learn to use wisely the knowledge we already have.…”

If only. Need we add that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 111:10)? Or that man can never master the universe until he masters himself, and that that can be done only when he is enthralled by Jesus Christ?

An Arab-Israeli Detente?

We rejoice in the fact that the United Arab Republic and the State of Israel accepted in principle the peace plan for the Middle East and the ninety-day cease-fire that is part of it. This is only a small step in the right direction, but it may be the beginning of a negotiated settlement.

We know that the greater the tension and the more people involved the greater the difficulty to negotiate a viable solution. Essentially this difficulty is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli confrontation. Israel genuinely believes it is fighting for its very existence and wants security and recognition by the Arabs. The Arab world—a conglomeration of competing factions with no essential political unity, no common goals, and no particular love for one another—wants some token of “victory” after military defeat plus the return of the territories seized by the Israelis in their stunning military victory. The Soviet Union is caught in the tentacles of deep military involvement on behalf of Nasser and the possibility of war with the United States if things go wrong. The United States has commitments to Israel and the moral obligation to prevent another genociding of Jews. It is faced with the threat of Soviet imperialist adventurism based on national interests that collide with its own. But it doesn’t want war with the Soviets because nuclear weaponry guarantees that nobody will win—or even, perhaps, survive—such a conflict.

Deep wrongs have been perpetrated; neither the Arabs nor the Israelis have totally clean hands. Justice in an abstract sense is impossible, and any negotiated settlement will necessitate some gains and some losses by both sides. Because Israel is unlikely to give up its holdings in Palestine, the displaced Palestinian Arabs have little hope of repatriation, and the injustice they have suffered must be remedied by providing them with other lands and new hope for a viable and decent life.

It should be apparent that war is no solution for the political and human problems of the Middle East. Reason and diplomacy are the only hope, and if they fail the prospects are too dismal to contemplate. The first stage is the cease-fire that would benefit both Jews and Arabs. This can succeed and progress only if the Soviet Union and the United States work together to hold their respective clients in line. If either lacks the good faith the situation calls for or the determination to secure a modus vivendi, then the picture is dark indeed.

It is in the best interests of the United States and the Soviet Union to work for a negotiated settlement and then to guarantee that settlement as well as to stabilize the situation for the years ahead. The road will be difficult, the obstacles many, and the human element forbidding. Christians, most of whom can personally do little to shape the course of events, ought to pray earnestly that God will work to cool the boiling pot and bring order out of the present chaos.

Evangelical Without Adjectives

The conciliar movement in recent years has been using a label that has become part of the lingua franca. The term is “conservative evangelicals” and is applied primarily to evangelical groups and individuals outside the ecumenical movement. Both the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches have indicated their willingness to court and to have dialogue with “conservative evangelicals.”

The term is a misnomer, a label that is a libel, and one that should be discontinued at once. Our reasons for this disclaimer are obvious. The word “evangelical” is defined in Webster’s International as “pertaining to or designating that party or school among the Protestants which holds that the essence of the Gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man’s sinful condition and need of salvation, the revelation of God’s grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” The adjective “conservative” before “evangelical” is superfluous and indeed redundant, provided that the word “evangelical” still is sound currency. The antonym of “conservative” is “liberal.” To say that a man is a “liberal evangelical” is a contradiction of terms, sheer nonsense. If he is an evangelical he cannot be a theological liberal; if he is a theological liberal he cannot be an evangelical. It is of course possible for a man to be an evangelical and at the same time to be a political or economic liberal. But as a theological badge, the term “conservative evangelical” is unnecessary, misleading, and deceptive. No evangelical needs any adjective before the word. It carries its own freight and stands on its own feet.

We are reminded of Kaiser Wilhelm to whom someone was introduced as a German-American. The king replied: “A German I know and an American I know, but a German-American I do not know.” An evangelical we know and a conservative we know, but a conservative evangelical we do not know.

The Spirit Of 1620

Love it or leave it, they decided, though they were scarcely offered that alternative. For their desire to leave the establishment they could not love, they received brickbats; for their efforts to leave the nation that refused them religious liberty, they were called traitors. But finally, to worship simply and purely, in contrast to the ritual of the established church, a group of English dissenters headed for Leyden, Holland, in 1608. There they worshiped freely on Sundays and scratched for a living in menial trades the rest of the week.

The hard life took its toll on their health and that of their children, and it failed to attract others who shared their views. Worse, some of their children, disillusioned by the futility of advancement, “were drawn away by evil examples” of unacceptable codes of conduct. So, 350 years ago this summer, they bade tearful farewells to what one of their leaders called “that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years.” William Bradford explained their decision—and left a challenge for Christians of all ages: “But they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”

Ulster: Who’s A Christian?

More than a dozen persons died in a two-week period last month during the “fraternal” strife engulfing six counties of Northern Ireland where the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority endure peace-on-a-razor’s-edge.

Editor James O. Duncan of the Capital Baptist editoralized in the weekly publication of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention: “We believe that the time has come for the moral persuasive power of Catholics and Protestants around the world to be used to speak to the crisis in Northern Ireland.” Challenging Pope Paul and World Council of Churches chief Eugene Carson Blake to “leave the seclusion of Rome and Geneva,” Duncan called on them, if necessary, to “stand together in the middle of the street where Protestant and Catholic areas come together and seek to bring about some kind of reconciliation.”

“Since when,” Duncan asked, “do segments of the church have to kill and wound and exploit each other? What does Christianity mean to those who keep warring with one another?”

To Captain Charles Ritchie, a 28-year-old career soldier of the First Battalion, Royal Scots, it is a kind of riddle to keep him on good terms with both sides. Like most of the British Army soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland, Ritchie has been on Ulster patrol for four or five months. Before coming there, he told a New York Times reporter, “we never knew or cared whether a man in the unit was Protestant or Catholic. But here it’s the first thing people ask you.”

“I tell them that I’m a Christian,” he added with a smile. “They always love the puzzle. They don’t seem to know what that means.”

Obviously not.

Compassion In The Andes

“Desolation comparable to Hiroshima,” said one observer, describing what he saw in the shadow of the Andes after Peru’s earthquake almost three months ago. Though church relief agencies sped with appropriate cups of cold water—medicine, food, clothing, blankets, money for rebuilding—desolation lingers. To repair the devastation of the forty-second quake will no doubt require at least forty months (see News, page 46).

The spontaneous sympathy of Christians around the world and their willingness to shoulder the Peruvians’ burden is commendable. To carry that burden through the heat of the day, the cool of the night, and the rains of September will demand strong shoulders and inexhaustible compassion.

Quenching A Man-Sized Thirst

Changing times and tastes have taken the fizz out of that “old faithful,” the corner drugstore soda fountain. Marble counters, high stools, and mirrors framed by pyramids of glasses and tall jars of gooey flavoring are now an anachronism.

Soda water, points out the National Geographic Society, was first produced commercially in the United States in the 1830s when John Matthews of New York City sold the first soda-water generator. Chips of marble—many salvaged from the building of St. Patrick’s Cathedral—were added to sulphuric acid in a lead-lined box, generating carbonic acid gas that was then dissolved in water.

While the old-fashioned soda fountain is drying up, the soft-drink industry has swallowed up pinpoint carbonation. Fizzy-water devotees now buy carbonated beverages, ice cream, and a variety of tantalizing toppings at the supermarket. Then, with kitchen blenders, the imaginative whump up their own summer specialties.

All of which proves that man’s styles may change, and his tastes. But his thirst remains. So, too, the places and modes of man’s worship shift with the times. Yet his thirst for the water of life can be quenched from only one source: Jesus Christ. Whoever drinks fizzy water will thirst again, but he who drinks of the water Christ gives will never thirst. As Jesus said long ago to the woman at the local watering spot: “The water I give shall be an inner spring bubbling up for everlasting life” (John 4:14).

Strong Delusion

Ahab was king of Israel at the same time godly Jehoshaphat was king of Judah. Ahab had gathered about him a cluster of false prophets whose business it was to prophesy to him what he wanted to hear. He was not interested in listening to a true prophet, for he didn’t bow before God nor did he want to know the will of God. But God did not leave himself without a witness. Micaiah, a true prophet, was the only link that wicked Ahab had with God. Micaiah, however, told it like it was and generally managed to make Ahab unhappy.

Good Jehoshaphat made a bad alliance with Ahab (for which Jehu, the son of Hanani the seer, later rebuked him saying: “Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? [1 Chron. 19:2]). When Ahab asked Jehoshaphat to join him in a military venture at Ramoth-gilead, Jehoshaphat agreed. Ahab’s prophets were consulted, and they promised him victory. But Jehoshaphat was not fully satisfied and asked if there was another prophet. Ahab mentioned Micaiah, whom, he said, “I hate … for he never prophesied good unto me, but always evil” (2 Chron. 18:7). When called upon to prophesy, Micaiah did it again. He forecast Ahab’s death and also told Ahab that God had permitted a lying spirit to deceive Ahab and that this lying spirit would prevail.

All Micaiah got in return for his prophecy was a jail sentence. He was to be fed “with bread of affliction and water of affliction” (2 Chron. 18:26). Ahab, on the other hand, got all that Micaiah predicted. He lost his life. What stands out most in this account is not that Micaiah, the true prophet, suffered for his faithfulness, nor that Jehoshaphat was reproved for having an alliance with wicked Ahab. What really stands out is that Ahab, who knew that Micaiah was a true prophet, and who had been told that he would follow a lying prophet, chose to do what Micaiah said he would do. And he perished.

What is it that confirms wicked men in their wickedness and causes them to fly in the face of the obvious, to their own undoing? May it not be what God said would happen in the last days and what seems to be happening with some frequency in our generation?—“God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:11, 12).

Yesterday was my birthday, but I didn’t expect any cards or presents. I don’t have any relatives, and why should anyone else bother with me? The strange thing was that the girl who catches the same subway I do every morning asked me out for the day to her uncle’s cottage. Her uncle was afraid the snow might have damaged the roof, and she agreed to go out and check it for him. I had never had a girl ask me to go on a drive before, so it was a very special day though she didn’t even know my name.

It was cold but sunny. She picked me up at the subway stop, and I sat in the back seat of the car. In the front next to her was a white-bearded gentleman who turned out to be a professor, a relative from New Jersey. Sometimes she turned around and said something to me, but the professor did most of the talking. Most of the time he called her “my dear.” Once he called her “Mary,” though, and it was nice to know who she was.

The cottage looked like a Christmas card. When we went inside there was a cake on the table, and stuck in the icing were twenty-one brightly burning candles. As I got near it I saw to my horror that there was writing in red letters on the cake that said, “Happy Birthday, Jim.” Mary immediately said that some gang must have broken in. They would probably be back for the guy’s birthday party—perhaps it would be wiser to leave? I managed to hide my confusion and said nothing.

The professor said the first thing to do was to find out what the cake was made of. So he got a knife out of a drawer and cut a big slice. As he rubbed the crumbs in his fingers and examined them, he said, “Hmmm. A most interesting formation. Two different mixtures have been folded in. There is a blend of flour and sugar, and that fell into egg protein, cream of tartar, sodium chloride …” I could tell Mary was impressed with the old buffer’s knowledge, but that didn’t explain who baked the angel-food cake and put the candles and lettering all over the top.

“Ah, you want to know about the baking, my dear,” he continued. “This particular mixture has to be baked at a temperature of 375° for not less than thirty and not more than thirty-five minutes. The hard layer of butter surfacing went on after the main mixture had cooled. It would be interesting to know whether this most unusual circle of wax pillars preceded the red markings …” Mary was obviously getting impatient, so I ventured to say that what she wanted to know was who baked the cake, not what it was made of. That got the professor very excited. He peered at me through his glasses and said, “Young man, asking ‘who?’ is a very stupid question. Everything should be reduced to ‘how?’ It is only when you can explain exactly how everything happens and then repeat it experimentally …”

Mary was in no mood to be lectured by her aged relative so she broke in and said, “Please, please, professor, all we want to know is the answer to a simple question. Did a fairy godmother say ‘hey presto’ or did someone bake this cake, and if so who did it?” The professor refused to admit that it was as simple as that. He wanted to be sure the cake hadn’t got there by chance. We had passed a big flour mill on the way, and, he said, “a cloud of flour blown into some sugar is always a possibility. If the cottage door blew open, and this pan happened to be in the oven, and the mixture happened to land in the pan, and a rat got on the stove and moved the switch to 375°, the oven door could have slammed shut for thirty minutes, and then …” That was too much for Mary. She caught the professor by the scruff of the neck, shook him, and said, “You are a stupid old man.” He collapsed into a chair.

Having disposed of the learned gentleman she turned on me. “Do you think this cake could have appeared here by chance?” I shook my head and weakly mentioned about the candles burning and “happy birthday” written on it. Mary quickly counted the candles, including the two the professor had cut out, and concluded that the cake had been baked for a boy named Jim who was twenty-one today. Then, with a kind of woman’s intuition, I guess, she looked at me carefully and asked what my name was. I had to admit it was Jim. “And it’s your birthday today.” I nodded sheepishly. Then with ruthless logic she said triumphantly, “And you are twenty-one.” That explained everything. She came over and gave me a big kiss and said, “Come on, professor, let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

The problem was that for me nothing had been explained at all. Mary was busy cutting pieces of cake and putting them on plates and making coffee. The professor had recovered his composure. He came over to the piece of cake he had cut, peeled off the icing, and, looking learnedly at the texture of the surface of the cake, informed us that it had been baked in a bakery oven by machine. Mary said, “Maybe the girl bought the cake in a shop, iced it herself, and then stuck candles all the way around.” The professor then explained that the candles had been stuck in when the icing was still soft, and he had also found out that the candles had been burning about sixteen minutes. That piece of research seemed to satisfy him, and he moved off with his cake and coffee to enjoy the view outside.

Mary then came and sat next to me, took my hand, looked into my eyes, and asked, “What’s she like? Is she blond or brunette, or maybe ginger? When did you see her last?” When I explained that there wasn’t a soul in the world who knew it was my birthday and that I didn’t have any girlfriends, or any friends for that matter, she looked sweetly interested and equally sweetly unbelieving. It almost seemed as if she thought a boy like me couldn’t possibly not have friends. Her only problem seemed to be that she wanted to know what the girl was like. That’s a woman’s curiosity! Happily she went of to fix more coffee, leaving me to think about the questions that puzzled me.

No one knew me well enough to know my real name was Jim. And even if someone did, there would be no way for that cake to be there with the candles burning at the cottage of an uncle of the girl who had caught the same subway I had every day since I got my job. I wondered whether Mary’s first guess could be right. Maybe a motorcycle gang planned to be here for the day, and one of them was named Jim, and his girl fixed this surprise. But then that was too much to swallow on my birthday. Somebody must be interested in me. Suddenly I was different, important, no longer the nonperson just out of jail, incognito, trying to remake myself a place in the world.

Then the doubts came back. I might be dreaming. Could it be a fairy godmother? I had always been superstitious, and my mother once told us we had a guardian angel. Mary noticed that my thoughts were far away and that my eyes had filled with tears, and she came over and gave me a big hug. I just wished that Mary could have been the girl who baked or iced or ordered or whatever it was that the girl did with the cake.

That’s what settled it. As soon as I wished, I knew. She must have found out before she ever asked me to the cottage. She already knew my name and my birthday and how old I was and my record, and she wasn’t going to let on. I didn’t have to admit I was Jim, and if I didn’t want to believe it was she I didn’t have to. The cake could have come “hey presto,” or it might have been for another Jim, and it might have been chance like the professor said—after all, anything is possible if you have enough flour and sugar and egg whites and ovens and winds and rats and everything else. It was a wonderful day, and Mary is a great girl in a different kind of way.

I wrote out this story, and when I had finished I headed it “Dear Preacher” and sent it to the fellow who had often come to see me during those three years. As I signed it “Jim,” I suddenly remembered that he was one who did know my real name. I still can’t figure out how the angel cake got its icing, and I know Mary can’t have lit the candles because she drove the car, and she still teases me about the other girlfriend, and she can’t have cared without the preacher, and the preacher might not have bothered it …

So I added at the bottom:

“P.S. Yesterday all that mattered was that Mary cared about me. Today I think you have won. I can still argue rings round you like the professor, and it mightn’t be me that God cared about, and there is always the possibility that chance did it all, so I don’t have to believe. I guess proof is only for those who want it. Is the professor one of your gang too? He was kind of different, like Mary, when he wasn’t giving us his explanations.”

Biblical evangelism is personal. It means nothing less than the whole Church bringing the whole Gospel to the whole world. Evangelical Christians who know what evangelism is are often uncertain about how it is to be done.

Methods of evangelism commonly fall into two categories: evangelism is considered to be identification with the world without any proclamation of the Word, or it is seen as proclamation of the Word without any identification with the world. Both these methods are unbiblical. To practice the first is to be guilty of compromise, while to practice the second is to be guilty of pharisaism. The Christian who wants to be an effective witness must avoid both extremes.

In presenting the Gospel, we must be constantly aware that we are confronting non-Christians who are unique personalities. We must take into account each person’s particular situation of lostness, and let that determine the manner in which we speak to him. Jude distinguishes various situations of lostness in these words: “Convince some, who doubt; save some, by snatching them out of the fire; on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” (vv. 22, 23). The Apostle Paul indicates that there are appropriate ways of witnessing to different types of persons when he says, “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one” (Col. 4:5, 6). These passages suggest that we must gently probe to discover what particular questions each person is asking. Only then will we be in a position to answer, not the questions we think he should be asking, but those that are really troubling him. It is said that someone wrote on a subway station wall, “Christ is the answer,” and someone else came along afterward and wrote beneath it, “What is the question?” The evangelizing Christian must take people as he finds them and try to speak in terms of their experience.

The classic description of this personal method of evangelism is found in First Corinthians 9:20–23. The Apostle Paul’s position on evangelism was that he could accommodate his personality to the situation of men without compromising truth. It is important that we understand this, lest we think Paul was inconsistent in what he said about evangelism. Paul believed that though he had to try to get right beside men in their own condition, though he was to weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh, yet the Gospel he presented could not be accommodated because it was not a matter of his preference. He was convinced that it was the Word of God and not the word of man that he was presenting, and that what God had said was not his to alter.

Paul gives us three examples of what he means by accommodation without compromise. First, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law—though not being myself under the law—that I might win those under the law” (v. 20). Paul explains that one type of person we will encounter acknowledges the existence of God and even accepts his Word as the valid authority on matters of salvation. A perfect example of this is the Jewish audience the Apostle confronted at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13). In order to find common ground (always necessary before a rational discussion can take place) upon which to present the Gospel, Paul took the Old Testament prophecies and pointed out how these were fulfilled in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. He started with the Old Testament but then moved quickly to the objective evidence for the truth of the Gospel, just in case the Jews might say, “Well, Paul, that is your interpretation. Our rabbis do not read it as you do.” Paul leaves no doubt about his affirmation of truth when he says, “It isn’t a matter of interpretation, because God actually raised Jesus from the dead, and many of those I have talked to in Jerusalem are witnesses of this.” After appealing to evidence in history, he presses the logic of his claim by saying, “Let it be known to you therefore, brethren, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him every one that believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (vv. 38, 39). Paul accommodated himself to them by going into their synagogue, but he did not compromise the truth of the Gospel.

In our day, we must be discerning about when to use Scripture as common ground in personal evangelism. Many non-Christians in Western culture have what we might call a “Christian memory”: they respect the Bible as God’s message of salvation because of Christian training they received as children. With these persons we can use the Bible in our witness for Christ. But a growing majority of non-Christians do not respect the Bible as God’s Word and will not permit the Christian to use it in his witness to them. So he has to use a different approach.

Paul had such an approach. “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law—not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ—that I might win those outside the law” (v. 21). Paul here explains that we will encounter some persons who are confessed agnostics, to whom we must also accommodate ourselves. He, it seems, was skilled in dealing not only with those who had a theistic base but also with those who did not. The example is his experience in Athens (recorded in Acts 17), when he was perturbed about what he saw and felt he must find common ground from which to speak with the Athenians. When the confrontation came, Paul set up his view of the world with God as Creator of all things, and with man created in God’s image and dependent upon him, as his ultimate point of reference. This was the common ground. But to support it, Paul quoted from two Stoic poets. He could not quote from the Old Testament because the Greeks did not recognize it as God’s Word; instead, he drew from their own culture in order to preach the Gospel to them. Because the Greeks did not accept the theism of the Old Testament, Paul had to cite evidence for theism from sources the Greeks did respect.

However, once he had done this, he immediately moved into the realm of the truth of the Gospel by saying, “Now, God commands you to repent. You have been worshiping the unknown god. But there is no reason to worship the unknown god, because he has become known in Jesus of Nazareth. God has given you assurance in that he raised Jesus from the dead.” It is important to observe that Paul’s appeal to empirical verification is the same with the Gentiles as with the Jew, though he began with different common ground. Why? Because the truth claims of the Gospel are open to all men. Jesus’ resurrection is evidence that the Gospel is true.

We might say that Paul had to do some pre-evangelism. He could not begin preaching the Gospel to the Greeks right away because he needed to find a context within which to do this. So, with much spiritual discernment, Paul drew from Greek culture to substantiate theism so that he could preach the Gospel.

Christians in our day need to learn this approach. Where the Word of God is not respected, another source must be used that is recognized as significant. Someone has said that the Christian should read the Bible he holds in one hand while reading the newspaper he holds in the other. The secular media of communication describes the lostness of man as the Bible does. The Christian must be alert to the felt needs of modern man—frustration, boredom, fear, loneliness, meaninglessness—and one of the best ways to do this is to be aware of the culture that influences man. Evangelical Christians have largely failed in this area of evangelism because of their cultural barrenness, a product of their so-called separation from the world.

Art, music and literature have been free from religious domination since the Renaissance and have consequently taken up secular themes. This means that they have become excellent sources for observing man’s lostness. Modern music, theater, the new cinema especially, deal with ultimate questions about life. Indeed, almost every area of man’s endeavor—economics, politics, education, and so on—is separated from the influence of the Church and has thus become a showcase of man’s lostness. Such an approach to evangelism to be used with confessed agnostics could be called “cultural apologetics.”

“To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak” (v. 22). A third type of person we will encounter in presenting the Gospel is the one who wants to debate religious issues without trying to reach any conclusions. Paul was wise enough in his application of truth to know the difference between essentials and non-essentials. He also knew the difference between the right and the wrong time to press something. This is something all Christians need to learn.

An example of this approach in evangelism is found in Acts 21. When Paul returned to Jerusalem from his third missionary journey, he rehearsed to the elders of the church there how the Lord had used him to bring many Gentiles into the Kingdom of God. The elders glorified God when they heard this, but they were also troubled. A serious charge had been brought against Paul because of his ministry to the Gentiles. Many Jews who had become Christians in Jerusalem while Paul was away had heard that the Apostle was discounting the law of Moses, and they were upset because they felt such talk might hinder other Jews from becoming Christians. The elders suggested that the only way Paul could restore the integrity of his ministry in the eyes of the Jews was to observe the law publicly. He could do this by paying the expenses of four men who had taken vows in Judaism, even going so far as to sit with them in the Temple for seven days. Paul agreed to do this, so that he could continue to preach the Gospel to the Jews. The Apostle appears to have been a sensitive, versatile, and tactful Christian. The point, once again, is that his method was accommodation in culture and personality to the persons he wanted to reach without any compromise of theological imperatives.

This strategy cannot be summarized any better than by Paul’s own words: “I became all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (v. 22). He could have formulated this philosophy of evangelism only by observing a divine pattern of evangelism in action. Because Paul understood the purpose of the Incarnation, he understood God’s strategy of evangelism. As the Lord emptied himself and took the form of human flesh to carry on his work of reconciliation, so each Christian must be willing to empty himself and identify with sinners so that he can declare the message of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:16–21). As Christ penetrated humanity without being assimilated by it, so each Christian is to penetrate human society without being assimilated by it. This is incarnational evangelism.

The contemporary scene should always influence the direction and philosophy of evangelism. We must take seriously Ephesians 2, where it describes the non-Christian as “having no hope and without God in the world,” if we are to share a meaningful Gospel with him. We cannot do this effectively if we are complacently insulated from the culture around us. With gentleness the Christian must be able to remove from the non-Christian’s view what he has taken from the Christian position and emphatically say of what remains, “This is your position without Christ: either be honest enough to live with it or become a Christian.” We must, like Paul, be “all things to all men” if we are to share the Gospel with them.

In a way, our world is more ready for incarnational evangelism than was Paul’s, for his world had not known the overwhelming despair that ours knows. The non-Christian world is waiting to be evangelized—person by person. Biblical evangelism is personal evangelism.

“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:28, 29).

It is surely very striking that what appears to have most impressed the audience that first heard Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not its content, not its sublime moral precepts, but rather the manner in which it was delivered. Apparently, what stirred that multitude of Jewish listeners most deeply was not so much what Jesus was teaching as the way in which he taught, for, as Matthew puts it, “he taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

To understand this statement, one must know who these scribes were and what they did. They were the recognized official students and expositors of the law of Moses, the Pentateuch, which, duly interpreted and expounded, was held to be a sufficient and authoritative rule of life and living. It was their duty to study the law, to gather together and collate the various opinions on that law given by generations of learned rabbis, and then to expound this sacred textbook of religion and ethics for the benefit of their contemporaries.

The Jews who heard Jesus give his Sermon on the Mount were thoroughly familiar with these scribes and their methods. But when they heard Jesus Christ, they were profoundly impressed with the difference between his manner of instruction and that of their official teachers, the scribes. What made this difference that came home so forcefully to those hearers of Jesus?

To begin with, Jesus Christ taught on his own initiative, responsibility, and authority, and not on the authority of anyone else. The scribes, of course, never pretended to do anything else than expound what had been said officially by Moses, the giver of their law, and by later rabbis who had tried to interpret and clarify the Mosaic law and apply it to particular cases. Their language was of this sort: “Moses commanded …; Rabbi This said so and so; Rabbi Thus said such and such and such.” They did not introduce their own views into the matter at all, for they taught not on their own authority but on that of others.

Jesus Christ’s method of teaching, however, was entirely different. He deliberately stated his own opinions and views in contrast to those of others. As Alexander MacLaren once put it, “Jesus Christ in these great laws of his kingdom adduced no authority but His own; stood forth as a legislator, not as a commentator; and commanded, and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on his bare word.” The regular way in which he spoke was this: “Ye have heard it said by them of old time.… But I say unto you.…” In a word, Jesus Christ spoke with authority, while the scribes spoke from authorities. Clearly, then, what Jesus said to those multitudes would come home to them with much greater interest, vividness, and power than what the scribes said, for it is always more impressive to hear a man speak his own message than the message of any other.

Second, Jesus Christ taught only what had come home to him with vital reality in his own personal experience, his own inner spiritual life. This was not at all what the scribes had in mind as they taught; indeed, it was not anything in which they were particularly interested. They set out in all their teaching only to expound and make clear that law contained in the Pentateuch. Here was the official text, the law of Moses, and here the commentaries of successive generations of rabbis of Israel; whether the scribes had found that teaching to come alive in their own life and experience was irrelevant.

With Jesus the case was quite different. He preached the Sermon on the Mount, not because it was his professional duty, but because what he said was so meaningful and important to him that he simply could not keep it to himself. John Bunyan once said, “I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel,” and this was true of Bunyan’s Master, Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke as he did in the Sermon on the Mount about not being anxious and fearful, it was because he had proved in his own experience the rich blessing to be obtained through trusting God and being freed from all anxiety. When he spoke of the blessings that come through private prayer, it was because he himself had experienced those blessings through his daily practice of the presence of God. When he said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” what he meant was that his hearers should get rid of the censorious spirit, the spirit of carping and negative criticism, and he said that because he knew in his own spirit the health of mind that comes to one who is habitually appreciative and generous instead of critical and negative. Jesus’ teaching was something that was real and vital in his own life; it had behind it the witness of his own character and spirit. So naturally it came home to his hearers with great impressiveness and authority.

Third, the appeal Jesus made in his message was to the mind and heart, or in other words, to the experience of his listeners. For he believed that truth, the truth he proclaimed, was self-authenticating, that it shone in its own light and freely commended itself to the sincere and seeking mind and heart.

This was not the attitude of the scribes at all. They depended on the prestige and authority of the name of Moses and the names of the famous Jewish rabbis whom they quoted to give weight to their laws and ordinances. With them, the determining consideration was that Moses, their great law-giver and leader, had said so and so, had laid down the law thus, and his decrees must be accepted and obeyed. The fact they stressed was that their teaching had behind it the sanction of a great name, the name of Moses.

By contrast, Jesus depended on the inherent force and authority of the truth that he proclaimed. He believed that the truth of his message would freely commend itself to any sincere mind and heart, so that it would not need any external weight of authority to buttress it and win acceptance for it. Says Dr. Herbert H. Farmer:

If anyone had the right to impose Himself and his message by over-riding authority upon men, He surely had it. Aware of the final decisiveness of His own person in the destinies of men, announcing the breaking in of the eternal kingdom of God upon history in His own advent, taking to Himself the highest category in the religious thought of men, there is nevertheless a complete absence of any attempt to compel men’s allegiance, whether by threat or command or any form of prestigious suggestion. Indeed, there is a manifest shrinking from any such thing. “Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” he cried. “Be ye not called Rabbi, for One is your teacher.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” In this last oft-repeated formula how much, how very much, is contained of the unique and distinctive quality of Christ, of his whole understanding of God and the way of his coming to man [The Servant of the Word, pp. 87, 88].

Take an obvious illustration. When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” he did not give any dogmatic answer that had to be accepted without question. He did not categorically say, “Your neighbor is anyone in need whom you happen to meet.” What he did was to tell that great and unforgettable story of the Good Samaritan, and when he had told it, he said to his questioner: “Which of these three, thinkest thou was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” (Luke 10:36).

Jesus Christ realized that truth is not dependent upon man’s acknowledgment of it. But he also recognized that in order for truth to have meaning for a man it must come home to him personally and freely, authenticating and commending itself to his own mind and heart and, where possible, being experienced in his life. Then and only then does the truth have illuminating and kindling power. Then and only then does the truth really make men free.

FALL AND THEN …

Don’t be afraid when each blade

Falls with a crash,

When a slate sky cries

Hate, rapes the proud oak

Bare, rakes glass debris

In thick death beds of grass

Paving. Do not fear death here

On this fall-leaf shroud.

For hate is love; and glass, that dead

Leaf-stone, is struck a blow to

Life, chiseled and heated to life

Under a steady Sun.

And slate is color! Slide kaleid-

Escope blank to teeming, deep

Color faces; turn and watch

For child-wonders in heavenly places

And wild Christ, the One in Three

Rarest stone of that infinite roof Came

smashing down, too,

Another piece of glass that cuts

As I lie here, deeper than

Other sharp leaves that lept

From the parent root to shoot blood

Holes in our macadam drone,

And draw glass souls to living Adam.

ELLEN STRICKLAND

The Christian college is not an independent institution. It is in partnership with the church, the alumni, accrediting agencies, the business community, and government at federal, state, and local levels. In the past, it might have assumed that these partnerships were clear and unchanging. A review of the twentieth-century history of the Christian college, however, shows that these partnerships have shifted in strength. As the partners have gained or lost influence, the change has influenced both the identity and the exposure of the institution. While the speed and the scope of changing partners varies from one institution to the next, the trend is toward an expanded identity and increased exposure for the Christian college.

The Church Era

In the first third of the century, the church was not only the senior partner with the Christian college—it was almost the sole partner. Whether the college was related to one church or interdenominational, its identity tended to duplicate the identity of the church. Students and faculty of the college came from the church. This guaranteed an output of graduates to serve the church and perpetuate its purpose. The school’s quality was judged more by religious than by academic standards, and the curriculum focused upon the study of religion and its application in the Christian ministry. In this era, the identity of the Christian college was narrow and clear.

Its exposure was equally limited. The separation between Christian and secular higher education was drawn along a line of spiritual warfare. Relationships between the college and the larger community were resisted, and administrators who fostered them were suspect. Thus, the range of exposure was as narrow as the individual’s foray into enemy territory for evangelistic purposes.

The college depended upon the church for economic support, of course, and most of it came through free-will offerings and church pledges raised by gospel teams that preached, prayed, and played for local congregations. Accountability in this era could be summed up in the question often asked by contributing church members: “Is the college still spiritual?” This question sums up the restricted identity and the limited exposure of the Christian college when the church was almost its exclusive partner.

The Alumni Era

In the church era, the alumni of the college and the members of the church were often the same people. But economic pressure and academic demands forced the Christian college to grow. Church-related colleges began to reach outside the denomination, and interdenominational colleges sought a national base. Because Christian colleges are poor places for proselyting, this move expanded both the identity and the exposure for the institutions. The identity started to shift from the church to the college itself. Institutional reputation became more important than denominational connections. Students with different backgrounds had to have an educational vehicle that would take them across church lines or into non-ministerial professions without penalty. The Christian college had to stand on its own, and in this era such schools as Wheaton, Baylor, Davidson, Gordon, and Seattle Pacific became more than their denominational or interdenominational connections.

As the Christian college expanded its identity, it increased its exposure. The new standard for output was loyal alumni rather than loyal church members, and exposure took on a different meaning. In the church era, exposure tended to be limited to church members with an evangelistic purpose. Now, exposure meant alumni at work in expanded service professions, such as education.

The alumni era introduced a new source of financing for the Christian college. Alumni associations and chapters were organized to maintain the line of loyalty with the college and to raise money. College presidents, alumni secretaries, and selected faculty members made up the “gospel teams” for alumni meetings, bearing a message that was essentially the same except for a new academic emphasis. Nostalgia was the content for communication. As church members had been told what they wanted to hear, the alumni were told what they wanted to remember.

The Accreditation Era

As the line of changing identity moved on, new partners came into positions of strength. At the close of World War II, the Christian colleges were besieged with veterans who brought maturity, motivation, and money to the campus. This was directly reflected in the identity of the college. Tuition was increased. Professional and vocational programs were expanded. Social regulations were modified for the new generation. The climate of learning shifted from declarations to questions. The output of the institution was judged by its academic standing and its dollar value. In its postwar response, the Christian college stepped into the open arena of competition in American higher education.

The veterans were just the first ripple of the tidal wave of students to hit the Christian college in the 1950s. Parallel with this movement was the “quality revolution” in higher education that gave accrediting agencies powerful authority over both public and private institutions.

The accreditation era produced major changes in the identity and the exposure of the Christian college. Accrediting teams called attention to the platitudes in college catalogues, questioned faculty quality, criticized inadequate facilities. Time and time again they cited insufficient financial support. To keep up with the competition, the Christian college had no choice but to shift the focus of identity from institutional loyalty to academic quality. Institutional purposes were clarified. General education and academic majors were strengthened. Faculty qualifications and salaries were upgraded. The concrete never set on presidential building empires. All this was done under the pressure of limited financial support from the traditional sources—the church and alumni. Therefore, the cost of quality was charged back to the student in tuition and fee increases.

The accreditation era widened the scope of institutional exposure. Emphasis upon quality exposed the Christian college to the scrutiny of the academic community. Presidents began to attend educational meetings, and faculty members began to participate in scholarly societies. The output of the college was judged by transferability, professional credentials, and admission into graduate programs. Within a generation, the academic community had become a senior partner with the Christian college through its accrediting agencies.

The Business Era

When the Christian college made a commitment to academic quality in the accreditation era, it again moved beyond the limits of its available resources. The churches had other priorities, and the alumni were in low-paying service professions. Tuition increases were limited by constituencies of middle-class families with multiple obligations.

The next natural move was to the larger community that the Christian college had either ignored or tried to evangelize in past eras. To appeal to this community, and particularly the business sector, the Christian college expanded its identity again. Suddenly, it was a full partner with the community. Evidence was gathered to show the college’s educational, financial, and cultural contributions to the community. The values of the private college were matched with the values of free enterprise. Business administration and related programs gained status in the curriculum. College representatives joined service clubs, raised funds for community projects, and participated in civic affairs. Community leaders were put on the board of trustees. Then, after the cultivation period, professional fund-raising counsel was called in to conduct a development campaign in the community. The Christian college had stepped into the public arena.

This new identity brought some surprises in exposure. Profit-minded businessmen applied the stand of specific returns on their investment. They asked how many alumni were hired in their firms. They asked about vocational and professional curricula that produced employees for their industry, about financial reports and management procedures, about restrictive social regulations. This new level of accountability produced mixed results. Many Christian colleges became members in state associations seeking operating funds from business and industry. Development campaigns for capital gifts, however, put the Christian college in competition with the gift demands in the entire community. Some highly successful campaigns were conducted, but they could not be repeated every year. It is doubtful that the results of the business era were equal to the magnitude of changes that this period introduced in the identity and the exposure of the Christian college.

The Government Era

Although governmental partnership in Christian higher education goes back to the official charters of the institutions, the state became a major partner through the student and building loan programs of the fifties and the omnibus higher-education legislation of the sixties. These legislative acts were essential to the continued development of Christian colleges as recognized academic institutions. But with the new era came a new identity. Christian colleges were now projected as serving “in the public interest” and as an integral part of the system of American higher education.

This new identity is still being developed. Yet it seems safe to say that the government era will give the Christian college its most severe test in both identity and exposure. It may imply a broader base of student enrollments. It could give the curriculum a public-service thrust. It will certainly require a redefinition of the purpose of the Christian college when “service in the public interest” is added to the traditional statements about “Christian service,” “institutional loyalty,” “academic quality,” and “community participation.”

The government era may also revolutionize the scope of exposure for the Christian college. “Public accountability” is a term that goes hand in hand with “the public interest.” Whether it is an audit on student loan fund collections, a check on compliance with the Civil Rights Act, an accounting of operating efficiency, or a report on quality control, exposure for the Christian college now means a new and untested level of responsibility. The 1970s promise to bring the philosophical, legal, educational, and economic issues of the new partnership into sharp relief.

A Perspective On Changing Partnerships

This survey of changing partnerships in Christian higher education has been oversimplified. Individual institutions will find themselves at various points on the continuum, and most will find their partnerships a mixture of many influences. Yet in one way or another every Christian college can identify with the problems of changing partners. The situation must be viewed realistically if Christian higher education is to prepare a purposeful response to the pressures and the promises of new partnerships in the next decade. The following observations may provide some guidelines for the response.

1. As the Christian college expands its identity, it also expands its exposure. Exposure is a factor that is not always considered in institutional planning. A restatement of purpose, a change in curriculum, or a revision of social standards will not only change the identity; it will also open or close the range of exposure. Long-range planning must weigh the changes in identity with the implications for exposure.

2. Each era in the history of the Christian college has put increased stress upon the identity of the institution. Many Christian colleges are already facing an identity crisis. In the future, the crisis will spread as the governmental era enlarges the questions of “the public interest” and “public accountability.” Alan Pifer of the Carnegie Foundation has predicted that the distinction between private and public institutions will be only an anachronism in the future. Yet those who are committed to Christian higher education believe that the Christian college of the future will stand or fall upon the sharp edges of its individual identity.

3. The catalyst for changing partnerships in Christian higher education is economic, but the impact is institutional. Economic factors have played so large a role in the development of Christian higher education that either death or defection might have been predicted long ago. The sequence of changing partners suggests that inadequate support at one level has forced the Christian college into new partnerships for support. If the current economic trends continue, the sequence suggests a bleak future for the Christian college without direct federal and state assistance. The question is not of categorically accepting or rejecting this aid, but of projecting the identity and evaluating the exposure of the “state-assisted Christian college.”

4. The Christian college will have to accept a balance of partnerships in order to survive. Only in the rarest of cases can the Christian college survive with a single partner in the future. Even denominational colleges that receive substantial support from their constituencies need to expand their resources for the years ahead. Therefore, rather than limiting the partners or moving back to an earlier stage of development, the Christian college must take the opportunity to explore a new level of independence and interdependence through the diversity of resources.

5. To accomplish a balance of partnerships, each public must be educated to understand the contemporary role of the Christian college. The church must be educated to know that the Christian college has more than one partner and that it can accomplish its mission without being a carbon copy of the church. The alumni must understand the generation gap that exists between the nostalgic thirties and the explosive seventies. Accrediting agencies must recognize that quality is determined by ends as well as by means. The business community must learn to support the Christian college for its contribution to the general welfare as well as to a specific motive. Government must recognize that a college can serve the public interest without losing its own distinctiveness.

6. The Christian college must redefine its essential purpose within the context of changing partners. The purpose of the Christian college now includes “Christian service,” “institutional loyalty,” “academic quality,” “community participation,” and “service in the public interest.” In the past, the senior partners in each era have dictated the emphasis. Perhaps the Christian college is just entering an era of balanced partnerships when it can communicate its identity to a larger base and maintain that identity under greater exposure. If so, then it is incumbent upon the leaders of Christian higher education to blend the diverse purposes of changing partnerships into a new identity for the seventies. A review of the history of the Christian college during the first two-thirds of the century suggests that there is no alternative.

Oscar Cullmann, in an article published in 1959, said: “The historiography of the origins of Christianity has long been dominated by a scientific dogma from which we should free ourselves. It is the so-called Tübingen school, inspired by the philosophy of Hegel, which is responsible for it. According to this dogma, with its scheme of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, there existed at the beginning of Christianity the community of Jerusalem, completely dominated by Jewish theology and especially by Jewish hopes; later through contact with the Hellenistic world, a very different kind of Christianity was supposed to have arisen—Gentile Christianity. Early Catholicism would then represent the synthesis” (“A New Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, October, 1959, p. 8).

Professor Cullmann refers to this Hegelian dialectical schematization in an attempt to interpret the Fourth Gospel without the excesses of Hellenization usually attributed to it. My interest, however, is somewhat different. I believe that a great deal of biblical, historical, and theological thought in our time has been excessively influenced by the Hegelian dialectic, and my purpose in this article is to trace the influence of this false dialectic in order to offer some guidance toward theological perspective. This is not just so much academic hullabaloo—it is a matter of fundamental importance for theology in our time. For it concerns the basic presuppositions that influence our understanding of the origin of Christianity, biblical hermeneutics, semantics, the relation of faith and history, and the relation of the Jesus of history and the Christ of dogma. Not least, a right understanding here will serve as a corrective to the “God is dead” theory.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the German idealist philosopher, developed his system of “absolute idealism” out of the critical idealism of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Working from the thesis that “the real is rational and the rational is real,” Hegel developed a “logic” for all human knowledge, not in terms of being but in terms of becoming. Development followed through a dialectical process of a thesis followed by an antithesis, in which the conflicting factors issued in a higher synthesis. He propounded an evolutionary view of the development of the universe that included not only the realm of natural science but also law, history, and religion, with truth contained within the whole.

The influence of Hegel’s thought has been vast. In the materialistic direction, his doctrines have been developed by Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx and contained within the whole Communist movement. Of particular interest to us is Hegel’s influence on the modern study of biblical and ecclesiastical history and systematic theology.

As Cullmann points out, it was at Tübingen that the modern study of biblical and church history began. The so-called Tübingen school was founded by F. C. Baur (1792–1860), a theology professor, who developed his characteristic doctrines under Hegel’s concept of history. In 1835 he applied Hegel’s principles to the New Testament; primitive Christianity was represented as a struggle between divergent views, the Catholic Church as the synthesis. In 1845 Baur roused a storm of controversy by applying his dialectic to Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, whom he represented as being violently opposed to the apostles to the Jews.

The principal endeavor of the Tübingen school, therefore, in the attempt to apply Hegel’s dialectic to the primitive Church, was to divide the Church into the Jewish Christians or Petrinists (thesis) and the Gentile Christians or Paulinists (antithesis), a cleavage that was healed in the second-century Catholicism of the Church (synthesis). Although the school lost its prestige toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Tübingen thesis was at the basis of the theologies of no lesser figures than Ritschl, von Harnack, and Strauss.

D. F. Strauss (1808–74), a pupil of Baur, in his famous Leben Jesu applied the “myth theory” to the life of Jesus. His book denied the historical foundation of all supernatural elements in the Gospels. These he spoke of as creative myths developed between the death of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels, which he dated during the second century. The growth of the primitive Church was to be understood in terms of the Hegelian dialectic. This work profoundly influenced German theology.

One detects something of this Hegelian dialectic also in the higher criticism of Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918). In the Old Testament he saw a gradual development of Hebrew religion from a nomadic stage (thesis) through that of the prophets (antithesis) culminating in the Law (synthesis). Wellhausen later concentrated on the New Testament, where he laid down many lines for the later development of form criticism.

We see the Hegelian influence more specifically in the movement that flourished between 1880 and 1920, the history-of-religions school (Religionsgeschichtlicheschule). This school advocated extensive use of data gathered from a comparative study of religion in interpreting Christianity. Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), who was one of the first to develop the form-critical method in relation to the Old Testament, not only traced historical developments within Israel but also sought parallels in Egyptian and Babylonian religious systems. He claimed that many of the biblical passages were based on the ancient myths of the nations surrounding Israel. Similarly, Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) made an exhaustive study of the Hellenistic world in order to discover the roots of original Christianity.

This “school” represented a new approach in biblical studies. Where formerly it was assumed that Christianity was an isolated phenomenon, without affinities in the world to which it came, now Christianity was related to its environment. Once it was held that everything in the Christian faith was new and distinctive; now parallels of expression and practice were sought and “found” in the surrounding nations. Thus Christianity dissolved into its Hellenistic environment, with all God-created originality gone.

Even Paul, the “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” was made to appear a “Hellenist of the Hellenists” as he penetrated the heathen world. Under Paul’s genius, it was claimed, the simple Gospel of ethical redemption as found in the prophet of Nazareth, the man Jesus (thesis), was transformed into a metaphysical redemption, with Jesus the prophet and teacher transformed and raised to the rank of transcendent divinity (antithesis). Paul was made to appear as the interloper who had grafted into the simple Gospel of Jesus and the primitive Church (thesis) ideas culled from the syncretistic Oriental mystery cults, and in so doing had changed the essential character of the Gospel (antithesis).

Thus it was that Wilhelm Wrede (1859–1906) maintained that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah during his earthly life (thesis). The gospel record was but a reading back of the Church’s later beliefs about his Person into the narrative (antithesis). The Christian religion, he contended, received its essential form largely through Paul’s radical transformation of the teaching of Christ (antithesis). Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) contributed to the discussion by viewing the metaphysics that came into Christian theology, as found in the Christian dogmas and creeds, as an alien intrusion from Greek sources, which he termed “Hellenization” (synthesis).

Within this context Johannes Weiss in 1912 expounded the principles of form criticism, which were later elaborated by Martin Dibelius (1883–1947) and Rudolf Bultmann, his pupil. This method of Formgeschichte was an attempt to trace and assess the historicity of scriptural passages by analysis of their structural forms. Its success depended on the assumption that the same forms can be traced in non-biblical literature. Dibelius in 1939 analyzed the Gospel into various literary forms, such as were used by preachers, teachers, and narrators. Others argued that the forms of the gospel narrative arose from the early Church “community debates,” while the Passion narratives were influenced by the needs and practices of the early Church.

All this prepared the way for the more skeptical analysis of Bultmann, followed by his shattering essay “New Testament and Myth,” which appeared in Germany in 1941. Here Bultmann contended that anything that suggested transcendence in the New Testament was to be understood as the outmoded language of Jewish apocalyptic and Gnostic redemption myths. To understand what the New Testament is trying to say, Bultmann proposed that we demythologize it, that is, interpret the outmoded imagery used there (antithesis) in such a way as to challenge modern man to decision at the depth of his existence.

From this revolutionary proposition it is but one small step to J. A. T. Robinson’s thesis in Honest to God. We would expect the real need of religion in our day to be a firm reiteration, in fresh contemporary language, of the faith once delivered to the saints, but Dr. Robinson is not of this persuasion. For him a more radical recasting is required than a restatement of traditional orthodoxy in modern terms. For him the very fundamental categories of theology, such as God and the supernatural, are suspect and must go into the melting pot. And this is precisely what the “God-is-dead” theologians tell us to do. All theological statements must be treated as Hellenistic metaphysics—the creeds must be dedogmatized. All concepts of transcendence must be viewed as outmoded mythological language—the New Testament must be demythologized. Dogmatic terms like “Christ”, “Son of God,” and even “God” must go by the board, for only along these radical lines will we be able to arrive at the so-called prophet of Nazareth, who challenges his day and ours with the example of love.

When one reflects upon the contemporary image of theology in this kind of melting pot, it becomes evident that the so-called new theology is really nothing more than an extension of the older forms of radical and skeptical dialectic, driven to their logical conclusion. For this reason, a survey of the historical development of the Hegelian dialectic should show up the God-is-dead theology in its true light. Those who are impressed by this theology’s method of reducing all theological categories to the “theology of Jesus” can at least question whether a dedogmatized and demythologized Christ really brings us face to face with the Jesus of Nazareth raised to glory, as the New Testament would have us see him.

In the June 19 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY we published the Frankfurt Declaration, a document we thought then and think now has enormous potential for guiding the Church toward its proper mission as described in the New Testament. Our mailbag has brought many letters of response, most of them expressing enthusiastic assent to the basic thrust of the declaration. In Europe, especially Germany and Switzerland, the declaration has produced some polarization between those committed essentially to the goal of transforming this present age and those committed to the calling out of the eschatological community of the redeemed as we await the return of Christ. The demand of the Frankfurt Declaration, not for dialogue and consultations but for decision, runs counter to the present stance of the ecumenical movement, which has never committed itself to calling men to leave their non-Christian religions and find salvation in Christ. Perhaps the declaration is the harbinger of a new age for missions and a worldwide movement that will bring together those who forged the Wheaton Declaration a few years ago and those who now support the Frankfurt Declaration.

As readers receive this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I am vacationing in Austria and visiting some of the German professors and friends who were instrumental in producing the Frankfurt Declaration.