Page 5676 – Christianity Today (2024)

J. Robertson Mcquilkin

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Bible-believing Christians are convinced that morality and values are rooted in religion. A society may enjoy the fruit of civilized mores for a while after the root of religious commitment is cut, but in time the fruit will wither away.

The enemy that insidiously gnaws at the religious root is secularization. To gain objectivity in defining this problem, let me go outside the realm of evangelical faith to consult Bernard Eugene Meland, distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. In The Realities of Faith: The Revolution in Cultural Forms (Oxford, 1962), Meland observes:

“A full account of the evolving cultural experience of the west would reveal the Bible to be the primary document of western culture … The Bible, and its tradition, has a priority in our cultural experience which no other document shares; it cannot be dissolved or denied without serious loss and possible radical dissolution of the controlling sensibilities of our common life” (p. 45).

Later in the book he says this about secularization:

“In defining secularization as a pathology in the social process affecting taste and judgment, following from a truncation of human experience in which ideal and spiritual values are disregarded or denied to man, one is not so apt to interpret its meaning within a single point of view or philosophy. Instead one will see that it is a condition and response within human existence which disregards all intrinsic meaning as this applies to man, and thus deprives him of dignity and of a personal destiny. So defined, the term secularization can have meaning to Christian and non-Christian alike as a threat to man’s spiritual life” (p. 63).

Has this pathology taken control of the public school? Michael B. McMahon, writing in Intellect, says: “So great has been the reliance on objectivity and scientism in modern education that not only learning experiences, but the whole enterprise of schooling have been cast in a positivistic mold” (“Religion, Scientific Naturalism, and the Myth of Neutrality,” Intellect, April, 1974, p. 431). “Questions of a spiritual or religious nature are a vital part of every student’s experience,” McMahon says, but modern education has ignored this dimension by “uncritical and slavish allegiance … to the canons of scientific analysis.” It is dedicated, he says, “to the postulates that man is self-sufficient, that human society is the arbiter of its own morality, and that knowledge is exclusively the product of scientific inquiry.”

Up to this point in our discussion of religion, morality, and the public schools, most evangelicals would be in agreement: moral values are enduring only when rooted in religious commitment, and the secularization of the public schools is a basic problem. But when we move into the area of solutions, the consensus dissolves.

True, all evangelicals would agree that basic responsibility lies with the home and church. The home and church should be able to produce children who are resistant, if not immune, to viral secularism. Some evangelicals believe that these institutions are all that is necessary for the moral and religious training of children and that banning religion from the public schools is a good thing.

Many others, however, cannot acquiesce in the secularization of education. Education that leaves God out is not true education, they feel, for it deals with only part of reality. And worse, to deal with the material dimension alone is to distort even the truth about that. These evangelicals are responsible for the phenomenal growth of private Christian schools in the last decade. Schools associated with various national Christian-school organizations increased from 652 in 1971 to 2,428 in 1975; they are estimated to number 4,000 today. And many more are unaffiliated and are identified only with local churches. The National Observer (January 15, 1977) reported that this movement is considered by some “the most significant trend in American education.” The Observer estimated that two new private Christian schools open in the nation every day.

These educators do not feel they are doing an un-American thing. They point out that education in America began with evangelicals. They have watched the historical process by which evangelical faith has been replaced by secular humanist faith and reluctantly concluded that John Stuart Mills’s judgment expressed more than a century ago is true: state-sponsored education “is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarchy, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind.”

Other evangelical Christians are unwilling to give up so easily on the public schools. A more moderate approach was reflected in an editorial in the National Courier:

“The high courts did not ban prayers in the schools; it only put a ban on those prayers dictated, written or prescribed by State authorities. And contrary to the general notion, the court did not prohibit the study of religion and the Bible in the public schools; it simply ruled against using these studies in publicly financed schools to propagate the doctrinal ideas of any single religious faith.… Prayer in the schools is acceptable by the Supreme Court, as long as the prayers are voluntary.… What this country needs at this point then is a loud and persistent public demand that the Bible be brought back into the schools and that religion be taught within the guidelines set by the court” (February 4, 1977, p. 5).

Others in this camp are not so irenic. They would like to take the initiative and capture public schools for Christ. “Impeach Warren”—the chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the school prayer ruling—used to be their rallying cry. Today they provide muscle behind the promotion of the so-called prayer amendment to the Constitution. In a Christian society, the schools ought to be Christian, they hold. The separation of church and state was never meant to mean total banishment of God from government or governmental functions.

These are the three main evangelical views of what should be done about religion and morality in the public schools. Now we are hearing an increasingly strong fourth voice that unifies those from all three camps: the religion of secularism must be disestablished. Judeo-Christian religion and, along with it, religious values and Christian morality have been barred from many public schools, while at the same time the frankly secularistic position has been established. And yet secularism is religious in nature. Man-centered and limited to the realm of the material, it has all the basic elements of religion: absolutes based on faith, values based on these absolutes, ultimate allegiance, evangelistic fervor, and an emerging “priesthood.”

There is growing sentiment and activity among evangelicals to disestablish humanistic secularism in the public schools. This goal is being pursued by congressmen at the legislative level and by parents’ action groups at the local level, as well as in the evangelical press and pulpit. For example, in May, 1976, an anti-secular-humanism amendment was passed by the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 222 to 174. No similar amendment was offered in the Senate, and so the proposal died. But the action, initiated by an evangelical congressman, shows the strength of the opposition to secular humanism. The establishment of humanistic secularism as the only legitimate faith is being identified by increasing numbers of Christian and non-Christian thinkers as the great hypocrisy of the twentieth century.

Evangelicals think the Constitution is on their side. And some are convinced that the Supreme Court decisions on the issue are on their side, too. Gerald J. Stiles made this point to the Virginia board of education:

“Legally, the situation is in conflict with the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 and 1963. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the court stated that free public school education can no longer be considered a ‘privilege’; that it is a basic ‘right’ and must be made available without discrimination due to (among others) ‘creed’ (religious belief). In Abington–Schempp (1963), Justice Clark giving the majority opinion stated that the ‘state may not establish a “religion of secularism” or prefer those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.’ Justice Goldberg, in a concurring opinion, went further and said that the government cannot work ‘deterrence to any religious belief.’ He further warned: ‘Untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it’” (“Presentation to the State Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” January 24, 1975, pp. 3, 4).

Just as the more universal and enduring faiths have been disestablished, so should secular faith. Discrimination should not be tolerated. I suggest that we seek for a true pluralism in our educational system, at least commensurate with the pluralism of our society, using two simultaneous approaches:

1. If the public-school system cannot be truly pluralistic, public-school educators should join with legislators to ensure a continuing private-school alternative for the citizens. I think that the Christian school movement should not be harassed, denigrated, or oppressed in any way, directly or indirectly. For the true liberal, the private school and particularly the Christian school may emerge as the only hope that a free pluralistic society will remain free and pluralistic. Without the Christian alternative in education, our society may well become a secular monolith in which the person of religious faith is not considered a first-class citizen.

The Supreme Court, in a landmark decision in 1925 (Pierce v. the Society of Sisters), declared it was beyond the power of the state to compel all children to attend public schools. According to that decision, “the child is not the mere creature of the state.” The court held that a 1922 Oregon statute requiring that each child of school age attend a public school “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

In a thorough analysis of the history and implications of the Pierce decision, Stephen Arons seeks to establish not only the right of private schools to exist but also the responsibility of the government to provide this alternative, lest the poor be discriminated against. I will quote at some length from this important study, published in the Harvard Educational Review (Vol. 46, No. 1 [February, 1976], p. 76 ff.):

“Individual parents have rarely been able to feel that their particular values have prevailed in the schooling of their children. In almost all the struggles over the content, structure, and methods of public schools, the under lying agreement among the combatants has been that majoritarian political control of the school system is appropriate.… This commitment to majoritarian control over what basic values are institutionalized by public schools is made tolerable to some parents because Pierce guarantees their right to choose a non-public school that better reflects their values.… The First Amendment encompasses a right of individual consciousness to be free of government coercion. The specific application to schooling of this right would describe a right of educational choice by parents wherever values or beliefs were at stake in schooling.

“Reading Pierce as a First Amendment case and taking account of the nature of schooling suggests that Pierce principles reached the basic value choices on which school policy and practice are based. The result of such a reading is that it is the family and not the political majority which the constitution empowers to make such schooling decisions. A First Amendment reading of Pierce suggests, therefore, that the present state system of compulsory attendance and financing of public schools does not adequately satisfy the principle of government neutrality toward family choice in education.…

“Because value inculcation cannot be eliminated from schooling, the notion of value-neutral education implicit in the legal distinction between religion and secular education is untenable.

“Up to this point, the effect of the court schooling cases has been to uphold and entrench the legal fiction that schooling can be value neutral.…

“Parents, social commentators, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others who have done research on schooling have all understood its value-laden nature. Seemingly, only the law continues to avoid incorporating this understanding into its deliberations. When the court’s well-developed doctrine of government neutrality in First Amendment issues concerning manipulation of beliefs is combined with the social scientists’ and parents’ understanding of schooling as a value-inculcating process, some extensive restructuring of compulsory education may be constitutionally required and publicly acceptable” (pp.97, 100).

Evangelical schools are not pressing for the government funding Professor Arons feels is constitutionally demanded. But they do ask for freedom in the fullest sense.

2. Because of the double cost to parents who send children to a private school—they must continue to pay taxes to support the public school—and because the issues are not clearly perceived, most children of evangelicals will continue to attend public schools. So I offer an additional proposal for this major segment of our society, people of Christian faith whose children are educated in a system that officially treats God as irrelevant to life. I suggest that the public school system itself be thoroughly pluralized. There are two ways of doing it.

a. Recognizing that every teacher has a value system and is communicating it, we should reopen the doors psychologically (if legal doors are in truth open) for the Christian teacher to share his or her Christian values freely. Someone objects: what if children are indoctrinated in religious convictions and morality with which the parents do not agree? That is my point; this is precisely what is happening.

Recently I was told by a parent of an experience his eleven-year-old son had at a school in Florida. A small group of students was to devise solutions to real-life problems, such as, “What if you were eighteen years old and found yourself pregnant?” The eleven-year-olds who were to solve these problems were given no guidance except one rule: “You may not say that any problem or solution is right or wrong.” This is moral and religious teaching of the most profound sort, and the approach is typical of what is taking place in classrooms throughout the United States. Such “values clarification” courses typically establish moral relativism as an absolute norm; the Christian alternative is simply not allowed.

Several years ago my daughter, Jan, was studying sociology in a high school in Columbia, South Carolina. The teacher often spoke against marriage and said that his most valued possession was his divorce certificate. Once when Jan tried to defend marriage, a discussion of human nature ensued in which she said, “I am a product of my heredity, my environment, and the choices I have made.” The teacher responded, “Heredity, yes. Environment, yes. But no choices.” This is very potent moral education. It is not only anti-Christian but also desperately anti-human, in that it locks a person into a deterministic box.

Moral neutrality is impossible. Moral values are being taught in the public schools. I am simply appealing for equal time. Free the Christian teacher to teach his religious and moral convictions as the secular humanist is free to teach his. This freedom must be established by law. If, as many authorities claim, the Supreme Court has already affirmed this freedom, means must be devised to restrain the omnipresent and omnipotent Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Bureaucrats, from Washington to local school boards, must learn law or be controlled in their application of it.

b. Another alternative would be to renew the old released-time concept but with a crucial change: it would be under the auspices of the school itself. Any group of parents would be authorized to provide a teacher for an elective course in religion and morals. This approach recognizes that value-neutral instruction is a fiction and that true freedom in the area of religion and morals exists only if parents and students have a choice of instructor.

The current discrimination against traditional values and morals is a trend that threatens the fabric of our society. It establishes the faith of secularism, which can offer no sure word about morals or values. I am urging, not the Christianization of all education, but rather concerted effort to provide true freedom. Legislators, the courts, and government agencies must work to provide freedom for private Christian schools by refraining from regulatory or economic harassment. Educators must give administrative encouragement rather than subtle opposition or mere tolerance to the private-school alternative to cultic secularization.

But more important to the future of our republic, I urge that we work toward providing true freedom for alternatives within the public-education system through the pursuit of true pluralism. There are two ways to do this: make Christian teachers as free legally and psychologically as atheists are to teach their faith and morality, and offer elective courses in religion and morality taught by adherents of the faith who are chosen by parents.

Western society—and American society in particular—is reaping the first fruits of materialistic thinking. The full harvest may be the dissolution of civilization as we know it. People of integrity and courage must unite to unmask the hypocrisy of so-called moral neutrality and to disestablish secularism as the religion of the state.

Expedition

and this is how it was:

we were climbing along a

high sheltered ledge

when we heard his

thin and distant screams

from below pinioning rifts of debris

deserves it, said some of us;

he caused the avalanche himself

didn’t he? a stupid novice, surely

no rescue equipment, said some of us

come on, come on; no time to fritter

if we’re going to reach the Peaks

but you and you could not go on (nor I)

I reached; you took ahold of my two hands

and spoke invoking words

that turned my bones and muscles

into long and looping ladders

of nylon ropes

you flung me down

the shattered granite cliff

and he climbed up, climbed up

the ropes made for those moments

out of mortal me; now, now

he climbs beside us toward the upper Peaks

and

this is how

it was

ELYA MCALLASTER

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

- More fromJ. Robertson Mcquilkin

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The Ten Biggest Church Stories of ’77

This is the time when pundits put together articles on the biggest stories of the previous year. Here are my choices.

The senior pastor of a San Jose church met with the four members of his staff for breakfast each Tuesday morning last year. He was supportive toward their ministries and personal growth. He also insisted on their taking one day off each week, and set the example.

A teacher of adults in a Philadelphia church responded to a question by saying, “I don’t know.”

The woman who teaches nursery class in a Columbia church loves the children, and they love her. “When can we go back to Sunday school?” is their question on Sunday afternoon.

A Tulsa pastor’s twelve-year-old son misbehaved at the Sunday school picnic, and everybody said, “Boys will be boys.”

Three laymen in an Ann Arbor church contributed fifty dollars each to their minister for book purchases and periodical subscriptions. And they didn’t want to know his selections.

The pastor of a large Midwest church gave up his special parking space so that an elderly woman who was crippled could use it.

“They still talk about George, a year after his funeral,” said a woman in St. Paul.

Single young adults in a Rochester church got together several Saturdays last fall to take down screens and put up storm windows for old and handicapped people.

A black church and a white church in Chicago exchanged pastors and choirs several times during the year.

The daughter of an elder in a Phoenix church became pregnant out of wedlock, and other parents said, “That could have been our girl,” prayed for her, and collected money for the unexpected expenses.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Money Well Spent

M. N. Beck’s article, “The Myth of the Self-sufficient Man” (Sept. 23) has certainly made the rounds in our family. Today I received this letter: “Mom, I’m so glad you gave me a subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. This week I read an article in my Psychology magazine which really disturbed me. According to the article, I was once again a victim, and the only hope for me or anyone was years of psychoanalysis, etc. The past was irreversible. Today, CT came in the mail and when I read the article entitled “The Myth of the Self-sufficient Man” my confusion resolved and I felt really great. It is so important to have a Christian viewpoint available in the secular world. Many times I know I don’t ‘buy’ an idea but I’m not sure of my intellectual reasons, only my emotional ones. I subscribe to three professional journals, the Psychology magazine and CT. I depend upon CHRISTIANITY TODAY to help me sort out and define the Christian view.” Now, wouldn’t any parent feel that their fifteen dollars was well spent?

VIOLA J. KLAFFKE

Sacramento, Calif.

Of Things To Come

Allow me to express my considerable pleasure upon reading “The Price of Praise” and “Christmas Is Coming” (Nov. 18). I was also impressed with “Of Heroes and Devils: The Supernatural on Film” (Refiner’s Fire). If these articles are harbingers of things to come under CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s new editor, count me as a continuing subscriber.

ARNE K. MARKLAND

Lutheran Campus Ministry

Salt Lake City, Utah

I am very grateful to Virginia Stem Owens for the delicate insights she offered in the article, “The Price of Praise,” in which she gave voice to the silent call which God, through the created universe, makes upon us all. In our increasingly man-made and man-centered world, it is a message of truly great importance which urges men to observe, explore, and ponder the world of nature—this: the Lord’s handiwork. The created world, in its forms, patterns, light, and purposes, never ceases to be that point of contact through which God is known, in a very real and present way.

JOHN F. WHALLEY

Bridgewater, Mass.

Paul Leggett’s article “Of Heroes and Devils: The Supernatural on Film” emphasized that films with supernatural themes contain within themselves an essential Christian view of good and evil. That may indeed be true. However, I must argue that such films also portray a brand of Christianity contrary to that set forth by the Word of God. Leggett suggests that the current Gothic films would serve as a warning for Christians to heed their messages. I find that difficult to relate to Scripture. If we believe the Bible to be our only rule of faith and practice, we must therefore turn to its pages rather than secular substitutes.… As I write this letter, I can think how appropriately the Dracula saga illustrates the fall of Satan and the ultimate sovereignty of God. Perhaps I can support Leggett to that point. Yet I must remind advocates of this view that Dracula and its sequels fall short in portraying a complete picture of the Cross … The Gothic films are exciting as mere entertainment, fulfilling the intents of the writers. Yet I fail to see why evangelicals should find interest in exploring the Christian concepts of such films when the intentions of the writers are purely secular. Perhaps we can find an evangelical answer to the Gothic film. Why can’t Christian producers make film out of the writings of C. S. Lewis or John Bunyan?

DENNIS K. CHAN

Portland, Oreg.

Rarely Seen Root

The NCC: Actions and Words

There was something for nearly everyone at the semi-annual meeting of the governing board of the National Council of Churches last month. In session in a New York hotel, the board members passed a variety of resolutions covering such diverse subjects as nuclear weapons, the Panama Canal treaties, the drive to unionize its own employees, and the sixtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

A highlight of the meeting was a dinner observing the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Some 30 million copies of the RSV have been sold since the NCC authorized a publisher to begin production in 1952. Several companies now are permitted to print the NCC-copyrighted Bible, and they are planning to put out a new edition (eliminating some “sexist language) when an NCC committee finishes a new text within the coming decade.

To support NCC operations in the year ahead the board approved a budget similar to the one under which it is operating this year. The 1978 spending total was projected at $24,154,990. Although the amount included is up for some projects and down for others, the overall total for the NCC program is $476,260 less than for 1977.

One new group, the National Council of Community Churches, was admitted as a constituent communion. The final vote of the board in plenary session was unanimous, but a denominational vote on the admission revealed twenty of the member denominations voting for admission and two against. The new member, in existence since 1948, is headquartered in Worthington, Ohio. Its 185 congregations—half of them black—have 125,000 members. In style and belief, they are close to the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Declared “eligible for membership” (an initial step in the admission process) was the North American diocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The closest vote of the meeting was on a procedural motion made during consideration of a resolution about unionization of council employees below executive status. By a vote of 53 to 52 the board agreed to postpone taking a stand on the delicate issue. Returning after a recess, however, the body decided to reconsider the matter. The resolution, quoting the prophet Micah and affirming the right of staff members “to exercise any of the options on the ballot” (including a choice to have no union), then passed easily. The election was scheduled two weeks after the board meeting.

The board took a more positive position toward union causes in another resolution. The boycott of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union against the J. P. Stevens Company won board approval after an optional late-night hearing and brief debate on the floor. The resolution said Stevens workers trying to organize had suffered “harassment, intimidation, and discrimination” and that boycott of all Stevens products (bed and table linens, carpets, draperies, and hosiery) was the only effective way to get the company to “behave legally and morally within any reasonable length of time.” The document also called for passage of additional national legislation to “expedite the administration and procedures of the National Labor Relations Act and greatly strengthen the remedial provisions of the act.”

On another labor front, the NCC policy makers heard a careful report about the much-publicized trip of farm worker organizer Cesar Chavez to the Philippines. Chavez, who enlisted NCC support of his grape and lettuce boycotts in earlier organizing efforts, was widely quoted as having endorsed the government of Ferdinand Marcos, now a special target of exile groups and American “liberals.” General Secretary Claire Randall reported to the board that she had talked on the telephone with the union leader, and he had denied backing Marcos’s martial law decrees. No action was taken on the question, and the discussion was broken off after the council’s chief executive suggested that further talk was inappropriate in Chavez’s absence.

In another issue related to the council’s Hispanic constituency, a resolution was approved asking President Carter to release from prison the four remaining Puerto Rican Nationalists convicted of attacking federal officials more than twenty years ago.

A special commission appointed after the last board meeting reported that it had visited in prison the two women staff members of the Episcopal Church’s Hispanic office who refused to give certain information to a federal grand jury (see March 18 issue, page 55). The commission said it was prepared to intervene if the women are not released soon.

In a resolution on the Panama Canal, the NCC board urged member denominations to promote study of the treaties and to push for Senate ratification. There was little debate on the issue, and only one negative vote was noted.

The policy makers also quickly passed a resolution calling for the United States to normalize diplomatic relations with Viet Nam and to end the embargo against shipments there.

Also approved with minimal discussion was a resolution which had been introduced from the floor as “new business” that noted the sixtieth anniversary of the Russian revolution. It noted that last month’s Soviet amnesty declaration in observance of the sixtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution did not include “prisoners of conscience,” and it called for release of imprisoned believers and dissenters.

Other resolutions called for a halt in production of nuclear weapons, restoration of government funding for abortions (on grounds that the cutoff discriminates against the poor), support of the National Women’s Conference in Houston, congressional caution in amending tax laws, and participation in the 1979 International Year of the Child.

In a final action, after suspending the rules that prohibit late introduction of new business, the board passed an appeal to President Carter to speak out for release of the “Wilmington Ten” prisoners in North Carolina (see June 17 issue, page 38).

In the closing moments of the meeting Ms. Randall cautioned board members to be careful about all the communications they want to send to the White House. She said the public liaison chief there, Margaret Costanza, had warned her that the President did not spend much time listening to visiting delegations. It may not even be wise to request such audiences, the general secretary suggested.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Giving And Getting Taken

December is a busy month for the postal people, and it’s not just because of all the Christmas cards and packages. This is the peak month for fund appeals from secular and religious organizations alike.

The envelopes that land in the mailbox from these groups may or may not contain sheets of promotional stamps, medals, other trinkets, or even “healing cloths,” and sometimes prize offers, but they all contain something in common: a carefully worded appeal indicating with some degree of urgency or importance that a contribution is especially needed at this time of the year. The letters may or may not be telling the truth.

Recent revelations about the fund-raising practices of some organizations have raised questions of credibility in the minds of many people. Unfortunately, the backlash may be hurting genuinely needy organizations with worthwhile projects.

Many of the religious organizations seeking contributions through mass mailings are Roman Catholic ones, and some of the most serious credibility cases involve Catholic groups. At their semi-annual meeting last month, the nation’s Catholic bishops adopted a strongly worded set of fund-raising guidelines. The guidelines were drawn up over a period of several weeks by a seven-member committee representing the bishops and the men’s and women’s religious orders in the church. Some of the provisions:

• Books must be audited annually by certified accountants.

• Disclosure statements must be made available to leaders and donors, showing the amount collected, the cost of the fund-raising effort, and the amount and use of the funds disbursed. The availability of these reports must be widely publicized.

• A fund-raising effort must have the approval of the local bishop or supervisory official of the religious order. Bishops and heads of religious orders are responsible for seeing that the guidelines are carried out within their jurisdictions, “even to the point, when necessary, of terminating a fund-raising program.”

• Appeals must be “straightforward and honest, respectful, and based on solid theological principles.” No “material objects which are inconsistent with the apostolic purposes of the appeal” can be sent with the appeal.

• Funds “beyond operating expenses should not be accumulated,” fund-raising or investment authority should not be vested in any single person, and “ethical business relationships” must be maintained between the fund-raisers and suppliers of goods and services.

• Commercial fund-raisers cannot be employed on a percentage (commission) basis.

Two well-known cases that helped to spur development of the guidelines involve the internationally famous Boys Town center near Omaha and the Pallottine Fathers in Maryland. A 1972 investigation showed that Boys Town was increasing its net worth by more than $16 million annually, an amount three to four times what it spent on child care—without informing donors, who kept receiving heart-tugging appeals.

A grand jury was still investigating the Pallottines last month. The probe, nearly a year old, was prompted by the disclosure in 1975 that priest Guido John Carcich—the director of the group’s huge mail-order fund-raising efforts—was pouring millions of dollars into real estate ventures and had lent $54,000 to then Maryland governor Marvin Mandel to help finance Mandel’s divorce. Of the $20.4 million collected in the eighteen-month period ending December 31, 1975, only 2.5 cents of every dollar went to missionary work, according to an audit. Carcich was banned from Maryland by Archbishop William D. Borders, who laid down strict guidelines for future operations by the Pallottines.

As a result of the Pallottine troubles, Maryland passed a law forbidding charitable organizations to spend more than 25 per cent on certain fund-raising costs except with the permission of the secretary of state in hardship cases.

A report filed with the state last month shows that the order spent $5.6 million on printing, postage, salaries, and related expenses to raise $7.6 million. It was able to send about $3 million to its foreign and domestic missions. This amount included $1 million or so from the forced sale of some of its investments in Florida real estate and other speculative ventures.

Because the Maryland law permits exemption of the actual costs of goods and postage from fund-raising costs—an exclusion that amounted to $4.4 million of the $5.6 million the Pallottines spent in 1976—the order was able to report that its fund-raising costs fell within the 25 per cent limit. An official of the order reported that $2.6 million went into mission work during the first six months of this year. (Under an agreement with the state, the order is reducing its mail solicitations, which at one time exceeded 100 million pieces annually at a cost of $10 million. Until the crackdown, the solicitations used a sweepstakes approach, offering to lucky donors cars, stereos, pool tables, and the like. Borders later condemned the operation as “immoral.”)

Another case that has received relatively little publicity involves Catholic cleric Walter J. Leach, 71, a retired parish priest, and Alfred W. Hall, Jr., a recently suspended bank treasurer. Both live in the Boston area. Last month a federal grand jury began looking into the case.

It seems that Leach had set up a fund more than four years ago known as Swedish Missions. His stated purpose was to raise money to assist the Stockholm diocese, which has about 40,000 Catholics. According to court records, he collected about $1.1 million, much of it from special parish collections in the Boston area.

An official of the Stockholm diocese, however, told the Boston Globe that the mission fund was “unknown here” and that no money had been received from it. He added that Leach had not yet replied to questions about the mission.

Hall is accused of embezzling at least $578,921 from the mission fund, and the U.S. Attorney’s office says that more than $900,000 has disappeared from the account.

Hall claims that the Hall family befriended Leach and that Leach promised to leave him a large portion of the money left in the account at the time of his death. Hall also charges that Leach permitted him use of the money from the account for his own and Leach’s benefit and that the priest authorized Hall to sign Leach’s name to checks drawn on the account.

According to Hall, Leach wrote a check for $400,000 to the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, a Milwaukee order, for use to support St. Joseph’s Hospital in Barbados, Leach’s favorite vacation retreat. Hall said he warned Leach that the account had less than $400,000 in it but that Leach went ahead and sent the check anyway, asking the sisters to send him a check for $300,000 in return, a puzzling arrangement resulting in a net donation of $100,000. The order’s administrator held up the $300,000 check until Leach’s check cleared the bank. After it bounced, the matter came to other officials at the bank where Hall worked, and they called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI lodged embezzlement charges against Hall, but the case is far from settled. It is bound to give rise to other questions surrounding the financial practices of church organizations.

Churches and church-related agencies (“integrated auxiliaries”) are exempt from filing disclosure-type informational statements with the Internal Revenue Service. If there are no complaints about a church organization, it will probably escape IRS scrutiny. In fact, it is even possible for the IRS to be unaware of the existence of some integrated-auxiliary organizations. Without internal integrity and a system of checks and balances (which the bishops’ guidelines may or may not guarantee), the chances of something going wrong are great.

The Boys Town and Pallottine irregularities were uncovered by journalists. Correspondent Rick Casey of the National Catholic Reporter recalls a national convention of Catholic fund-raisers in New York in 1974. One of the speakers was a journalist who criticized the traditional secrecy in church fund-raising. One priest took issue with him and, according to Casey, shouted: “Our books are completely in line. We refuse to disclose them because we believe in the First Amendment—just like the press refuses to disclose its sources.”

The priest was Guido Carcich of the Pallottines.

‘Uncle Cam’ Visits the U.S.S.R.

W. Cameron “Uncle Cam” Townsend, the 81-year-old founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, is still personally involved in the task of getting the Gospel translated into every tongue on earth. His travels have taken him to unusual and remote places. Through gumption, deft application of personable diplomacy, and sometimes through sheer persistence, he has opened doors that remain closed to others.

He and his wife Elaine, who speaks Russian as well as several other languages, traveled to the Soviet Union in October to follow up contacts with linguists in that country’s Academy of Science. His mission: to obtain official assistance in translating Scripture in several minority languages, including the Gorny Altai tongue of Siberia. (There are 168 language groups in the Soviet Union, says Townsend.) The couple met with academy officials in Moscow and in the capital cities of three Soviet republics: in Yerevan, Armenia; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Tbilisi, Georgia. These republics are in the Caucasus Mountains region between the Black and Caspian seas.

By the time the conversations ended, academy officials had agreed to recruit linguists to produce a copy of First John in the languages Townsend had specified. These are languages in which Scripture never has been translated before, he says. He hopes to begin receiving copies within the next few months.

During their trip, the Townsends visited Baptist churches in Leningrad, Moscow, and the three republic capitals. In each place, reported Townsend, they found thriving congregations, freedom of worship, and pastors and laymen alike proclaiming the Word of God in packed auditoriums. In Tbilisi, he said, the preaching was done in the Russian, Georgian, and Armenian tongues. One pastor told Townsend that he leads a youth group of 400.

The Townsends read and discussed the Bible with linguists and scientists over meals in restaurants and in homes. To some the couple gave Scripture portions as gifts. In expressing his gratitude, a university physics professor remarked that all of his life he had wanted to know something about God, said Townsend.

After departing New York aboard the Soviet vessel Lermontov, Townsend celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of his arrival in Guatemala as a missionary with the Central American Mission—the beginning of his missionary career. On the Sundays during the two-week voyage to Leningrad, the captain gave the Townsends use of the ship’s theater for worship services.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Lausanne Plans

About 40 evangelical leaders from around the world will meet in Bermuda next month for a major international consultation on cultural implications of the Gospel. Participants will analyze culture and its relationship to revelation, hermeneutics, evangelism, conversion, churches, and ethics. Chairman John Stott, a well-known Anglican, says that there is a need to understand the influence of culture on the Christian’s communication of the Gospel message and on the hearer’s perception of that message. The meeting is being sponsored by the Lausanne Continuation Committee.

The LCC is also working on plans for a ten-day consultation on world evangelization to be held in 1980 in a Third World city. Executive David Howard of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship will direct the consultation. It will be limited to 450 leaders, according to present plans. These persons, representing many countries, will assess progress since the 1974 Lausanne congress and will set post-1980 strategy for world evangelization.

Wesleyan Issues

Troublesome theological issues bubbled in the background as a record 200-plus scholars, pastors, and students gathered at Huntington College, a United Brethren in Christ school in Huntington, Indiana, for the thirteenth annual meeting of the 1,000-member Wesleyan Theological Society. The WTS is a “commission” of the Christian Holiness Association (CHA) drawing from perhaps a hundred colleges and half a dozen seminaries spawned in the wake of the nineteenth-century “holiness revival.” The issues came under scrutiny during discussions of the historical development of Wesleyan-Holiness theology and as participants sought to chart a theological course between Reformed post-fundamentalist evangelicalism on one side and Pentecostalism on the other.

The current debate over the Bible in evangelical circles helped to spark keen interest in Nazarene Paul Bassett’s case study of how “fundamentalist” doctrines of Scripture had threatened between the World Wars to overwhelm in his denomination the “more Wesleyan” and “more orthodox” view of Nazarene theologian H. Orton Wiley. Most, though not all, seemed to share the implicit agenda of Bassett’s paper—to reassert a view mediating between extreme critical views and the over-reaction of anti-critical fundamentalism. One participant from the floor noted striking parallels between Wiley’s earlier and Fuller Seminary’s modern critique of the inerrancy doctrine of B. B. Warfield.

Church bodies and institutions represented in the WTS—largely “holiness” and “conservative Methodist” ones—have in recent years had their own version of the evangelical “battle for the Bible,” though much more muted. Originally influenced by the inerrancy-oriented doctrinal statement of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Evangelical Theological Society, both the WTS and the parent CHA in recent years have softened their statements on Scripture. Indeed, the Church of the Nazarene declined to join the CHA until such a softer position was adopted. The WTS’s recent growth may be attributed in part to the ensuing influx of younger scholars and those from churches not affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals. But the recent collapse of merger talks between the Wesleyan and Free Methodist churches, in part over this issue, indicates continuing unresolved tension over this issue.

Historical and contemporary relations with Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement—extremely strained at both points—provoked two featured papers that dealt with the historical and theological relationships between Wesleyan-Holiness thought and Pentecostalism. The issue rests partially on John Wesley’s reluctance to use Pentecostal vocabulary in teachings about sanctification—the prime Wesleyan-Holiness doctrine. Nazarene historian Timothy Smith of Johns Hopkins University implicitly defended the development in a probing study of the theology of nineteenth-century evangelist Charles G. Finney and its social outworking in the anti-slavery, feminist, and temperance movements. Wesleyan Donald Dayton of North Park Seminary traced the rise of the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to indicate among other things both the continuities and discontinuities between Wesleyan and Pentecostal thought. The sharp interest in the subject all but ensures that more time will be devoted to it at next year’s meeting.

Wesleyan Melvin Dieter of Asbury Seminary took over as the new president of the WTS, and Nazarene John Knight was selected to succeed him at next year’s meeting.

Uganda: More Bloodshed

President Idi Amin’s security forces went on another rampage against Christians in Uganda last month, according to press reports. Church and diplomatic sources told reporters that hundreds of Roman Catholic and Anglican church officials, businessmen, and farmers were arrested in the Masaka area and that about two dozen were killed. A Canadian Catholic missionary spent two days in jail without food and then was deported.

The sources said the latest purge—at least the third this year following two previous assassination attempts against Amin—was sparked by the killing of a prominent Muslim businessman in Masaka in October. The businessman reputedly was connected with Amin’s secret police unit that has been responsible for the recent mass killings. Masaka, about eighty miles south of Kampala, is a major Christian center for the once dominant Baganda tribe.

Religion in Transit

President Jimmy Carter has designated December 15 as a National Day of Prayer. The Senate earlier passed a resolution suggesting the date. The First Continental Congress proclaimed the third Thursday of December as a day of prayer for the Continental Army and thanksgiving for its victory at Saratoga in 1777.

Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where tourists come to see the church catacombs and the grave of Edgar Allen Poe, voted to close this month because its dwindling congregation of a dozen members is no longer able to finance maintenance. Other notables of history are also buried in the church’s small cemetary.

Bishop Theodosius of Pittsburgh and Virginia, 44, was chosen metropolitan (primate) of the Orthodox Church in America at the OCA’s convention in Montreal. The youngest and the first native-born American to attain the position, he was named by the church’s twelve bishops despite the fact that he came in second (to Bishop Dmitri of Flartford) in voting by clergy and lay delegates. The bishops are not bound by the election results, and they did not explain their action. Theodosius succeeds 85-year-old Metropolitan ireney.

Personalia

A West German Lutheran minister, Arnold Bittlinger, was appointed staff consultant on charismatic renewal for the World Council of Churches. He will serve the WCC part-time while serving as a parish pastor in Switzerland. Bittlinger directs an evangelical academy in Bavaria and has written extensively on the charismatic movement.

Singer Anita Bryant, an evangelical activist who has campaigned against some hom*osexual causes, can breathe easier: her contract to promote Florida orange juice was extended through 1979 at $100,000 a year. The commission also adopted a resolution supporting the right of Miss Bryant to give her views on any subject without fear of reprisal. hom*osexual groups have launched boycotts of Florida orange juice in retaliation against her.

Pastor Nathaniel A. Urshan of Calvary Tabernacle in Indianapolis was elected general superintendent of the non-trinitarian United Pentecostal Church International. He succeeds Stanley W. Chambers. The UPCI has nearly 400,000 members in 2,900 churches in the United States and 250,000 adherents in fifty-three other countries.

World Scene

As expected, Israel released—and deported—Melkite Catholic archbishop Ilarion Capucci from a prison after he served three years of a twelve-year term for smuggling arms and explosives to Palestinian guerrillas. His release had been requested personally by Pope Paul VI. After arriving in Rome, Capucci reportedly received a transfer from his Jerusalem see to an administrative post in Brazil, where some 200,000 Eastern-rite Catholics—mostly from the Middle East—have settled.

Bishop Chrysostomos of Paphos, 50, has succeeded the late Archbishop Makarios as spiritual overseer of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

Deaths

OSCAR C. CARR, JR., 54, president of the National Council on Philanthropy, former executive staff member of the Episcopal Church, and one of the earliest and most prominent southern Episcopalians to promote the civil-rights cause in the church; in New York City, of cancer.

WILLIAM R. HINTZE, 52, president of Grand Canyon College, a Southern Baptist school in Phoenix, and former missionary to Ecuador; during a faculty-student basketball game on campus, of an apparent heart attack.

DOROTHY GRUNBECK JOHNSTON, 62, noted author of Christian children’s books; in Arlington, Washington, of cancer.

A. C. BHAKTIVEDANTA PRABHUPADA, 82, one-time Calcutta chemist and Hindu teacher who renounced his wife and three children and traveled to New York in 1965 to found the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement), which currently claims 108 temples and 15,000 full-time followers worldwide; in Vridaban, India.

Edward E. Plowman

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The Cherokee Indians had a word to describe the stream-laced mountains and hills of pine and laurel in the northeast corner of Georgia. Toccoa, they called it—beautiful. One stream was especially beautiful. Flowing in a northeasterly direction, it splashed over rocks and down mountain sides to a rocky ledge overlooking a peaceful valley, then cascaded over the ledge to a gorge 186 feet below, and finally meandered out into a flood plain, moving ever downward to the river and the sea.

Educator Richard A. Forrest came to this valley in 1907 and built a Bible school. He named it after the falls: Toccoa Falls. Thirty-five years later industrialist-evangelist R. G. LeTourneau built an earthen embankment across the stream about half a mile above the falls. He built it atop a little dam someone else had built about the turn of the century. The dam and the resulting 35-foot-deep lake was to provide the campus with water and power.

The school gradually grew, it became a college (affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance), and many of its graduates went out from the valley to proclaim the Gospel in the far reaches of the earth.

Fifteen years ago the college plugged into other sources for its water and electricity, and the eighty-acre lake—named Kelley Barnes, after a much-loved patriarch of the school—was devoted to recreational use. There was never any trouble with the dam; no one paid it much heed.

The stream was not much wider than twenty feet or so and not very deep, and it seldom left its banks in times of heavy rain (it did last year, causing $100,000 worth of damage). Campus roads and bridges criss-crossed the stream. Houses and other structures were built on its banks, a trailer village was created on the flood plain downstream, and finally a four-story brick dormitory—Forrest Hall—was constructed on the northwest bank just a few hundred feet from the falls.

Last month, on the night of November 5, it rained steadily, as it had for two days. The power went off for four hours, then came back on at 11 P.M.

By midnight, most of the campus’s 600 residents (425 of them students) had gone to sleep. But not campus maintenance man Eldon Ellsberry or campus volunteer firemen Bill Ehrensberger, 28, and David Fledderjohann, 30. They were out keeping an eye on Toccoa Creek, swollen from the rain runoff. They alerted a few residents of Trailer Village about conditions, but the rain slacked off, and it appeared that no one would have to be rousted from bed after all.

The three were preparing to leave about 1:30 A.M. when they heard a roar coming from upstream. Suddenly they were in ankle-deep water. Apparently aware of what had happened, they made a dash for their jeep, hoping to get across the bridge and turn on a siren to awaken everybody. But a waist-high wave hit them, and then another swept over them, dumping them out of the jeep and washing them downstream. Ellsberry, pummeled by water-borne boulders, tree limbs, and other debris, finally was able to grab a tree branch at the edge of the maelstrom and pull himself to safety. Ehrensberger and Fledderjohann both perished. On the opposite bank Ehrensberger’s house was smashed apart; his wife and three of their four children were killed.

Ellsberry watched helplessly as trailer resident Ronald Ginther, a student, tried in vain to save his family. Ginther tossed his son on the roof of their trailer, but “the wave came along and took him off,” said Ellsberry. Ginther’s 26-year-old wife and three daughters also drowned.

When the dam broke, a thirty-foot wall of water crashed over the falls and through the gorge, churning up mud, ripping loose boulders that weighed tons, and uprooting giant oaks that had stood for centuries. The water slammed into the first floor of Forrest Hall, breaking the windows. There were screams as the sixteen male students on that floor tried to get out. Three did not. Within seconds the water had reached the ceiling. Fortunately, the building stood firm. There were scores of students on the upper floors.

Directly across the stream from Forrest Hall, the home of David Eby, dean of men, was torn from its foundations, and the torrent swirled through the house. The Eby family got wet and frightened, but they survived.

The flood made splinters of several nearby campus buildings that were vacant; the main college buildings and other dormitories were on high ground and therefore escaped damage. As the wall of water moved downstream, it demolished seven residences, devastated Trailer Village (of twenty-five trailers, all but one were destroyed or damaged), flattened dozens of vehicles, and swept through the college’s garage and warehouse. A big intercity-type bus was deposited on its side a half-mile away. Debris piled up against a highway bridge further downstream, creating a dam-like effect that dissipated the flood and prevented heavy losses in a more heavily populated area below the campus.

In thirty minutes it was over. Thirty-nine persons, including twenty children, were dead and dozens were injured. Among the dead were theology professors Edward Pepsney (also his wife and two children) and Jerry Sproull (also his three children). The body of elderly Paul Williams had not been found as of late last month. All of the victims were associated with the school directly or indirectly. Damage exceeded $2.5 million.

Help arrived quickly. Some students and staff personnel joined disaster workers in search and rescue operations. Many others congregated in prayer meetings in the pre-dawn darkness, then gathered for a worship and prayer service later in the morning.

Despite the tragedy, an air of optimism prevailed among the students. “Sure, I’ll miss my friends,” said one girl. “But I know they’re in heaven, and I’ll see them again someday.”

Some outsiders predicted that the campus would have to be closed for perhaps the rest of the school year. President Kenneth Opperman arrived from Florida, where he had conducted the funeral service of a coed killed in a traffic accident. “This is not the end of Toccoa Falls College,” he told the students. “It may be a new beginning.” He announced that the campus would close for nine days but would open with a full schedule of classes on November 15. The announcement was greeted with applause: it was clear that the students shared his determination to go on.

A Baptist conference center and members of Toccoa’s churches offered to provide lodging to the displaced and to students not going home for the break. Money, goods, and relief supplies poured in from the surrounding community. The World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals sent a $50,000 check, the Billy Graham organization sent $25,000, and there were other donations (the total had reached $200,000 before Thanksgiving Day).

President Carter’s wife Rosalynn and Georgia governor George Busbee toured the campus and offered encouragement. The President declared the campus a federal disaster area, qualifying it for special aid. The Vatican sent a telegram of support.

Reporters who visited the campus immediately after the disaster said that they were impressed by the calm outlook and deportment of the survivors. They listened carefully as administrators, teachers, and students alike answered the most-asked question: “Why did God allow it to happen to a Christian school?” The replies stressed that it rains on the just and unjust alike, that God never promised to keep Christians from experiencing hardship, that God has a transcendent plan, and that the universe operates according to physical laws set in motion by God.

Some 1,500 persons attended a memorial service when the school reopened. In his sermon, Opperman emphasized that life goes on and that the job of world evangelism remains to be done.

Students say the tragedy has resulted in greater unity, a measure of spiritual renewal, and a sense of seriousness about the future. It has also had other results. At least eighteen persons are known to have professed faith in Christ. They include an ABC television cameraman; a local-area newspaper reporter, and several relatives of victims.

Another result is the increased state and federal attention that will be given to the thousands of private dams like the one that burst on Toccoa Creek. A congressman calls them “loaded shotguns pointed at the people downstream.” Many have not been subjected to a program of regular inspections by experts.

The authorities may never know for sure why the Toccoa dam burst. There is disputed evidence that water had been seeping through the earthen wall in recent months. Building a dam on top of an old one presents hazards, say engineers, and they should not contain timbers, for wood will rot and weaken in time (the Toccoa dam contained timbers).

Whatever, the dam probably will not be rebuilt.

Meanwhile, it will take some time for the valley to heal itself of its terrible wounds.

Flynt’s Odyssey

Charles Colson. Eldridge Cleaver. And now Larry Flynt.

Flynt, the controversial publisher of Hustler, a magazine that features nudity and sex, was a surprise platform guest at the Sunday morning worship service at Braeswood Assembly of God Church in Houston on November 20. He told the audience of 1,900 that God had convicted him of sin and that he had at last become a follower of Christ.

The surprise appearance was a last-minute one. Evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton had been signed up months earlier to speak at the special pre-Thanksgiving service. Between press interviews an hour before the service began, Mrs. Stapleton told Braeswood’s pastor, Earl Banning, that Flynt had called her Friday night from San Antonio and told her he had become a Christian. Moreover, said she, Flynt was that very morning in a Houston hotel (it was the final day of the big international women’s conference in town). Banning and Mrs. Stapleton talked about it some more, then decided to telephone Flynt and invite him to share his story with the congregation. The millionaire publisher arrived within thirty minutes, Banning recalls.

“I feel I owe every woman in America a personal apology for Hustler magazine,” he remarked to the congregation during a twenty-minute testimony. He announced plans to change Hustler “from raunchy sex to healthy sex” and to feature articles on religion and other upbeat topics. He credited his conversion in part to Mrs. Stapleton and her husband Bob. The Stapletons and the Flynts had exchanged visits over a period of several months, and on these occasions Mrs. Stapleton offered spiritual counsel.

Flynt asked permission to conclude his talk with a prayer. “God, if you can save a man like me and love me, surely you can love anybody.…” he began. It was his first public prayer ever, he said, and it was probably only the second time he’d been in church. When he finished, the audience broke into applause.

Over lunch, Banning and the Stapletons discussed Flynt’s profession of faith with him further. Afterward, in an interview, Banning said: “It is my opinion that he’s serious and is not playing games.”

Later in the day, Flynt and his wife Althea traveled with the Stapletons to San Antonio, where Mrs. Stapleton was scheduled to speak that night at the Church of Castle Hills, an independent Pentecostal church. Here again Flynt gave his testimony.

Afterward, he repeated to reporters his plans to change Hustler. “We won’t be discriminating toward women,” he said. “If we deal with sex, it’ll be promoting a healthy attitude toward sex rather than a perverted one.” The magazine will still have controversy though, he affirmed. He added that Hustler “isn’t a cause, only a symptom.” The 15 million readers, he said, “are reflective of the problems of society, and most of them really need help.”

Flynt has been convicted of obscenity charges in Ohio (they do not involve sex or nudity), and he faces legal hassles elsewhere. He told his new Christian friends that he had instructed his attorneys not to call any witness except himself in the appeal of the Ohio case; he said he will simply tell the court of his decision to follow Christ and how it has changed his outlook.

The publisher points to several influences for good in his spiritual odyssey; the friendship of the Stapletons and of Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington, a chance meeting with two evangelists while he was in San Antonio to testify before a state legislative committee on child p*rnography, and a research project to determine what the Bible teaches about sex.

The evangelists in San Antonio were Ed Human, a Southern Baptist formerly associated with street evangelist Arthur Blessitt, and Evelyn Linton. Mrs. Linton and her husband Guy ran a strip joint known as the Green Gate before they professed Christ a few years ago through the ministry of Harrington. Since then, the Lintons and Human have worked closely together in some outreach projects.

Human, an ardent morality-in-media crusader, bumped into Flynt at the hearing and said he wanted to share the love of Christ with him. Flynt invited Human and Mrs. Linton, along with a local reporter, to his hotel room, where they talked and prayed for more than four hours. The pair also visited with Flynt the next day—the Friday before his church appearance in Houston. “If I’m right in what I am doing [publishing Hustler and pushing for more permissiveness], America is in a whale of a mess,” Flynt told Human. “But if I’m wrong, I want to know.” Human prayed on the spot that God would show Flynt what was right.

Flynt had already been shown a short time earlier. In preparing his court case, he assigned researchers to find out what the Bible teaches about sex. Upon reading their report, he said, he found out that everything he was doing in Hustler was wrong.

Here’s Life, World

Founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ last month announced the launching of a campaign to raise $1 billion by 1982 to finance what Crusade bills as “the most extensive Christian social and evangelization mission in recorded history.” He made the announcement at a press conference in Washington, D.C., with telephone hookups to simultaneous press gatherings in New York and Los Angeles. A panel of business leaders and entertainers joined Bright for the conference. They included: Wallace E. Johnson of Memphis, cofounder of the Holiday Inn motel chain: Nelson Bunker Hunt, a Dallas oilman and financier (and son of the late H. L. Hunt, the famed late oilman who championed many conservative political causes); and movie star Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans.

Johnson is the international chairman and Hunt is chairman of the international executive committee.

The initial phase of the campaign has been launched with a goal of $100 million, with some $30 million in pledges already collected, according to the panelists.

The outreach part of the program, “Here’s Life,” will be patterned after the recent “Here’s Life, America” effort and similar campaigns that Crusade has been conducting in other countries in the past year or so. The idea, said Bright, is to field a force of Christian workers who will “unite with churches and other Christian organizations to help fulfill the Great Commission in our time.” Modern communications technology will be employed to try to reach every person in the world with the Gospel message “at least once,” said Bright. Laypersons will be recruited to work at their own vocations in foreign countries to “demonstrate Christian love in action” and to assist national churches in evangelism and social-action projects, he added.

Several task forces are being lined up to service the effort. One will study the problems of new technologies needed to reach many otherwise inaccessible areas, according to a Crusade press statement. Another is expected to produce hundreds of hours of domestic and multi-lingual films and television programs. New York producer John Heyman of the Genesis Project (The New Media Bible) has been named to direct this task force, said Bright. Another group will aim its witness at the world’s political leaders, he indicated, but a chairman had not yet been selected.

Included in a press kit handed out at the Washington conference was an audited financial statement covering Campus Crusade’s 1976 and 1977 finances. Its income for the fiscal year ending last June shows total income at $41.6 million (including $32.5 million in contributions), an increase of $7.5 million over the preceding year. Expenses were tabulated at $40.3 million and $32.2 million respectively. These amounts include neither certain funds raised overseas for local work nor Here’s Life, America projects, which are set up under separate corporations, according to the statement.

- More fromEdward E. Plowman

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A Nation In Exile

A History of the Jewish People, edited by H. H. Ben-Sasson (Harvard, 1976, 1,170 pp., $40.00), is reviewed by David E. Aune, professor of religion, Saint Xavier College, Chicago, Illinois.

One of the more popular one-volume histories of the Jews has been Cecil Roth’s A History of the Jews, a book that is objective, scholarly, and dry. A racier and more unorthodox history, one that is professedly partisan, is Max Dimont’s Jews, God and History. Both of these books are now eclipsed by the one edited by Ben-Sasson, certainly the most com prehensive, scholarly, and readable one-volume history of Judaism available in English. Originally published in Hebrew in Israel in 1969 and written by six Israel historians on the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the book makes unpretentious use of the most recent archaeological and historical research or Israelite-Jewish history.

Many evangelicals have a general notion of the outlines of Israelite history of the biblical period through an acquaintance with the Old Testament and have a sketchy knowledge of the history of the modern State of Israel as presented through the news media. Few have more than a rudimentary idea of the history of the Jews from the Hellenistic-Roman era through the early part of the twentieth century. Since the survival of the Jews culminating in the formation of the modern State of Israel is nothing short of a miracle, those who have any deep interest in the Old Testament and Judaism owe it to themselves to fill in the blank spaces by reading this history of the Jews.

Portions of the book that will be of special interest to evangelicals are A. Malamat’s survey of “Origins and the Formative Period” (beginnings through the kingship of Saul), A. Tadmor on “The Period of the First Temple, the Babylonian Exile and the Restoration,” and M. Stem’s “The Period of the Second Temple” (the exilic period through the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70). The perspective of each of these sections might be described as “moderate historical criticism”; the authors generally find themselves more in agreement with the approach represented by such American Christian scholars as William Foxwell Albright, John Bright, and G. Ernest Wright than with the radical criticism associated with such German scholars as Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth. (For a glimpse of the debate between these schools, see John Bright’s Early Israel in Recent History Writing.) The “fundamentalist” approach to biblical history represented by the great Jewish historian Yehezkel Kaufman is studiously avoided in favor of an approach that sees genuine history mingled with anachronism. In contrast to Stem, Malamat and Tadmor tend to neglect the religious and social history of Israel by giving their attention almost wholly to politics.

S. Safrai’s survey of “The Era of the Mishnah and Talmud (70–640) is superb, and the editor’s section on “The Middle Ages” is magnificent. Incidentally, Ben-Sasson’s survey should serve as an antidote to that residual anti-Semitism which continues to afflict conservative Christians, for he shows that the trends in economic and social life throughout large segments of medieval Judaism were frequently determined through the enormous pressure exerted on Jews by Christian states and church authorities. S. Ettinger’s survey of “The Modern Period” is generally excellent, though in many respects it is for me the most disappointing section of the book. Because of Ettinger’s exclusive focus on the political history of modern Judaism (before 1948, Judaism constituted a nation in exile), the enormous contributions and developments within American Judaism are almost totally passed over. While Ettinger discusses the development of Reform Judaism in Germany, nothing is said of the blossoming of Reform in America under such leaders as Isaac Mayer Wise and Kaufman Kohler (neither is so much as mentioned). Nor, for that matter, does Ettinger discuss the development of the uniquely American Conservative Judaism in the early twentieth century under such leaders as Solomon Schechter. Perhaps more understandably, no reference is made to Mordecai Kaplan, the brilliant but erratic “founder” of Reconstructionist Judaism. (Such developments in American Judaism are superbly discussed in Gilbert S. Rosenthal’s Four Paths to One God.) More perplexingly, the religious developments of Judaism in modern Israel are ignored; the secularity of a majority of modern Israelis is nowhere discussed, nor is the domination of traditional orthodoxy under both Israeli law and the watchful leadership of the chief Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis.

The character of this volume has apparently been determined by two factors: (1) it was published in Hebrew in Israel for Israelis (very few of whom are American immigrants), and (2) Judaism is implicitly defined, not as a religion, but as a nation in exile. Because of this second factor, many of the religious features and developments of Judaism were ignored. American Judaism has been largely characterized by religious diversification and development, and so Ettinger, writing on the modern period, passed over it. One motif that runs through the entire volume is the constant Jewish presence in Palestine, a presence that is important to Israelis and functions as an implicit justification of Jewish history after 1948. The book concludes with a twenty-six-page classified bibliography that focuses on Jewish writings about their history.

Despite the reservations I have expressed, I consider the book a rare achievement in popular historiography. It belongs in every religious library.

Reality Of The Resurrection

Space, Time and Resurrection, by Thomas F. Torrance (Eerdmans, 1976, 193 pp., $5.95 pb), is reviewed by Ray S. Anderson, associate professor of theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

If this book is not easy to read, the reason is not simply that Torrance has a tendency to create a word jungle in which even those accustomed to his plunges into dense foliage must draw back to look about for a fresh start. No, the difficulty is one of thinking, not merely of communicating. And this book is about thinking theologically, and thus correctly, about the very structures of reality that bind our created world and us as creatures to the mind and heart of the Creator.

The distinguished professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Edinburgh here continues his brilliant, if at times pedantic, exploration into the philosophical and scientific basis of theology. Using the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the fulcrum, Torrance applies the lever of inner logic as discovered within the historical revelation of God and seeks to move the world. And if we feel the earth shifting beneath our feet, it may be that our own “ground of certainty” is being challenged for the sake of a new and more promising alignment.

Make no mistake about it: Torrance is not seeking to justify the concept of resurrection to the contemporary mind. Rather, he is seeking to bring the contemporary mind, with its hopelessly subjectivizing and solipsistic tendencies, into conformity with the concept of a historical and bodily resurrection. Torrance does not argue for the credibility of a bodily resurrection; he assumes it, or biblical grounds, with no equivocation.

Conservative evangelicals who are seeking support for a completely historical resurrection of Christ will be satisfied and encouraged. Torrance dismisses as docetic the attempts to minimize the bodily aspect of Christ’s resurrection, and he charges that attempts to redact the resurrection accounts into an “Easter faith” are reductionistic and constitute “another gospel” that is anathema to the true Gospel. However, evangelicals may get more than they bargained for in this book. Torrance makes no apology for taking revelation seriously, and in taking the resurrection seriously, he wants us to think out the entire theological agenda on the same terms.

Turning to what he calls “uncritical epistemological assumptions,” Torrance, in his introduction and again in the final chapter, spells out the terms of a scientific theology that is rigorously controlled from the side of its object, rather than from the side of the human subject. The resurrection posits the grounds on which it is to be believed, argues Torrance, and thus confronts us with a “dynamic ontology” that stands objectively behind all theological thinking and language. The interaction of the Creator’s being with creaturely nature through the incarnation makes all dualistic schemes, whether epistemological or cosmological, untenable and illegitimate. Hence, argues Torrance, there is no mythological or eschatological gap between revelation and history, with its corresponding non-cognitive idea of revelation requiring a “leap of faith.” Indeed, perhaps the strongest statement Torrance has ever made concerning the cognitive and thus rational content of divine revelation comes at the very outset of his book: “If God really is God, the living Creator of us all, not only is he intelligibly accessible to our understanding but actively at work within the world revealing himself in cognitive ways to those whom he has made for communion with himself. Divine revelation and intelligible content belong inseparably together.” This is no passing nod toward American evangelicals concerned for propositional revelation. This same unequivocal assertion underlies the entire book and opens up a new discussion within Barthian theology about the place of a natural theology in which the integrated cosmic structure of divine creation and redemption as given in the incarnation lies at the heart, as four-dimensional geometry is now placed at the heart of physics. If I understand Torrance correctly, he is saying that divine revelation, as the co-efficient of created rationality, is accessible and knowable on the same terms as all creaturely knowledge—that is, in terms of its own order of being. In an interesting anecdote recounted in the preface, Torrance recalls that Barth himself admitted to agreeing with this just before his death in 1968.

Filmstrips

The Man for Others from Thomas S. Klise (Box 3418, Peoria, IL 61614) is a superb rendering for children of the story of Jesus from birth to resurrection. The art, though stylized, is outstanding. With the background music and text carefully integrated, this set of four filmstrips will affect children positively toward Christ. But one would never know it from the catalog description. An evangelical reading it would dismiss out of hand. The catalog, in an almost incomprehensible statement, declares this series “… is not the ‘story of Redemption’ that we are concerned with here—doubtful as we are that little children can handle the ‘story of Redemption’. It is rather the story of Bonhoeffer’s Jesus …” It is likely Klise wrote the blurb himself. He needs a new catalog writer. A better “life of Christ” for children can hardly be found, especially as that life has meaning “for us.” As Klise retells the story, he is eminently true to Scripture. His catalog is inexplicable.

God is “like that” is the beautifully scripted and illustrated answer of four filmstrips from the same producer for 4–7 year olds, titled Religious Awareness. It is based on the latest accepted child psychology and, as the guide correctly asserts, “the filmstrips are not non-denominational but richly transdenominational.… for and open to Catholics, Protestants and Jews.” Prayer for children is the theme of the four part sequel to the above, Growing in Awareness. Designed for 6–8 year olds, this “praying to God is like …” series will surely teach children the significance of these four elements of prayer: petition, at-one-ment, gratitude, and adoration. A beautiful piece of work.

A really effective filmstrip that gets beneath the skin and into the heart of junior age children and enables them to turn toward Christ is Who Cares? produced by Scripture Press (1825 College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187). The audiovisual is a keen blend of both; the audio features unaffected children’s voices, and the visual includes a variant of the spoken text that reinforces the overall impact of the message. A nice addition is the reverse side of the cassette, which has some complementary teaching. The “extras” include an attractive take-home booklet, and theme music.

Little children will love this treat, The Little Stars of Bethlehem, which are talking stars talking about Baby Jesus. This cartoon comes from Contemporary Drama Service (Box 457, Downers Grove, IL 60515). It’s hard to believe that anyone would want to show any of the six silent, captioned filmstrips offered by Encyclopaedia Britannica (425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611). The set, Christmas Stories, might be useful to a group of children who can’t hear. “Christmas Through the Ages”, the only religious filmstrip, could have been quite interesting if it had sound. The rest are Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, and other favorite stories. A sheer delight, which could become an annual tradition in church or home, is the version by Alba House (Canfield, OH 44406) of Margery Williams’ classic The Velveteen Rabbit. Perfectly told, and visually pleasing.

DALE SANDERS

Portland, Oregon

But precisely at this point an obscurity enters that I suspect will cause the argument to go out of focus for many theologians committed to a more thomistic strain of natural theology. When Torrance speaks of the total “objectivity” and otherness of divine revelation, even in its integration with our time and space, it would appear that the cognitive connections for which he has so forcefully argued disappear. What is this “objectivity” that Torrance maintains must be the critical point of reference for all epistemology?

I am convinced, from my own struggle to maintain a transcendent pole to divine revelation while coming to it as radically historical, that the most critical issue for evangelical theology lies in the epistemological presuppositions that are brought to the theological task. If one is operating on the basis of a pre-critical and pre-Kantian form of rationalism that posits the human subject as the primary agent in knowing, then that which is assertable as universal truth by the human mind is considered to be “objective,” hence absolute. However, if one comes as a neo-Kantian, with an epistemological dualism between phenomenal events (which can be directly experienced) and noumenal realities (non-experienced and thus non-historical events), one is reduced to either agnosticism or existentialism. For the Cartesian rationalist, all talk of objectivity that lies beyond and outside the control of the human mind is hopelessly irrational and “subjective.” This presupposition brings the conclusion that all talk of divine revelation “positing itself’ is non-cognitive, a case in point being the misleading inferences drawn by the reviewer of my book, Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God (Eerdmans, 1975), in the November 19, 1976, issue of this magazine.

However, what Torrance relentlessly forces us to see in his book is that one cannot mark off the epistemological framework of the resurrection from that of the crucifixion, or the incarnation and historical life of Jesus, for that matter. It simply will not do to have a natural theology that can account for the historical life and death of Jesus and an “unnatural theology” that approaches the resurrection as a qualitatively different phenomenon. Pannenberg has at least seen the inconsistency of that and seeks to bring the resurrection totally within the methodology of the historical critical method. However, for the sake of consistency Pannenberg may have surrendered too much of the eschatological nature of the resurrection itself.

The resurrection must be theologically as well as exegetically understood, Torrance maintains, and fruitfully used to reveal to us the inner coherence of the incarnate person, life, and atonement of Jesus Christ. This he proceeds to do in the main body of this book. With an opening chapter on the biblical concept of the resurrection, he considers in order, the resurrection and the person of Christ, the atonement of Christ, and the ascension and parousia of Christ.

Taken seriously, and there is no other way to take it, this book will cause thoughtful reflection upon the very nature and possibility of our knowledge of God. But even more, it will convincingly and refreshingly bring the mind to consider Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Certainly it is difficult. But it will be worth the next ten books you were going to read because you already knew what they were saying.

The Life Of Tillich

Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought, Volume I: Life, by Marion and Wilhelm Pauck (Harper & Row, 1976, 340 pp., $15.00), is reviewed by Lewis Rambo, assistant professor of psychology, Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois.

Paul Tillich’s contemporary significance lies in the fact that he courageously lived through the struggles of modernity—with its secularization, meaninglessness, and chaos—and at the same time sought to address his fellow human beings with the Christian message as he understood it. Criticisms of Tillich’s theology abound, but few can deny that his life and thought had a fierce integrity. Tillich understood the currents of modern life—its art, philosophy, history, and literature—and challenged its values with an interpretation of Christianity that he deemed substantial enough to ward off the anxiety, aimlessness, and folly of secular thought. Tillich’s position “on the boundary” between religion and the world enabled him to speak in ways that resonated with people on both sides and provided creative answers to the perplexities of many seekers for truth.

This biography is based upon extensive interviews with friends, students, and colleagues of Tillich in addition to documentary resources such as letters. The authors divide the book into seven periods: Tillich’s childhood and education (1886–1914), his experiences as a chaplain during World War I (1914–18), the chaotic period following the war (1919–24), the maturation of his thought at Dresden and Frankfort (1924–33), the anguish of personal loss because of the Nazis and his move to the United States (1933–39), his wartime work with refugees and the rise of his popularity in the United States (1939–55), and the culmination of his Systematic Theology (1955–65).

The Paucks neither sensationalize (as in the case of Hannah Tillich’s From Time to Time) nor minimize the failings of Paul Tillich. Tillich’s infidelity to his wife, Hannah, is portrayed with candor, but in the context of his whole life and his tortured relationship to her. Indeed, Tillich’s anguished guilt over sexuality is stressed as much as the tentative sense of liberation that he derived from sexual experimentation. More significantly, Tillich’s capacity for friendship and for childlike vulnerability to others is admirably described. Without minimizing or justifying Tillich’s faults, the authors give one a sense of the conflict in him, and this helps one empathize with his all too human behavior. Those seeking ad hominem arguments against Tillich’s theology will not be satisfied if they read this book in the spirit in which it was written. The overall impression it gives of Tillich is that of a man with enormous energy, ambition, and ability seeking to forge a viable theology in the midst of social disruption, philosophical malaise, and personal suffering and striving.

Assessment of this biography is difficult in that Volume II may provide information and interpretations that compensate for deficiences in Volume I. I feel that an integration of Tillich’s life and thought would have been better than the Paucks’ stated separation: “Volume I depicts Tillich’s life against the background of his thought. Volume II analyzes his thought against the background of his life.” Such a strategy may nullify Tillich’s own selfinterpretation expressed in his autobiography On the Boundary. Until Volume II is published, we will have to be content with a biography that, though it gives us a richly textured portrait of Tillich’s life and times, largely neglects the desire that was the driving force of that life: to create a philosophical theology that would be comprehensive and compelling for the modern mind.

The Church: Catholic And Apostolic

The Church, by G. C. Berkouwer (Eerdmans, 1976, 438 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Donald G. Bloesch, professor of theology, Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

In this significant work on the church, Berkouwer discusses apostolicity and catholicity. Every church should seek continuity with the ecclesiastical and biblical traditions as well as universality in its outreach, he says. At the same time he warns against misunderstanding catholicity and hence striving for world domination in the name of Christ. The continuity of the church, he says, must be seen not in its offices but in its fidelity to Jesus Christ. A catholic and apostolic church will be one that reaffirms and proclaims the apostolic message as declared in Holy Scripture.

Berkouwer also affirms the infallibility and holiness of the church but with important qualifications. The church is infallible because its Lord and the message he speaks are infallible. The church is holy because it is covered by God’s sanctifying grace. It must not claim inherent purity on the basis of its membership, since the empirical church is composed of sinners, albeit sinners who have been justified and redeemed.

In his treatment of the marks of the church, Berkouwer maintains with the Reformers that the dominant mark is the Word of God, proclaimed and received by the company of the faithful. Another hallmark is involvement in mission, not only through kerygmatic proclamation but also through self-giving service to the dispossessed. By identifying itself with the despised and forsaken of this world, the church removes false stumbling blocks to the faith and thereby prepares the way for the reception of its Gospel.

Berkouwer sees a place for apologetic defense of the faith but only if it respects the self-authenticating quality of the Word itself. He rejects an apologetics that seeks to establish an independent truth claim for the Gospel. The truth of God, he says, must not be “delivered into the grasp of human, testing rationality.” He repudiates a priori, preparatory verification of the Gospel. For him “the gospel does not penetrate into life apart from touching the heart through the truth of the gospel itself.” He maintains that circular reasoning is required in any effort to press the claims of faith upon the world.

At the same time he insists that faith should not be thought of as blind obedience, for this reduces it to a meritorious work. The Gospel does not demand a sacrifice of the intellect; it carries its own evidence. Faith is an acknowledgment and commitment that are made practically inevitable by the compelling power of the Gospel itself.

As a true Reformed theologian, Berkouwer acknowledges that because it is deformed by human sin, the empirical church is in constant need of reformation. But those who seek reform can legitimately criticize the church only from the inside, in solidarity with their brethren who are both righteous and sinners at the same time.

Berkouwer sees the importance of hierarchy and office in the church as well as charismatic gifts. He is critical of those who seek a fellowship of love ruled directly by the Spirit. The Spirit works through human means and mediators. There is a place for representative authorities who are specially empowered and anointed by the Holy Spirit for leadership roles; their task, however, is not to dominate or rule in an arbitrary fashion but to serve.

Berkouwer reveals in this book a definite affinity to Karl Barth, as well as to the theology of the Reformation and the Dutch Calvinism of Kuyper and Bavinck. His emphasis on the universal outreach of salvation and faith as an answer to a salvation already completed strikes one as similar to what we find in Barth. He insists that salvation oversteps all boundaries; but does it transcend even the circle of faith (as he also implies)? He refuses to see faith as a condition for salvation because then it becomes a meritorious work. In his view, the cause of salvation is the free mercy of God alone. Yet can we not speak of faith as an instrumental cause and therefore as a requirement for the fulfillment of salvation in individual lives?

Berkouwer perceives the duty of the church to speak out against heresy, but it would have been helpful for him to delineate some of the heresies that threaten the church today. He does discuss Karl Rahner’s concept of the anonymous Christian, but it seems that he tries to see only the truth in this notion and is not sufficiently aware of its perils.

This book can be highly recommended for its firm evangelical and biblical commitment as well as its ecumenical vision. Berkouwer is a theologian who must be taken seriously by both evangelicals and ecumenists. The questions that he raises often challenge long cherished notions of what the church is, but he rightly reminds us that church tradition must ever be subordinate to biblical authority and that the Spirit constantly causes new light to break forth from God’s holy Word.

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It is surely impossible for any American or European Christian to visit West Africa without feeling embarrassed and even ashamed. There hideous slave-trade brought untold misery to the whole region for some 250 years. It is conservatively estimated that between thirty and forty million slaves were sold to the European colonies, and that as many perished on the voyage across the Atlantic. Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette was not exaggerating when he referred to this as a “colossal evil.” Nor was Malcolm X when he called it “the world’s most monstrous crime.” True, Christians took the initiative to get the trade abolished and the slaves freed, but before this both horrors had been tolerated for too long.

Then there is the colonial record. In her Reith Lectures published as The Colonial Reckoning (1961) Margery Perham, an expert in African affairs, paid tribute to those good things that the colonial powers bequeathed (from roads to schools and law courts). She conceded that the first imperial motivations were selfish (trade, security, and power), and that the philanthropic concept of serving the interests of the ruled rather than of the rulers developed much later, and then slowly. “When at last Africans woke to self-consciousness,” she wrote, “it was to discover that as long as history recorded they had been ignored, enslaved, subjected, despised or patronized by the rest of the world.” Africans felt themselves “humiliated rather than oppressed” and the quest for liberation was (and still is) less a cry for political independence than for human dignity.

In a chastened and humble mood I spent September visiting the five English-speaking countries of West Africa, beginning in Nigeria, continuing through Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and ending in the little country of the Gambia. My responsibilities included pastors’ conferences, student work, and some public meetings. Although the Anglican churches were in most cases involved in the planning, I was sponsored by the Scripture Union that, along with the Pan-African Fellowship of Evangelical Students (PAFES), has had a remarkable influence on the up-and-coming Christian leadership of the region.

Indigenization

In one of his books Dr. Lesslie Newbigin, formerly Bishop of Madras, playfully chides the early missionaries in South India for exporting all the paraphernalia of Western church life, “from archdeacons to harmoniums.” The same could be said of West Africa. The anomalies are rather grotesque. Gothic spires rise above the coconut palms; some Anglican bishops don robes that are not only European, medieval, and Roman in origin but also in tropical heat and humidity a cruel punishment to wear. The continuing use of the Prayer Book liturgy of 1662 compels African tongues to get round archaic words like “vouchsaf’ st,” which we Anglo-Saxons can scarcely manage any longer. Hymns and choruses too—both words and music—are still mostly Western (at least in the older mission-founded churches), though Africa Christian Press has published Living Songs that includes some translations from local languages. It was a particular joy in Ghana to hear and watch the young people when at last they sang one of their native Twi songs. Only then did they become themselves. With loud voices and rhythmic body movements, accompanied by drums, handclapping, tambourines, and even the tapping of a knife on (of all things) an empty coca-cola bottle, they gave themselves up to worship, their eyes and teeth gleaming with uninhibited joy.

The main impetus toward the formation of the African Independent Churches has been a protest against alien cultural forms and the quest for an authentically African expression of Christian faith and life. Dr. David Barrett of Nairobi in his book Schism and Renewal in Africa (1968) has documented 6,000 of these churches; indeed it is reckoned that about one-fifth of Africa’s total Christian community belongs to them. Peter Barker, literature secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, has compiled a brief survey and directory of Christianity in Ghana, which is shortly to be published as Five Hundred Churches. Of these he shows that about 450 are “independent” or “spiritual” churches. Many have chosen picturesque titles like Nigeria’s well known “Cherubim and Seraphim Church,” or “the Church of the Lord Aladura” or “God is our Light Church.” Some are distinctly heretical, and others make observers apprehensive because of their tendency to syncretism and their accommodation to such superstitious practices as jujus and medicine men. All of them raise serious questions about schism and the fragmentation of the church. Yet the majority of them seem to be genuinely Christian, confessing Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, and we can only applaud their determination to develop genuinely African forms of Christianity.

Evangelization

European missionaries arrived in West Africa during the eighteenth century. Most of the repatriated slaves who began a new life of freedom in Liberia and Sierra Leone were Christians. And in the middle of the nineteenth century freed slaves in Barbados even formed “The West Indian Association for the Furtherance of the Gospel in Western Africa.” Their first two missionaries landed in 1855 in what is now the Republic of Guinea. Yet from those beginnings one has to say with sorrow that the Gospel has not spread as widely or as rapidly as it should have. The exact Christian percentage of each country is hard to discover, but it ranges from about 53 per cent in Ghana to only 2 per cent in the Gambia, whose remaining 98 per cent is almost entirely Muslim.

During recent years, however, partly stimulated by the Berlin and Lausanne Congresses, a new zeal for the evangelization of the region has been emerging. “New Life for All” (an African version of Latin America’s “Evangelism in Depth”) began in Nigeria and has spread to other countries. Ghana, for example, now has four full time traveling secretaries who are promoting this program. Ghana also had its own congress on evangelism earlier this year, and several leading evangelicals are busy forming a “Christian Outreach Fellowship” to stimulate evangelism both in their own country and beyond. Nigeria had its first congress on evangelism in August of 1975, attended by 831 participants, and is now planning its second for August of 1978. They hope to attract up to 1,500 people and to follow the congress with “Operation Good News,” which will aim to bring the Gospel to every Nigerian before the end of 1980.

Perhaps the most encouraging news of all is that ECWA (the Evangelical Church of West Africa, which, since 1893, has grown out of the labors of the Sudan Interior Mission) now has not only 1,400 churches in Nigeria but 260 missionaries belonging to its “Evangelical Missionary Society.” So far these are all working in Nigeria and its neighboring countries, but soon they are to begin work among the Muslim Nigerians of the Sudan, that is, among some of the tens of thousands who make the pilgrimage to Mecca annually but fail to complete the return journey.

Finally, we have to face the hindrances to evangelism in West Africa today. All the churches complain of the scourge of nominalism. “People are baptized and confirmed,” Bishop Rigal Elisée of the Gambia said to me, “but that means nothing; what we need to understand most is how are we converted.” Alongside nominalism go low moral standards, especially immorality at home and corruption in business. A third obstacle to effective witness is the disunity of the church, caused by tribalism and denominationalism. I have already mentioned the bewildering proliferation of independent churches. Also older Protestant churches have failed to come together. The proposed union in Nigeria between the Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches ended in December of 1965, only weeks before its inauguration; a similar plan ended in Ghana only days before. Since then hardly any fresh initiatives have been taken. Nevertheless, each country has its Christian Council that facilitates cooperation, and there are several united theological seminaries.

Evangelicals also are showing increasing signs of working more closely together. The third General Assembly of AEAM (the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar) was held at the beginning of August in the Ivory Coast. The late lamented Byang Kato has been succeeded as General Secretary by another Nigerian, Tokunboh Adeyemo, who plans to return to Africa in December after completing his doctoral research at Dallas Theological Seminary. In Francophone Africa BEST (the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology) opened in October with about thirty students, and the African Evangelical Theological Society has been launched by AEAM’s theological commission. All this is encouraging news. My own prayer is that more and more evangelicals will offer themselves to God as instruments in his hand for the reformation and renewal of all West Africa’s churches. Without this, the work of evangelization will continue to be impeded.

JOHN R.W. STOTT

Edith Schaeffer

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The important question of “who am I?” has gotten a new twist by the recent outbreak of “past lives-therapy.” It is bad enough to have so many people turning inward in self-analysis to determine whether or not they are “fulfilled” or “free” or “in touch with themselves.” But with the springing up of the new “past-lives therapy,” whether in group sessions or in expensive personal sessions with the therapist, people are being told that they need to search back to discover who they were in previous existences. Recently I met someone who “remembered” another existence when she had had her hands tied behind her back, and had been burned at the stake. This was her traumatic death, which could be responsible for some of her present troubles, she said. People are led to be certain that they have lived several lives before, and are “helped” by “meditation,” “hypnosis,” or some sort of talk sessions, into discovering who they were. The spread of this acceptance of reincarnation will add another question to, “who am I?”, making the puzzle more complicated with, “who was I?” Reincarnation is taken in this new form of psychoanalysis and made to be a reasonable probability, divorced from religious connections, so that Presbyterians, or Methodists, or people of any kind of religious affiliation are told that this won’t interfere with their beliefs. It is just something that takes place, and we need to recognize it in order to become “better adjusted,” and overcome our “depressions and tensions.”

Perhaps you haven’t met anyone yet who tells you what her life was, or his life was, in the past few centuries, but you probably will before long. It is important not to be just jolted, or shocked, or amused, but to think very soberly as to why this cannot be true. With the onslaught of old heathen ideas coming in new clothing we need to be ready with an answer for ourselves that is in season with the need, as well as answers for someone who might want to discuss the idea with us.

People of any religious affiliation are being told that reincarnation will not interfere with their beliefs. It is taken in this new form of psychoanalysis and made to be reasonable.

We were listening to a trio playing Beethoven’s trios for piano, violin, and cello in the little old Vevey theater the other evening. This dusty, small, undecorated old place seemed a strange bit of space to be containing the gorgeous sounds coming forth from one of the world’s best trios. The exact same “space” has had divergent kinds of entertainment, bringing forth sounds as varied as could be imagined. As we sat there listening Fran whispered to me, “Strange about space, isn’t it?” and I nodded, looking around me and thinking my thoughts about all that had been seen and heard in this particularly hemmed in bit of space. One could go on for pages about the use, and re-use of space throughout the history of the world. Buildings that have been used as places of business, temples, markets, churches, and have continued to stand to be used by yet more divergent purposes. Pieces of ground, properties, estates that have been the scene of titanically different events, or daily uses. One plot of ground could easily have been used for the guillotine at one time, and for grazing cows in another, and a maypole dance at some other point in history. Space is used, over and over and over again with so many different uses, and as the background for so many scenes. Just think of Holland as so much under sea water at one time, and as a battlefield another, as full of tulips and windmills at one time, with some of that same space filled with high rise apartment buildings that are as grey in contrast to tulips as is a stormy evening in contrast to a blazing sunset. Space—the space we are familiar with in the world, was in existence when Adam and Eve walked in their bit of geography, and was all there as Christ lived and died and was buried and rose again. The same space he walked and talked in during his days on earth still goes on filled with the footsteps and voices of hundreds of people.

But people, human beings are significant personalities, so significant that the way has been opened up to them to live forever. An individual is born in a body, and when that individual becomes a Christian, a child in the Lord’s family, he or she has the same body that will one day be changed to be like Christ’s resurrected body. But may we never forget the marvel that it will be the same body. The changed body and the changed life of the kind of “born again” the Bible is talking about consist of the same body and the same person forever. We are not wiped out so that someone else can use our bodies, nor are our bodies wiped out so that we can use the bodies being formed by two new parents.

It is very interesting in the connection of the preciousness of our identity as a person that we really are separate identities forever. Jesus died that we might each be saved, one by one. We are not gathered up in bunches of ten at a time blurred through years of merging.

Hebrews 9:27,28 points this up with a knife-edge sharpness: “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes the judgment; so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, not to bear sin, to those who eagerly await Him, for salvation” (NASV). We die once. Our one-time trauma of death is as much of a promise as the one-time suffering of death Christ had to go through for us. It is a very conclusive statement—we don’t have to “worry about living many lives that end in many deaths. Space is re-used. In contrast, personalities live one lifetime and are warned not to waste that period of time. Personalities die once, unless Jesus comes back before they die, in which case even that “once” is canceled.

Thank God for eternal life in which we will have access to another section of “space” where God is preparing for us a city, and eons and eons of time to explore and grow in understanding and discovery. But thank God we won’t have to be confused as to who we are or who we have been.

- More fromEdith Schaeffer

Ideas

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Christmas time is gift time and rightly so. God gave his Son as a gift to the world. We, in turn, are called upon to emulate the Saviour, following his example by our own good works. For most of us, Christmas is the season in which we give our more or less lavish gifts to those we love and to others who are close to us by family or business ties. Generally our giving stops right there. But should it?

No one who reads the Bible can deny that those who know God are called to a ministry of compassion. This includes help to those in need, even those whom we do not know personally. The Apostle Paul exhorted the churches of Galatia to give money to needy believers in Jerusalem and then directed the Corinthians to do the same (1 Cor. 16:1). The believers in Asia Minor and Greece undoubtedly did not know the Palestinians personally. But that made no difference.

The injunction to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, the teaching of Paul that “as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10), and many other passages in Scripture stress a common theme. Believers are called upon to do works of righteousness including striving for justice, promoting the good of all men, and helping to create the kind of society that will come as close to the ideal as is possible in this present evil world.

Many Christians do comparatively little with respect to these biblical admonitions. Why not? Rarely would it be because of deliberate disobedience to biblical commands. A more likely explanation is ignorance of needs and ways to alleviate them coupled with an absence of desire to learn. Also for many the sheer magnitude of the world’s needs leads to a feeling that unconsciously says “I cannot do very much, so will it really matter whether I do anything?” How should we respond to these attitudes?

First, we must understand that every Christian who is a faithful steward of God’s possessions must do something besides praying for those with needs. One can meet needs by direct involvement. But needs can also be addressed by indirect means such as entrusting money to responsible Christians who are directly involved in meeting the world’s needs. Scripture tells us that we should help as we have opportunity, and as we are able. No one can do everything, but everybody can do something.

It would be imprudent and biblically wrong to create in Christian hearts a sense of guilt for not spending all of one’s time doing such good works. No one supposes that the Holy Spirit calls all men to a pastoral ministry, or all Christians to missionary endeavor overseas, or all people to practice medicine or any other line of work. Acts 13 clearly shows that the Holy Spirit called Paul and Barnabas to missionary work. Those who sent them were not so called, although they were to keep informed and be supportive. Similarly, God does call some of his people to full-time service in providing relief, in promoting social justice, and in politics, even as others are called into business or a profession or a trade.

Second, everything that Christians do should be done in the name of Jesus Christ (Col. 3:17). This means, of necessity, that we speak to those who are not of the household of faith about the very greatest gift of all—the gift of eternal life that belongs to those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. Even the cup of cold water should bring with it not only temporary relief but the good news of salvation. This poses difficult questions that Christians may answer differently. Is it proper for believers to do works of mercy without any mention of Jesus? Are works of mercy in and of themselves appropriate when no word of the Gospel is proclaimed?

There are those who believe that all men will be saved and for them this is no problem. Since all men, according to this view, are already in Christ whether they know it or not, Christians can do good works anonymously. But what about those who are not universalists? For those who believe that evangelism is imperative, then the question of doing good works without also sharing the good news is vital. However, there are places where it is illegal to overtly evangelize. Should not works of mercy without an explicit reference to Christ be carried on nevertheless? Can not such activities be considered a kind of pre-evangelism that might build good will and open the door to the Gospel at a later time?

A splendid organization like World Vision has had to face this problem. It receives a small amount of money for overseas use from taxpayers of the United States through the government. But due to separation of church and state strings are attached to the use of the money. It cannot do with this money what it normally does with funds contributed by individuals. Surely in such cases is it not better to use the money to alleviate distress and leave it to God that somehow, sooner or later, he will open the door to Gospel penetration as an indirect result of a good work?

The real challenge to the Christian church is to do what is needed: both help those in physical and economic need and bring them the Gospel at the same time. In this Christmas season, as we give our gifts to loved ones and friends we should also ask ourselves the question: “What are we doing for the unloved and the friendless around the world?”

Taking a Position By Avoiding the Issue

Of all the time spent debating issues at the recent Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) biennial general assembly, a third was spent on just one subject: hom*osexuality. Kenneth L. Teegarden, general minister and president of the denomination, wrote in a pastoral letter after the meeting that the explosive issue “could not be avoided.”

Some discussion is necessary to clarify the issues, granted. But the main question is, “Where do you stand?” The voting representatives at the Disciples assembly took four stands (see November 18 issue, page 56). The tallies varied a bit from one vote to the next, but the overall message was that the Christian Church leaders approved “liberal” positions on hom*osexuality by a margin of about two to one. Two of the votes were clear-cut statements by the assembly: one supported civil rights for hom*osexuals; the other opposed a resolution that would have condemned hom*osexuality as an alternative lifestyle for Christians. Although these votes indicate where the denomination is heading, the tallies on the two other questions probably tell us even more. The assembly referred an 8,000-word paper to the congregations to study. And the question of ordination of hom*osexuals was sent to a task force for study. The president said in his pastoral letter that the two statements on hom*osexuality that the assembly passed did not represent a final position on hom*osexuality. By referring the other questions for further study, the assembly avoided taking any firm stand on the issue.

It is not our intention to single out the Christian Church in this matter, but its October actions are an example of what is being done in many denominations. The United Church of Christ synod sent its congregations a study paper on hom*osexuality. Other denominations also are taking this position, which says in effect, “We really don’t know whether hom*osexuality is right or wrong, so we’re going to take a look at the latest literature on the subject.”

We regret this attitude. The leaders in these denominations are telling their people that they cannot rely on the Bible for guidance in this matter. hom*osexual behavior was not invented in the last decade. The Bible speaks about it and emphatically condemns it even while holding forth the hope that those who have been guilty of practicing it can be saved (1 Cor. 6:11). Christians, both individually and corporately, who claim to apply the Word to all areas of life cannot ignore the plain teachings of Scripture on this issue.

The Quest For Human Origins

“How Man Became Man,” the Time magazine cover story for November 7, shows once again the human inclination for arrogance. In defiance of the biblical account of where man comes from and who he is, man continues to think that the proper study of mankind is himself, to paraphrase Alexander Pope. Time magazine in its story did not exactly ignore the biblical account of creation. Instead it dismissed that view with an offhanded reference to James Ussher’s attempt in 1650 to date the creation by working with certain genealogical data in the Bible. The approach Time used was not unusual; it represented the customary approach used by the mass media and by prominent scientific institutions.

We need to look beyond man to determine his identity. If we use an evolutionary model, we are forced to settle for an identity that is just one step and twenty million years ahead of the ape. Although the Time article gave no concise definition of man, such researchers as Richard Erskine Leakey settle for a Shakespearian definition of man as the “paragon of animals”—and that based on inadequate evidence as to how man came to exist. Many scientists force the origins of man into an evolutionary model because, by definition, science can only accept what it has discovered. To accept the word of some un-checkable authority is deemed unscientific.

Leakey says that “By searching our long-buried past for an understanding of what we are we may discover some insight into our future.” But such a search to understand what we are presumes that the answer is to be found essentially in what can be discovered by carefully studying the surviving relics of our long-buried past. It also presumes that we are merely more intelligent descendants of animals evolved from animals. In this way scientific man sacrifices his imago dei on the altar of self-worship. He denigrates who he really is in the very process of aspiring to be the final measure of all things. And man is not the final measure. When we refuse to submit ourselves to our creator and to what he has graciously revealed to us about our origins and identity, we not only strip ourselves of our dignity, we also become derelict in our duty.

To keep our semimonthly schedule the last three issues of 1977 are being published at three week intervals (November 18, December 9, and December 30).

The Time article acknowledges that “Scientists concede that even their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the fossil record.” Nevertheless, the article matter-of-factly assumes the truth of conclusions that go beyond the admitted limitations of scientific inquiry. Science, by leaving aside purported revelation, can indeed restrict its pronouncements to what man can discover. But in disregarding revelation, it must also set aside speculation that goes beyond verifiable scientific discovery. Consequently, science will not be able to fully answer many important questions. Gordon College professor Jack Haas, in a CHRISTIANITY TODAY interview on the subject of creation (June 17 issue, page 10) said “To establish what has happened in the past goes beyond the ability of science.”

It is God who reveals to us the truth of our beginning and our destinies. Only by humility and by believing the Word of God can we adequately know what we are and obtain the most vital insight into our future.

His Birthday And His Family

Christ did not come to earth to give us Christmas trees. At this season of the year, perhaps more than at any other time, believers need to be reminded of why he did come. It was certainly not for partying nor for the kind of gift-giving that most people now associate with the observance of his nativity.

He declared, in stark contrast to conventional wisdom, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). This no-nonsense message was a part of Jesus’ initial training of the apostles. He wanted them to know from the beginning who they were following and where he was leading.

For the ragtag band of disciples he covered all the bases (vv. 35–36). The illustrations he gave were enough to leave them without question. If some of them were not married and did not understand the daughter-in-law, mother-in-law situation, then he spoke of father and son. He summed up the possibility of conflict by stating flatly that his followers would have to put him ahead of their parents and their children (v. 37). To all this he added the warning that a cross, the harsh symbol of execution, could be required of them (v. 38). Lest there be any misunderstanding of that, he told them that they could lose their lives for his sake (v. 39).

In this hard passage Jesus was quite specific in telling the disciples what his incarnation meant. He came to be God on earth. He demanded an allegiance above all their other allegiances. He was to have first place in everything. He could even promise that those who did give him top priority, thus losing their lives, would find new life (v. 39).

Finally, he instructed the disciples about simple hospitality and giving (vv. 40–42). The sword that he brought cut both ways. Not only would it cut his followers away from some of their former alliances, but it would bring new people into contact with them. In effect, he would give the apostles new families. They were to become a part of his family, and those who claimed a relationship with him would be hospitable to them. In turn, they were to receive others in his name. And they were to give such simple things as cups of water to fellow believers.

Christmas is upon us. Hallelujah! Let us not withhold any good thing from the people that he came to call unto himself.

Brother Andrew

I have always distrusted … people who blame the Communists for everything!

That may seem a strange thing for me to say, since to many people I am a symbol of resistance to the Communist governments of Eastern Europe. But it is true, nevertheless; I find it amazing the great variety of ills that some westerners manage to trace to the influence of Communism. I know people who see Communists lurking behind virtually all their troubles, from the prices of food in Paris to the failure of the corn crop in Kansas. A friend recently showed me an article in an American newspaper which declared that the change from Fahrenheit to Celsius in American thermometers is a diabolical Commie plot!

My very first trip to the United States, in fact, came at the invitation of an organization that was (unknown to me) totally obsessed with fighting communism. As I found when I got to their conference in a western state, these people had no idea what they were for; they only knew what they were against, and that was the Communists. They apparently thought, because of my reputation for smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, that I would give a red-hot speech condemning the Communists. When I declined to do so, they were very upset. So upset, in fact, that they dumped me right then and there, without even air fare to get home to Holland. I had to hole up in a hotel, with no money, until my wife could send me money to fly home. I had just enough money to buy a carton of yogurt each day, which I ate in my room, using the back of my toothbrush as a spoon! What an introduction to America!

David Adeney, an outstanding Christian leader in China who witnessed the takeover there by the Red Army, has said, “To paint communism in completely black colors and to fail to appreciate its very real achievements will only close the door to any meaningful communication of the Gospel.” I agree with that, and I think it is not at all constructive to spend all one’s time fighting communism as a political system per se. There are too many man-made systems which are cruel and evil to limit oneself to an attack on communism alone.

People somehow expect me to be a vehement anti-Communist, and I simply have never had the time nor the inclination to become a crusader against communism. I am not anti-Communist; I am pro-Christian. I am pro-people. God called me to take the Gospel to people, and whatever stands between them and me is my enemy.

But I must tell you that communism is hard at work in the Revolution in Africa. Moscow, Peking, and Havana all have their hands in the African pot right up to their elbows. The clearer we are on that critical point, the more clearly we can see what the stakes in the battle for Africa really are. The African crisis cannot be fully understood in detachment from the events in history which have led up to it. It is a part of a larger pattern of worldwide agitation and violence that is generated and inspired by the persistent fight of communism against the church.…

No other type of Communist involvement in Africa has so immediate and violent an effect on the battle for Africa as does the support of liberation movements and revolutionary fronts in various countries. The strategy is a simple one: throw money, arms, and support to one side of small wars, wherever they break out, help that side win, and demand reciprocal “friendship” when that group is firmly in power. On a continent where so many natives have legitimately and passionately fought for their freedom in the past thirty years, there is a fertile field for Communist infiltration. The rhetoric of communism mingles easily with the slogans of national liberation. It is only after the war is over that the “freedom fighter” discovers that his revolutionary comrade—whether Russian or Chinese—is himself a greedy, harsh slavemaster.

In Angola, Russia and Cuba threw their support behind the MPLA, and that faction has virtually eliminated all opposition in the country, though it represents only about 20 per cent of all Angolans.

In Southwest Africa, the liberation front is called SWAPO, and it too operates a constant guerrilla war, largely with Russian support.

Children in Tanzania come home from school singing a song they have been taught by nationalist teachers: “Kill your mother! Kill your father!” It is a hint of the breakdown of Tanzanian home life that has accompanied the pervasive Chinese influence in that country. Families are being forcibly moved into “resettlement areas” by the revolutionary government there, which has also brought tens of thousands of Chinese workers into the country.

In Mozambique, the Portuguese colonial regime was overwhelmed by the FRELIMO (Front for Liberation of Mozambique) revolutionary movement in 1975. FRELIMO began its fight twenty years ago with only two hundred and fifty men, against a well-equipped Portuguese army of forty thousand soldiers. Receiving constant infusions of money and arms from the Chinese and Russians, the movement eventually gained the support of the Mozambican masses, and moved from guerrilla warfare to outright control of the country. There is nothing wrong with nationalism in itself. There is nothing wrong with an Angolan or a Mozambican wishing his country to be governed by Angolans or Mozambicans rather than by Europeans in some remote capital. It is natural for a young black African to demand and strive for a nation that is governed by its own people. But too often in Africa it is not working out that way. Too often the Revolution has merely produced a change of slave masters, and not an elimination of slavery.

If a nationalistic revolution becomes an enemy of the church, if it cuts off a man’s access to God, if it opposes the free exercise of Christian worship and witness, then it is evil and it must be fought! However much we are inclined to sympathize with its hatred of imperialism, we cannot support its repression of the Gospel.

There is a great tendency for liberal white westerners—including many Christians—to be so enamored of the liberation movements in developing nations that they neglect to consider whether that movement is moving people further away from God. A regime that harasses and imprisons Christians is equally guilty, whether it does so in the name of black nationalism or the name of Marxist communism. The sad truth is that many liberation movements have sold their souls to the Revolution. In their understandable rage and frustration after years of antiblack suffering, they have too often unleashed their own horrors on the people whom they set out to save. Their legacy to the African continent too often has been to continue the tradition of violence and tragic savagery in a new and more brutal way.

Perhaps the earliest of these bloody local wars came in the Congo (before it was known by its present name of Zaire), as Belgian authorities withdrew, and Patrice Lumumba began to seize power. A United Nations document provided this look at Lumumba’s confidential instructions to heads of Congo’s provinces: “Terrorism is essential to subdue the population. Arrest all members of the opposition. Imprison the ministers, deputies, and senators. Do not spare them; revive the system of flogging. Inflict humiliation of the people thus arrested. For example, strip them in public, if possible in the presence of their wives and children. Those who do not succumb in prison should not be released for at least a year.” (The Western world responded to the bloodshed in the Congo by showing a cruel side of its own. The United Nations set up a detention camp in Katanga, and imprisoned thousands of Baluba tribesmen, most of whose only crime was to be members of the “wrong” tribe. Forty thousand civilians were jammed into a single camp. It became a ghetto, where no drainage system existed, and fifteen hundred tons of fecal matter accumulated. One thousand inmates died in the first three months.)

There is no monopoly on cruelty in Africa. No race, no political group can lift up hands which are clean of violence. It is a continent whose turbulent history seems to have elicited from whites and blacks, colonialists and revolutionaries, foreigners and natives the ugliest human qualities. It is impossible in modern Africa to take sides on the basis of absolute virtue. None seems to exist. Rather, the Christian responsibility is to demand of every government and movement that it provide its people a free opportunity to seek God and do the work of His Kingdom.