Page 6344 – Christianity Today (2024)

Many missionaries are convinced that the greatest opportunity for the Church of Jesus Christ today lies in Latin America. With population expected to soar well past the half-billion mark by 2000 A.D., Latin America may become the most populous and in many ways the most important segment of the Western Hemisphere. The evangelical community today numbers nearly 6.5 million and is growing rapidly. Persecution is always on the horizon, yet even countries like Colombia are ripe with opportunity. According to the 1958 National Catholic Almanac, “A controversial survey of conditions in Latin America by Fr. Albert J. Nevins in September, 1955, reported that 93 per cent of the millions of Latin Americans claimed to be Catholics but estimated that only about 10 per cent actually practice the faith. It declared that the (Roman Catholic) Church was strong in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Argentina; that it was standing still in Guatemala, Nicaraugua, El Salvador, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Peru and Uruguay, and that it was dying in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, rural Brazil, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Haiti.” As Father Nevins’ report indicates, nine in ten of those classed as Roman Catholic practice no religion. If they are not confronted by the Gospel, something else presumably will be imported to fill the vacuum.

In this Index all countries south of the Rio Grande are classified under “Latin America.” Separate attention is given to Brazil, not because of its linguistic uniqueness (Portuguese rather than Spanish) but because it affords a prime example of modern missionary opportunity. Brazil has the fastest-growing evangelical community in the world.

SPANISH-SPEAKING AMERICA

including Mexico, West Indies, Central America, South America

PORTUGUESE-SPEAKING AMERICA

Brazil

The United States and Canada are among today’s Protestant strongholds. They have become the chief manpower source of the world missionary movement. Today more than 26,000 evangelical and Protestant missionaries are supported around the world by American and Canadian Christians, compared with 12,597 from Europe, 847 from Australia-New Zealand, and 104 from the “younger churches.”

Although Protestantism has kept surprising pace with Roman Catholicism in North America, population growth in North America is not nearly as rapid as elsewhere in the world. By 2000 A.D. the U.S. and Canada may form only 4.7% of the world population. Today roughly one-third of the world is Christian (of all branches). By the end of the century, due to their slower growth, the Christian one-third is expected to drop to one-fifth.

Foreign missionary statistics in North America, as in Western Europe, reflect the fact that these lands are primarily sending areas. A Canadian missionary working in the United States would not be considered a foreign missionary; if in Mexico, he would be so considered here. Dr. Frank M. Price of the Missionary Research Library defines a “foreign” missionary as one who has left culture and people to labor in a new and strange environment. Hence this survey includes Mexico with Latin America rather than with North America. Western European and North American missionary statistics inevitably list only those sent out, rather than those received from other lands. When the Christian Church around the world fully realizes its missionary task, this situation is expected to change.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CANADA

(Seventh-Day Adventists and Assemblies of God missionary statistics are not included under NCC totals, although the latter lists them as “associated boards.”)

Europe, for centuries the cradle of Christianity, has now become in part a mission field itself. The proud continent first sparked the modern missionary movement, sent Carey and Schwartz to India, Livingstone to Africa and Morrison to China. Today many of its churches are hampered in their ministry—particularly to youth—by unfriendly and atheistic governments, and are hard put to stay alive. Hardly a year passes but some far-flung mission outpost, supported for decades by European Christians, comes under American or Canadian or Australian sponsorship. In western and northern Europe, where Jesus Christ is still freely preached, young men and women hear the call and the task force is moving out. But in East Germany, where the missionary movement was once the glory of the Lutheran Church, the stream of volunteers for Christ has been reduced to a trickle by the Communists.

As in the case of North America, the Western European task force is designated statistically by those “serving abroad” rather than those “in the field.” This arrangement does not imply that Europe and North America are not to be considered legitimate “mission fields.” It simply reflects the fact that missionaries from abroad, by and large, are not now working in these areas.

WESTERN EUROPE

EASTERN EUROPE AND SIBERIA

Communist controlled

Two facts stand out in a modern appraisal of the world missionary situation. The first is the demographic explosion—in simple terms, the expected multiplication of the earth’s population to more than 6 billion by the year 2000 A.D. The second is the decision of a large segment of the Christian Church to downgrade the foreign mission enterprise as such, and through agonizing reappraisal to redefine “mission” either as inter-church aid or as just about everything a church does through its total program.

THE BULGING MULTITUDES

The sudden astronomical leap in human population, particularly in under-developed areas of the earth, is due mainly to international control of disease. Antibiotics and other new and relatively inexpensive preventive health measures have lowered the traditional death rates. By 2000 A.D. quite conceivably 2 billion persons will be living in China, and another billion in India.

There are two ways in which Christians can interpret these figures. They can say that Christianity is going to be crowded into insignificance by the shape of things to come. Or they can say that the population increase presents a priceless new opportunity for spreading the Gospel, and call forthwith for new missionary strategy.

For a century and a half the Protestant missionary momentum has come almost entirely from Western Europe and North America. In one of the most heroic sagas of world history, thousands of young men and women left their homes and sailed the seven seas seeking to reach a lost world for God. On the fever-ridden shores of Africa their average life span a century ago was just four months; yet on they came, wave after wave, to build the Church of Jesus Christ.

THE MISSIONARY IMAGE

Today in some ecclesiastical councils the word is being passed that the missionary movement as such is finished. The missionary, we are told, is now regarded as a symbol of religious and cultural superiority, and as part of a sinister political scheme for re-establishing Western supremacy in erstwhile colonial areas. Therefore the Church has no choice but to destroy the missionary image. She proposes to do so by training the modern worker in technical and pedagogical skills, by making him an attaché to the indigenous church, and by ceasing to call him a missionary. No longer is he, by definition, a man sent from God with a message of salvation; instead, he is a “fraternal worker.” So the Great Commission is put in storage while the Church adopts the “buddy” system. Today the overseas “heroes” are not those who strive first and foremost to bring nationals into the Kingdom of Christ’s love, but social workers who teach contour farming. Not that contour farming is undesirable. But the Church of Christ seems not to have discovered a divine mandate for it until our century.

The World Missionary Index in this issue speaks for itself. Certain areas are already sealed off to the missionary impact, such as China and Eastern Europe. Others are threatening to close, such as Egypt, Sudan, Iran, and India. Others are opening, such as Nepal and the Amazon region of South America. In many countries the door is open, but no one knows for how long.

If population growth were the only criterion on which to base future missionary activity, the strategic areas could be easily pinpointed. According to the United Nations Department of Social Affairs, the burgeoning areas in the decades ahead will be the Caribbean, Central America, tropical South America, Africa, the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, Central South Asia, Southwest Asia, and East Asia (except for Japan). These areas, however, present quite different problems and opportunities.

Our survey establishes one fact clearly: now is no time for retrenchment in foreign missions. Any change in the mission situation, such as deeding properties to the indigenous churches, should be merely incidental to a great thrusting movement of evangelism into the very heart of the world’s uncommitted areas. We cannot afford ecclesiastical fiddling while the fires of superstition threaten to engulf tomorrow’s billions. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin reminds us that while the geographical dimension of the missionary task is changed, it is far from eliminated. Africa does not look nearly as dark from a jet airplane as it does from a dugout canoe. But as long as human beings exist on earth, just so long will the foreign missionary be needed. In one sense no country on earth stands in greater need of foreign missionaries than our own. We have much to absorb from the Christians of Africa and Asia. And they need us: not to run their compounds and hospitals or to dictate church policy, but to preach the truth as it is in Christ!

The world missionary situation then does call for a new missionary strategy: back to fundamentals! Every resource of the Church must be geared to meet the challenge of these next years. Missionaries are needed on six continents—not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands; and from every race and color. The stakes are the highest ever in our expanding universe. Christ is calling still, and who will answer? Foreign missionaries are as necessary as in apostolic days. Ours is no time to be concerned merely about the tender feelings of the younger churches. They are in this too! They need to recruit foreign missionaries as much as we do. We have a world to win! And “if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?”

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

In the New Testament the Christian missionary is synonymous with the Christian man. Strictly speaking the Christian mission is synonymous with evangelism. The missionary enterprise is the most important thing that has happened and is happening in history, because it is addressed to the profoundest problem in history, namely, the alienation of men from the living God.

The younger churches of Asia and Africa, as well as the “older” churches of the West, are today engaged in this mission. But for more than a century the Christian missionary enterprise was promulgated from its strategic position in the West. Men and women left their natural context in Europe and America for an unnatural and largely non-Christian context, under the leadership of God, with a view to winning men and areas of life to Christ.

Today no enterprise is so thwarted and threatened by forces all around it as the missionary venture. It has been pushed out of China, banned from the Soviet Union, is slowly being ejected from Africa, and its future is questionable in India. All over the world doors are closing to Christian missions as they have been traditionally understood.

The fact should sober us. Evidences are not lacking that God’s judgment has in some measure fallen upon the policies and practices of “Western mission.” The closed doors demand of us, first of all, a profound repentance and re-evaluation. Yet there is something thrilling here too. The fact of the closed doors actually throws open the door and the imperative of indigenous (“native”) mission. And while it apparently closes off Western mission, it does so only seemingly. Our responsibility has not terminated, for we as well as members of the overseas churches are united in the body of Christ. As parts of the same body we share a common responsibility for one another. We must not disown or ignore them, nor they us, in this hour of challenge; we need each other, and we need one another’s gifts. For the repentant Western missionary, closed doors should constitute a creative demand.

Perhaps too much is being said today about the “end” of mission from West to East, and even of the retiring of the term “mission.” Certainly the East is no longer understood only as a mission field but has itself become a mission center, whereas the West is now also a mission field. So long as Christ’s commission to the ends of the earth applies, the mandate of mission from one end of the earth to any other will pertain. So long as there is Gospel for the whole world, there will be mission in the whole world. And so long as the Missio Dei applies, we shall have the Missio Ecclesia.

But the precariousness of contemporary Western mission is difficult to exaggerate. For the first time in about a century, the Christian missionary enterprise has become almost insuperably difficult. When pioneer missionaries went out at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they died with fearful frequency due largely to the absence of antibiotics and modern medical knowledge. Nevertheless they went out to establish the Christian Church as she now is, coexistensive with the whole inhabited earth. Finally medicine caught up, and for about one hundred years mission has been relatively safer. It is not so any longer. Not inanimate nature but animate nations are rising up to strike us down. For the first time since the challenge of Mohammedanism in the eighth century, mission is faced with massive and sometimes organized opposition in the form of vibrant, awakened (and often positive) nationalism, virulent, raging communism, and incipient, omnipresent secularism. For the Westerner, there is no more insecure or perilous calling in the world today than to the Christian missionary enterprise. One may prepare himself for years in a language, move his family and earthly belongings to a foreign field, and then be summarily dismissed and ejected with no questions asked. Today (at least initially) the possession of a white face is often a decided handicap. The missionary enterprise offers a young man no earthly certainty, only uncertainties and insecurities.

One is reminded of Garibaldi’s classic and terse address to his troops on the eve of the French entry into Rome: “Let those who wish to continue the war come with me. I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provision. I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, and death.” Four thousand men followed Garibaldi that night. A greater than Garibaldi stands in our midst today, invisibly and imperiously, offering no more, asking no less. He offers only the provision of His presence (and “it is enough”!), and asks far more—a heart burning for the salvation of men and nations, and a mind ready to think.

That the missionary enterprise has entered a new day is abundantly evident. Because of the obedience of yesterday’s pioneer missionaries, the Church is planted today in almost every nation of the earth. Should a missionary ignore or intentionally bypass the already existing church in the land to which he goes, he displays bad faith not only towards his predecessors and contemporaries but towards the Holy Spirit who brought the church into existence. Today the emphasis rightly falls not upon the missionary and his labors but upon the Younger Churches and their life. As we hear so often, the missionary is no longer master and church builder but servant and church member. The peril in the well-known emphasis of “the new day” is that, in stressing the new “servanthood” of the missionary, it may appear to young men and women concerned for mission that their qualifications are significantly downgraded and demeaned. Such is far from being the case. The qualifications are greater—in humility and grace. The demands are higher—in flexibility and initiative. The Younger Churches are telling us today that the crying need from their overseas brothers is not quantity (more missionaries) but quality (better missionaries). Indeed, our time—the time of closed doors—calls for a quality of missionary commitment which really deserves the designation of statesmanship.

THE APOSTOLIC PROTOTYPE

The finest definition we have found of the character of missionary statesmanship comes from the pen of the prototype missionary statesman, the Apostle Paul. It is expressed in the opening verses of Paul’s classic, the Epistle to the Romans. The first seven verses constitute one long sentence in which Paul uses twice the little Greek preposition of purpose éis, meaning “unto.” This word “unto” is the key unlocking the meaning of missionary statesmanship, or its ancient semi-equivalent, apostleship. After his opening words, “Paul, slave of Christ, called to be an apostle” (important opening words!), we have the operative phrase, “separated unto the gospel of God” (which he proceeds to define), “… unto the obedience of faith among all the nations for his name’s sake.” Now there were two great “unto’s,” two great preoccupations in the Apostle’s life: the first was the gospel of God—the Word; and the second was the nations of men—the world.

Paul’s first preoccupation was the Gospel—the Word. He pored over it, he pondered it; and with his heart and soul, pen and voice, he pounded it out on the anvil of his time. The finished product of Paul’s separation unto the Gospel is preserved for us in some measure in his 13 New Testament Epistles which make up half our New Testament masterpieces of monumental thought.

But Paul was not separated unto the Gospel for its own sake. He was separated unto the Gospel, as he writes himself, “unto the obedience of faith among all the nations.” He was separated unto the Word for the sake of the world. The missionary statesman must be a man of both the Word and the world. He would know the Word like a scholar and the world like a Secretary of State. He must labor to be unrivaled in his appropriation of the Bible message, and be second to none in his alertness to the world situation. A missionary statesman must be both a gospel man and a global man, reverent and relevant, whose passion is the glory of the Name through the disciplining of the nations. The primary character of missionary statesmanship, then, may be provisionally defined as a deep separation unto the Word for the sake of the world.

ADDRESSING THE WORLD

Although missionary statesmanship demands an unparalleled alertness to the political, social, economic, intellectual, and spiritual vicissitudes of the world of men, its principal message is not to be drawn from that world. It is to be drawn from another source and applied to that world. The message of the missionary statesman must be no less than his principal preoccupation, the Word of God, which is the Gospel. And certainly the Gospel, is at least and at center the news that the one true God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, has intersected history in the person of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, just as he had promised in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Furthermore, this Son was a man of the lineage of David who slugged it out with the evil all his life up to the Cross, where by taking our sins upon himself, he forever maimed sin and killed death dead. Then by an unprecedented resurrection from the dead, he was designated the Son of God, and is now King of kings, Lord of lords, and actually lives as Sovereign in the hearts of every person who by faith has received his offer of salvation and his office of Lord. Those who know him by faith make up his holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and through her he is working out his purposes in the world. One day he shall return in glory to sit as Judge over the world, directing the secular and the fleshly to hell and the faithful and believing to heaven, and every knee shall bow in that day and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God, and then he himself shall give over his dignity to God the Father, so that God may be all in all, for ever.

The outline given above is the body of the Gospel. The heart of the Gospel is God’s gracious offer of fellowship and friendship with man, which means our acceptance before God, the forgiveness of every sin, and the very presence and power of God in the person of the Holy Spirit in his life. Such gospel benefits have been provided by the work of the crucified and living Christ, and we receive them by faith alone.

I stand in awe before this great Gospel. It requires more than a lifetime to plumb its depths, apply its healing, and proclaim its truth. Its message, its marvelous news, must be the principal and paramount burden of missionary statesmanship. To summarize, then, we understand the primary character of missionary statesmanship to be a separation unto the Word of God and the world of men, and the principal message of missionary statesmanship to be the Word of God, the Gospel.

THE DIVINE STRATEGY

We come now to the priority strategy of missionary statesmanship. Human strategy in a divine enterprise is a dangerous affair, for “His thoughts are not our thoughts.” One may become more concerned with human strategy than with the Spirit of God, whose purpose it is to develop strategy and to lead us in it. Nevertheless, God has seen fit to reveal to us in his Word his own priority pattern and strategy of mission.

It seems clear not only from the New Testament but also the Old that God’s major missionary strategy through the ages has been to reach the nations through their great cities. In Jonah, for example, which is the major missionary epistle of the Old Testament, one will notice that in calling his prophet, God stated three times, “go to Nineveh,” adding pointedly, “that great city” (1:1–2; 3:2–3; and cf. 4:11). If Assyria, the major world empire of mid-Old Testament times, was to be influenced for God, then her capital city of Nineveh was the strategic beachhead.

We have a further example of God’s missionary strategy in New Testament times. When the gospel witness was fully established in Jerusalem, God moved Paul to establish churches in the great cities of the Roman Empire, namely, in Ephesus, the key city of Asia Minor; in Philippi, the capital city of Macedonia; in Corinth, the commercial key to Greece; and to establish connection with the Christians in the city of Rome, the seat of the Roman Empire. Paul’s work was so successful that Roland Allen, in his Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s Or Ours, writes: “In little less than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of the (Roman) Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia. Before 47 A.D. there were no churches in these provinces; in 57 A.D., St. Paul could speak as if his work there were done.…” What was it that made Paul’s missionary work so extraordinarily successful? Allen points out in his opening chapter, “Strategic Centres,” that it was due partly to his being guided by certain principles in the selection of his places of work. Every major city in which Paul worked had four distinct features: it was a center of Roman administration, of Greek civilization, of Jewish influence; and of world commerce. In other words, here were centers of government, culture, religion, and business.

Paul’s plan was that these cities should become the “centers of light” for their whole province; that from these key cities the outlying territories and eventually the whole nation would be evangelized. Most cities in which Paul worked were cosmopolitan, not provincial, and as such were especially fitted to be centers for the dissemination of the world-wide Gospel. They were the crossroads of the Roman Empire.

There is, and always will be, an important place for rural, “bush,” and out-of-the-way mission. It has been the glory of the Christian Church that she has gone to regions where no one else dared or desired to traverse to bring the Gospel and its healing accompaniments. And God continues to call men and women to arduous pioneer work.

Yet the prime strategy, if Scripture is to give us a lead and the Apostle is correct, must lie with the regnant “centers of light,” the teeming and seemingly impenetrable metropolises from which the truth of the Gospel can radiate into all the corners of the province and nation. The cities must be “occupied for Christ.”

When we learn that less than one of every 100 persons walking the continent of Asia is a Christian, we know that something is wrong. When we hear from Dr. James Robinson of Harlem’s Church of the Master the sobering news that he saw more trained Christian workers on two mid-western American university campuses than in all of Asia, we sense again something is wrong. Indeed something is deeply wrong. But we know this Saving Fact: there is nothing wrong with God and his Gospel. God is not frustrated; nor is he dismayed. God is God. We may hope that the wrongs of our time may in some measure be righted as men who love this god and his Gospel, separate themselves unto his Word for the sake of his world, and plant themselves with resolution in the life of the churches, within the strategic centers of our time, as servants and statesmen of the most high God.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Part of the renaissance of the city of Pittsburgh has been the renaissance of the University of Pittsburgh under the dynamic and imaginative direction of Chancellor Litchfield. One of the nicest things at Pitt has been the creation of the “Book Center”—“it’s a rouser for a browser”—and one of the nicest things at the “Book Center” is the series of book reviews being presented every two weeks, reviews usually by members of the faculty conversant with the themes of the books, or, best of all, the occasions when the authors themselves appear to review their own books and lay themselves open to question and discussion. As visiting chaplain at Pitt this year I get invitations to the reviews and always resent anything in my schedule which makes it impossible to attend.

Just about a month ago we had a review by Robert Musser Brown of his new and first novel, Brother, Which Drummer. You would have to be a Thoreau enthusiast to catch the allusion in the title: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” Brown is an executive, a vice-president in Pittsburgh’s largest advertising agency. He understands the pressure and the pace of modern business, indeed, through his agency experiences he must understand many businesses. The problem of his novel is related to the pressures brought upon a man who is trying to live his moral life in immoral society, but beyond this moral problem he works on a distinctively Christian problem, namely, whether a man paced to his own drum beat, can, through the exercise of affirming and forgiving love, bring another man to listen with him and perhaps change his pace. It is a book about sin and redemption with the fundamental problem of whether a Christian way of doing things can be redemptive even in the moral ambiguities to which a man is exposed in modern business competition. I have no notion of reviewing this book, even though I heartily recommend it; for my purpose I shall call attention to several things which I think arc significant: I. In a modern novel (ultra-modern you may think at some points) the teaching of Jesus is given serious consideration in direct conversation covering about two pages; 2. The theme of the book is a Christian theme and thus requires, as many modern novels deny, some stance with regard to what is right and what is wrong and what the redemptive struggle requires; 3. The battle between good and evil is carried out in the arena where man is living, and where so many men are living today in the era of big business; 4. At least in this novel, and Brown will write some others, there is no effort to solve a man’s moral dilemmas by changing the economic system, as if the change in scenery would change the basic issues—Adam fell in paradise! 5. As a religious novel the book is not a namby-pamby saccharine effort in which unreal characters have unreal temptations and gain unimportant victories; the forces of evil are constant, universal, attractive, and always subtle, and the results of brutal choices are not always pretty and clean-cut; 6. The author is a very attractive man. Besides being a top-flight businessman he is, as the jacket blurb tells us, “an accomplished musician …” and among “his other interests, in addition to writing, he lists tennis, tropical fish, church work, and hiking.” Now what do you think of a vice-president and the author of a modern novel who lists “church work” as one of his interests!

My intention had been to treat Brown briefly in order to get at some wider generalities, but he sort of took me over in the above paragraphs the way he charmed me the day he reviewed his book. I am enchanted by what I think, or maybe wish, is happening to the novel, and maybe to the stage. It will have to happen, because there is no story to tell, really, unless the moral struggle is clearly drawn and squarely faced. This fact was made plain to me first in a book by Randall Stewart, American Literature and Christian Doctrine. Stewart is a free-lance writer for the Saturday Review, and was visiting professor at Vanderbilt University when his book came out in 1957. His thesis is that there is no great literature in the American tradition without great doctrine—God, Man, Sin, Redemption. He illustrates in his own way from such great novels as Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter. Another man who has written along the same line is Edmund Fuller of Kent School. His book is Man in Modern Fiction. Again the approach is Christian; there is no doctrine of man without a doctrine of God, and a story has no real plot without real straggle, and you can’t have a real strangle without a moral issue.

Our seminary librarian of former days, an amazingly widely-read woman, heard some of my effusions about Stewart and Fuller and guided me to Arnold Stein. The first book I read by Stein was his Heroic Knowledge, a profound and beautifully written study of Milton’s Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. That book led me to his former work, Answerable Style, a series of studies on Milton’s Paradise Lost in which the author, primarily from the standpoint of literary criticism, but inescapably aware of the moral issues, is showing how the style of Milton is answerable to the magnitude of his subject matter, but nevertheless possible only because of the religious magnitude of Milton himself. Arnold Stein is professor of English at the University of Washington. Read I lopper’s Spiritual Problems in Contemporary Literature, especially his essay by Denis de Rougemont in which, somewhat after the clue of Dorothy Sayers, he sees an understanding of the creative artist in our acceptance of the reality of the Trinity. You should get a whole hat-full of ideas from that one essay. And, of course, our friend C. S. Lewis has been at this a long time—not in his specific books on “religion”—in his literary criticism, The Allegory of Love, and Preface to Paradise Lost, to name two. Something good is happening.

Fuzzy Focus On Billy Graham

Billy Graham: Revivalist in a Secular Age, by William G. McLoughlin, Jr. (Ronald Press, 1960, 269 pp., $4.50), reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt.

When the fashionable poet Southey projected his biography of John Wesley, he sought out an elderly minister who had known the great man. “Sir,” commented the old minister, “thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.”

Author McLoughlin has staked his reputation on this book, the third in a series of studies of American evangelists. It extends the contemporary effort to reduce Christianity to a naturalistic expression of man’s efforts to adjust to his environment. A veiled contempt showed through both previous works, Modern Revivalism (a study of evangelists from Finney to Graham) and Billy Sunday Was His Real Name, which makes over Sunday as a kind of Elmer Gantry.

In the present work McLoughlin removes the veil, and the historian turns sociologist-hatchet man. Prominent persons must expect to be appraised critically, and Billy Graham has his measure of fallibilities and limitations. However, when a work that contains errors on nearly every page is sprinkled in addition with biased implications and faulty conjectures, and then put forth as a work of scholarship, something must be said. Science is the impartial quest for truth, not the indexing of prejudices.

There was good reason for McLoughlin not interviewing Billy Sunday before attempting to destroy him (he concluded that Sunday was a complete failure) since the evangelist died in 1935. But Graham is very much alive; yet he was not interviewed except once “briefly.” The first law of research is to go to the original sources; this McLoughlin ignored. Research was confined to attendance at a few Crusade metings at Harringay and Madison Square Garden; a visit to the Minneapolis headquarters of the Graham organization; talks with a few team members (not including Grady Wilson, Beavan, Barrows or Shea); and a vast amount of digging in newspaper files of cities where Graham preached years ago. Everything reported in newspapers and magazines was published as good scholarship, providing (it seems) it was derogatory to Graham.

There are misspellings, errors of description, incorrect dates and places. Yet McLoughlin does not merely claim to be an accurate reporter, he essays also to be a scholar; and in this realm he stands or falls. What are we to say of a statement such as: Graham “angered all Africans” when he refused to comment on the French A-bomb test? Is this objective research? What about the claim that crowds in America use Graham’s meetings as “self-flagellation” because of their opulence? Does this also apply in non-opulent India?

The author accepts Max Weber’s thesis equating the “Protestant ethic” with the “spirit of capitalism,” but apparently never heard of Robertson’s corrective which makes an equal case for the Roman Catholic ethic—to say nothing of Tawney’s Anglican ethic. He discusses theology as a lay historian without an experiential grasp of the terminology. By a facile rearrangement of history he lumps Whitefield, Frelinghuysen, Tennent, and Edwards as “quite different in theory and practice” from Wesley, Dwight, Taylor, Lyman Beecher, Finney, and Graham. Why? Because one group held that “there is little or nothing one could do to effect his own salvation,” while the other believed that “if he (the sinner) really wants to save himself (!) he can do it quickly and easily.”

On page 15 we are told Graham is an Arminian; on page 211 he is labeled a Calvinist. Again, the author assails evangelistic work in India as “a form of Christion imperialism” (p. 217), and yet we are told, “the Christian churches can never forsake their evangelistic function.”

Apart from such “double-think,” the author paints Graham as a narrow, rural, dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fundamentalist (he uses the latter word as a whip throughout), and also an intolerant fanatic (p. 215), a McCarthyite and an opponent of social reform. He is off course on every count. Furthermore, quotations illustrating the evangelist’s social and political views were taken almost entirely from broadcasts made during or before 1952, before the significant London Crusade, before Graham’s meetings with world leaders. Any allowance for growth is given grudgingly.

We are speciously advised as to what Graham “probably” thinks about men (e.g., Rauschenbusch) and issues (e.g., morals in non-Christian cultures). The author even speculates about the youthful Graham’s baseball batting habits. All good fun, but it is not scholarship. One complimentary reference to Graham in the book is unhedged: he is “honest!”

Who is McLoughlin and what is his mission? In another field, under better discipline, he might do effective work, for he shows some historical ability and insight. On the subject of revival he is over his depth and miserable, for he is forced to bandy words he cannot fathom. The well is deep.

What we really have here is not a book about Graham at all; we have the existential controversy of a man with his Creator. In his own way, McLoughlin tries to come to terms with God by drawing a psychograph of him. He aims to prove that Christian faith, even if true, is a mistake; salvation is a false option; and those who preach the Gospel are engaged in a vast deception. But God’s love is even vaster, and our hearts go out to Brother McLoughlin. We hope he will keep on going to Graham meetings. Who knows?

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

Science And Religion

The Natural Sciences and the Christian Message, by Aldert Van Der Zeil (T. S. Denison and Co., 1960, 259 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Edward John Carnell, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Fuller Theological Seminary.

This is a Lutheran sponsored book, though it defends nothing distinctively Lutheran. The author is Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His competence as a scientist is beyond dispute. He gently leads into his subject by a general definition of science (“a systematic investigation, interrelation and exposition of a certain field of human experience”). But before he is through, he escorts the reader into a dense jungle of technical symbols, a jungle that only an expert in science could hope to penetrate. His central argument is Barthian in substance: science and theology have nothing to do with each other, so why worry? “The Christian message and its systematic presentation, theology, are independent of science and thus cannot be supported by it or hampered by it.” If science should teach total evolution, a Christian should answer by witnessing to the faith-truth that God created the world.

While I envy this Barthian serenity, I suspect that sooner or later we must leave our castles of faith and engage scientists on the field of mutually accessible evidence. For example, when Freudians reconstruct the psyche on the analogy of natural determinism, I think a Christian must do a lot more than “witness to his faith.” Unless belief terminates in objective evidence, the witness of a Christian has no more claim on reality, and thus no more apologetical force, than the witness of a Hindu or a Moslem.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL

Archaeological Survey

Prophets, Idols and Diggers, by John Elder (Bobbs-Merrill, 1960, 240 pp., $5), is reviewed by G. Douglas Young, Trinity Theological Seminary.

Here is a well-illustrated survey of archaeological data that bears on the time between Genesis and Revelation. The author establishes well the manner in which the science of archaeology enables us to reconstruct the life and times of the Bible world as a backdrop against which we can see the biblical details in a life situation. There is an emphasis on the contribution of archaeological science to the evaluation of the Bible as an historical record. The whole is a constructive work by an author whose viewpoint is in sympathy with the biblical material he surveys. Some corrections must be noted. Among them are the following: It will not take 50 years to translate the Scroll finds (p. 145); and the Waters of Merom no longer exist (p. 165). It is very readable, up to date, and geared for the layman rather than the specialist by a missionary-author who has lived in Iran since 1923.

G. DOUGLAS YOUNG

Peter’S Significance

Sermons on Simon Peter, by Clovis G. Chappell (Abingdon, 1960, 128 pp., $2), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Minister, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Ga.

Peter played a leading role in the circle of the Twelve. Dr. Chappell undertakes to explain the significance of this Apostle for Christians today. The twelve studies throw the spotlight on the leading episodes in his career from his conversion to his latter days. The author holds to the idea that if a popularity contest were conducted even now, Peter would surely be selected as the best loved among the Apostles. The reason he gives is that Peter is so genuinely human.

For the special benefit of preachers, Dr. Chappell reminds his readers that Peter’s effectiveness was largely due to the fact that he spoke with compelling urgency. Says Chappell, “Peter was deadly in earnest. He believed in the importance of what he was saying. People have a way of listening to a man who is really in earnest.”

Dr. Chappell writes simply. It is not difficult to understand what he has to say. Each message is characterized by great plainness of speech. For years the author has excelled in lucid character sketches, and this latest volume, depicting Peter as a great human being and a great Christian, maintains the same high standards found in his earlier works.

The most valuable aspect of the book is the emphasis upon the power of the full-orbed Gospel of Christ to produce a strong and vigorous character.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

On Thessalonians

The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 1959, 274 pp., $4), is reviewed by Merrill C. Tenney, Dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College.

Dr. Leon Morris is already well known to the Christian world through numerous magazine articles and through his Tyndale Commentary on Thessalonians. This volume, which is the eighth to be published in the series of the New International New Testament Commentaries, is an outgrowth of the smaller volume, and deals more fully with the problems of the underlying text.

The first impression that one receives upon perusing it is that it is both thorough and readable. Dr. Morris’ presentation of the results of his study deals minutely with the grammatical meaning of the Greek text without being obscure or pedantic. Technical details are made lucid by clear explanation, and discussion of disputed points is generally relegated to footnotes where scholars may find them when needed. The main exposition of the commentary is comprehensible by any intelligent Bible student, and provides ready reference for the casual reader.

The author carefully weighs textual problems with a statement of evidence for all alternate renderings and with a reasoned judgment for his choice of reading. On disputed eschatological points, he states fairly the possible alternatives of interpretation. While he does not make his commentary a vehicle for controversy, he does state his own position so that readers may know where he stands, and then succeeds in maintaining a firm but amiable objectivity.

There is no equivocation, however, on theological issues. In discussing the allusion to Christ’s death in 1 Thessalonians 5:10, he says: “It is impossible to argue that the failure to mention the cross more often means that as yet Paul had no theology of the atonement.… The references to the kerygma throughout the New Testament show that the cross was the central element in the proclamation of the gospel to those outside” (p. 161). Doctrinally this commentary is thoroughly evangelical and reliable.

The candid and reverent attitude of Dr. Morris appears at its best in his discussion of the difficult passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12. He reviews completely all of the possible interpretations of “that which restraineth,” and finally says: “The plain fact is that Paul and his readers knew what he was talking about, and we do not.… It is best that we frankly acknowledge our ignorance.” He does dismiss as improbable the current interpretations that the “restrainer” is the Holy Spirit. According to him, “it is impossible to envisage Him as being ‘taken out of the way’ “(p. 228). He could have explained more fully the reason for the impossibility of this inference. God withdrew his spirit from Saul; why should He not do the same from a world that has persistently rejected him?

His references to other literature are carefully documented and up to date. This work should be useful not only in expounding the Thessalonian epistles but also in meeting the problems raised by advocates of neo-orthodoxy and of realized eschatology. To the evangelical theologian it affords strong exegetical support, and to the average Bible student a sane and constructive aid for his thinking.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Bible Ornithology

All the Birds of the Bible, by Alice Parmelee (Harper, 1959, 279 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John Leedy, Professor of Botany, Wheaton College (Illinois).

Authoritative, fascinating, profusely-illustrated in one volume, Alice Parmelee’s All the Birds of the Bible becomes a biblical ornithological Who’s Who.

The many never-before-told bird stories, so accurately, beautifully, often dramatically compounded with the spiritual message of Scripture passages, reveal in a new dimension the sweep of the entire biblical narrative … even “the clouds fly forth like birds.… He scatters the snow like birds flying down” (p. 158). Full of expert but not tedious or showy scientific asides, the book begins with Noah’s opening of the window of the ark and the launching of the raven, “the black dweller of the mountain crags” into the wind above “the floating wreckage of the flooded world” (pp. 54–55). From this dark beginning the reader is carried on multihued pinions from book to book to end with the exaltations of Revelation 4 and 5. “In the end as in the beginning God reigns.” … “Then the heavenly winged lion and the ox and the man and the flying eagle cried: ‘Amen’” (p. 266).

JOHN LEEDY

Position Of The Vatican

Vatican Diplomacy, by Robert A. Graham, S.J. (Princeton University Press, 1959, 442 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University.

Because of the political position of the United States, both domestically and internationally, the problem of the Vatican’s diplomacy is becoming of ever-increasing importance to Americans. Father Graham’s study of Vatican international relations should be of no little present interest. He writes in clear, concise English with few if any literary frills, and sets forth what he believes to be the rationale of the papacy’s position in the world of international diplomacy; and, what is of greatest moment, he does so in a way that though one may disagree one can understand him without any difficulty. The book, therefore, should be a significant one for Protestants.

Father Graham presents as his basic thesis the view that the pope enjoys a unique position in the field of international diplomacy, a fact demonstrated by the number of ambassadors representing even Protestant powers accredited to the Vatican. Such a position, he maintains, is perfectly correct diplomatically since the papacy, as a truly “sovereign” power, meets the requirements of being a proper participant in international diplomacy.

He then proceeds to present proofs of the pope’s sovereignty. One cannot enter into a detailed exposition of his argument, but in broad lines it is somewhat as follows. During the Middle Ages the rulers of Europe recognized the pope as a sovereign, and since that time many national governments have accepted his right to establish official diplomatic relations with them. The fact, however, would not necessarily establish the papacy’s claim to diplomatic recognition. Rather, it is derived from the pope’s position as head of the Roman Catholic church. “Ultimately, his authority is merely a function of the Church’s own authority” (p. 215). He is the sovereign over all Roman Catholics wherever they may be, so that in each country there is a “concurrence of two jurisdictions.” “The state deals with a religious authority located outside its territory, concerning institutions and persons who, civilly are within its jurisdiction” (p. 248). Thus the pope is freely sovereign in the ecclesiastical sphere over all Roman Catholics whatever their political allegiance.

It should be perfectly clear what Father Graham is at pains to emphasize repeatedly: the pope claims recognition as a sovereign, not by virtue of his sovereignty over Vatican City, but by virtue of his sovereignty over the Roman Catholic church. Such a position would seem to destroy the arguments of some Protestants who favor diplomatic relations with the Vatican on the ground that the pope is a political ruler. He claims recognition as a sovereign because he is lord over the consciences of the faithful (p. 395). Father Graham holds that this is the same position held by all other religions vis a vis the state. The uniqueness of the papacy rests in the fact that the earthly source of authority is outside all national sovereignty.

The argument sounds logical and to a considerable extent reasonable. One difficulty about it is, however, that Father Graham does not liken the claims of the papacy to diplomatic recognition with its assertion of superiority over all other sovereignties. Only once does he refer to it and then when quoting a letter of Pope Pius XI who spoke of “the absolute superiority of the church” over the sovereignty of the state. This doctrine of papal universal lordship, which goes back deep into the Middle Ages, was stated most clearly and concretely by Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302). Thus the pope, an earthly though “spiritual” sovereign, would seem to make first claims on the faithful’s allegiance. This very fundamental aspect of the pope’s international position Father Graham has largely ignored.

Another matter which he might have discussed in order to make the issue perfectly clear is the church of Rome’s claim to be the sole church of Christ to the exclusion of all other bodies. This is implied in the Roman church’s claim to be the one “perfect society” which deals with that other “perfect society” known as the state. By the assumption of this uniqueness of the position of the Roman church, one may easily see how the Vatican on its own terms not only may but must use its diplomatic position to forward Roman Catholic projects by political as well as ordinary ecclesiastical means, if possible, to the exclusion of all other religious groups. Thus Vatican diplomacy can be a means of posing a serious threat to religious freedom whether government regards the pope as a ruler of equal status or as the first object of its allegiance.

Two chapters of this work are devoted to Vatican relations with the United States and the Soviet Union. Little or nothing is said about the papacy’s dealings with Falangist Spain or Nazi Germany. One cannot but feel that a study of Vatican relations with these two countries might have shed even more light on the subject. But Father Graham has perhaps set forth Rome’s position with sufficient precision, if we link it with her doctrine of the church, to show rather clearly the implications, both for political states and the Protestant churches, of the diplomatic claims of the papacy,

W. STANFORD REID

Dynamics Of Communism

Christianity and Communism Today, by John C. Bennett (Association Press, 1960, 168 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

The question, how the Christian ought to view communism, has for 40 years been a thorny one. One admires the courage of any writer who seeks to come to grips with the problem, since no writing on the subject can possibly please everyone. Dr. Bennett has this year offered a revision of his volume, Christianity and Communism, first published in 1948. The revision seeks to view the scene in the light of the events of the past decade, particularly in terms of the death of Stalin and the changes it may have made in the Soviet Russia, and in the light of the communizing of China.

The volume accepts as given the proposition that we will need to live for a long time in a world in which communism is a powerful factor in the lives of men. Dr. Bennett seeks to interpret for us the dynamics of the Communist movement and the inner workings of the minds of its leaders, particularly the fears which are such potent factors with them. In the light of this, our author seeks to outline what he considers to be a realistic national policy with reference to both Russia and China.

The question which perplexes all of us is whether the Western World may not need to reckon for a long time to come with a system whose seeming flexibilities and whose temporary smiles may not issue completely from tactical considerations—a system whose over-all strategy cannot change without destroying the system itself. Dr. Bennett is to be commended for his willingness to let optimism spring eternally in the breast. Certainly none of us would wish to become enmeshed in a total cynicism concerning a movement that embraces a third of the human race. At the same time, one cannot help wondering whether the major blunders which the West has made with respect to the Communist world have not been made upon the basis of a too-great trust that the Soviet masters, if treated as respectable human beings, would respond in decency and honor. The reply of the enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe might be instructive to us.

Dr. Bennett proposes that we attempt a new beginning with the Soviet masters: that we declare a “statute of limitations” with respect to their crimes against humanity. Certainly our Lord did prescribe a “seventy-times-seven” forgiveness toward enemies. But can such a crime as Hungary, and as China’s rape of Tibet be wiped from the slate with one stroke of forgetfulness? Is there hope for a new beginning with such unutterable boors as now make the public pronouncements for both Soviet Russia and China. So long as these lands maintain the stance of the total destruction of the non-Communist world, some means of self-defense may need to be taken against them, as against any predator.

The author has attempted to deal with a bafflingly complex question. He seeks to be fair in his attitude toward the Communist world. Some may feel that in so doing, he sells the free world a bit short and tends to confuse tactics with strategy at some points—a thing which is easy for any of us to do. He feels constrained to maintain the innocence of those who joined Communist “front” organizations in the “thirties,” and has a good deal of confidence in an inclusive United Nations. Whether he would alter some paragraphs in the light of Khrushchev’s brusque termination of the Summit Conference and his subsequent abuse of the free world, is a question. The book has merit as a stimulant to thought. It would be improved by an index.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Counselors’ Guide

The Psychology of Counseling, by Clyde M. Narramore (Zondervan, 1960, 303 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain, Christian Sanatorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

This is primarily a “How to” book; a better title would be “The Technique of Counseling.” It was “written to meet the needs of ministers and other Christian counselors.” The book has three parts, the first constituting the main body of the book and dealing with “Basic Concepts and Techniques of Counseling.” Part two discusses special areas of counseling, namely, teen-agers, the emotionally ill, marriage, and sex. The third part is an appendix on the use of Scripture, a glossary, and a list of books and recordings.

The book’s chief virtue is its simplicity. It is written in nontechnical language, the chapters are short, and the main points are numbered and italicized. Like other “How to” books, this one is dogmatic rather than scholarly. It does not discuss problems in the field of Christianity and psychology or psychiatry, it makes practically no reference to other works either in the body or footnotes, it has no bibliography other than a suggested list in the appendix of which a third are the author’s own works, and it has no index. The author’s evangelical faith is evident throughout.

THEODORE J. JANSMA

Anabaptist Ethic

The Way of the Cross in Human Relations, by Guy Franklin Hershberger (Herald Press, 1958, 424 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Arthur H. De Kruyter, Pastor of the Western Springs Christian Reformed Church, Western Springs, Illinois.

The Anabaptist ethic has an able apologist in Dr. Guy Hershberger, professor of history and sociology at Goshen College. This book is the latest addition to an impressive list of titles which have come from his pen since 1940.

The first half of the book deals with the problem of war. After a chapter on “Foundations,” the author treats what he calls the dualistic ethic of the historic branches of the Christian church: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, and fundamentalism. In each case an attempt is made to show that resistance through war is a second wrong seeking to right the first sin of self-interest and greed. Each system of theology fails to answer with consistency the basic ethical need of the world community.

There is only one right answer and there has been only one consistent approach to the problem, and that is the “way of the cross” found in the Anabaptist Christian ethic. Whether the abuse comes from a child, a neighbor, or a nation, there is only one true answer for it. The section closes with a series of examples of the “cross” ethic in action.

The second half of the volume probes the problems of establishing a Christian economic system (the relation of piety to riches), and points to a better foundation for all social relations. The discussion on race relations was very general and safe and rather disappointing in view of the author’s previously definitive stand on the issues treated.

ARTHUR H. DE KRUYTER

Twenty Years After

A Survey of Religious Education, by Price, Chapman, Carpenter and Yarborough (Ronald Press, 1959, 466 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Charles G. Schauffele, Professor of Christian Education, Gordon College.

For a teacher in the north to review a Southern Baptist textbook is like asking a proper Bostonian what he thinks of grits and gravy. Like the Boston baked bean, there is plenty of substance to it. One encounters no naturalism here. “Public education is under the direction of the state and is therefore secular in nature, while religious education is under the control of the church … and is religious and moral” (p. 9). The revision did not have to go from liberalism of two decades ago to neo-orthodoxy in its pilgrimage of relativity, but remains constant in its devotion to evangelical convictions. From Price’s section on “Philosophy” to Chapman’s treatment of “Principles,” there is expressed the dynamism of epistemology which posits knowledge upon revelation rather than experience. Here are found those basics of Christian education which have made this denomination a leader in the field. If one is ever curious as to why there are more men directors of religious education in local Southern Baptist churches, this book will give the reason.

The local pastor interested in more than just his responsibilities in the pulpit will find the volume illustrating the best in Christian education. It stands beside another popular revision, Murch’s Christian Education in the Local Church. What the latter has been to schools and churches in the north, the present book has been in the south.

A Survey of Religious Education is a solid refresher course for the workers in any church, north or south!

CHARLES G. SCHAUFFELE

Sex In History

Sexual Relation in Christian Thought, by Derrick Sherwin Bailey (Harper, 1959, 312 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by F. F. Bruce, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England.

Dr. Bailey, who is Study Secretary of the Moral Welfare Council of the Church of England, has devoted special attention to the theology of sex, love and marriage, and has written a number of highly appreciated works in this field. The present work (published in Great Britain under the title The Man-Woman Relation in Christian Thought) takes the form of a historical survey of the subject in Christian thought from the teaching of Jesus to our own day.

Few subjects, Dr. Bailey points out, have exercised a more potent influence on the pattern of Western culture than the traditional teaching of the Church about sex; yet he has failed to find a systematic and sufficiently detailed account of the development of this teaching. Accordingly, he has set himself to make good this deficiency; the resultant book is a first-rate piece of research, interestingly written, and worthy to be recommended with confidence to all students of the subject.

It is good at an early stage in the book to see the appreciative evaluation of Paul’s “profound and realistic treatment of coitus and its significance in the first epistle to the Corinthians,” which “displays a psychological insight into human sexuality which is altogether exceptional by first-century standards” (pp. 9 f.). The unfortunate trend so evident in most patristic literature is examined in some detail: “while there was no denial that procreation is good in itself, there was nevertheless a general disposition to deplore the means appointed by the Creator to that end” (p. 45). Dr. Bailey points out that the oriental-hellenistic dualism in which the age was steeped infected Christian thought in this particular regard even when its heretical influence in other directions was condemned by the Church; besides, it can hardly be denied that the attitude of a number of the Fathers towards sex was adversely affected by their preconversion experiences.

There follow chapters on the thought of the medieval Church in the West, on the Reformation and seventeenth-century Anglicanism, and on the state of the tradition today. Among the factors which have influenced contemporary Christian thinking about sexual relation a high place is given to Martin Buber’s I and Thou, “which has, among many other things, profoundly illuminated our understanding of the metaphysical aspects of sexual love and marriage” (p. 247). Dr. Bailey pays attention also to the implications of biblical criticism, especially with regard to the Genesis narratives of the origin of mankind and our Lord’s words on marriage and divorce; and considers the significance of the inclusion of the Song of Songs in the canon of Scripture. His final chapter, “Towards a Theology of Sex,” concludes with an affirmation of the abiding validity of the analogy between marital love and the union of Christ with the Church, even if the husband be no longer regarded as the “head” of the wife: “rejection of the wife’s subordination does not invalidate the analogy, but simply requires a revision of the terms in which its ethical and personal implications are expressed” (p. 303). From which it will be seen that this important work does not shrink from challenging controversy.

F. F. BRUCE

Basic Stewardship

Stewardship in Contemporary Theology, edited by T. K. Thompson (Association Press, 1960, 251 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Fred L. Fisher, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

Jacket blurbs on newly published books are usually misleading—they often promise more than the book delivers. Not so this one. It says: “from a study of Old and New Testaments, a survey of stewardship in the history of the church, and a fresh look at current practices and problems—new understanding for the Christian and his church.”

The book consists of essays on stewardship principles and practice growing out of a conference sponsored by the National Council of Churches.

Each essay is written by a specialist. The book contains three biblical studies, one theological discussion, one historical study, and four studies of current practice. Naturally, there are variations in the quality of the essays. The chapters on the history of stewardship and the one of Paul’s philosophy are especially rewarding.

This is a book which will stimulate your thinking on basic principles which underlie the practice of stewardship.

FRED L. FISHER

Ecumenical Trends

The Ecumenical Era in Church and Society, edited by Edward J. Jurji (Macmillan, 1959, 238 pp., $5), reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History at Catawba College.

This symposium in honor of Dr. John A. Mackay seeks to present the role and challenge of the ecumenical church in an ecumenical society. In the opinion of the reviewer, Dr. Mackay may well regard its dedication to him as a somewhat dubious honor. While there are a few good chapters in Part II, notably those dealing with the challenge to Protestantism in Latin America by G. Baez-Camargo, and renascent religions and religion in India by Paul David Devanadan, the work as a whole reveals the theological bankruptcy and the declining zeal of the ecumenical movement. Its theological weaknesses are startlingly apparent at the outset in George Hendry’s chapter on the theological context of the church today, in which he would seem to conclude that the most important question in theology today is the theory concerning the nature of the church.

Emile Cailliet’s attempt to set forth the role of the church in contemporary culture is quite disappointing in that he presents no theological foundations by which she may fulfill her cultural mission. But the crucial weakness of the ecumenical movement becomes even more apparent in Eugene Carson Blake’s chapter on the American church and the ecumenical mission. He insists that Protestantism will not be able to meet the challenge of our time unless it develops a world base for its world-wide mission, and such a base is not to be found in the historic theology of the Reformers (p. 76). It is to be found in the World Council of Churches and a theology which includes little more than an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Although Dr. Blake acknowledges the danger of seeking co-operation between churches on the basis of the lowest common doctrinal denominator, he actually has little more to offer as an ecumenical theology.

The concluding section on the communication of the Christian message fails to resolve any of the dilemmas raised in the preceding discussions.

It is clear that the Church must proclaim her message, but nowhere is her content clearly suited. There is no emphasis on the biblical doctrine of sin and redemption, justification by faith, and salvation by faith alone. Underlying much of the thinking of the book is an enervating existentialist approach that talks of estrangement rather than sin, and encounter rather than regeneration.

An ecumenical movement that rests upon the theology of this symposium has not long to live and little to offer to men who are dying in their sins.

C. GREGG SINGER

Orienting Buber

Martin Buber, by Malcolm L. Diamond (Oxford, 1960, 240 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Every student of contemporary theological thought is bound to ask such questions as, How is it that Buber being a Jew has so many dealings with us who are Christians? What does he really think of Jesus and Paul, and what do his Jewish brethren think of him? Flow did he come to embrace the “philosophy of dialogue” so commandingly stated in his I and Thou? These and many more interesting questions about this remarkable Jewish thinker are ably discussed and answered by Professor Diamond. The book is valuable not only because it helps a student to orient Buber’s place in the debate between Judaism and Christianity, but also for the sympathetic, careful, and well-documented synthesis of Buber’s thought. Buber’s mind has many facets, and it is no mean task to reduce these insights to a unity of brief compass. For these reasons the book is rewarding.

As a committed Christian, the reviewer read the book with an increased sense of the tragedy of the man. Buber has refused Paul’s interpretation of Jesus and substituted that of Albert Schweitzer and thereby for all practical purposes sided with the Pharisees against our Lord. He can therefore never have a really significant word for the Church, and yet at the same time without Jesus he can make no final sense for Judaism either, as is evidenced by the fact that he has had less influence on the thinking of his own people than on that of Christian theologians. These and lesser matters are brought into clear focus by this work, which is recommended to all students interested in the existentialist contribution to Christian theology.

PAUL K. JEWETT

Distinctively Lutheran

Worship: A Study of Corporate Devotion, by Luther D. Reed (Muhlenburg Press, 1959, 437 pp., $6.75), is reviewed by James C. Eelman, Professor of Practical Theology, New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

Dr. Luther D. Reed is president emeritus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has been seriously engaged in liturgical studies for the past 50 years. Worship may be considered as his greatest contribution to liturgical study in which he has been so vitally interested during his long ministry in the Lutheran Church.

This book is a study in the principles and forms of corporate worship but also contains numerous practical helps for the use of worship materials. It is, however, a distinctively Lutheran work which concerns itself primarily with the liturgy and hymnal of that ecclesiastical body.

The book is divided into four main sections: “The Spirit of Worship,” “The Form and Content of Worship,” “The Ministry of Music,” and “Leadership.” The first section is a short exposition on the nature of worship as “an experience and an institution.” The remainder of the book is mainly concerned to assist Lutherans in the use of their new Service Book and Hymnal in the worship of God. The section on the ministry of music is very helpful and shows that the author has a sensitive appreciation of the place which music has in the worship of God.

The fact that Dr. Reed has written primarily for the Lutherans does not rob the book of value for other Protestant communions. It is regrettable, however, that the book’s preoccupation with the Lutheran Church led the author to make some questionable statements about other communions of the Reformation.

For example, a careful comparative study of Luther and Calvin’s liturgical efforts seems to indicate that in spite of what the author says, Calvin preserved the ancient structure of liturgy better than Luther did. That a later “Calvinism” has at times shown nonliturgical tendencies is, of course, true of many other Protestant denominations.

JAMES C. EELMAN

Book Briefs

A Treasury of Books for Bible Study, by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1960, 289 pp., $3.95)—Hundreds of biblical libraries have been built around Dr. Smith’s biographical suggestions. In this mature work—confined to church history, theology and biblical interpretation—he directs the Bible student to the volumes essential for such a library. A work of great value.

Preaching, Confession, The Lord’s Supper, by Walter Luthi and Eduard Thumeysen (John Knox Press, 1960, 121 pp., $2.50)—A book by two Swiss theologians dealing with three areas in the life of the church. Gives insight into the strengths and weaknesses of European Protestantism.

Predestination and Other Papers, by Pierre Maury (John Knox Press, 1960, 109 pp., $2.50)—A French theologian’s bold interpretation of the central doctrine of Calvinism which will scarcely satisfy the orthodox, but will stimulate constructive thought.

The Concept of Newness in the New Testament, by Roy A. Harrisville (Augsburg, 1960, 126 pp., $1.95)—An interpretative study of New Testament ideas based on (1) the words and deeds of Christ in the synoptic gospels, (2) the kerygma of the New Testament and (3) Old Testament background.

Toward World Literacy, by Frank C. and Robert S. Laubach (Syracuse University Press, 1960, 335 pp., $4.75)—A sound and practical training volume which admirably implements the elder Laubach’s world-wide literacy program now so effective in 96 countries and 274 languages.

More than two dozen important U. S. denominational bodies held general conventions during the month of June. The following reports summarize key developments (see also CHRISTIANITY TODAY for July 4, 1960, and subsequent issues):

At Kansas City, Missouri—More than 16,000 rank-and-file ministers and lay members of the Church of the Nazarene joined 660 official delegates to the 15th quadrennial assembly at the Municipal Auditorium. Together they constituted the largest assembly of Nazarenes in the church’s 52-year history.

For several days prior to the June 19–24 assembly, there were conventions of Nazarene young people, Sunday Schools, and missionary organizations in the city where denominational headquarters are located.

Though most visiting Nazarenes came from the United States, 25 countries were represented.

General Secretary S. T. Ludwig reported that 1,200 new churches had been established during the last decade to bring the total number of local congregations to 4,696 and membership to 311,300. During the quadrennium 1956–60, 119,000 new enrollments were made in Sunday School, bringing the total to 700,500, according to Dr. A. F. Harper, secretary of the Sunday School Department. Treasurer John L. Stockton reported that per capita giving averaged $135 per annum and that total giving for the four year period amounted to $14,648,245. Dr. Remiss Rehfeldt, retiring secretary of the Foreign Missions Department, said there were 50,350 Nazarenes in 42 world areas outside the United States where 489 missionaries are at work. Nearly $2 million was spent for foreign missions in the year 1958–59. New areas entered during the past quadrennium included Formosa, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Brazil.

The Church of the Nazarene was founded at Pilot Point, Texas, on October 13, 1908, with the merger of several independent holiness groups. There were initially 228 churches with 10,414 members. Since then, ten smaller denominations have joined the Nazarenes and growth by individual accessions has been rapid.

The church is governed by general superintendents elected at each quadrennial gathering from among the 660 official delegates from the 76 church districts. The 15th assembly reelected Hugh Benner, Hardy C. Powers, D. I. Vanderpool, G. B. Williamson and Samuel Young, and recognized the growth of the church by electing a sixth, Dr. V. H. Lewis, who has been superintendent of the Department of Evangelism.

Speaking for the superintendents in their annual report, Young said: “We do not claim to be the Church of Christ in any exclusive sense, but we would identify ourselves as a vital part of His great church and face our responsibilities. We are never free to ignore the disciplines of holy living. There is no divine strength without obedience to the divine will.”

Young challenged the church to obtain 800 new local congregations, 70,000 new members, 100 new missionaries, 150,000 new Sunday School pupils and $18,000,000 for missions and general expenses in the next four years.

At Kansas City, Kansas—Some 1,400 delegates to the annual meeting of the American Baptist Association agreed to “use our influence in every way honorably posible” to prevent a Roman Catholic from becoming president.

A unanimously-adopted resolution described the Catholic church as “an international religious-political organization whose religious and political dogmas and concepts are in absolute conflict with our United States constitutional concepts of separation of Church and State and religious freedom.”

The ABA is made up of some 3,000 churches, mainly in the South and Southwest, with a combined membership of 600,000. It is not related to the much larger American Baptist Convention.

ABA President Hoyt Chastain told delegates that “no man can be loyal to the United States and the Vatican at the same time.”

“Baptists have never opposed a man for president because of his religion,” he said. “But Catholicism is more than a religion. The Vatican is a political state.”

At Winona Lake, Indiana—The centenary General Conference of the Free Methodist Church of North America voted to organize overseas counterparts and an international fellowship. Delegates to the 25th quadrennial conference also endorsed the action of the Free Methodist Board of Missions to sever relations with the National Council of Churches’ Division of Foreign Missions and approved the use of service agencies of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (a resolution supporting the board’s move cited theological differences and variant social, economic and political views expressed in pronouncements by the NCC and its units not in harmony with the denomination’s views).

In establishing the new international structure, delegates authorized general conferences for Egypt, where there are some 5,000 Free Methodists, and for Japan, where there are about 3,000. Others will be authorized as “maturity requirements” are met. All will be bound together under the newly-organized World Fellowship of Free Methodist Churches.

Some 6,000 delegates and guests witnessed the Winona Lake conference. One of the highlights was an address by Dr. Glenn L. Archer, executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United and a third-generation Free-Methodist. Another was the groundbreaking ceremony for a $150,000 office building for the Free Methodist publishing house.

By a narrow margin, delegates voted down a resolution that would have put the denomination on record as favoring the abolition of capital, punishment. They also defeated (1) a proposal providing that certain general officers be appointed instead of elected and (2) a plan for easing restrictions against divorced persons.

The Free Methodist Church of North America, with a current membership of about 55,000, was officially organized at Pekin, New York, in August, 1860. The founding was commemorated last month with the unveiling of an eight-foot stone shaft bearing a bronze memorial plate and located near the apple orchard where the initial organizational meeting was held.

At Boston—Conservative Baptists, meeting in historic Boston’s Statler-Hilton Hotel for their 17th annual fellowship, found the finest spirit of unanimity and harmony since the movement’s founding. Unity has always been found in the raison d’etre of the Conservative Baptist Association, viz. world missions. Interest in the structure of the fellowship has been minimal, while attention is focussed upon reaching the world with the Gospel, and upon the building of new churches.

In thankful restrospect, the Foreign Mission Society reported a total income of more than $2 million in the past fiscal year. It required just seven years to double receipts from the $ 1 million mark. On the field and under appointment are 395 missionaries, and a new station in Borneo is soon to be opened. The Home Mission Society celebrated its 10th anniversary with a pictorial report of its 18 fields on the North American continent and surrounding islands, staffed by 92 missionaries. The Home Mission budget for 1960 exceeds $550,000.

The Conservative Baptist Association of America accepted 81 churches applying for affiliation, including 52 newly-organized churches. In the past 10 years the CBA has seen 690 new churches organized. The total Conservative Baptist constituency now stands at 1,321 churches with 300,000 members, and with a Sunday School constituency exceeding 325,000.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, keynoted the fellowship with a message on “Historic Evangelical Christianity Confronting Roman Catholicism.” Awareness of the contemporary issues prompted a resolution concerning the separation of Church and State. Cherishing their “inalienable right to a conscience absolutely uncoerced,” the Conservative Baptists affirmed their “unalterable devotion” to this principle. Noting that the separation of Church and State is “repudiated and rejected by the official doctrine and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church,” and that there could be “no assurance that a faithful Roman Catholic who became president of our nation could impartially defend these basic freedoms of the United States while remaining true to his religion,” the resolution urged the “American political parties not to nominate … any candidate for President or Vice-President of our country whose religious affiliation … conflicts with the separation of Church and State.” Copies of the resolution were sent to the national chairmen of both Democratic and Republican parties.

The increasing intensity of the subversive strategy of world communism was reflected in other resolutions adopted. Delegates unanimously resolved to “commend our Congressional committees, especially the House Committee on Un-American Activities, for their watchfulness over our national security and their dedication to a thankless but positively necessary task.” The conclave assured committee members of their prayers. It was further resolved to express “distress at the infiltration of communistic ideology in the National Council of Churches and in the World Council of Churches.”

Other social issues resulted in resolutions (1) encouraging the support of a bill (H.R. 11454) sponsored by Representative James Oliver to establish a Commission on Noxious Printed and Pictured Material and (2) declaring approval of Senator J. Strom Thurmond’s bill (S. 1432) to prohibit consumption of alcoholic beverages aboard commercial planes.

Dr. Vernon C. Grounds, president of the Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, defended the fellowship against charges of “splinter movement.” Grounds emphasized the divisive character of Jesus. He indicated that it would be impossible never to be divisive, if one desired to remain wholeheartedly loyal to Christ. Later, he warned the Conservative Baptists against veering sharply to the right into an unbiblical exclusivism in areas of eschatology, evangelism, and other associations.

An eschatological debate, however, did wander through the woods of parliamentary briars and tangles. Inclusion of the word “pre-millennial” into the statements of faith of both foreign and home mission societies failed, inasmuch as a unanimous vote was necessary to alter the doctrinal statements. Many delegates felt that fellowship ought not to be denied to those outside the scope of pre-millennialism, although the present constituency is almost totally pre-millennial. Later, legal technicalities served to allow the word “pre-millennial” to be inserted into the statement of purpose of the foreign society, so that only pre-millennial missionaries may be appointed under that board.

At Chicago—Plans for a “Decade of Dedication” were endorsed by delegates to the 75th annual meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. Part of the program calls for a unified budget to inspire “greater devotion to the cause of Christ through a stewardship of means, witnessing, and service.” Another phase includes a goal of $5,000,000 or more for an investment fund for new churches and other denominational construction projects.

The Covenant church owns and operates 10 homes for the aged, two hospitals, two children’s homes and two homes for sailors. North American membership now totals nearly 60,000 in 536 churches.

President Clarence A. Nelson was presented with Sweden’s Royal Order of the North Star, Knights Commander degree for “official services as well as scientific, literary, learned and useful work.” Representing King Gustaf VI Adolf was the Rev. Gösta Nicklasson, president of the Swedish Covenant Church.

The Evangelical Covenant Church of America perpetuates a free church movement within the Swedish state Lutheran church. In early years the group was known as the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant church and later as the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church of America.

At Grand Rapids, Michigan—Matters of world concern occupied the interest of delegates to the annual Synod of the Christian Reformed Church. The body addressed itself to questions of missions, racial tensions, world-wide disaster relief, and the church’s attitude toward war. For the rest, it was a quiet session compared to last year’s gathering, which was stirred by sharp differences on theological and doctrinal questions.

Sensitivity to South African apartheid reflected itself in a communication addressed to Reformed sister church bodies there. The message called to mind and reaffirmed decisions of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod of 1958, held in South Africa, which stressed the church’s duty to avoid attitudes leading to estrangement of races and asserted the essential unity of believers in Christ, as well as the need for public enlightenment through teaching and preaching, and a church alert to biblical evaluation of government policy. The action indicated that Christian Reformed mission efforts were being hampered by identification in the public mind with Reformed churches and the segregation policies in South Africa.

The synod moved to establish a world-wide service committee to administer relief funds in disaster and distress areas. Heretofore, relief funds for flood, earthquake and refugee situations have been collected and distributed by special deacons’ committees, but the synod felt that the time had come for an official committee to give world-wide witness to the church’s expression of Christian mercy.

A study committee to re-evaluate the church position on modern warfare will undertake to examine previous synodical statements on the Christian attitude toward war in the light of a set of resolutions adopted by the Reformed Ecumenical Synod of 1958. The church’s 1939 statement endorsed a “witness against pacifism”; the 1958 resolution, not endorsed, called for an “international judicial system.”

A denominational budget of $3,640,000 was approved, of which $1,798,000 was earmarked for foreign missions. Ten new home mission fields were approved. A Calvin Institute of Missions will expedite missionary training extension at Calvin College. A cultural anthropologist and a missionary linguist will be added to the college staff.

A plan for regional synods, under discussion for some years, was shelved again because of insufficient demonstration of necessity. The church now has 31 classes, or districts, scattered over the United States and Canada, embracing its half-million over-all membership.

Delegates witnessed the laying of the cornerstone for the new Calvin Seminary building, to be ready for the fall semester. The half-million-dollar structure is the first on the new Knollcrest campus of Calvin College and Seminary.

On the ecumenical front, the denominational committee is studying anew the church’s relationship to several interchurch bodies, including the National Association of Evangelicals. A committee was appointed to continue discussions with a faction of the Protestant Reformed Church looking toward reunification with the Christian Reformed denomination.

At Nashville, Tennessee—Commissioners (delegates) to the 130th General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church asked Bethel College trustees to admit qualified Negro ministerial students “as soon as feasible.” The request contradicted a report from the Cumberland Presbyterian school in McKenzie, Tennessee, which recommended that no integration of the races be attempted until sometime in the future.

Cumberland Presbyterians, who now number some 88,000, are marking their 150th anniversary. Highlight of this year’s seven-day assembly was a mass pilgrimage to a state park near Dickson, Tennessee, where a pageant was staged in honor of the anniversary. The site marked the place where three clergymen—Samuel McAdow, Samuel King, and Finis Ewing—prominent in the historic revival of 1800 knelt for a night of prayer and subsequently organized the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. A chapel and a replica of McAdow’s log cabin were dedicated on the site.

At Green Lake, Wisconsin—Delegates to the 76th annual sessions of the Evangelical Free Church approved relocation of Trinity College from the northwest side of Chicago to a 79-acre site near Deerfield, Illinois. Also endorsed was the establishment of a “national church” in the Washington, D. C., area. Officials are advancing $44,000 toward its erection on a three-acre plot in suburban Annandale, Virginia. Spearheading the work is the Rev. Olai Urang, district superintendent who was honored at the conference as Trinity’s “Alumnus of the Year.” The Rev. Turner Tallekson has accepted an invitation to become the church’s first pastor.

‘The Story of Ruth’

Yet another in the burgeoning succession of Hollywood films treating biblical stories has appeared: ‘The Story of Ruth.” With a qualified sense of relief, one may report an upgrading in taste and restraint in handling of the biblical materials.

Indeed, by Hollywood standards the film is exceedingly chaste, so much so that some say it is dull. Missing are the usual sex orgies related to Eastern fertility cults.

And it was not as if opportunities for such were lacking. For Ruth is portrayed as a priestess of the Moabite god Chemosh, worshiped like Molech through sacrificing children by fire. Won romantically and religiously by Naomi’s son, Mahlon, Ruth marries him as he is dying, then faithfully cleaves to Naomi as they make their way to Judea, a journey which becomes a military pursuit of Ruth for disloyalty to king and Chemosh.

It becomes evident that what is not recounted in the biblical narrative—such as Ruth’s background—is about as valuable for the moviemakers as what is. For the silences leave so much room for improvisation that relatively little contradiction of Scripture is required by the plot. While filial devotion is not wholly lacking in the twentieth century—“Dear Abby” revelations notwithstanding—it can hardly be expected to shoulder two hours of Cinema Scope-DeLux color. And the prefatory note emphasizes that many legends have grown up about Ruth. As if in quasi vindication, however, they are all said to have originated in Judea.

So the result is considerably beyond the findings of even the imaginative sort of pulpiteer. Boaz turns out to be a rather impulsive young hothead harboring a fair share of national prejudice before Ruth comes into his life. This contributes to a rather stormy romance, updated to meet twentieth century specifications and replete with a triangle involving the “nearer kinsman.” But after a sleepness night over the prospect of a loveless marriage, Ruth is snatched from the altar by Boaz, whom she marries immediately, a frugal move which takes advantage of the other kinsman’s wedding preparations.

Ruth is played by Elana Eden (an Israeli), Naomi by Peggy Wood, and Boaz by Stuart Whitman.

Care is taken not to offend Jewish sensitivities. Example: a prophecy concerning Ruth’s lineage refers to Christ not as Messiah but as a great king “whom many will worship as the Messiah.”

Much of the beauty of the book of Ruth is in its simplicity and natural grace. The widescreen treatment had to be incongruous.

F.F.

‘Africa on the Bridge’

The production of quality Christian films passes another milestone with the release of “Africa on the Bridge,” 80-minute color documentary of the 1960 Billy Graham Africa crusade. Dick Ross and his cameramen have caught Africa in transition, with its television towers and its primitivism, its gleaming apartment houses and its famed wild beasts.

Speaking through two interpreters in many cases, Graham found Africans to be profoundly moved by the Gospel message, and their response is a thrilling thing to watch. The facial studies of men, women and children from Liberia to Egypt are outstanding, and Victoria Falls lives up to its name.

S.E.W.

Crusade Totals

Evangelist Billy Graham’s Washington crusade drew a total attendance of 139,000 for eight services. Inquirers numbered 4,971 (a youth night service drew the largest response, 1,051, most of them teen-agers).

Orthodox Cooperation

Orthodox churches in the United States hope to achieve closer fellowship and better cooperation through a newly-created episcopal conference.

Formation of the conference was unanimously approved at a meeting last month in New York attended by representatives from 11 Orthodox groups.

The conference will normally meet twice a year. The office of presiding hierarch will be rotated annually among ruling bishops of the canonical jurisdictions. Archbishop Iakovos presided over the formative meeting.

Correction

In the June 20, 1960 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Richard Cardinal Cushing is quoted as having said that Knights of Columbus advertisem*nts attracted 3,660,182 inquiries during the first third of 1960.

The statement was incorrect. The figure actually represented the total number of inquiries received since the advertising program was begun in 1948.

The Knights of Columbus reports that inquiries between January 1 and June 17, 1960, totaled 284,387.

People Words And Events

Deaths: Retired Free Methodist Bishop Mark D. Ormston; at Spring Arbor, Michigan … Dr. Dumont Clarke, 75, founder of the Lord’s Acre method of tithing; at Manchester, Vermont … Dean Denier, 32, Navigators evangelist; in Hong Kong.

Elections: As bishops of The Methodist Church (South Central Jurisdiction), Dr. Aubrey G. Walton, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas; Dr. Paul V. Galloway, pastor of the Boston Avenue church in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Dr. Kenneth W. Copeland, pastor of Travis Park church in San Antonio, Texas; Dr. William Kenneth Pope, pastor of the First church in Houston, Texas; and Dr. Oliver Eugene Slater, pastor of the Polk Street church in Amarillo, Texas … as moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, the Rev. R. J. Mcllmoyle (he had been elected to the same post 50 years ago) … as president of the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the Rev. James Stuart; as president of the Foreign Missions Society, Dr. Lester Thompson; as president of the Home Mission Society, Dr. Charles W. Anderson … as president of the Association of Council Secretaries, Dr. G. Merril Lenox … as president of the National Conference of the Methodist Student movement, Kaneaster Hodges.

Appointments: As dean of Alderson-Broaddus College, Dr. Wilfred T. Packer … as publicity director of the United Church of Canada in its Board of Information and Stewardship, Norman K. Vale … as general manager of the publications division of the Board of Christian Education in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Martin E. Brachter … as secretary of literature and evangelism of the Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities, Urie A. Bender.

Resignation: As general secretary of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Dr. C. Stacey Woods.

Retirement: As professor of New Testament and Greek at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Julius R. Mantey.

Any given summer will find a host of seminary professors trading the comfort of an air-conditioned classroom for a stretch of Middle East sand where, clad in Bermuda shorts and clutching a pick under the broiling sun, they seek out ancient treasures.

For the survey of this year’s archaeological projects which follows, CHRISTIANITY TODAYis indebted to Dr. William Sanford La Sor, professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

A Presbyterian minister, La Sor holds both Ph.D. (Dropsie) and Th.D. (University of Southern California) degrees. He is familiar with current archaeological undertakings, having made four trips to the Middle East in recent years. He is a member of the American Oriental Society and the American Schools of Oriental Research, and his writings include Amazing Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith, Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls 1948–1957, and Historical Geography of the Bible Lands, to be released by Harper in 1961.

To read about archaeological discoveries is sometimes thrilling. To engage in the work is often prosaic. To visit an excavation is frequently disappointing.

Yet it is highly profitable to observe archaeologists at work, to understand something of the tons of earth that must be moved with delicate care, the exact attention that must be given to every stage of the work, the combination of many sciences and skills that is necessary, and the vast knowledge of antiquity, ancient history, other archaeological digs, artifacts, bones, ancient languages, and traditions that the director and his staff must have at their fingertips.

Visitors learn to appreciate, moreover, that archaeological excavation is destruction. Once the area has been disturbed it can never again be studied in situ. The director therefore must record exactly everything that he does and everything that he finds.

To visit an excavation, the director’s permission, or that of local authority, should be obtained. He may not want a crowd milling around, breaking down baulks, picking up important surface finds, moving tabs or pegs, disturbing workers, and so on. If he has only a few weeks for the work, he may resent losing an hour or more each day for guided tours. Moreover, there may be rules against picture-taking. It is the director’s prerogative to publish—and he has no desire to let someone else “scoop” him. Above all, don’t argue with his conclusions unless you are at least as experienced as he is. He may appear to be an inconsequential figure in his working clothes, but the very fact that he is director is proof that he is a recognized scholar and authority—otherwise he would not be allowed to direct the excavation.

Glossary Of Archaeological Terms

Archaeology: The scientific study of the ancient past, historic or prehistoric, from the evidence of the remains, such as monuments, artifacts, population centers, and written materials.

Artifact: Anything that has been made by human skill.

Baulk: The untouched section of an excavation, usually about a meter (39.37 inches) wide, left at regular intervals to serve to hold steps to the lower levels as excavation progresses. Baulks provide a visible record of the levels in profile while holding tags and pegs necessary for recording the finds and surveying the levels. In a large excavation, baulks may be left at 10-meter intervals as a grid.

Cuneiform: Wedge-shaped writing made by pressing a stylus in soft clay or by chiseling in stone.

Dig: A familiar term for an excavation.

Epigraphic: Writing on a wall, statue, or other surface.

Glossary

Excavation: The scientific uncover op past civilizations at a given site.

Expedition: An organized team of skilled experts and assistants on a specific project.

In situ: In the actual location in which it was found.

Occupational level: A single layer in a tell or the level of the city at any given time during its occupation.

Site: The location of an excavation.

Tell: A hill or mound formed by successive layers of human occupation resulting from garbage and trash disposal, accumulated dust, and ruins of old buildings. The highest level is the most recent and the lowest is the oldest.

Here is a survey of this year’s expeditions:

PALESTINE

One of the most fascinating is an underwater exploration of Caesarea in a vessel built especially for the work by Edwin A. Link (of the company famous for Link aviation trainers). Professor Charles T. Fritsch of Princeton Theological Seminary will be chief archaeologist, assisted by Professor Immanuel Ben-Dor of Emory University, and others. The work is sponsored by Princeton Seminary and the America-Israel Society. It is believed that part of this Roman seaport was covered by the sea in an earthquake A.D. 800.

Another underwater exploration, headed by Dr. Ralph E. Baney, Baptist missionary from Kansas City, Missouri, was conducted in the Dead Sea, using skin-diving methods, in an effort to locate the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Claims of discovery have been challenged by competent authority, and the results of this excavation are difficult to evaluate. Reports seem to indicate that the lack of customary archaeological techniques plus inability to photograph the finds will invalidate most of the work.

Dr. Benjamin Mazar, president of Hebrew University, reports that the Israel Antiquities Department of the university, in cooperation with the Israel Exploration Society, has located the Philistine city of Ekron. The site is Khirbet Muqenna, and the walled ruins, covering 40 acres, establish it as an unusually important city, twice as big as Lachish and three times as big as Megiddo. Professor William F. Albright had formerly identified the site as Eltekeh.

Another site identified by Professor Albright has been challenged, this one by Dr. Shmuel Yeivin, Director of the Israel Department of Antiquities. Yeivin has directed a dig at Tell Gat, supposedly the site of the Philistine city of Gath, since 1956. It gave evidence of having been an Israelite city, but no Philistine evidence was uncovered. Yeivin thinks, on the basis of some stamped jar-handles, that the site may have been Mamshat.

Professor James L. Kelso of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (the union of Pittsburgh-Xenia and Western seminaries) is digging at Beitin, the site of biblical Bethel. The expedition is sponsored by his seminary and the American Schools of Oriental Research. Previous work was done at Beitin in 1934, 1954, and 1957. Dr. Kelso will be assisted by Professor T. M. Taylor of the same seminary and by professors from five other seminaries. The principal objective is to try to find the remains of the temple erected by Jeroboam I. A Reuters report last month quoted the Jordan Antiquities Department as having announced that Kelso’s mission has discovered the ruins of a Canaanite town dating from 1700 years before Christ.

Dr. Yigael Yadin of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, has continued to excavate at Hazor, in Galilee, using such equipment as airborne observation, walkie-talkie communication, aerial photography, etc., in an effort to locate the most significant portions of an extremely large tell (or occupation-mound.) He is attempting to shed light on the date of building this Solomonic fortification and the dates of at least five other occupation levels.

Dr. Yadin was also associated with an expedition searching the caves along the southern shore of the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of Engedi, which found fragments of the book of Exodus, dated by the discoveries at A.D. 132. These explorations are not to be confused with the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries further north on the shore of the sea.

Work on the Dead Sea Scrolls continues. Tourists may wish to visit Khirbet Qumran, where some of the fragments were discovered and probably where most of the scrolls were produced. This requires special arrangement from the Department of Antiquities in Jordan. No excavation is in progress, but the site is in a military zone. Work on the thousands of fragments continues, by an international team of scholars, in the “scrollery” in the Palestine Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem (Jordan). Special permission must be obtained for a visit. Also on display are coins, desks from the Qumran Scriptorium, and other items from the great discovery. The original scrolls can be seen at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Israel).

Dr. Joseph Free of Wheaton College completed his sixth season at Dothan, north of Nablus, uncovering successive cities that date from 3000 to 1000 B.C. Of particular significance were the levels from the time of the Assyrian conquest (733–722 B.C.) and from the time of Solomon (c. 950 B.C.).

Professor G. Ernest Wright of Harvard Divinity School is directing a dig at Tell Balatah, the site of ancient Shechem, near Nablus, assisted by Professor Lawrence Toombs of Drew University and Professor Edward F. Campbell, Jr., of McCormick Theological Seminary. Shechem was excavated in 1912–13, 1926–27, 1928–32, 1934, and 1957, but much of the earlier work was not done in accordance with modern techniques and needs to be restudied by excavating the adjoining remains. According to Professor Wright, one of the objectives is “to train younger men in our American biblical archaeological tradition at a time when they are desperately needed to carry on what has been this country’s greatest single contribution to biblical scholarship.”

Père Roland de Vaux, whose name is most frequently associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, is conducting the ninth season of excavation at Tell el-Far‘ah, near Nablus, which he identifies with the biblical site of Tirzah. The work will be done by the Ecole Archéologique Françhise de Jérusalem.

Professor James B. Pritchard of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, directs the fourth campaign at el-Jib, biblical Gibeon. The work is under the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Father Robert North of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Jerusalem, has conducted the eighth campaign at Ghassul, three and a half miles east of the new Hussein Bridge, and about 100 yards south of the new Amman highway at the northeastern end of the Dead Sea. The last excavation was in 1938. This site is of great importance for the Chalcolithic era, about 3500 B.C., and has been widely publicized (see article by G. Ernest Wright in The National Geographic Magazine of December, 1957). One of the significant finds was the skeleton of a giant, well over six feet tall. It is not yet clear whether this was one of the Anakim, or an Englishman from the Crusades.

President Nelson Glueck of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, continues exploration of the Negev under the David W. Klar Foundation. His previous discoveries have been beautifully described by him in Rivers in the Desert (See Dr. La Sor’s review in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 16, 1959, pp. 37–38—ED.).

THE BIBLICAL WORLD

Egypt, faced with the obliteration of all antiquities from Aswan to the Sudanese border by the building of the new dam and the lake it will form, is racing feverishly to explore the many sites in the area. Most of this region is all but inaccessible to tourists, but includes such locations as Abu Simbel with its gigantic statues of Ramses II, and numerous cities of the Ethiopian dynasties of Egypt (one king of which was Tirhakah, 2 Kings 19:9). In an effort to encourage foreign institutions to participate, the United Arab Republic is making extremely liberal grants of the amount of discovery that may be retained by excavators. The Oriental Institute, Chicago, will continue its Epigraphic Survey, or study of the inscriptions, at the mortuary temple of Ramses III, at Medinet Habu near Luxor. Professor George Forsyth of the University of Michigan plans to lead another expedition to Mt. Sinai. He will be assisted by a team including men from Princeton University.

In Syria, Professor André Parrot of the Louvre, Paris, is directing another expedition to Mari, near the Syrian-Iraq border. Mari has already yielded thousands of cuneiform tablets from c. 1800 B.C., which have revolutionized our knowledge of the period. Professor Claude Schaeffer of Paris will continue his excavations at Ras Shamra (Ugarit). Both of these sites are of primary importance for biblical studies.

Because of unsettled conditions in Iraq, there is uncertainty about excavations. Donald J. Wiseman of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of the British Museum spent two months in Baghdad working on cuneiform texts found at Nimrud (biblical Calah). The British School of Archaeology in Iraq, under D. Oates, plans to continue excavations at Nimrud, near Mosul. The Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research, together with the Oriental Institute, hopes to continue excavation at Nippur, in southern Iraq.

In Iran, several expeditions are planned or in process. Dr. Robert Dyson of the University Museum, Philadelphia, assisted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, continues to dig at Hansanlu, near Lake Rezaiyeh. The connection with biblical history is not immediately obvious, but the location is on one of the main routes between the Iranian plateau and Assyria. The Oriental Institute, under Professor Robert J. Braidwood, and cooperating with the National Science Foundation and the American Schools of Oriental Research, will continue the exploration of prehistoric sites in the Kermanshah watershed. This is of great interest for understanding more of the migrations of early man, the interchange of cultures, and other facts that must be deduced from widely separated areas.

In Turkey there are many fascinating sites. The expedition to Sart, the biblical Sardis, is directed by Professor George M. A. Hanfmann of Harvard University. Cornell University is also associated. Sardis was the capital of the wealthy kingdom of Lydia, one of whose kings was the fabulously wealthy Croesus. Later, it became an important administrative center of the Persian Empire, and still later, for the Roman Empire.

This survey omits reference to Greece and Italy, because these are more properly subjects for a classical scholar. The American Schools of Classical Studies at Athens and Rome maintain valuable programs. Inquiries to the schools will yield details.

Archaeological Hogwash?

Dr. Nelson Glueck, world-famous archaeologist says recent reports of the discovery of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are “hogwash.”

Glueck, discoverer of King Solomon’s copper mines, declared in Dallas last month that “No one, no matter his competence, could find the cities.”

He discounted the claims of amateur U. S. divers led by Dr. Ralph Baney that they had found the remnants of the two evil cities described in the Bible.

“Thick salt deposits on the bottom of the Dead Sea would make it impossible to get to the remains,” he said, adding that the ruins of the 4,000-year-old civilization have been razed and that the only remains would be “some rather disreputable bits of pottery.”

Baney claims to have located, among other things, a long dike in the sea.

Protestant Panorama

• Official interpreter for President Eisenhower’s visit to Korea last month was an American missionary. Horace G. Underwood, 43, currently serving as chairman of the United Presbyterian Korea Mission was recalled to active naval duty for the assignment which included interpreting Eisenhower’s historic address to the Korea National Assembly. Underwood had served as a principal interpreter during the Panmunjom truce talks.

• The Fulton Street Noon Prayer Meeting closed its doors June 30 after 103 years of services in downtown Manhattan. Attendance had dropped considerably since the meeting site was moved to 93 Nassau Street seven years ago. Sponsors may decide to reschedule the meeting after a survey of the area.

• A New York City television station is programming two religion courses for college credit this summer. The courses, “Introduction to Biblical Thought” and “Religion and Modern Literature,” are presented in cooperation with Protestant councils of churches in the New York area and are produced by the Radio-TV Department of the New Jersey Council of Churches.

• The Lutheran, official weekly newsmagazine of the United Lutheran Church in America, is marking its 100th anniversary. Its 200,000 subscribers represent a doubling of circulation since 1951. Dr. G. Elston Ruff has been editor since 1945.

• The Rev. Russell H. McConnell, pastor of Greenfield Congregational Church in Dearborn, Michigan, is the first “resident agent” at the newly-organized Religious Center of the Dearborn, Campus, Inc. Purpose of the non-profit group, according to articles of incorporation, is to “further the religious life and enrich the temporal life of the campus community” served by nearby colleges. Dearborn is a suburb of Detroit.

• A Lutheran church now being built in Copenhagen is shaped like a snail’s shell. Designed by Danish architect Holger Jensen, the church will be primarily for school children, who may help decorate the interior by painting their own murals on biblical themes. All worshippers will sit on the floor.

• Baptists in Israel are setting up a youth camp near Pethan Tikvah in the Sharon Plain, with the help of the International Civil Service, an organization which sponsors voluntary youth work camps to promote better understanding between races.

• A new international magazine for Anglicans and Episcopalians made its debut in London last month. The Anglican World, edited by the Rev. Peter Harvey, vicar of a church near London, is a bi-monthly. Patrons include Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. It is not, however, an official church organ.

• Cornerstone-laying and dedication ceremonies for the new national headquarters of the Hauge Lutheran Inner-mission Federation were held near Minneapolis last month during the federation’s annual convention and Bible conference.

• The five-day North American Youth Congress of the Seventh-day Adventist Church drew more than 12,000 delegates from throughout the United States and Canada. The congress, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was climaxed with the launching of a global drive to win converts among youth and to recruit them for full-time church service.

• The Massanetta Springs Summer Bible Conference encampment hopes to raise $600,000 for expansion and improvements following endorsem*nt of the drive by the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia.

• Far East Broadcasting Company began beaming regularly-scheduled Gospel programs to the Chinese mainland from its new 100,000-watt transmitter on Okinawa last month.

• A new Christian day school will open in Silver Spring, Maryland, (Washington suburb) this fall.

As its major book review a recent issue of the Saturday Review carried an analysis of the second novel by a young American, William Styron. The novel, described by critic Granville Hicks as “rich and deep,” is Set This House on Fire, a violent and bloody story of Americans in conflict Its theme, as is so common among contemporary novelists, is the frantic and passionate search for self-satisfying pleasures by a trio of young men “without hope and without God in this world.”

In the course of his novel Styron introduces three characters to typify his view of man. The narrator is commonplace enough, describing himself as being “something of a square.” The villain of the piece is a despicable fop whose tales of his own manly exploits had enthralled his fellow students at prep school, and now as a young-man-about-anywhere he is still using any means to attain the selfish ends he proposes. The hero, as for want of a better term he must be known, is himself something of a villain by accepted Christian standards. But he is saved from general condemnation by the fact that his crimes are all for love, while his antagonist’s sole motivation is his own gratification.

A Window on Corruption

Mr. Hicks reminds his readers that Styron is a disciple of William Faulkner. In certain respects the comparison is obvious: both men reveal the true nature of man to be wildly passionate, innately corrupt; both writers settle upon physical violence as man’s most creative expression of himself—the thing he does best is self-destruction. In Styron’s book he includes most of the popular literary forms of brutality and bestial*ty: murder, rape, hom*osexuality, p*rnography, degraded drunkenness, illicit love, and so on.

To be sure, all of this, and sometimes much more, can be read in Faulkner. One need only recall the actions of Benjy, Joe Christmas, or Wash Jones to substantiate the statement. But there is a quality in Faulkner that is missing in Styron and in so many of his kind. Or shall we reverse the assertion and say there is an element in Styron, in Grace Metalious (Peyton Place and The Return to Peyton Placed, in James Jones (From Here to Eternity and Some Came Running), that is not apparent in the more mature and vastly more gifted expatriate from Yoknapatawpha. That certain something which shows through the writings of these younger, passion-ridden novelists is the flaw that distinguishes gold from pyrites. It is a superficial, self-conscious, ostentatious delight in presenting the sordid and ugly in life, in lifting the lid from the world’s garbage can to revel in its abominable state.

The Lost Power of Good Writing

One could almost judge that sensationalism has carried away any power of good writing these novelists possessed. Note might be made of the extent to which Styron, Metalious, Jones, and the others will go to stimulate and shock their readers. Styron permits gross obscenities among his characters at their Italian resort; Metalious wallows with her sometimes frigid, sometimes nymphomaniac Jennifer in atrocious masochism; Jones in a mildness that is itself dangerous creates a “peeping Tom” of a respected citizen. It seems that a malevolent contest is being waged in current American literature to determine which author can create the most hideous specimen of humanity.

Stripping Sin of Its Penalties

But Faulkner is rarely guilty of presenting “sin for sin’s sake.” Like Hawthorne and Melville before him, and unlike Poe, Faulkner is more concerned with the consequences of sin than he is with its lurid description. Why do his characters often meet a violent end? It is because of the wrong done in the past. Faulkner does not forget the biblical warning of judgment upon the children of the third and fourth generations because of the sins of the fathers.

For these current writers there does not appear to be a consequence to sin. Punishment may be enacted upon the guilty, or not, depending upon how skillful has been his preparation. In Styron’s story the law is represented as being benevolent because of the circ*mstances. Conversely, in the late Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger, the law, represented by an insensitive theist, is harsh and condemnatory. The French winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize presents a hero who, although he admits to a criminal offense, is not conscious of any sin nor of any need to repent. Metalious allows one of her vixens the distinct pleasure of beating an erstwhile assailant to death with a poker; another counteracts her mother-in-law’s plot to kill her by pushing the older woman down a flight of stairs to her death. Neither killer is subjected to the law’s retribution.

In so representing “life,” these writers affect or infect their readers strongly and divide their audience into three distinct groups: those who are revolted and repelled by the open and matter-of-fact presentation of sex and sin; those for whom the actions of the fictitious characters provide a vicarious thrill; those who find their own course of action and manner of living described and thereby gain justification for their own misdeeds.

The Breakdown of Decorum

The present crop of horror-mongers finds itself championed by the playwright, Tennessee Williams, whose goal seems to be the complete breakdown of all dramatic decorum in choice of topic and theme. With increasing daring Williams has descended the scale of decency from A Streetcar Named Desire to the sodomy and cannibalism of Suddenly Last Summer. The New York Times magazine section recently published an article which questioned the reason for such an outpouring of violence both on the stage and screen and in books.

In a subsequent issue of the Times, Williams defends his point of view and that of his literary fellow travelers, Camus, Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape), Lillian Hellman (Toys in the Attic), and Bertolt Brecht (Mother Courage). His argument in support of the morbid subjects he chooses is simple: his material and characters come not from the sewers of society but from the main stream of life. “No significant area of human experience … should be held inaccessible, provided it is presented with honest intention and taste, to … writers of our desperate time.”

The Exploitation of Decadence

This quotation itself reveals a point of view which lacks a major ingredient to make it acceptable to the Christian mind. Granted that the world is consumed by sin; that violence and injustice are front-page news; that juvenile delinquents vie with each other for top-billing alongside the adult gangsters. Granted that divorce cases attributed to marital infidelity are increasing; that moral standards have lowered immeasurably; that this is, as Tennessee Williams calls it, “our desperate time.” Granted that all this is true, the task of the contemporary writer is not to exploit the decadent condition. He may not be able to correct it, and he certainly cannot ignore it, but he can do one thing which Williams has failed to state: he can provide his reader with conscionable characters. No matter the intention of the author or his careful choice of words, he has failed to present life accurately if he ignores the conscience—both of his characters and of his audience.

What of National Conscience?

Our minds have been directed recently to thoughts of our national purpose. It may well be contended that any national purpose stems from a national conscience. Our generation appears to be lacking even the pin-pricks of conscience. The lack appears most strikingly in the literature of our time, full of protagonists who know no distinction between right and wrong, “having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” It is as a corollary, therefore, to our lack of conscience that we find our lack of purpose. No book, no matter how talented its author may be, can be considered “rich and deep” unless a positive attitude toward good and evil is engendered by the author through his characters to his readers.

Stony Brook, N. Y.