Page 6071 – Christianity Today (2024)

Many of us are convinced that it is impossible to reform the social order apart from personal redemption of individuals. We will be wise if we carry the same line of reasoning into our concept of the work of the Holy Spirit in individuals and in the Church.

We are inclined to think of his work in general and impersonal terms. We pray for an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” as if he worked in some nebulous way apart from the lives of people. True, he may use things and events for his glory and the advancement of God’s Kingdom; but he possesses and fills people and works through them.

The very heart of the Christian faith is man’s personal relationship with God. Man stands before God as an individual, and as an individual he is redeemed. The work of the Holy Spirit is personal. It is he who effects the new birth, who brings spiritual life from spiritual death. It is he who comes into the hearts and lives, wooing, speaking of the things of Christ, and instructing in spiritual truth.

When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, there were supernatural manifestations that immediately became personalized. The “tongues of fire,” we are told, were “distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit …” (Acts 2:3, 4, RSV). And because this experience was personalized, these unlearned Galileans went out transformed.

The phrase “a Spirit-filled Church” can be misleading. It is the persons making up the Church who must be filled with the Spirit, and we cannot avoid this necessity by thinking or hoping that God works in some other way.

There is no doctrine more neglected than that of the Holy Spirit. Much is said about God the Father, and about his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of course none of us can fully understand or exhaust these subjects. But about the Holy Spirit there is abysmal ignorance and often a strange indifference. Yet it is he by whom alone we can believe in Christ and be prepared to witness for him. It is through the Holy Spirit that the Bible becomes an open book. The Holy Spirit is not an accessory to Christian faith and work; he is a necessity.

Most churches are today confronted with a depressing fact: the spiritual birthrate increasingly lags behind the biological. In desperation we turn to new programs and new methods. Some even attempt to jettison basic parts of the Christian faith in favor of ideas more acceptable to the unregenerate. How foolish can we get?

If there is to be a change—and there can be—we must search our own hearts for the cause of the trouble. Is there concrete evidence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in us? There can be no improvement in the general situation in the Church until there is a change in the lives of individual Christians, in the pulpit as well as in the pew. An answer to the problem is a personal one; it affects you and me.

Confronted as we are with spiritual deadness in the Church, let us honestly admit that this deadness lies within us as individuals. The Church’s state is an elongated shadow of the state of its members. And the great omission in its members’ lives is the failure to recognize the absolute necessity of a personal experience with the Holy Spirit—an experience that transforms and quickens, not the organization, but the people who make up that organization.

We thrill at the story of Pentecost and perhaps are inclined to look on it merely as a phenomenon in history. But the coming of the Holy Spirit in mighty power in the lives of Christians should be a continuing experience within the Church.

The significance of the manifestation at Pentecost was not that rude fishermen were suddenly able to speak in other languages. Rather, it was that they were transformed into something they had not been previously. Only a few days before they had been scattered, and one of their number had denied his Lord before a mere servant maid. Then, when filled with the Spirit, this same man stood fearlessly before the Sanhedrin, who had condemned Christ, and boldly denounced them for their sin while pleading with them to repent. Even these enemies of our Lord recognized that the disciples had been with Jesus and, at this time, dismissed them with nothing more than a threat.

Obviously, the Holy Spirit changes the person in whom he lives. It is by his presence that men become “new creatures” in Christ. But how often do we see any vital change today? The lack of evidence of transformed lives rests as a dead weight on the Church and discredits the validity of the Christian faith in the eyes of an unbelieving world.

The change that takes place is a tremendous one. The fruits of the indwelling Spirit, enumerated by Paul in Galatians 5:22, 23, are the result of a supernatural work, contrary to man’s natural behavior. Do we by our own lives show these fruits to others? Do we have a consciousness of love, joy, and peace within?

These are questions we need to answer in all honesty. In the answer, either spiritual health or sickness—even to death—is indicated.

Our Lord described the work of the Spirit to Nicodemus as something to be felt. We cannot see the wind, but we feel its effect. So it is with the Spirit of God. There must be an effect of his presence in our lives, felt by us and seen by others.

This change and empowering is a constant work of the Holy Spirit, renewed day by day in the hearts and lives of those who turn to him. It is through such persons that the Christian witness is made effective.

Recently I heard a successful young minister speak about “communicating” the Gospel. He wisely observed, “I cannot communicate the Gospel, nor can any one else. It is the Holy Spirit alone who makes the Gospel intelligible to people.”

Perhaps many of our failures stem from misapprehensions about this vital matter. We are prone to depend on personality, education, organizational structure, and programs as the primary means of leading people to believe. Important and useful as all of these may be, they are useless unless surrendered to the leading and power of the Holy Spirit. God has used some very unlikely people and methods, while some grandiose, expensive, and sophisticated methods have failed miserably. The word of the Lord to Zerubbabel holds good today: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).

The Holy Spirit is no longer the dominant reality in many churches because he is no longer the dominant reality in the members’ own personal lives. This is a serious spiritual situation, the cause of weakness and ineffectiveness.

Things do not have to continue as they are, however. There can be a tremendous change, a new surge of power and understanding, a new sense of urgency for a world that has gone far down the road to destruction.

This change must take place in a person’s heart and mind, and it is possible only by the in-filling of the Holy Spirit. God has promised to give his Spirit to those who ask him. His presence will open up an entirely new concept of what it means to be a Christian. We, and the Church, can then become filled with life and power—God living in us.

It will make all the difference!

Dear Members Of The Old Breed:

Bearded Harvey Cox waxes enthusiastic in Harvard Today about the “New Breed” of churchmen who, he claims, have changed the cartoon stereotype of an American clergyman from a pompous bore to an active proponent of social change.

Reluctant though I am to differ with such a widely heralded pop prophet, I must say that the New Breed is about as new as a retreaded tire. Scrape off the outer layers of soft, synthetic theology imbedded with steely bits of revolutionary fervor and you find the weakened old casing of a fuzzy-headed social gospeler. I hate to think of the blow-out that will result for the church and the nation if their movement increases its momentum and heats up under increased pressure.

For the past five years New Breed tactics have been a limp imitation of those of the New Left. After the avant-garde glamorized coffeehouses, New Breed churchmen created their own brand of coffeehouses. They even found their own poetry-spouting Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the person of the stool-sitting, jazz-accompanied reciter of hip prayers, Father Malcolm Boyd. As Johnnies-come-lately to the civil-rights and anti-Viet Nam policy protests, they soon became master practitioners of the march. And now, following the Greenwich Village—Haight Ashbury-Dupont Circle syndrome, they have developed their own “Happenings.”

New Breed churchmen at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington staged a four-day Happening last month. The first two evenings people saw and discussed the films Sundays and Cybele and The Red Balloon. On Saturday afternoon, gaily dressed moderns assembled for a “Be-In” to “celebrate life.” As the hi-fi reverberated with the Supremes’ rendition of “The Happening,” the mods painted cardboard boxes fuschia, orange, chartreuse, and periwinkle and decorated them with such stale slogans as “Make Love, Not War,” “Draft Beer,” “Keep the Faith,” and “War Is Ugly.” The whole affair ended Sunday with a colorful march around the block at which time message-laden balloons were sent aloft. Aside from providing a jolly good time for all, I’m not sure what the event accomplished. But it did show how hard the New Breed will work to emulate the pace-setting hippies.

A week later, the New Breed at Washington’s National Cathedral topped even St. Stephen’s. They staged a rock and roll festival with nineteen—count ’em—nineteen ear-shattering bands. Mini-skirted teeny boppers danced before the altar. The recessional was “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

At the rate the New Breed is going, it shouldn’t be long until they bring on the go-go girls. Ho hum.

Bored by the New Breed, EUTYCHUS III

Protestant Church Schools

It was encouraging to see in your pages a direct affirmation of the viability and vigor of both the idea and practice of the Protestant day school (“Will Protestant Church Schools Become a Third Force?,” May 12). Writers Buchanan and Brown are indeed right that “there is no indication that the movement will be short-lived or inconsequential. On the contrary, we see it as a growing movement.”

We represent a Protestant day school system which is not mentioned in the article but which, like Lutheran and Adventist schools, has been around for some time. It has been in existence for over seventy-five years and presently enrolls over 62,000 students in 282 schools. These are concentrated largely in the Northern and Midwestern states, but the system does embrace schools from coast to coast.

These schools are parental rather than parochial: they are operated by groups of parents, largely of Reformed and Calvinistic persuasion, and are served by the National Union of Christian Schools (865 Twenty-eighth St., S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49508). A growing number of teaching materials and publications are produced for the use of those who wish to make the Christian day school “become a powerful [third] force in the American educational picture.”

DONALD OPPEWAL

Chairman, Public Opinion Comm.

National Union of Christian Schools

Grand Rapids, Mich.

As I read the article, one question kept nagging me. Could one of the subtleties underlying this movement be another attempt on the part of white Protestants to avoid confrontation with the reality and necessity of racial inclusiveness in the public schools? If this be so, the church school is an immorality the Church cannot espouse.

L. CARROLL YINGLING, JR.

Saint Mark’s Church

Baltimore, Md.

I wonder what would happen to many of these private schools if a Negro child, qualified and money in hand, showed up asking for the blessings of a Christian education.

WILLIAM H. ANDERSON, JR.

Virginia Union University

Richmond, Va.

It would be interesting to know the source of the statistics. The Board of Parish Education for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod provides a very reliable set each year. For the school year 1966–67 they list 4,300 Protestant-schools with 477,000 pupils. (The article claims 5,700 schools.) They also report over 13,000 Catholic schools. (The article reports 10,000.) If the Protestant-school enrollment continues to grow at 4 per cent per year and the Catholic schools lose enrollment at 1 per cent per year, in ten years we will have Protestant enrollment of 750,000 compared to Catholic enrollment of 5,000,000. How can it be said, “If these trends continue, Protestant schools will match Roman Catholic schools in ten years”?…

A second concern arises from the fact that three-fourths of the quotations used are made by Christian school men in the deep South. The growth of Christian schools is a national phenomenon, not just a regional reaction. The NACS has member schools in thirty-eight states. This geographical distribution should be emphasized.…

We regret that the article made no mention of the proposal that freedom in American education would be very effectively served by some form of tax credit for parents sending children to private schools. This proposal, which is resisted strenuously by treasury and administration officials, would provide parents who relieve the public-school rolls of the expense of educating their children with an income-tax credit for each child each year that these children were enrolled in private schools. Thus we would maximize parental freedom and minimize governmental bookkeeping (as well as regulation).

The forces opposed to Protestant schools as a “third force” in the American educational picture are powerful. The humanistic loyalties of American educators; the secular impact of unprecedented government expenditures; and the widespread assumption by denominational leaders and local pastors that Christian America does not need private Christian schools are all well-entrenched obstacles.

JOHN F. BLANCHARD, JR.

Executive Director

National Association of Christian Schools

Wheaton, Ill.

The Suspicious Specialist

I found the article “Is a Read Sermon a Dead Sermon?” to be of special interest … because of its authorship. I find it somewhat surprising that you would turn to a historian for practical advice on sermon delivery. On the other hand, my surprise should be tempered by my observation of current attitudes and practices prevalent in many seminary circles today. Normally, the various disciplines listed in seminary curricula are represented by academic specialists trained for their particular department. Thus, ideally, a Ph.D. degree in Old Testament studies would be a proper credential for teaching Old Testament, and a man who has specialized in language studies would be considered first for a language department.

The system appears to break down when it comes to speech training, however, and a brief survey of homiletics departments would seem to confirm the fact that the Church still looks with suspicion upon the specialist in speech and fears his sophistic influence upon young preachers. Some seminaries have “progressed” to the point where they allow a speech specialist to share in homiletical training, but he is mainly confined to advice and criticism related to sermon delivery. Homiletics appears to be of such a sacred nature that it can be entrusted to anyone save the rhetorician. Just where preaching differs in principle from any other kind of oral communication is a vague question which escapes logical consideration. While the content of preaching is sacred and the source of its effectiveness lies in the power of the Holy Spirit, the concepts used in communicating the Gospel of Jesus Christ are the very same as those used in other fields.

LORIN H. SODERWALL

Chairman, Speech Department

Azusa Pacific College

Azusa, Calif.

Dandelion-Digging

Wherever I reside, it seems that two things are unavoidable: dandelions in the lawn and CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the mailbox.

Perhaps your publication is well named, for it reflects the reactionary conservative, malinformed, backwardyearning spirit that is easy to find among Christians today.…

If I get the dandelions out of my lawn will you get CHRISTIANITY TODAY out of my mailbox?

EDWARD B. GREVATT

Emanuel United Church of Christ

Rochester, N. Y.

Saved By Suppression?

I am sorry that you are going to kill the discussion on baptism (“The Conflict Over Baptism,” April 14). It promised to be lively. The two essays were certainly not adequate, and the letters you published were insipid.

Of course since the Baptists are stuck with the idea that baptize means to sink the ship they stand upon a flimsy argument. I suppose you do have to cater to them.…

You can save the Baptists from the embarrassment of seeing their position destroyed if you wish. But you will do it not on the basis of the facts and reason and Scripture, but only by the suppression of the truth.

I trust that you will get enough mail on this subject to lead you to open the magazine to an open exchange of views, rather than the present “O, so gentle Evangelical” touch.

JAMES MILLER

Montclair Community Church

Denver, Colo.

It Hits A Basic Error

Thanks to Dr. Mikolaski for “Ecumenism and the Gift of the Spirit” (April 28). It strikes at a basic error to which the Church of Christ must give earnest heed. In this altogether too short examination, it is refreshing to read an argument that is biblically documented. There can be no doubt that the relationship between personal saving faith in Christ and the receiving of the Holy Spirit is scripturally undeniable. The Holy Spirit is certainly not hierarchically transmitted.

We welcome this brief, well-reasoned, scripturally orientated presentation. Give us more of them!

STUART E. MURRAY

Principal

United Baptist Bible Training School

Moncton, New Brunswick

I looked forward to reading [it] because ecumenism, as I have known it, is praying, working, talking together with men of all Christian faiths.

Since the Holy Spirit is poured forth upon all, it seemed to me that the title was indicative of a significant piece. I was stunned, however, by what the author called his main point, namely, “Whether bestowal of the Spirit can be confined to the action of episcopally sanctioned persons.” What Christian of sound mind could ever believe that the action of the Holy Spirit could even be confined to the action of episcopally sanctioned persons”? Surely not the Catholic Church, as is inferred. In its theology of the Holy Spirit, it teaches that, while the Spirit is particularly active in prayer, the reading of the Scriptures, and in any sacramental encounter with Christ, He sanctifies a person in every one of his conscious moments when there is faith and love.

MORTON A. HILL, S. J.

Church of St. Ignatius Loyola

New York, N. Y.

I consider myself open-minded and willing to listen to all views.… Having been a student of Dr. Mikolaski … I know his basic theological orientation; therefore I am not surprised at his unsympathetic attitude toward the Consultation on Church Union.… I do believe that he should better inform himself concerning COCU before he starts criticizing. In the first place, the only church in the group he called “successionist” that is involved in COCU is the Episcopal Church, and he failed to call it by name but referred to its counterpart, the Anglican church. With a minimum of reading, Dr. Mikolaski would find that one of the underlying assumptions of all the churches that are involved in COCU is that there is a chance that they may be wrong in some of their dogmatic beliefs. It is true that in a united church some of the members and maybe even some of the clergy may have the idea that the Spirit is given through the church, but that will not be made a test of fellowship. What church can claim that all its members believe the same thing concerning every doctrine?… It takes very little effort and no Christianity to criticize, but it takes real effort and real Christianity to swallow your prejudices and cooperate with your brothers in Christ.

RILEY W. SANSON, JR.

United Church of Christ

Lyons, Tex.

The author failed to avoid many of the pitfalls he accuses others of having fallen into. For instance, in opposing his own evangelical position to the “Catholics and Orthodox,” in each instance he blurs the pneumatology of the two church bodies, as if they were not distinct, even contrasting entities.…

It is the inadequacy of both Roman Catholic and Protestant ecclesiology that both need an external authority outside of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church as an ultimate appeal and criterion for truth, whether that authority be pope or Scripture. It is not Scripture that the Orthodox contrast to church tradition, obviously; rather, it is to a naïve assumption that Scripture will be interpreted uniformly outside of the Church, which is at the same time the place where the Holy Spirit abides. Witness the scattered “churches” of Western Protestantism, professing a unity in Scripture.

There can be no “private judgment” so naively proposed by the author, because it is precisely the witness of the Spirit that disallows it. The leader of the church assembly speaks with authority only when he expresses the truth of the faith in accord with the Gospels, and with the tradition as always witnessed by the Church; if that leader has a “private judgment” to contrast to the divine truth of the Church, it is the duty of the body of the Church, or any single member of that group, to expose such error, and that error will be manifest by the Holy Spirit that lives and dwells in the Church.

VLADIMIR BERZONSKY

Parma, Ohio

Who Or What Was Meant?

Your editorial on “The Spirit of Pentecost” (April 14) was well written. However, your remarks on subjectivity and excessive enthusiasm as characteristic of many Pentecostal-like movements, without your really calling names and making it clear just what you were trying to say, make it impossible to know who or what you meant by subjectivity or excessive enthusiasm.…

I am of the personal opinion that the Pentecostal-like movements are living closer to the Pentecostal Spirit of Acts 2 than the rest of the church world. Their services are open for examination by all, and I believe you will see as a result of this Pentecostal experience working in the lives of believers … Dynamic Vitality, Divine Illumination, Renewal, and Divine Liberation. However, it will never come about without Divine Subjectivity.

C. L. HARBIN

Church of God

Huntsville, Ala.

More I.A.C.S.

We would like to have you channel the enclosed dollar for the proposed Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, and it is our prayer that this may soon be a reality. In this day in which secularism is advancing on every hand, there is a pressing need for more institutions where Christianity is emphasized on the highest intellectual level for the glory of God.

VERNON G. BIGELOW, JR.

Things to Come Mission

Ozamis City, Philippines

The most important moments of our era occur when God’s Word is proclaimed

Preaching has always been the minister’s greatest opportunity and responsibility. History shows that preaching is a barometer of the life of the Church. When the preaching has been dynamic, the Church has been strong; when it has been insipid, the Church has been weak. P. T. Forsyth wrote in Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, “It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.” And Emil Brunner, in one of the most audacious claims made in our nuclear space age, said that “where there is true preaching, where, in the obedience of faith, the Word is proclaimed, there, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the most important thing that ever happens upon this earth takes place” (Revelation and Reason).

Both in the world and in the Church today, much preaching is considered trivial and irrelevant. The basic cause for this tragic condition must be our lack of a vital theology of preaching. Strong and effective preachers in every age have believed greatly in preaching. If the minister gives the gavel of primacy to any other hand in the senate of his interests—counseling, liturgy, visitation, group therapy, administration—his preaching will inevitably decline in power and relevance.

Thus one of the most pressing needs in the Church today is to formulate a theology of preaching. Helmut Thielicke’s plea is that “everything depends upon our gaining some standards for that which is ‘Theme Number One’ of the church—our preaching” (Encounter with Spurgeon). What might some of these standards be?

Protestants stand in the heritage of the Bible, and any theology of preaching must be anchored there. In the New Testament, seven Greek words, each translated “preaching,” share a truth that must enter into a vital theology of preaching.

1. Euaggelizō originally meant to bring or announce good news. Later it came to mean the good news itself, or the good news preached, as in the description of the work of Philip in Samaria: “But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12, RSV). A theology of preaching must capture the concept that preaching is the act of announcing the good news of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom.

2. Kataggellō is translated “preach” in the King James Version and “proclaim” in the Revised Standard Version. It is a heightened form of a simple verb that means to announce. Kataggellō means to tell thoroughly and to proclaim with authority, as one does who is commissioned to spread official news among other persons. The word is used in the vivid portrayal of the arrest of Peter and John in the temple after they had healed the lame man: “… the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:1, 2, KJV). This “proclaiming with authority” implies that preaching has an authority behind it greater than the force of a man. Martin Luther, feeling the pulse of the Reformation to be preaching, declared, “In a word, if one would praise God to the uttermost, one must praise His Word and the preaching of it; for it is God’s Word, and the preaching of it is His.” And Karl Barth wrote: “Real proclamation as this new event, in which the event of human language about God is not set aside, but rather exalted, is the Word of God preached.… The Word of God preached now means … man’s language about God, in which and through which God Himself speaks about Himself” (The Doctrine of the Word of God). A powerful theology of preaching must see preaching as a proclamation of the Word of God with authority—nothing less than the authority of God himself.

3. Kērussō is to cry to proclaim as a herald. The kēruka is the herald. In the Homeric age, the herald partook of the character of an ambassador. He summoned the assembly and kept order in it, and had charge of arrangements at sacrifices and festivals. The office of heralds was sacred and their persons inviolable; therefore they were employed to bear messages between enemies. In later times, their position as messengers between nations at war was emphasized. Thus kērussō means to proclaim peace to warring peoples as the herald sent by God; as Paul declared, “… but we preach Christ crucified.… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23, 24, RSV). Preaching thought of as the proclamation of a herald implies a call and commissioning to preach. Karl Barth’s powerful words in God in Action are, “This is that ‘other’ factor which makes one a minister of the Word, in contrast with all other ever-so-respectable examples of mankind … Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners, as the Lord of the Church, as eternal Son of God in the midst of our temporal existence—He it is who calls, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23, 24, RSV). No one and nothing else.” A vital theology of preaching must include the concept of the herald of God declaring the truth of the One who has called him.

4. Laleō means to talk, discourse, or assert something. It is used in contrast with or as a breaking of silence, voluntary or imposed. It was reported of Jesus that when “many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door, he was preaching the word to them” (Mark 2:2, RSV). Preaching is more than dialogue gone mad; it is a spontaneous assertion.

5. Parrēsiazomai strictly means to use boldness, to speak openly and fearlessly, to be utterly free in one’s speech. It was thus that Barnabas described Paul before the Jerusalem leaders, “how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus” (Acts 9:27, RSV). It is in this sense that Bishop Gerald Kennedy describes preaching: “Headline stuff blaring forth the news about a Man, a Life, a Way, an Answer.… Preaching is not going from door to door to sell a book on home remedies, but standing on a street corner shouting ‘Extra!’” (God’s Good News).

6. Plēroō means to fill or made full, and was Paul’s description of his preaching before the Romans when he reported, “… so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 15:19, RSV). Apparently, Paul took it as his God-given task to fill the Roman world to overflowing, to fill it up and over the rim, with the Good News concerning Jesus Christ.

7. Parakaleō is translated “exhort” in the King James Version but “preach” in the Revised Standard Version’s interpretation of Paul’s injunction to Timothy: “Till I come, attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13). Parakaleō is a compound of para, to the side of, and kaleō, to call or summon. It means to call to one’s side to help. Preaching in this sense is preaching the Word in exhortation and with encouragement, not just so it can be studied and understood but as a challenge to action.

A theology of preaching, if it is going to be true to the New Testament, must include the basic ingredients suggested by all these words. There must be a note of “good news” that is “proclaimed with authority” by a “herald sent by God” who “asserts something” “openly, fearlessly,” and “fully” in order to “strengthen, challenge, and exhort” others to Jesus Christ. Such a theology will tap the deep wells of faith for the drought of our twentieth-century preaching, will convict us in our lethargy, and will challenge us to action.

The Greek mathematician Archimedes, in the third century B.C., made a statement that has been quoted many times: “Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum strong enough, and single-handed I can move the world.” Joseph Conrad, however, answered him by saying, “Don’t talk to me of your Archimedes’ lever.… Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.” The “right word” needed by American churches today is “preaching,” preaching based on the “right accent” of a dynamic theology of preaching. With it, we can still move the world for Jesus Christ.

When Silas and Timothy arrived in Corinth, after traveling from Macedonia, the stirring account is that when they found Paul, he was “occupied with preaching” (Acts 18:5). This is the call to American pastors in this day of crisis and need: Be “occupied with preaching”!

Wife Charts A Sermon

That “a preacher’s most severe critic is his wife” is no empty truism; she has listened to enough sermons to be a master of constructive criticism.

Recently my wife “doodled” a road map of my sermon while I was preaching. After dinner she presented me with the facts: every detour I had taken, every curve and bump. Here are the labels she used:

Your Trip This Morning

Start. Introduction. You began too slowly, seemed uncertain which road to take.

Detour. Left the subject completely!

Bumpy Road. Had difficulty in expressing yourself.

Long Straight Stretch. Needless exposition; this section was monotonous, a few miles too long.

Back Track. You repeated yourself.

Too Many Curves. In trying to explain your point, you wound around too many Bible characters.

Breathtaking Scenery. Climax of the sermon. Most scenic part, but you covered it so fast we missed much of the beauty.

Destination. Conclusion. Like a frantic search for a motel. You finally found it and tumbled into bed completely exhausted. What a trip!—Jerry W. Hopkins, assistant to the president, John Brown University.

Does modern Christianity derail the Holy Spirit?

In a review of David J. du Plessis’ book The Spirit Bade Me Go, published in 1964, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin acknowledged that “the Pentecostal churches are almost certainly the fastest growing Christian communities in the world.” Today this is even more apparent. In America, Pentecostals appeal to an ever widening spectrum of the nation’s citizens. And in many countries abroad their growth in numbers and in influence is phenomenal. Why do they grow? Are their distinctive views on the nature of the Christian life truly Christian? What do they have to teach the churches? And what does their witness mean for Christian proclamation?

A major part of the reason for such rapid growth is the faithfulness and effectiveness of the personal witness given by the rank and file of the Pentecostal churches. Other churches have learned in recent years to place great emphasis on the responsibility of the layman to witness for Christ, but one might hazard a guess that the proportion of their members actually attempting to do this and the results they are able to achieve can hardly be compared with what is seen in the Pentecostal churches. Why are Pentecostalists eager and diligent in this work when so many others are not? The answer surely lies in the fact that they witness to what is real in their experience, to what they know is the most important thing in the world for themselves and for everybody else. Their witness is not simply a matter of duty or of belief. The constraint comes from within them, from something that has happened to them and that they know they must share.

By their own confesssion, that something is the presence of the Holy Spirit. They do not deny the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring Scripture objectively, nor do they denigrate the value of an objective atonement and objective revelation. But they speak of something more, a subjective quality that has entered into their conscious experience. They claim to have experienced the Holy Spirit in an endowment of spiritual power—power to speak in “tongues,” to witness, to prophesy, to heal the sick, and so on—power that they perceive in themselves and that other people perceive in them also.

In other words, Pentecostals appear to witness diligently because they have something exciting and precious to witness about. And they witness effectively because that something lends penetration and authenticity to what they say.

Ii

The very success of the Pentecostalists’ mission and the distinctly Christian character of their claims compel the rest of Christendom to ask whether the experience that lies behind the great expansion of the Pentecostal churches is to be regarded as standard for all Christians, whether it is something that is peculiar to certain types of people, or whether, indeed, as some suggest, it is really a distortion that is rooted in purely psychological or emotional factors and does not belong to a sane, balanced Christian way of life.

The only way to answer that question is to return to the New Testament. And to do that is to take the Pentecostal view much more seriously than many are perhaps inclined to do.

One of the most distinctive things about the activity of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is that he manifests himself in the realm of human experience. He is, indeed, God entering into personal lives in such a way that men become aware of him, of what his coming means to them. This awareness is not totally unlike their awareness of other, ordinary factors that enter into conscious experience. God’s coming is something of which one is aware, as surely as he is aware of other things—the results of an injection, the effect of good news, the lifting of worry. This is perhaps the point of greatest significance in this whole matter.

One of the key words that begins to lay bare the outlines of the New Testament picture is that spoken by Peter on the day of Pentecost. When the people who heard him preach and were disturbed by his message about Christ asked what they should do, Peter replied, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). They were to do two things: “Repent,” which in that context simply meant turning back to God and giving his Son, the exalted Lord, his due place in their lives, and “be baptized,” which carried as its central meaning the acceptance of God’s forgiveness of their sins through Jesus Christ. If they did these two things, God would do something for them. He would bestow on them the same gift that they had already seen bestowed on the apostles, the same remarkable spiritual power that had transformed them.

Moreover, this gift was for all who would believe. “The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39).

Now it is obvious that a remarkable change did come to those people who believed and were baptized on the day of Pentecost and thereafter. In the closing verses of Acts 2, Luke pictures a joyful people closely knit together, gladly sharing their possessions with one another, praising God, having “favor with all the people,” and making such an impression on the city of Jerusalem that their numbers increased daily. This was not their normal state. It was a mark of the change that had taken place in them, a change of which, without doubt, they were deeply conscious.

Similar results followed Philip’s preaching in Samaria (Acts 8). The change wrought by this gift was so marked and so apparent to onlookers that Simon the Sorcerer wanted to be able to wield this influence himself. It was not hidden and secret. It was open and obvious, a vivid part of the ordinary Christian’s experience.

So also with the group that heard Peter preach in Cornelius’s house (Acts 10; 11). The Holy Spirit was given to them without doubt and was given in such a way that the people themselves knew it. Peter and the others could see it also.

The evidence of the New Testament Epistles is no less significant. Paul’s words to the church in Corinth about the diverse gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12; 14) certainly refer to something that was a well-known element in the life and experience of the congregation. To speak about God’s having given “the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. 1:22) could have had no meaning if the Spirit was not something they could discern and be aware of as part of their conscious experience. The Apostle’s references to the Spirit in the eighth chapter of Romans suggest the same truth. And the first Epistle of John argues, “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (3:24b).

These references indicate that the promise Peter cited on the day of Pentecost was amply fulfilled in the experience of the New Testament Church. The gift of the Holy Spirit was not confined to the apostles, nor to a special few, nor to the day on which he was first manifested in this new form. A personal awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit was a normal part of the experience of being reconciled to God. It was God’s response to all who turned to Christ in repentance and faith. It was God’s confirmation that they were accepted by him and had entered into the new life of his Kingdom. Moreover, it was a confirmation only because it was something they experienced. They did not just assume that something new had happened to them. They knew it had, for the evidence of it was plainly seen by themselves and others.

Iii

Both the teaching and the experience of the New Testament Church make it plain that there were certain marks of the Spirit’s presence that were common to all who believed, and there were other marks that were peculiar to individuals and were greatly varied.

This appears to be the distinction made by Paul when he speaks of the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22, 23) and the “gifts and the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12). Fruit is that which grows naturally and inevitably on a particular tree. And wherever that tree grows, it produces the same fruit. The Apostle teaches, therefore, that whenever the Holy Spirit enters into a man and dwells there, invariably his presence will be revealed by certain results. These are: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”

These are not hidden qualities. Their presence in a man’s life is known to him and to others as well. Who does not know when love wells up in his heart? Who is not aware of joy when it comes to him? Who is not conscious of peace when it steals into his soul? And who can have these qualities without their being sensed by other people?

So the universal mark of the coming of the Holy Spirit is the gift of such inward qualities as these, qualities that reveal themselves in the experience of those who receive them, and that arc evident to those who look on. This fruit is evidence of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of spiritual power.

The gifts of the Spirit that Paul refers to in his letters to the Corinthians, and elsewhere, seem to stand in contrast to the “fruit” of the spirit. The fruit is singular; the gifts arc plural. The fruit of the Spirit relates to quality of character and spirit; the gifts have to do with men’s ability to serve the Kingdom of God among men. The fruit is common to all who receive the Spirit; the gifts are apportioned as he chooses. One man has the gift of inspired speech, another of healing, another of faith, another of administration, another of ecstatic experience.

Thus, in addition to the universal marks of the presence of the Holy Spirit in man’s lives, there are other marks that differ from person to person, so that the presence or absence of any one of them cannot be applied as a test of whether the Spirit has entered a man or not.

The significant point is that the power to serve the Kingdom of God effectively, in one way or another, either by the living of the Christian life, or by specific ecclesiastical or missionary activity, is to be expected as a consequence of the Spirit’s coming.

We are not reconciled to God merely for the sake of our own salvation. God’s will is that we should share in the work of his Kingdom on the earth. And when we are reconciled to him, the power of God to do his work is part of the gift that he bestows upon us. “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witness unto me.…” (Acts 1:8).

In this sense, the gifts of the Spirit should be set alongside the fruit of the Spirit as one of the sure marks of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life. We should find ourselves able to do things for the Kingdom of God that previously were beyond us. They may seem very small and unspectacular, or they may be enough to astonish ourselves and others. They will be capable of being interpreted in quite other ways. But we will know within ourselves that they are not simply our doing. They will have been accomplished through our efforts, but their effectiveness will be due to the touch of the Spirit of God upon us. We will not know the full range of what is accomplished. We will see only a little here and there. But it will be sufficient to confirm within us the awareness of God’s presence and God’s power.

Iv

Two practical things seem to spring out of all this. First, if the Holy Spirit is to be real in the experience of the Church and its members, all followers of Christ need to be given explicit instruction about his place in their lives. Jesus made sure that his disciples understood what to expect. He encouraged them to look for something special to happen. Those in the early Church laid special stress on the matter. And there seems to be a clear connection between the vividness of their experience and the thoroughness of their understanding.

No one would dream of suggesting that the Holy Spirit is not present in the life of the Church today, or in the experience of multitudes of its members. But it can hardly be denied that many are unaware of this because they have never been told the truth about it. They are unable to recognize what it is that has happened to them, or the greatness of what could happen to them if they only knew more if what it signified.

The second conclusion springs out of this: namely, that in the presentation of the Gospel to men in the work of evangelism, the promise of this gift of God should have its proper place alongside the call to repentance and faith in Christ. Peter’s reply to the people on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:38) would seem to supply the proper pattern of the evangelistic message, a pattern that, in the main non-Pentecostal churches at least, is often followed only in part.

If this is a true interpretation of the matter, then it is important to tell the inquirer not only what he must do but also what God will do to him and for him in response. Somewhere here lies the key that opens the door for the believing and obedient one and admits him into the joy and power of Christ’s Kingdom. And, if the Pentecostal churches’ experience is any guide, somewhere here also lies the key by which the rest of the Church may discover that effective and dynamic witness which makes our Pentecostal brethren so significant for our times.

On some points the united authority of all the biblical critics counts for nothing

The undermining of the old orthodoxy has been mainly the work of divines engaged in New Testament criticism. The authority of experts in that discipline is the authority in deference to whom we are asked to give up a huge mass of beliefs shared in common by the early Church, the Fathers, the Middle Ages, the Reformers, and even the nineteenth century. I want to explain what it is that makes me skeptical about this authority. Ignorantly skeptical, as you will all too easily see. But the skepticism is the father of the ignorance. It is hard to persevere in a close study when you can work up no prima facie confidence in your teachers.

First then, whatever these men may be as biblical critics, I distrust them as critics. They seem to me to lack literary judgment, to be imperceptive about the very quality of the texts they are reading. It sounds a strange charge to bring against men who have been steeped in those books all their lives. But that might be just the trouble. A man who has spent his youth and manhood in the minute study of New Testament texts and of other people’s studies of them, whose literary experiences of those texts lacks any standard of comparison such as can only grow from a wide and deep and genial experience of literature in general, is, I should think, very likely to miss the obvious things about them. If he tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavor; not how many years he has spent on that Gospel. But I had better turn to examples.

In what is already a very old commentary I read the Fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a “spiritual romance,” “a poem not a history”.… [But] turn to John. Read the dialogues: that with the Samaritan woman at the well, or that which follows the healing of the man born blind. Look at its pictures: Jesus (if I may use the word) doodling with his finger in the dust; the unforgettable ēn dè núz (xiii, 30). I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage … or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn’t see this has simply not learned to read.…

Here, from Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament (p. 30) is another: “Observe in what unassimilated fashion the prediction of the parousia (Mk. 8:38) follows upon the prediction of the passion (8:31).” What can he mean? Unassimilated? Bultmann believes that predictions of the parousia are older than those of the passion. He therefore wants to believe—and no doubt does believe—that when they occur in the same passage some discrepancy or “unassimilation” must be perceptible between them. But surely he foists this on the text with shocking lack of perception. Peter has confessed Jesus to be the Anointed One. That flash of glory is hardly over before the dark prophecy begins—that the Son of Man must suffer and die. Then this contrast is repeated. Peter, raised for a moment by his confession, makes his false step; the crushing rebuff “Get thee behind me” follows. Then, across that momentary ruin which Peter (as so often) becomes, the voice of the Master, turning to the crowd, generalizes the moral. All his followers must take up the cross. This avoidance of suffering, this self-preservation, is not what life is really about. You must stand to your tackling. If you disown Christ here and now, he will disown you later. Logically, emotionally, imaginatively, the sequence is perfect. Only a Bultmann could think otherwise.

Finally, from the same Bultmann: “The personality of Jesus has no importance for the kerygma either of Paul or of John.… Indeed the tradition of the earliest Church did not even unconsciously preserve a picture of his personality. Every attempt to reconstruct one remains a play of subjective imagination.”

So there is no personality of Our Lord presented in the New Testament. Through what strange process has this learned German gone in order to make himself blind to what all men except him see? What evidence have we that he would recognize a personality if it were there? For it is Bultmann contra mundum. If anything whatever is common to all believers, and even to many unbelievers, it is the sense that in the Gospels they have met a personality. There are characters whom we know to be historical but of whom we do not feel that we have any personal knowledge—knowledge by acquaintance; such are Alexander, Attila, or William of Orange. There are others who make no claim to historical reality but whom, none the less, we know as we know real people: Falstaff, Uncle Toby, Mr. Pickwick. But there are only three characters who, claiming the first sort of reality, also actually have the second. And surely everyone knows who they are: Plato’s Socrates, the Jesus of the Gospels, and Boswell’s Johnson. Our acquaintance with them shows itself in a dozen ways. When we look into the Apocryphal gospels, we find ourselves constantly saying of this or that logion, “No. It’s a fine saying, but not his. That wasn’t how he talked.”—just as we do with all pseudo-John-soniana.… So strong is the flavor of the personality [of the Jesus of the Gospels] that, even while he says things which, on any other assumption than that of Divine Incarnation in the fullest sense, would be appallingly arrogant, yet we—and many unbelievers too—accept him at his own valuation when he says “I am meek and lowly of heart.” Even those passages in the New Testament which superficially, and in intention, are most concerned with the Divine, and least with the Human Nature, bring us face to face with the personality. I am not sure that they don’t do this more than any others. “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of graciousness and reality … which we have looked upon and our hands have handled.” What is gained by trying to evade or dissipate this shattering immediacy of personal contact by talk about “that significance which the early church found that it was impelled to attribute to the Master”? This hits us in the face. Not what they were impelled to do but what impelled them. I begin to fear that by personality Dr. Bultmann means what I should call impersonality: what you’d get in … an obituary or a Victorian Life and Letters of Yeshua Bar-Yosef in three volumes with photographs.

That then is my first bleat. These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can’t see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.

Now for my second bleat. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point—and often involves throughout—the claim that the real behavior and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars. Now long before I became interested in theology I had met this kind of theory elsewhere. The tradition of Jowett still dominated the study of ancient philosophy when I was reading Greats. One was brought up to believe that the real meaning of Plato had been misunderstood by Aristotle and wildly travestied by the neo-Platonists, only to be recovered by the moderns. When recovered, it turned out (most fortunately) that Plato had really all along been an English Hegelian, rather like T. H. Green. I have met it a third time in my own professional studies; every week a clever undergraduate, every quarter a dull American don, discovers for the first time what some Shakesperian play really meant. But in this third instance I am a privileged person. The revolution in thought and sentiment which has occurred in my own lifetime is so great that I belong, mentally, to Shakespeare’s world far more than to that of these recent interpreters. I see—I feel it in my bones—I know beyond argument—that most of their interpretations are merely impossible; they involve a way of looking at things which was not known in 1914, much less in the Jacobean period. This daily confirms my suspicion of the same approach to Plato or the New Testament. The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur. Thus any statement put into Our Lord’s mouth by the old texts, which, if he had really made it, would constitute a prediction of the future, is taken to have been put in after the occurrence which it seemed to predict. This is very sensible if we start by knowing that inspired prediction can never occur. Similarly in general, the rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous in general never occurs. Now I do not here want to discuss whether the miraculous is possible. I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon “If miraculous, unhistorical” is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing. On this they speak simply as men; men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up in.

But my fourth bleat—which is also my loudest and longest—is still to come.

All this sort of criticism attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the texts it studies; what vanished documents each author used, when and where he wrote, with what purposes, under what influences—the whole Sitz im Leben of the text. This is done with immense erudition and great ingenuity. And at first sight it is very convincing. I think I should be convinced by it myself, but that I carry about with me a charm—the herb moly—against it. You must excuse me if I now speak for a while of myself. The value of what I say depends on its being first-hand evidence.

What forearms me against all these Reconstructions is the fact that I have seen it all from the other end of the stick. I have watched reviewers reconstructing the genesis of my own books in just this way.

Until you come to be reviewer yourself you would never believe how little of an ordinary review is taken up by criticism in the strict sense: by evaluation, praise, or censure, of the book actually written. Most of it is taken up with imaginary histories of the process by which you wrote it. The very terms which the reviewers use in praising or dispraising often imply such a history. They praise a passage as “spontaneous” and censure another as “labored”; that is, they think they know that you wrote the one currente calamo and the other invita Minerva.

What the value of such reconstructions is I learned very early in my career. I had published a book of essays; and the one into which I had put most of my heart, the one I really cared about and in which I discharged a keen enthusiasm, was on William Morris. And in almost the first review I was told that this was obviously the only one in the book in which I had felt no interest. Now don’t mistake. The critic was, I now believe, quite right in thinking it the worst essay in the book; at least everyone agreed with him. Where he was totally wrong was in his imaginary history of the causes which produced its dullness.

Well, this made me prick up my ears. Since then I have watched with some care similar imaginary histories both of my own books and of books by friends whose real history I knew. Reviewers, both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author’s mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why—and when—he did everything.

Now I must first record my impression; then, distinct from it, what I can say with certainty. My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; that the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure. You would expect that by mere chance they would hit as often as they miss. But it is my impression that they do no such thing. I can’t remember a single hit. But as I have not kept a careful record my mere impression may be mistaken. What I think I can say with certainty is that they are usually wrong.…

Now this surely ought to give us pause. The reconstruction of the history of a text, when the text is ancient, sounds very convincing. But one is after all sailing by dead reckoning; the results cannot be checked by fact. In order to decide how reliable the method is, what more could you ask for than to be shown an instance where the same method is at work and we have facts to check it by? Well, that is what I have done. And we find, that when this check is available, the results are either always, or else nearly always, wrong. The “assured results of modern scholarship,” as to the way in which an old book was written, are “assured,” we may conclude, only because the men who knew the facts are dead and can’t blow the gaff. The huge essays in my own field which reconstruct the history of Piers Plowman or The Faerie Queene are most unlikely to be anything but sheer illusions.

Am I then venturing to compare every whipster who writes a review in a modern weekly with these great scholars who have devoted their whole lives to the detailed study of the New Testament? If the former are always wrong, does it follow that the latter must fare no better?

There are two answers to this. First, while I respect the learning of the great biblical critics, I am not yet persuaded that their judgement is equally to be respected. But, secondly, consider with what overwhelming advantages the mere reviewers start. They reconstruct the history of a book written by someone whose mothertongue is the same as theirs; a contemporary, educated like themselves, living in something like the same mental and spiritual climate. They have everything to help them. The superiority in judgement and diligence which you are going to attribute to the biblical critics will have to be almost superhuman if it is to offset the fact that they are everywhere faced with customs, language, race-characteristics, class-characteristics, a religious background, habits of composition, and basic assumptions, which no scholarship will ever enable any man now alive to know as surely and intimately and instinctively as the reviewer can know mine. And for the very same reason, remember, the biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

You may say, of course, that such reviewers are foolish in so far as they guess how a sort of book they never wrote themselves was written by another. They assume that you wrote a story as they would try to write a story; the fact that they would so try, explains why they have not produced any stories. But are the biblical critics in this way much better off? Dr. Bultmann never wrote a gospel. Has the experience of his learned, specialized, and no doubt meritorious, life really given him any power of seeing into the minds of those long dead men who were caught up into what, on any view, must be regarded as the central religious experience of the whole human race? It is no incivility to say—he himself would admit—that he must in every way be divided from the evangelists by far more formidable barriers—spiritual as well as intellectual—than any that could exist between my reviewers and me.

… A Person Facing Serious Surgery

Surgery is usually a mysterious and frightening experience. I listen first to the advice of doctors on how much or how little one should talk with the patient about the seriousness of his condition. I have found it increasingly possible, however, to offer assurance—even in cases of serious malignancy—about the genius of medical science and its progress with miracle drugs, surgery, and treatment. One is never casual or callous. But usually one can remind a person that, humanly speaking, he is in good hands.

Prayers that add to or create an atmosphere of uncertainty, or prayers uttered with a tone of “last rites,” are unpardonable. Prayers may be honest without being either light-hearted or presumptuous about an outcome. It is good to listen to the patient. What he has to say to you is more important than what you have to say to him. When a minister speaks, and also when he is silent, he should be suggesting that we are always in the hands of Eternal Goodness, and therefore are beyond any ultimate harm. And the minister should remember that the patient’s family must be his concern also and will probably benefit from the same approach to their needs—GEORGE DAVIS, National City Christian Church, Washington, D. C.

… Parents Of A Retarded Child

I never knew the disappointment, heartbreak, rebellion, sacrifice, and sometimes triumphant spirit that characterize the parents of a retarded child until after May 5, 1952, the day when I learned I was the father of a mongoloid baby boy.

There are many people and institutions to which to turn for guidance: specialists, clinics, children’s homes, and a vast amount of literature. But the supreme problem is, “How do I look upon this child, my child? Is God involved, or did the mathematics of the birth rate of retarded children just catch up with me?” At this point the Bible is particularly relevant. When Moses protested to God that he was not eloquent, his protest brought forth this reply: “Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?” (Exod. 4:11). The parent will either hate this kind of a God or come, perhaps slowly, to trust completely his wisdom and love. Job, having lost all but a critical wife, could finally say, “What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).

In counseling sessions often fraught with emotional overtones, ministers are called upon as never before to be articulate and helpful in dealing with troubled lives.

Just how does the skillful pastor go about offering encouragement when hope is dim, or confronting the consequences of sin in love?

Ten Protestant pastors here dip into their own experiences to show how they have handled difficult counseling situations and what they have learned from them.

SoonCHRISTIANITY TODAYwill begin a series by evangelical clergymen on “The Minister as Counselor.” These articles will appear in “the Minister’s Workshop,” a monthly feature currently devoted to effective preaching.—ED.

The biggest lesson I learned is that by following this pathway of acceptance and balanced understanding, Christian parents arrive at the place of being able to believe that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). As I have believed God, I have experienced this progression of thought myself and have seen God lead hundreds of other parents of retarded children to this understanding and acceptance of their children.—ROBERT J. LAMONT, First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

… An Unhappy Marriage Partner

Think first of a model family. Now watch deterioration. Bob doubts, abandons religion and home. Betty is shaken, but with the help of many Christian friends is not shattered. I spent days searching for Bob. When finally I found him, he talked in abstractions, dodging references to family responsibility. Later he left town with a married secretary. Despair almost overwhelmed Betty, but because of an unwavering faith in God and a deep love for Bob, she took drastic action. She traveled 1,000 miles, found them and talked things out. Reconciliation for both couples resulted. Forgiveness was complete. Confession included a new determination to restore broken lives. Christ and his Church became the center of life.

Not all cases end “happily ever after,” but when counseling others, I remember that there is rarely a hopeless case. I remember Betty’s love and forgiveness and the time she spent in working out a solution. Encouraging her, reviving her self-confidence, stabilizing her faith, was my small part. I recall this case and take heart when I am with others in need. Asking God’s help, I try harder to counsel wisely. Since Betty and Bob made it, so can others—ROGER MILLS, Belair Church of Christ, Bowie, Maryland.

… A Dying Person

To stand beside a deathbed is an experience no minister asks for. But it comes uninvited. And it does something to a man.

On the hospital bed lay a man dying of cancer—suffering agony, gasping for his last breath, clinging to the brittle thread of life. Death seemed to be waiting in the wings while on the stage this poor sufferer pleaded for an end to his agony.

What can a minister say or do in such an hour? Complain to God for permitting such a death to a fine Christian? Unthinkable! To do so would only intensify the suffering of the wife and family.

This is what I did. First I whispered in the man’s ear my joy that he had settled all spiritual matters before this battlefield of agony came upon him. Now he didn’t have to fight on two fronts at the same time, the physical and the spiritual. Then I repeated softly and slowly the Twenty-third Psalm. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me” (and I tried to underline each of these next words by slow and precise diction) “all—the—days—of—my—life—and—I—will—dwell—in—the—house—of—the—LORD—for—ever.”

He squeezed my hand tighter. Words would not come. In a short while he struggled his last and went to be with his Lord.

I went away slowly. My faith was enriched. And this man’s faith was strengthened in his dying moment by a word from God.—NORMAN R. OKE, First Church of the Nazarene, Washington, D. C.

… A Member Arrested By Police

A church member arrested by police? Yes, it sometimes happens.

The member may phone you in desperation, saying he must see you now. You drop everything and go to the police office. The man tells you he’s being held on a morals charge. This is not the first arrest; it’s an old problem. Despairingly he says there is no one but his pastor to whom he can turn.

What have I learned—and done—in situations like this?

Jesus was a friend to sinners. He has been my friend, and now I must help this man, without condemning him or condoning his sin.

I have learned:

1. To put the man immediately in contact with a sound legal adviser.

2. Not to accept the man’s initial statements at face value—the whole truth may be painful and very embarrassing.

3. To contact the arresting officer and ask how I can help. Often he can give good insight and sound advice.

4. To realize that the real difficulty is more than the arrest and probable trial. The man has a deeper problem that he cannot evade. The police and the judge will make him face this basic problem; if they don’t, the pastor must.

5. To help the man see there’s hope in the power and compassion of Jesus Christ. Many times I have read First Corinthians 6:9–11 to a man who thought there was no hope for him.

6. To strengthen the man by follow-up counseling and mutual friendship in Christ (Gal. 6:1, 2).—

RAYMOND C. ORTLUND,

Lake Avenue Congregational Church,

Pasadena, California.

… A hom*osexual

“No, that’s not what I was talking about! You’re the one that keeps bringing that up all the time!”

Although it happened twenty years ago, I’ve not been able to forget it. Few counseling sessions are still so vivid to me. It was my first “case.” A call for help had come to the university counseling service. The caller said he could meet a staff member downtown, and the leader of our practicum in psychotherapy turned over name, place, and time to me. For a year I’d served as a vocational counselor. I’d had the theory. I’d practiced role-playing in therapeutic counseling under the critical eye of instructor and fellow students. Now I was on my own.

A handsome, soft-spoken young man approached and identified himself. He was personable and dressed in quiet good taste, and I wondered what could have prompted him to call for help. He looked as though he had everything going for him.

“You called the university about a counselor?”

A long pause. He started to speak several times, stopped, sized me up, then suddenly blurted out, “Yes, I’m hom*osexual.”

My stomach knotted. Nobody brought up this one in practicum, I thought. How on earth do I handle it?

All the O.K. words came to mind: acceptance, permissiveness, non-judgmental, reflection of feeling. I proceeded with the techniques I’d learned. He spoke of his life pattern in a hom*osexual community and his distinct uneasiness outside it. His fear was that he would be identified as a hom*osexual and be the target of any number of untoward consequences. He feared his voice or his mannerisms or something about him would betray him to a hostile society. The fear of being found out had become obsessive, keeping him anxious to the point of distraction.

I was obsessed, too. All I could think was, Of course he wants to repudiate this kind of life. Naturally he should get out of that hom*osexual community so he could work more productively at sexual reorientation. This is what I thought I heard him saying. What snapped me back to reality was the tart retort with which this account begins.

What had happened? Only that I had violated practically every important principle of good counseling. What I did in that session has appeared increasingly wrong to me with the experience of the years. In capsule form, these are some things I’ve learned as over the years I’ve pondered that disastrous session:

1. I was not relating to him with warmth and concern as one needy, fallible human being to another. Instead, in a doctrinaire way I was playing the role of ideal client-centered counselor. Whatever else may be a part of good counseling, genuineness and a sense of fellow feeling are a sine qua non.

2. I was tuned in improperly. Instead of really listening to him, I heard him only through my own sense of how he ought to feel and what he ought to want. This could only come through to him as my rejection of him. He could only feel that I had judged him and had no interest in helping him deal with the problem as he saw it. I did not meet him with sympathetic concern at the point where he was. In spite of myself, I had a fundamental disrespect for his person.

3. I did not know enough about his most troubling symptom. I did not understand, for example, the hom*osexual’s tendency to over-identify himself with his sexual orientation to a point where he can scarcely think about himself apart from this problem. Neither did I understand the sense of otherness that haunts the hom*osexual so that he feels he has no place either in church or in society.

4. I failed to distinguish the person from his symptom. That is, I repeated his own error.

These are some things I learned through a humbling effort at counseling with a hom*osexually oriented person many years ago. My mistakes were basic ones. And I’ve since learned that to slip back into these errors comes easily. That a few people have been helped in spite of my propensity for such destructive attitudes testifies abundantly to the power of God’s grace.—LARS I. GRANBERG, president, Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa.

… A Prospective Bride And Groom

A bride- and groom-to-be are people who have already made up their minds. This acknowledgment has helped me improve my perspective toward the rigorous ritual of premarital counseling, often consented to as part of the “price to be paid.” Even though I insist on counseling prior to marriage, I am mildly cynical about the effect (other than the relief I feel at having maintained a standard that is expected of trained clergymen these days).

Perhaps this is a defense for my officiating record of marital mortality, which is close to 50 per cent. But so many couples come to me with minds made up, their questions confined to matters like “How much does it cost?,” that I often feel my services are regarded as part of a packaged plan, along with pictures, flowers, and dresses. Worse, for many my services seem to be thought only a prelude to the main event—the reception!

My lesson is not all negative. Even though the mindset of the prospective bride and groom does not allow for much insight, reflection, and even planning apart from “details,” there is an opportunity to begin a process of continuing help. In conversations before the marriage one can witness to the biblical expectation for marriage. Goal-setting, this might be called. I have found many couples unable to point to a happy marriage! I give personal testimony to what Christ has done for my home and the happiness I find there. Then, having walked with them through the days of hectic distraction, I find I have earned the right to stay in the picture, and later some better opportunities for counsel are available. Counseling bride and groom makes the best sense when it is part of a process that begins before they decide to become bride and groom and certainly continues after, when they are husband and wife, father and mother.—DON DE YOUNG, Elmendorf Reformed Church, East Harlem, New York City.

… A Bereaved Person

It happened to me, not to someone else. Though I had counseled others in bereavement, I could do so only by faith plus hearsay. I had been less than three years old when my father and sister died. Then thirty-eight years later, my mother died, and for the first time I really knew what bereavement was. For over twenty years as a pastor I had prescribed for others. Now would the physician find that the prescription really worked?

In my heart I said the things that I had said to others hundreds of times. She was seventy years old and had lived a full, rich life. As a Christian, nevermore would she feel the sting of death. She had been released from a frail body and in the Lord was more alive than she had ever been before. My own Christian faith told me that I would see her again in the resurrection.

Then I saw her body in the casket. The mortician’s art could not hide the fact of death. Though my faith held for the future, what about now? What or who would fill the emptiness? The sense of loss had hit me dead center.

Awaiting the minister’s words at the funeral, I felt that my chest would explode with the pressure of grief. And then the minister began to read.

“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by my name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God. the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.…” (Isa. 43:1–3).

A peace beyond understanding overshadowed and indwelt me. I then knew the comfort of God’s Word and of his abiding presence in sorrow. Never since have I read the Bible to bereaved persons simply as a ministry to be rendered. It is now an experience to be shared.—HERSCHEL H. HOBBS, First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

… A Terminally Ill Person

The first time I came to know Harry was when he was in the hospital for exploratory surgery. He was not unduly apprehensive, but he had a normal concern. Harry was not very active in church.

The morning before surgery we had prayer, and Harry was calm as he was wheeled away. But the diagnosis was terminal cancer. Harry seemed to know this, even before the doctor asked me to join him in honestly sharing with Harry the truth about his condition. The doctor was not optimistic, but he held out a ray of hope, not ruling out the healing power of God to work a miracle.

Harry did not want to die, but he arranged his business affairs. As we prayed together in the weeks ahead, I saw him grow into a deeper trust and faith in God.

Yet he was to die. The evening of his death, I stood at his bedside with the sacrament. Communion meant much to him. As I lifted his weak and weary head to place the bread in his mouth, tears came down my cheeks. Harry saw them, raised up with strength not his own, and said: “O, pastor, don’t do that! It’s all right, I’m fine! Don’t cry!”

In two hours, Harry was dead. I had seen God bring healing and peace in death. He had helped me to be able to say: “It is not bad to die, when you die as Harry died.”—IRA GALLAWAY, Walnut Hill Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas.

… A Pastor Who Has Lost His Church

An unofficial function that devolves upon people engaged in theological education, especially if they have also had long pastoral experience, is counseling ministers who have lost their churches. Over the years I have learned one big lesson from this counseling and several lesser ones. The great lesson is that Christ is the King of the Church. Whatever man, minister or layman, may intend, God can turn it to good.

Beyond this lesson (which can be learned from Scripture itself), I have learned that when a minister loses his church, it is not always his fault. Aside from cases of incompetence and a few instances of moral failure, I have discovered an alarmingly great number of ministers who have been penalized, not because they were politically or socially controversial, but because they preached the Word of God. I think there is more of this than is generally realized, much more than congregations or denominational officials admit.

Some of these tragedies are related to the fact that there is no spiritually sensitive system of clergy placement in Protestantism as a whole. The methods of the world have infiltrated God’s Church. Nevertheless, not infrequently a minister loses one church in order to be released for an unexpectedly larger usefulness to Christ.

I have learned from these counseling situations that there are two things that the clergy should remember: (1) When a minister finds himself in a church where he is needed and where the relationship is on the whole congenial, let him beware of that subtle worldliness which tempts him to seek for himself supposedly “greater fields of service”; (2) Each minister should take pains to maintain continuing contacts with the seminary of which he is a graduate.—GEORGE MORREL, rector of St. Simon’s Parish, San Fernando, California, and adjunct professor of theology, Bloy House Theological School, Pasadena.

… An Unwed Mother

Carol’s husband had died a tragic death, and her grief had been severe. At the time her ability to catch hold of spiritual insights into life and death had seemed doubtful. Her relationship to God and his Church was vague.

Ten months later she came to me for help. As she sat in my office, she shifted nervously in her chair and took a long draw on a cigarette. Then suddenly she blurted out that she was pregnant.

Her feelings were pretty standard: embarrassment about the exposure of her secret love life; scorn over the unfairness of being left alone so young with three active children; self-pity over the loss of her husband; guilt over the several affairs she had had as she tried to quench her need for love and companionship; and bitterness that sexual intercourse produces children.

Through the weeks that I counseled her, her concern wavered back and forth between her theological and psychological needs. For the most part, her view of life was superficial. This superficial approach revealed itself in shallowness and self-deception. And when the superficial problems were solved, Carol was inclined to slide back into the old patterns of life.

Then she discovered some of the deeper issues of faith. Her discovery lead her to Christ and the miracle of his redemptive love. Although her restoration was slow, I had the privilege one day of seeing a deep spiritual radiance on her face. We had just concluded a prayer, and she had lingered in His presence. She had discovered the divine mystery and the absolute purity of His strength.

This whole experience brought home to me several principles of counseling. The cardinal rule is listen, listen, listen. I’ve learned that most people already have the answers; they merely need support and encouragement to put their plans into operation. Second, I learned that Carol’s fears could break out into the open only when she discovered that I was not sitting in self-righteous judgment of her acts. Only as I empathized with her in each part of her trouble would she uncover the emotional garbage that caused her deep anxiety and guilt. Third, I learned not to overplay the role of counselor. It takes considerable effort to hold back one’s inclination to offer a packaged solution. Fourth, this experience made me aware that every person can have that radiant moment when God’s love flows in. This warms the heart and transforms the life.—NEWTON C. STEACY, St. James United Church, Montreal, Quebec.

If the more than 10,000 Americans killed in the Viet Nam conflict could speak, would they not urge free men not to undersell their resistance to totalitarian tyranny? Surely they would say that as servicemen they had stoutly championed the right to dissent as part of the right to liberty. But would they not consider it a stain on their flag and a reproach to moral courage when dissenters create sympathy for the aggressor and portray the most benevolent land in modern history in the role of villain? Is anyone who implies that Communism is benevolent a trustworthy spokesman? And ought not flag-tramplers and draft-card-burners to be given an opportunity to reapply for citizenship?

The Viet Nam conflict is woefully complex. The liberals who rightly insist that the United States ought not to be going it alone should be equally vocal in lamenting that the United Nations (“the world’s best hope for peace”!) seems increasingly ready to run away from trouble, as, for example, in U Thant’s withdrawal of U. N. troops from the Israeli-Egyptian border.

No Christian dare advocate the use of unlimited power, since force ought always to be employed in the service of justice. But from the Berlin Wall to the Viet Nam demilitarized zone, American leaders may yet learn that, when flagrant injustice has been committed, its consequences should be reversed as swiftly and as powerfully as is necessary to keep aggressors from milking a propaganda advantage as well as a military advantage out of their barbarism.

The manifesto of contemporary radical theology in England is not so much the Bishop of Wolwich’s Honest to God (which is regarded as painfully superficial even by the theological community that shares its views) but the volume Soundings: Essays concerning Christian Understanding, edited by A. R. Vidler. It was almost inevitable that when Pike took his recent “sabbatical” for theological study in England, he spent it at Cambridge in close touch with Vidler (cf. my analyses of Pike’s theology in the Sunday School Times, April 30 and May 7, 1966). There is little doubt that Dr. Vidler has succeeded admirably in his cherished purpose of serving as a midwife to the radical theology of the day.

It was therefore with considerable interest that I, together with the students now participating in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s annual European Program at the Faculté de Théologie Protestante of the University of Strasbourg, attended Dr. Vidler’s recent presentation on “Church and Society in England, 1900–1950.” The lecture-and-discussion session took place on April 14 under the sponsorship of the University’s Centre de Recherches d’Histoire des Religions. The fifty or so students and professors who turned out for the two-hour session found Dr. Vidler a paradoxically engaging fellow: with white eyebrows, mustache, and goatee, he looked from the neck up like a sophisticated Santa Claus; with white tie and black shirt, he looked from the neck down like a sophisticated Chicago gangster. Perceptive listeners to his talk found the same odd combination of the positive and the negative in his remarks.

Vidler’s lecture was frankly autobiographical. Born in a thirteenth-century house in Rye, Sussex, at the turn of the century, Vidler recalled Henry James’s home in one direction and slums in the other. For the socially conservative church of the day, poverty was simply taken for granted as a concomitant of the natural order: it could and should be mitigated through charity, but to attempt to root it out by way of radical social programs went beyond the vision of clergy and laity. At preparatory school in 1910, Vidler encountered only one professed political liberal out of 100 boys (quite naturally, the boys followed their fathers’ viewpoints). Vidler became “quite religious” in these vital pre-university years—“too religious” he now thinks; never did he consider that his Anglican high-churchmanship had anything to do with politics or society.

In 1919, Vidler entered Cambridge, and while he was an undergraduate his eyes were opened to many of England’s great social and political needs. Under the influence of S. C. Carpenter (a theologian and Christian socialist of the Gore and Lux Mundi school) and Muggeridge pere and fils, he became a convinced socialist. On graduation in 1921, he went to Wells, Somerset, for theological training; but finding it hopelessly conservative (paralleling Anthony Trollope’s Barchester), he soon withdrew and obtained a “title” to a mining parish in Newcastle-on-Tyne. There 10,000 people lived in miserable slums, and the rector was a political conservative who worked there only from a sense of duty. Vidler, however, was soon involved in political activity; sometimes after the Sunday evening service he would dash off to a Labor Party meeting to speak (and now he recalls the latter meetings as often more exhilarating than the former).

Later Vidler moved to a Birmingham parish, was temporarily drawn into Eric Gill’s orbit (society should return to handicraft; the invention of the internal combustion engine was an incalculable tragedy), but soon had his views tempered by the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Chiefly owing to Niebuhr, Vidler gave up “all naïve, Sermon-on-the-Mount idealism.” Now he saw that one could not appeal to man’s “better nature” to achieve social goals but that the will-to-power, especially in collective activity, necessitates action in terms of the lesser of evils. Politics is the art of the possible, and appeals should be made not to principles but to the exigencies of the concrete situation.

Eventually, Vidler came to entertain thoughts of a “social faith” for all of Great Britain. Naturally this faith could not be distinctively Christian, since only a small number of citizens are committed to Christianity; perhaps it could take the shape of a neo-Utilitarianism. Discussions along this line went on in a private group called “The Moot,” whose leading figure was sociologist Karl Mannheim, and which included T. S. Eliot, Walter Moberly, Dr. John Baillie, and other notables of varying persuasions. Though it ceased to exist after Mannheim’s death in 1947, this group prefigured, as Vidler sees it, the concerns of such contemporary organizations as the Evangelical Academies in Germany and—most particularly—the Ecumenical Institute in Switzerland.

In the most penetrating critique of Vidler’s Soundings to date—E. L. Mascall’s Up and Down in Adria (Faith Press, 7 Tufton St., London SW 1)—the author writes: “My first criticism … is that, taking it in its overall character, it has misunderstood the function of the Christian theologian vis-à-vis the contemporary world.” This criticism precisely applies to Dr. Vidler’s Strasbourg lecture, for he unabashedly set aside Christ’s Great Commission in favor of a program of generalized, secularized social amelioration. One fully empathizes with Vidler’s disgust for the socially indifferent church-life of his youth; but how much greater a tragedy it is that he has aided and abetted a pendulum-swing in the opposite direction that leaves man with no clear hope for the next world and no solid grounding for his social action in the present.

The discussion period following the lecture underscored the impotence of Dr. Vidler’s approach. Questioned on his assertion in Soundings that “there is still in the tolerant, pluralist, democratic kind of society which we now have and want to maintain and strengthen—value and validity in the idea of a national church,” Vidler reaffirmed his belief that a reconstituted form of established church—oriented not to “evangelism and piety” but to “the whole life of the nation”—could “witness to a transcendent Authority over the state.”

Two of my Trinity students raised serious objection to such a program on the ground that a church drawn into the communal, secular orbit of the state is in the worst possible position to speak prophetically to the state—as the Church of England so well illustrates. Moreover, by cutting himself off from the moorings of scriptural revelation, Vidler eliminates the very possibility of establishing any clear view of the transcendent God and any definite expression of his will for man socially and ethically. Thus social action becomes a chameleonic reflection of the secular situation itself, and the church is powerless to deal with those totalitarian threats to man’s very existence that appear on every hand with increasing intensity in the modern world.

Why is Dr. Vidler always the midwife and never the mother? Is it because to bring forth genuine theological life, one needs seed—the seed of the Word of God? That seed is sure to produce fruit both in temporal society and in the eternal Kingdom: some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some an hundredfold.

When Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the fight to get federal money for children in private schools was won. But this year that bill faces its first full congressional review, and congressmen expect a whole new fight. The big question now is how the government can best distribute that aid.

For some leaders in religious education, the question holds more than passing interest. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, along with the influential interfaith parents’ lobby, Citizens for Educational Freedom, is lining up opposition to a Republican measure that would place control of much of the bill’s $3 billion in the hands of state educational officials, instead of Washington.

Under a bill sponsored by Rep. Albert H. Quie (R.-Minn.), a large part of the aid would be given to the states in the form of “block grants” to be distributed as the states wish. Under the administration’s proposal, funds flow directly from Washington to local school districts.

For religious educators, the important question raised by the Quie bill is this: Under which plan will private-school children get the most? As one congressional aide put it: “It’s a matter of who do you trust—the state government or Washington?” Apparently, the private schools trust Washington more than they trust the states.

The threat of state control is clear to Msgr. James C. Donohue, who is leading the fight against the Quie bill for the U. S. Catholic Conference. Said he: “If it is passed, we believe that private-school participation in the federal school-aid program would become all but non-existent.”

The reason for Catholic suspicion of state educational officials, according to Donohue, is that “for the past fifteen or twenty years their association has passed resolutions opposing any kind of participation by private schools.”

Citizens for Educational Freedom, whose 150,000 membership includes parents from all three major faiths, many with children in church schools, has charged that the Quie bill would deny to private-school children some services that would be open to public-school children. “If a bill is going to aid school children,” says Jeremiah D. Buckley, CEF’s executive director, “it should help them all equally.”

A silent partner in opposition to the Quie bill is the National Council of Churches. The NCC’s disapproval is based on the belief that some areas of the Quie bill go too far and that its approval might open a whole new debate on the church-state issue in aid to education. After a week’s study, however, the NCC said it will not publicly fight the bill because it has found that the congressmen it believed it could influence were already against the bill.

The opposition, particularly from Catholics, has caused Republicans to seek accommodation. Since its appearance late last month, the bill has been rewritten at least four times.

To take off the pressure on another front, two Catholic Republican congressmen (Scherle from Iowa and Erlenborn from Illinois) sent letters to the head of every parochial school system rebutting their church’s position and asking support for the bill.

In a statement on his own, Quie promised his bill will “continue every form of assistance now available to private-school pupils and teachers.”

Outwardly, Republicans are interested in the bill because it places control in the hands of the states. Privately, however, some congressmen admit that in addition a victory for the Quie bill would connect the party to an important piece of education legislation while at the same time providing a rebuff to the Great Society.

Democrats emphasize that Quie would reduce by as much as 30 per cent the money for educationally deprived children. Also, directing the money through the states would take away from the bill’s ability to spot and help individual problems at the grass-roots level.

How the vote will go is still unclear. Both parties backed away from a showdown at month’s end. The letter-writing campaigns flooding some congressional offices, particularly from heavily Catholic areas, seems to be changing few minds. Of the twenty-two congressmen, for example, who are both Republican and Roman Catholic, only two have said they will break with their party to oppose the bill.

Protestant Panorama

The “restructure” proposal toward more centralization in the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) has run into enough criticism that the final vote, scheduled for this fall, is likely to be held off until the 1968 convention. Restructure is necessary for ultimate Disciples entry into organic union with other denominations.

The North Carolina Lutheran Synod asked that pastors be given a week’s leave of absence each year for “scholarly studies.” Congregations and church synod agencies were requested to arrange for the furloughs. Actual implementation was left up to local church leaders.

The Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board has appointed its first Negro career missionary in eighty-four years: Miss Sue Thompson of Missouri, who will work in Nigeria. The SBC has previously sent some Negroes on short-term assignments.

Episcopal Bishop Robert F. Gibson, Jr., told the Consultation on Church Union that similar broad church mergers are under way in twenty-five other nations and that, comparatively speaking, the Americans “are quite far behind in the process.” He was reporting on an April meeting of union leaders sponsored by the World Council of Churches.

Miscellany

A windstorm peeled back the roof of a new warehouse belonging to the Baker Book House religious publishing firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A number of books were reported damaged by water. No one was injured.

An international art talent contest among orphans and needy children between the ages of six and eighteen will be sponsored by World Vision. The children will use whatever media is available, from oils to charcoal.

Orissa State in India will pay $15,000 for rebuilding of four churches in Berhampur damaged in a riot last fall.

Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox pilgrims clashed briefly in Jerusalem during an Orthodox Holy Saturday procession April 29. The violence, according to reports, was the result of a long-standing dispute between the two churches over ownership of a monastery. Coptic Orthodox Archbishop Basilius was slightly injured.

The Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to kill three obscenity convictions on the sale of “girlie” magazines and paperbacks. The court said that the cases did not involve the “pandering” aspects that led it to convict Ralph Ginzburg (see April 15, 1966, issue, page 44), and that prosecutors made no appeals for protection of “juveniles.”

Personalia

The first woman moderator of a presbytery in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is Dr. Janie McGaughey of Atlanta. She was elected head of the local presbytery by a voice vote. Dr. McGaughey is a ruling elder at Druid Hills Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.

Dr. James Ralph Scales was chosen president of Wake Forest College (Baptist), succeeding Dr. Harold W. Tribble, who is retiring. Dr. Scales formerly headed Oklahoma Baptist University and more recently has been a dean at Oklahoma State University.

The Rev. Carlyle Marney resigned as pastor of the 11,000-member Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina, to become director of Interpreter’s House, an ecumenical center at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.

Benjamin F. Payton, first Negro to head the religion and race department of the National Council of Churches, will become president of Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, in July. The first of this year, NCC amalgamated its seven social-justice agencies under Payton’s direction. Benedict, which has 1,100 students, is a Negro college related to four Baptist conventions.

Colin W. Williams, associate secretary of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Life and Mission, will become director of the Doctor of Ministry program at the University of Chicago Divinity School this fall. He succeeds the late Robert W. Spike in that post. Williams, a 45-year-old Australian Methodist who has nettled conservatives in the NCC fold with his new-evangelism ideas, says his departure does not indicate a redirection of the NCC program.

The Rev. Charles L. Warren was appointed executive director of the Council of Churches of Greater Washington, D. C. Warren is presently a district superintendent in the New York Conference of The Methodist Church. He is the first Negro to hold the influential ecclesiastical post in Washington.

Monsignor William W. Baum, quiet, friendly ecumenical officer for U. S. Roman Catholics, becomes chancellor of the Kansas City diocese in July. In little more than two years in the pioneering post he has traveled 150,000 miles and attended a broad range of Protestant meetings.

Dr. Fred E. Young was appointed dean of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Kansas. Young, professor of Old Testament since 1955, has been acting dean since January 1.

The Rev. Ralph C. Chandler was elected secretary for international affairs in the United Presbyterian Office of Church and Society.

Allan M. Parrent, former U. S. foreign service officer, was named director of program in the Washington, D. C., office of the National Council of Churches’ Department of International Affairs.

Anniversaries

The Presbyterian Journal marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a special issue dated May 3. The magazine, founded by Dr. L. Nelson Bell as a monthly, now appears as a weekly with a circulation larger than that of any other independent Presbyterian or Reformed publication in the world.

Air Force Chief of Staff General J. P. McConnell threw a quiet over the fiftieth anniversary dinner of the General Commission on Chaplains by telling chaplains that “they need to spend less time in their offices and more time down with the boys.” McConnell, a Protestant, said “Catholic chaplains are best. I don’t know why, but they are.”

Groups in more than two dozen cities gathered for simple meals last month to observe the fiftieth anniversary of the American Friends Service Committee. Justin Kaplan, winner of the 1967 Pulitzer prize for biography, announced he would donate his $500 prize to the Quaker organization as an expression of his dissent from U. S. policy toward Viet Nam.

Deaths

PETRUS OLOF BERSELL, 84, retired president of the Augustana Lutheran Church; in Minneapolis.

ROBERT NATHANIAL MONTGOMERY, 66, president emeritus of Muskingum College and last moderator of the United Presbyterian Church of North America; in New York.

For more than two years, Christian clergymen have been meeting with disciples of Communism in a vague sort of dialogue in various places across Europe. The talks have blown hot and cold and until recently were little publicized. But they will probably attract a surge of new interest now that the Soviet Union has awarded Martin Niemöller, a president of the World Council of Churches, the Lenin Peace Prize.

Chief initiator of the talks has been a Roman Catholic organization, the International Paulist Society, which started in West Germany.

Until this spring, significantly, all the talks have been held in non-Communist countries. The first one in a Communist land was held last month in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, and Religious News Service reported that it ended on a discordant note.

Father Erich Kellner, founder and president of the Paulist group, was asked by a foreign journalist to send a telegram to the Czech government asking details about three Catholic bishops reportedly held in jail. Kellner replied that the question was out of order, holding it was a matter for the proper ecclesiastical authorities to take up with the Czech government. In any event, he added, he had no personal evidence that the bishops had been, or still were, imprisoned by the Communist state.

Kellner then asked a representative of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Mrs. Olga Kadiecowa, who was serving as translator, if she had any knowledge of the bishops in question. She rebuked him sharply by saying: “This matter is a strictly political one, and of no concern to the church. This is another example of church interference in politics.”

During the entire conference, RNS said, the official Czech government newspaper failed to take any note of the dialogue in Marienbad.

In one of the final lectures in the session, attended by more than 260 scholars, scientists, theologians, and Marxist ideologists from many countries in Western and Eastern Europe, Professor Johannes Metz of Münster, Germany, called on Christians to “break from the chains of tradition.” He said “Christianity today is no longer merely a question of personal salvation. It has broadened to include the social and economic progress of peoples.”

A Marxist philosopher, Dr. Michael Prucha of the University of Prague, said that “the task of Marxists is to make Christians aware that religion, by emphasizing the supernatural, enchains mankind.”

More such “dialogues” are on the way. In England, Communist party officials are to hold talks with Christian representatives at York next month. Another Christian-Marxist consultation has been scheduled for London for October.

The meetings in England have been encouraged by the British Communist Party’s theoretical journal, Marxism Today, which has carried regular articles by Christians and Marxists.

The Communists’ chief promoter of dialogue with Christians has been a Frenchman, Roger Garaudy. His book From Anathema to Dialogue was issued by Herder and Herder last year and probably was the first volume ever written by a Communist and published by a Roman Catholic publisher. Last year Garaudy toured the United States to promote his views (see January 6 issue, page 26). Temple University has reportedly offered him a visiting professorship next year.

Garaudy has improved significantly upon the old Marxist cliché that “religion is the opiate of the people” by saying that “religion is becoming the yeast of the people.” He has admitted in a public forum, however, that no true dialogue can take place between the Marxist, who believes Christianity is a man-made projection, and the biblical Christian, whose view of life rests on God’s revelation and miraculous saving acts in history.

Upheaval In Greece

The military junta that took control of Greece in April moved this month to revamp the Greek Orthodox Church. The primate of the church, 86-year-old Archbishop Chrysostomos was dismissed, along with the twelve archbishops who have executive powers.

Replacements were to be chosen by the government, not the church, unless King Constantine intervened.

Interior Minister Stylianos Patakos explained the military’s displeasure: “There were very many things wrong in the church. They were all fighting with each other.”

A church dispute with the previous democratic government over appointment of bishops had only recently been resolved. The Greek government traditionally has considerable power in church affairs.

An N.C.C. For Free Thinkers?

The Unitarian Universalist Association this month ordered a one-year study of the possibility of closer ties with other religious liberals, perhaps through a National Council of Free Religious Societies comparable to the National Council of Churches. The UUA is not a member of the NCC, which requires belief in the divinity of Jesus.

A recent poll of UUA attitudes showed members feel the most affinity with Quakers, Ethical Culturists, Reform Jews, and Congregationalists within the United Church of Christ.

The UUA will also study a controversial proposal to merge its seminaries. The current separation appeals to the diversity-minded free-thinkers, but Chicago’s Meadville (the only one with full accreditation) has only twenty-three students, and Berkeley’s Starr King has eighteen. The Unitarian-leaning seminary at Tufts University has thirty-seven students.

Optimism Over Cuba

The Rev. and Mrs. Clifton Fite returned to Waynesboro, Georgia, believing the Cuban government will “deal kindly” with requests to release their missionary son David from prison.

The elder Fite also reports that another jailed Southern Baptist missionary, 63-year-old Herbert Caudill—who is David Fite’s father-in-law—is regaining sight rapidly after an eye operation by an American doctor, who was flown in.

The Fites had tried to see their son since he was imprisoned two years ago on charges of currency-exchange violations. They finally succeeded, through the Cuban ambassador in Mexico. Officials “listened with reverence and responded with courtesy” during the fifty-one-day stay in Cuba, Fite reported.

Paisley In Canada

Carrying his anti-ecumenical crusade to Canada, Northern Ireland’s Ian Paisley this month urged 2,000 persons, mostly elderly, at the meeting of the small Canadian Council of Evangelical Protestant Churches to boycott the World Council of Churches. He was accompanied by Carl McIntire and General Edwin Walker and confronted by two dozen protesters.

High-Rise Social Action

As a man who finagled an interview with Pope Paul last year, the Rev. Kenn W. Opperman shows a knack for surmounting red tape. The 41-year-old Toronto pastor, a former missionary to Peru and a staunch evangelical, is now putting his leadership gifts to a much more daring test. At a cost of more than $20,000,000, Opperman wants to establish the world’s biggest evangelistic and social service center in downtown Toronto. It would be built around an office-apartment complex with three buildings—one rising twenty-seven stories.

“Evangelicals,” says Opperman, “often give the impression of being interested only in the soul of man. We need to give attention to the whole man, spiritually, physically, intellectually, and socially.”

To this end, plans for the new center include facilities for 775 senior citizens, a geriatric center, low-rent apartments, shops, a nursery school, classrooms for adult education programs, a public library, a gymnasium, and Toronto’s biggest indoor swimming pool, as well as three chapels, a 350-seat theater to show Moody-type films, and a Christian bookstore. All facilities are to be open to the public with no sectarian restrictions, but the intention is to “create the kind of atmosphere which will make people want to inquire about Christ.”

Opperman says the Canadian centennial-year project has the unanimous support of his 412-member congregation, the Avenue Road Church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which has already invested $20,000 to pay management consultant and architectural fees. The first big hitch is whether city fathers will grant forty acres of surplus property for the site. To encourage favorable consideration, the church has engaged the services of Canada’s former finance minister, Donald Fleming.

The church will need to raise six million dollars and will depend on federal, provincial, and municipal grants for the rest of the required initial outlay. Once the center gets going, it’s expected to pay its own way, with much of the revenue coming from offices leased.

Opperman was born in Saskatchewan of American parents and trained at Canadian Bible College, Regina, operated by the Alliance. In the Avenue Road pulpit he is successor to former evangelist Charles Templeton and the late A. W. Tozer. One of Opperman’s first activities at the church was to oversee development of an evangelistic coffeehouse in a beatnik neighborhood.

Opperman made local headlines by divulging the outcome of his papal encounter. He asked the pontiff whether he believed in the necessity of personal conversion (“Absolutely”) and whether he himself had experienced it. Paul recalled two experiences for Opperman but was not so positive in response to a third question about personal destiny. “I deserve to go to hell,” Opperman quoted the Pope as saying. “I hope to go to purgatory.”

Opperman says he got an invitation to return and hopes to see the Pope again in September.

Evangelism In Sand And Snow

Because the Christianity of so many of us is not a robust and rugged thing, we lose many opportunities for evangelism. For example, 22 per cent of the five million British tourists who go abroad this summer will go to the Costa Brava, Spain. There are no churches, the beaches are too crowded to build a sand pulpit, and the Spanish authorities have laws about holding meetings in the open air. Is our Christianity robust and flexible enough to do something there?

The Commonwealth and Continental Church Society is continuing its mission to the sun-worshippers in Spain this summer after the success of last September. The Society has had an established work with Barcelona’s English and American community, and in September the present chaplain, the Rev. Brian Moore, was able to obtain permission from the Roman Catholic bishop of Gerona to hold Sunday services in the hotels of certain resorts (Callela, Blanes, Loret de Mar, and San Feliu) and to publicize these activities. In order to make this a team enterprise, a villa was rented to house the team members, who had the task of trying to make their friendships count for God. British people are easy to contact and talk to on holiday. They have time, they are relaxed, and many appreciate the opportunity—often the first they have ever had—to talk personally to someone about Jesus Christ.

The real problem is finding people who can talk about the faith in a natural way; who give the impression that they are living on top of the pile of life’s problems rather than under them; who can say, without embarrassment or a holier-than-thou attitude, that they would prefer Coca Cola when the person with whom they are discussing Christ offers them a gin and tonic or a cigar.

Flexibility counts. For example, it was great to have a small music group of Christian fellows who could see an evangelistic opportunity in this invitation: “We want your group to join us on a cruise for about 140 teen-agers. You’ll each be given a free bottle of champagne and then we’ll finish up on a secluded beach with girls guaranteed.” It was certainly already an opportunity for the devil; it would be an opportunity for God only if these Christian fellows moved in.

This summer the society will again be organizing training sessions for those who wish to join the teams in August and September.

From February 5 to 18, 1968, Grenoble in the south of France will be host to the tenth Winter Olympic Games and to three-quarters of a million guests. Plans are now well under way among the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society, the Église Réformée, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Navigators, World Wide Pictures, and the local committee of churches to set up the first International Christian Witness Team. Ten main teams will be recruited from various countries to create what the French are calling “a Christian Olympic presence.” Their main task will be to contact people of their own language and publicize the many Christian activities. These will include the showing of the Billy Graham films in four languages, sing songs, and discussions—all in all a unique international Christian aprés-ski atmosphere.

PETER GOODWIN HUDSON

Missionaries Face Ouster

“The Africanization of cadres in the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Guinea must be completed by the first of June,” thundered President Sekou Toure in a May Day harangue. In Marxist terms, it appeared to mean that all foreign missionaries may be deported. African Christians fear Toure’s denunciation of “apprentice spies” may apply to them as well as to the missionaries and be an advance warning of repression by the Communist-leaning regime.

Touré, president of the nation of 3.5 million since it won independence from France, expelled a French-born Roman Catholic bishop in 1961 when he balked at nationalization of church schools.

Tensions In Jewry

The largest Reform Jewish congregation in the world has withdrawn its membership from the oldest organization of synagogues in America in a dispute over Viet Nam.

The congregation, New York City’s 3,200-family Temple Emanu-El, voted to leave the Union of American Hebrew Congregations because of criticism of U. S. policy by Union President Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath.

Congregation President Alfred R. Bachrach charged in his statements Eisendrath had assumed the role of spokesman for the entire Reform movement and that “such a position is unauthorized and impossible.”

In defense, UAHC’s board chairman, Irwin Fane, said Eisendrath spoke only for himself, then added: “But does a large and important reform synagogue withdraw into isolation every time a Jewish leader says something with which they disagree?”

In another Jewish split, two Orthodox organizations have withdrawn from an interfaith conference on “The Role of the Religious Conscience” for fear of connection with the “ecumenical movement.”

The groups, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (Orthodoxy’s national body) and the 900-member Rabbinical Council of America, were to participate this month in the conference, sponsored jointly by the National Council of Churches, the U. S. Catholic Conference, and the Synagogue Council.

Explaining the move, Rabbinical Council President Pesach Z. Levovitz said: “The Jews, as a distinctive faith community, have no part in such ecumenism.”

Even though Christian operations in Israel are minimal, a move for stricter limitations is growing. The Interior Committee of the Knesset (parliament) is investigating mission activities amid charges that missionaries are taking advantage of Israel’s economic recession to tempt people in need with promises of help.

The Ministry for Religious Affairs estimates that 1,200–1,400 Jewish children attend Christian schools, while Christian educators say the figure is half that.

In Haifa, the Beit-El Children’s Home, a Christian institution that accepts Jewish children, lost its first appeal of government refusal of a license unless it accepts only Christian children. Some Christians fear this is part of a new strategy to close all missionary institutions by legal means. Groups that run boarding schools that accept Jewish and Muslim students include Baptists, the Church of Scotland, Anglicans, and Pentecostalists. A public council has been formed in Haifa to combat “missionary” activities.

A study of conversions ordered by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol showed that since 1950, only eleven Jewish children became Christians, while 200 Jews in all became either Christian or Muslim. In the same period, 407 Christians, Muslims, or others converted to Judaism.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

From Oberammergau To Britain

Oberammergau, Austria, is famous for its Passion play. Now a condensed version of this play that has been called “one of the glories of Europe’s spiritual and artistic heritage” has been presented to audiences in several British cities.

Semi-professional and amateur actors compose the cast of one hundred, twenty-eight of them Germans or Austrians who have appeared in the Oberammergau or Thiersee productions. Christ is portrayed, appropriately enough, by a carpenter, Matthias Kaindl; Mary, the mother of Jesus, by Marion Schwombeck, an unmarried actress (it is a rule of the play that the actress portraying Mary must not be wed); and Judas by an abstract sculptor.

One of the big problems with a touring company that performs in different countries is, obviously, the language. In this country it was decided to make an English recording, with English actors saying the words the performers were to mime. The actors chosen included well-known stage and television personalities Tony Britton (as Christ) and Alfred Burke (as Judas).

But it is this idea that prevents the production from becoming the outstanding success it deserves to be. At times, overloud music makes it impossible to follow the words. But more upsetting is the sight of an actor mouthing words that only too obviously come from somewhere far removed from him. Not only that—few members of the cast have managed to perfect this admittedly difficult task of mouthing recorded words.

Yet one still can say, as a considerable compliment to the performance, that this glaring defect does not detract excessively from the beautiful and moving production.

For two hours we are taken through episodes in the life of Christ. The language used is a mixture of the King James Version and modern English. Whether this is ideal or not, the gospel message is presented forcefully in a way that modern man can comprehend. (Perhaps this points to the need for more Christian drama.) And Christ, portrayed as loving and gentle but not weak, inspires men to become his disciples.

Certain moments of the production are particularly memorable, most of them in the latter part. During the Last Supper and Christ’s prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, there is conveyed to us something of the awful agony he endured, and of the desolation and fear the disciples felt as they realized that their Master would soon be leaving them. In the Garden, a somewhat hoarse-voiced devil, accompanied by the clash of cymbals, tempts Jesus to deviate from his chosen path. Darkness envelops the Savior. As the devil is defeated, light radiates round the victorious Christ.

The trials before Caiphas and Pilate are imaginatively performed. So, too, the crucifixion. After Christ’s scourging (blows and cries in total darkness), he carries his cross down the aisles and through the audience, attended by dozens of Roman soldiers and a jeering mob.

When the nails are driven through his hands and feet, the hammering is done naturalistically to the taped sound of blows. Yet there is no sign of pain, not even a slight movement, from Jesus. Surely there should have been some response to the pain.

Christ speaks his words from the cross. Then darkness falls. The body is taken gently from the cross, which is bathed in light as the final words of Jesus on earth are spoken: “And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

DAVID COOMES