Page 5756 – Christianity Today (2024)

The Sexual Revolution

The Gay Church, by Ronald M. Enroth and Gerald E. Jamison (Eerdmans, 1974, 144 pp., $4.95), and The Sexual Revolution, by J. Rinzema (Eerdmans, 1974, 107 pages, $2.45 pb), are reviewed by Jon R. Kennedy, director, Kuyper Institute, Stanford, California.

Together these books, which were released simultaneously, give the evangelical church and academy valuable new information on what Rinzema calls “the sexual revolution,” the rapidly changing attitudes in Western civilization toward sexual practices and topics that for centuries had been considered taboo. Enroth and Jamison write as a sociological research team based at Westmont College in California, an evangelical liberal arts institution, and Rinzema as a pastor-theologian and ethicist in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands.

Enroth and Jamison tell the fascinating and often surprising story of the Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination of forty congregations (at the time of their writing) that came into existence six years ago primarily to provide a worship community for hom*osexuals who professed Christianity in greater Los Angeles. The “mother church” there today claims to be the third largest church in that city, and other congregations dot the map from San Diego to Seattle and across the country to Boston.

The most surprising thing about the MCC is that on virtually every doctrine but sexual behavior, it is as fundamental as any evangelical church. The doctrines of the way of salvation, infallibility of the Bible, person and work of Christ, and evangelism its pastors espouse are all in line with the Pentecostal teachings on which the church’s founder, the Reverend Troy Perry, was educated. Some congregations even claim divine healing of physical infirmities, and they are active in street evangelism, prison witness, alcoholic rehabilitation, care for the elderly, and counseling for sadomasoch*sts, a subgroup in the gay (hom*osexual) community who are considered pathological by MCC pastors, the authors say.

Their book is especially helpful in sorting out the “gay theology” devised by MCC spokesmen and analyzing the interpretation gays have placed on each passage of Scripture condemning hom*osexual activity. Although the authors admit to being out of their field in discussing theology, they do a creditable job of showing the inconsistencies in MCC hermeneutics and doctrine. This is a book every Christian in leadership should read. The question of what to do with the hom*osexual who claims to be a Christian but won’t or can’t—at least in his perception—abandon hom*osexual practices is one that every church should be prepared to face, unless it wishes to make it plain that anyone with problems of sexual identity is unwelcome there.

Pastor Rinzema faces it in his slender volume, but his conclusion is one that most evangelicals, including Enroth and Jamison, will not accept. He sees the rising tide of hom*osexuality as one of a half-dozen areas on which the Church must reconsider its “moral rules.” He admits that “one cannot locate a soft spot anywhere in the Bible for the practicing hom*osexual.” But he says that the reason for this is that the hom*osexual acts mentioned in the Bible are being practiced by heterosexuals, rather than “confirmed hom*osexuals,” and that the Bible didn’t distinguish between heterosexuals practicing hom*osexual acts and hom*osexuals following what is natural to them because “the confirmed hom*osexual was not recognized until roughly 1890.”

Herein lies the flaw in Rinzema’s doctrine of revelation, which unfortunately weakens his entire effort at reformulating evangelical morals on the basis of biblical principles. Using the reform principle articulated by Abraham Kuyper and popularized recently by Francis Schaeffer and the Toronto school of social reconstruction—that we must strip away the centuries-deep crust of Greek philosophical influence on Christian thought and see the world as wholly under God’s rule rather than divided between God’s domain and Satan’s—Rinzema rightly calls for seeing sexuality as the Bible sees it, rather than on the basis of moralistic, manmade contempt for the body, which the Bible never displays. But his weakness is in viewing the Bible itself as in error on such matters as this one.

Despite its flaws, however, the book has many suggestions that evangelicals can consider seriously. Rinzema thinks that Christians must continue witnessing to the highest principles of God’s teaching in the area of sex—namely, preservation of the family and human dignity—and his work is helpful in an apologetic sense, enabling readers to get the basic concepts straight and thereby argue reasonably and humanly for conservation of moral norms.

On War And Peace

A Strategy For Peace, by Frank Epp (Eerdmans, 1973, 128 pp., $2.45), Render Unto God, by Thomas A. Shannon (Paulist, 1974, 180 pp., $4.50), and King Jesus’ Manual of Arms For the Armless, by Vernard Eller (Abingdon, 1973, 205 pp., $4.75), are reviewed by Sterling Mehring, Bethesda, Maryland.

These three books about the Christian’s relation to his government, especially in the matter of war, are alike in their call for individual responsibility but dissimilar in nearly all other respects.

Of the three, Frank Epp’s A Strategy For Peace is the least useful. Reflecting traditional Mennonite pacificism, Epp engages in a kind of inhouse rambling on the peace movement, appropriately subtitled “Reflections of a Christian Pacifist.” The book lacks any sustained argument or constructive “strategy for peace.” The thesis that unifies these assorted essays and speeches is that the “foremost requirement for renewal [of the Church] is not smoother strategy, but purer, more righteous theology. A Theology of Peace.” Unfortunately, in attempting to avoid smooth strategy the author neglects to define and expand adequately on this theology.

Epp asserts that being more committed to Christ will ultimately mean being more pacifistic and more committed to non-violence. The rest of the book simply reinforces this assertion without elaboration and without any attempt at tough-minded thinking about its basis.

With Thomas Shannon and Render Unto God we move from the radical Reformation position to that of the traditional Roman Catholic, and from loose rhetoric to a well conceived and documented argument. Shannon is concerned with the problem of obedience faced by the Catholic citizen as a member of two institutions with differing values that sometimes conflict. Under what circ*mstances should these conflicts prompt the Catholic to disobey the state?

Shannon begins with a useful study on the background of church-government relations that surveys scriptural, theological, and papal teaching. He finds the dominant theory to be one that assumes the duty of the Church and the individual Catholic to obey secular authority a priori because it reflects the authority of God. This reasoning is based on a hierarchically ordered universe. But against this historically dominant position stands the subordinate but valid tradition of disobedience to the state. Shannon re-examines elements of this tradition and establishes a theory of selective obedience, one that he feels is compatible with the Roman Catholic tradition, especially in light of Vatican II. His examination of the political obligations in a democratic society and his ensuing definition of the sources of these obligations provide the framework for his theory of selective obedience.

Render Unto God will be as useful to inquiring Protestants as to thoughtful Catholics because it takes seriously the biblical teaching enjoining obedience to secular authority but does not opt for an easy or irresponsible submission. Evangelicals will find much of the discussion applicable in light of the recent emphasis on absolute submission in popular teaching. Particularly thought-provoking are Shannon’s sections on the movement from principle to practice, especially as found in the Roman Catholic Church. This serves as an instructive example of the tragedy of uncontemplated obedience. In this context he deals specifically with selective conscientious objection.

Vernard Eller at the outset warns the reader that “our book is going to be more than slightly goofy.” And so it is. King Jesus’ Manual of Arms For the Armless is easily the most entertaining as well as the most consistent attempt to arrive at a biblical understanding of war and peace.

In an informal, highly conversational, and sometimes humorous style, Eller lets “the Bible speak for itself.” In so doing he comes up with an alternative that transcends militarist/pacifist options. He feels the unified position that the Bible presents could be called the “Holy War.” It is a war fought by God to the end that “His Kingdom be established, and victory will come when all resistance to God ceases and His control is complete.” The enemy is not man but in man.

The fatal error, according to Eller’s interpretation, is not that man engages in violent conflict but that he engages in the wrong conflict. Man’s wars fought with carnal weapons, directed against other men and always for self-serving motives, will never bring about God’s ends. Such wars of hatred, whether they are fought by militarists or more subtly by anti-war activists, are all destined to be self-destructive and futile. Fighting God’s war God’s way means radical discipleship, following God much as a dancer responds to the leading of her partner. The essential weapon, Eller finds, is a faith that manifests itself in sacrificial love. The model of this “battle plan” is Christ the Suffering Servant. The reader is not encouraged to believe that this method will “work,” i.e., be successful, but it is God’s technique for subduing evil in the world.

This is a very provocative volume. Some questions may be raised concerning a certain crucial and unusual assumption that Eller makes in biblical interpretation, especially in the Old Testament, and that allows him to arrive at his conclusion. Nonetheless, what he says is well worth serious consideration.

BRIEFLY NOTED

I Pledge Allegiance, by Paul Minear (Westminster, 142 pp., $2.65 pb), Politics and Ethics, by Francis Winters (Paulist, 121 pp., $1.65), The Nation Yet to Be, by James Armstrong (Friendship, 128 pp., $2.25 pb), and The Patriot’s Bible, edited by John Eagleson and Philip Scharper (Orbis, 196 pp., $3.95 pb). Four of the many books anticipating the nation’s Bicentennial. Not strictly evangelical but suggestive of questions that all Christians should face. Suited for group discussions. Minear deals with topics like civil disobedience, amnesty, and national security. Winters briefly develops his ethical theory and then applies it to political situations, asserting that Watergate and Viet Nam involvement could have been avoided if the concepts of partnership and mutual dependence had been properly used. Armstrong criticizes American religion, stressing his definition of a truly Christian patriot. Eagleson and Scharper have arranged quotations from a variety of sources, including the Bible, under the key themes of the preambles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Rolling Thunder, by Doug Boyd (Random House. 274 pp., $8.95), and What About Us Who Are Not Healed?, by Carmen Benson (Logos, 162 pp., $2.95 pb). Two unusual treatments of healing. Boyd, a researcher with the Menninger Foundation, writes about the healing art practiced by an American Indian. Benson grapples with the important questions that healers and the would-be-healed must face. Her answers are more helpful than the usual superficial responses found in many other books on this topic.

How in the World Can I Be Holy?, by Erwin Lutzer (Moody, 192 pp., $1.25 pb), The Call to Holiness, by Martin Parsons (Eerdmans, 96 pp., $1.64 pb), and Transformed Christians, by Milton Agnew (Beacon Hill, 208 pp., $2.95 pb). Three books on holiness from an evangelical point of view. Lutzer examines various areas of life such as relationships, giving, and entertainment and defines worldliness and holiness. Parsons tackles the motives, the experience, and the results of holiness. Agnew, a retired Salvation Army officer, presents twenty short messages from the New Testament on holiness.

No King But Caesar?, by William Durland (Herald Press, 184 pp., $5.95). The author, a Catholic attorney, argues that the New Testament teaches non-violence and that the Church must return to that ethic to be truly Christian.

Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, by Richard Longenecker (Eerdmans, 248 pp., $4.95 pb). A leading evangelical scholar compares first-century Jewish and Christian writings on, and procedures for interpreting, the Scriptures.

Newness of Life, by Richard Howard (Beacon Hill, 266 pp., $5.95), and Paul and Jesus, by F. F. Bruce (Baker, 92 pp., $2.50 pb). Two evangelical studies on the thought of the Apostle Paul. Howard concentrates on Paul’s message, holding that the “indicative of grace and the imperative to holiness” constitute the essential message. Bruce’s study is basically a refutation of the liberal proposition that Paul’s teaching of the Gospel deviates from that taught by Jesus.

Toward a Biblical View of Civil Government, by Robert Culver (Moody, 308 pp., $6.95). A major first-rate exegetical study by a theology professor at Trinity seminary.

The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 199 pp., $7.95). Originally published in 1908, Thursday is the first of a fourteen-book series, The Permanent Chesterton, that the publisher plans to issue over the next five years. Johns Hopkins professor and journalist Garry Wills is editing the series. The first volume is one of Chesterton’s best known but hardest to find books. The well-written story reads like a suspense or spy novel. The mystery is not hard to figure out, but the book’s disarming simplicity, part of its charm, is the bait with which Chesterton hooks the reader to think about more serious matters, particularly Christianity.

Tyndale Bulletin 25, edited by A. R. Millard (Tyndale Press [39 Bedford Sq., London WC1B 3EY, England], 120 pp., £3 pb). Five essays by leading evangelical scholars, including “The Logic of Penal Substitution,” and “Old Testament Textual Criticism.”

Helping Your Handicapped Child, by George Paterson (Augsburg, 104 pp., $2.95 pb). This brief, informative book is excellent for parents of handicapped children, but there are good insights for everyone. Deals with the kinds of handicaps, how to face them, and how to help the child live as a whole person. A key chapter is “Finding Help Through Your Faith.” Good bibliography.

The Lausanne Covenant, by John Stott (World Wide, 62 pp., $.95 pb). An exposition of the covenant adopted at the last summer’s International Congress on World Evangelization. Each chapter ends with thoughtful study questions. The author was head of the drafting committee of the covenant.

First Century Judaism in Crisis, by Jacob Neusner (Abingdon, 204 pp., $4.50 pb), Introduction to the Intertestamental Period, by Raymond Surburg (Concordia, 200 pp., $8.95), and The Rebel King, by Henry Marsh (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 222 pp., $7.95). Books on three different subjects, but all fill in some background to New Testament times. Neusner uses the story of a Pharisee rabbi to show what happened to Judaism in the first century and particularly what happened to Jews who did not become Christians. Surbury discusses the history, religion, and literature of the Jews from intertestamental times through the first Christian century. Marsh places the life of Jesus in the context of the whole picture of the Roman Empire of the time. All three books are a good aid to understanding Jesus’ life on earth.

Say Hello to Yourself, by Walter Wilson (Broadman, 140 pp., $1.95 pb). An explanation of Transactional Analysis for young people. Intended for group discussion in a Christian context.

Northern Ireland: Crisis and Conflict, by John Magee (Routledge, 196 pp., $10.95). A well-researched, historical approach to the present conflict. Magee explains and illuminates rather than taking sides.

T. S. Eliot: Out Of Step With The Times

Great Tom: Notes Toward the Definition of T. S. Eliot, by T. S. Matthews (Harper & Row, 1974, 219 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Haven B. Gow, graduate student, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts.

T. S. Matthews has furnished us with nothing new or instructive regarding T. S. Eliot’s poetry. In this widely promoted book, he is too much given to an inordinate preoccupation with the sexual details of Eliot’s life.

Thus, for example, Matthews contends that for Eliot “sex and sin were the same thing.… He … never altogether shook this reductio ad absurdum.” Why did Eliot have such a view of sex? The author, a former editor of Time, believes he has the answer: “Because his mothers and sisters were ladylike women, terrified of sex and disgusted by it, and ashamed of their female bodies. By precept and example, they encouraged his own shame.”

Matthews argues that Eliot suffered from an agonizing sense of guilt that was centered on “two peculiar obsessions which he stated as general truths: that every man wants to murder a girl; that sex is sin is death.” From a limited and distorting Freudian perspective, Matthews strongly suggests that Eliot sublimated his sexual passions into other activities—most notably, the writing of poetry.

True, Eliot did suffer from a horrendous first marriage; and it may be true that Eliot had a “puritanical” view of sex. Yet it would be a mistake to view Eliot as a sexually repressed man who wrote poetry, plays, and literary criticism to compensate for his alleged sexual inadequacies. It is far more accurate, it seems to me, to view him as a man of moral and intellectual courage who refused to surrender to the spirit of his age.

T. S. Eliot, it seems, was always out of step with the times. At a time when Charles Eliot’s “free elective” system at Harvard was gaining popularity, Eliot was fighting for the study of the classics. At a time when totalitarian societies were on the rise, he was arguing for “the idea of a Christian society,” one permeated with the spirit of religion and the spirit of the gentleman. And at a time when hollow men were seeking redemption through secular liberalism and self-worship, Eliot was insisting that men needed to renew religious faith and commitment.

What the times demanded, claimed Eliot, was “not a religion of vague idealism, of sentimental humanitarianism, of aimless liberalism, not a religion which had become a cloak for romantic nature worship, man worship, self worship.” All that, he insisted, is merely “the hair of the dog that bit you.”

Instead, Eliot maintained that we must accept and act upon the Christian world view, for “the Christian scheme seemed the only possible scheme which found a place for values which I must maintain or perish … the belief, for instance, in holy living and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, austerity.”

According to Matthews, Eliot’s journey from his own private “waste land” to a commitment to Christianity was inevitable. For there was in Eliot, he contends, a “craving for authority” that revealed itself in “the unquestioning obedience he rendered to the hierarchy that lorded it over his world: his mother, his father, his teachers, God. It was a trait that was to stay with him all his life.”

Yet this “craving for authority” does not necessarily lead—as Matthews suggests it does—to a commitment to Christianity or, for that matter, to any supernatural religion. The “craving for authority” also may lead to faith in totalitarian movements and leaders. Why was it that Eliot sought to satisfy his “craving for authority” through an allegiance to Christianity?

Eliot’s rediscovery of Christianity, it seems, resulted from his desire for what the Greeks so aptly termed “order in the soul.” There is “order in the soul” when one lives a life of virtue, when one’s thoughts and deeds assuage the intense demands of one’s higher nature. There is order in the soul when one’s thoughts and actions contribute to the perfection of one’s nature and lead one to the Author of one’s nature: that is, God.

Matthews suggests that Eliot’s quest for spiritual order and harmony motivated his decision to become a member of the Anglican Church at the age of thirty-eight. “The acts of exorcism he performed in his poetry were not enough in themselves to rid his swept and garnished house of the evil spirits that threatened to dispose him,” the author contends. For that, he continues, Eliot believed that “he had to have the assistance of superhuman power. No distant, deist, Unitarian God could have sustained him.” The God whom Eliot was seeking, and who is seeking us, is the “God who had become man, an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering incarnate thing, recognizably human, unknowably divine.” For Eliot, then, Christ, the Church, and the sacraments furnished the necessary means to the attainment of order in his soul and—most importantly of all—his redemption.

The rhythmic swish of gentle waves, the muted voices of parents calling to children, the happy chatter of children interrupted by shouts and splashes, the soundless breeze, the sunshine baking upturned faces, a sailboat gliding silently toward the beach—all these blend together to make the summer vacation. Whether in Italy or at the Great Lakes, on the Atlantic or Pacific shore, or on one of the islands of the seas, there is an attempt to relax, to unwind, to forget, to put “fear of fear” away, and to breathe deeply and easily.…

Suddenly the blue of the sky is pierced by two dark shapes accompanied by the shriek of jet sound. Bomber planes and their shadows dive close to the water, turn sharply up again, and rise like a streak of lightning to disappear over the hills. A quick return curve to repeat the practice, and then the shattered silence is restored. Heads that were lifted to look in surprise are back contemplating sand-castles, or books, or the need for more suntan lotion, or watches to see if it might be time for lunch. Fear? No. No fear where there is confidence. Confidence—that one is protected, that one is in a safe place, that danger is far, far off. Confidence nullifies fear.

But sometimes confidence is misplaced. The students studying innocently as part of their university work in Africa had no fear of being kidnapped. They were confident that they were safe because it was a study center of a reputable sort. Their confidence was suddenly shattered when that which they had not feared came suddenly upon them.

Confidence as a quality in itself will not push away the possibility of a fearful calamity. There are sudden attacks, snipers, assassins, kidnappers, accidents, illnesses, operations, breakdowns, fires, robberies, wars, floods, depressions, losses, earthquakes, death. Telegrams, phone calls, letters, and messengers do sometimes bring fearful news. Confidence that “nothing bad can happen to me or mine,” that “everything will be all right, dear, don’t worry,” is often just whistling in the dark. The questions should be: “In whom is my confidence placed? Am I being optimistic with no ground, no base for my confidence, and do I therefore have freedom from fear only as a mindless creature would have such freedom?”

Come to Proverbs for a moment. Chapter 3, verses 25 and 26: “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh. For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” It seems to me this comes as a command: Don’t be afraid of sudden fear, my child. It seems to me that the Lord is speaking to each of his children. In the dark of the night, during a walk when the wind is moaning in the trees, while we are waiting in a hospital hall, during the long moment before the doctor speaks, even in the music of a symphony or of waves on a shore, amid quiet and beauty or amid shock and confusion the fear of fear can come as a nibbling thing within as well as a searing shock from without. Our “fear of fear” can be ever present, whatever secret thing it is we shrink from.

Our Father in heaven knows us so well. He knows that our energies, time, emotion, conscious thought, and creative possibilities can be nibbled at, wasted, and even destroyed because we are “afraid of sudden fear.” Often we suffer from an unnamed and unknown fear, a nebulous, floating thing that eats away at us, spoiling what we could be right now because of what we fear in the future. The word comes sharply to us: “Don’t.” We are not to waste our time being afraid of something that might happen.

Why not? Because the Lord shall be our confidence! The Creator of the earth, the One who can speak a word and change things in history, this One who is our Father through the reality of the new birth that Jesus explained to Nicodemus, is now our confidence. Not at some future date when there will be no more fear ever again, but now, before Satan is defeated, before the resurrection of the bodies, before Jesus destroys “the last enemy,” he is to be our confidence. Our first confidence in his power is to be our certainty that although “the body they may kill,” no one can do anything to remove eternal life and the certainty of our new bodies from us.

The missionaries recently martyred along with all the other martyrs did not have a “misplaced confidence”—they will receive the martyr’s crown as well as their new bodies, and even now they are present with the Lord while they are absent from their bodies.

Our confidence is also to be in the power of the living God to act in history right now to keep us safe and complete the plan he has for our lives. Verses 23 and 24 of this third chapter of Proverbs speaks of walking in one’s way safely, of not stumbling, of not being afraid when one lies down to sleep, of being given sweet sleep. “For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” He it is who tells us, “Be not afraid of sudden fear.”

Each time a fear of fear nags us within we should apologize to the Lord. “Sorry, Lord, I’m doing it again. I’m not concentrating on my work. I’m not reading. I’m not full of love and appreciation for you, Father, or even for the people and the things you have given me. I’m in danger of allowing my fear of fear to push out every other emotion and therefore every response you have told me to have. Help me, O God, to push out this fear of fear, to replace doubt with confidence.”

In Matthew 8:25 and 26, the disciples awakened the Lord, crying, “Lord, save us; we perish!” They were at that moment afraid of fear. They were afraid of the fear they would have if they were plunged in the water. They were still in the boat; their fear was of what was ahead of them. The Lord’s word to them was a question: “Why are ye fearful, ye of little faith?” “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh. For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

And the Lord’s own formula needs to be added here. It is not a thing of simply declaring “I won’t ever be afraid again.” What we are to do is made clear in Philippians 4:6. Instead of being “anxious” or fearful, we are to pray. That prayer is to start with thanksgiving for things that have taken place in the past, so that we are filled with an emotion of real thankfulness and confidence in the One who has done all these things. After the thanksgiving, then we are ready to make our petitions to our listening Father concerning the thing that is making us fearful. This is how we are to carry out his command. “Be not afraid of sudden fear.”

God Bless The New York Times

The good, grey old lady of comprehensive journalism, the New York “All the News That Fits” Times has once again gladdened the hearts of reasonable, fair-minded, and moderate persons all over the Eastern Establishment and everywhere else that it is read. I refer, of course, to its recent editorial on the civil suit being brought by Episcopal women, claiming admission to that church’s priesthood, and demanding that the courts give them redress for denial of what they consider to be a “property right,” namely, admission to that sacerdotal collegium.

The Times stated, in a burst of rare common sense (we scruple to call it a rare burst of common sense), that whatever one’s views about ordination, the Episcopal priesthood, and the like, it really is something to be decided by the Episcopal Church, not by the civil courts, or even by the New York Times. It certainly is a reactionary move on the part of those women to ask the government to determine a matter of ecclesiastical polity or even doctrine. After all, the Constantinian age—when the emperor began to tell the church how to run itself—is supposed to be behind us. And if the courts are going to tell the churches what they can do in matters of internal policy, then the least they can do is follow the examples of Constantine by painting the first two letters of the name of Christ on their shields and running the pagans off the field.

No doubt many Bible students will warn the Episcopal women that they are transgressing the Pauline warning against taking their quarrels before a godless magistrate (1 Cor. 6:1–7). Of course, if the plaintiffs are hard-line feminists, then they will have a limited appreciation of St. Paul. And likewise if the courts follow Constantine’s example, then that Pauline objection would be removed. But we suspect that some scholars, in their zeal to protect the ladies from the error of taking spiritual matters before a worldly judge, may have overlooked an even more dangerous aspect of the suit. Can ordination be “property”? If so, then it can be bought and sold. And that, of course is what Simon Magus tried to do with St. Peter (Acts 8:18–24). Warned by Peter of his mistake, Simon withdrew his offer. (According to tradition, Simon Magus nevertheless went off so angry that he founded Gnosticism, a heresy that it took the Church about two hundred years to deal with. So let us entreat the Episcopal plaintiffs not to take our warning in a bad spirit!)

Furthermore, if spiritual offices are property rights, then they can be taxed. So much for a deacon, so much for a priest, so much for a bishop. Worse still, parishioners might begin suing for their property rights in interesting preaching, sound exegesis, and good administration of church programs. Then where would we all be? Where indeed? O blessed New York Times, pray for us.

What Is The Question?

Few things in the life of the Church should contribute less to the Kingdom and the equipping of the Saints than two recent articles: “When Wedlock Becomes Deadlock” and “Wine-Drinking in New Testament Times” (June 20). Now that these two crucial areas have been solved by such careful exegesis and hermeneutics, we can now move on to solving another historically pressing problem—that is “How many angels, holding a three-to-one wine mixture in the left hand and a cool cup of Mogen David in the other, can dance on the head of a pin held in place by a recently divorced non-Christian?” Or is that question, “How many recently divorced non-Christians holding an angel in the left hand and a three-to-one wine mixture in the other can dance on a cool cup of Mogen David held in place by a pin?”

Seventh Street Baptist Church

Ballinger, Tex.

This is just a note to say that I was especially pleased with the major articles in the June 20 issue. A special commendation should go to Andre Bustanoby.… His use of hermeneutics is simply superb! His interpretation of the divorce situation is the clearest I have ever encountered.… My one comment is, “Very well done! Keep articles like this one coming our way.”

Zion Mennonite Church

Bridgewater, S. Dak.

Outstanding Together

My July 4 issue has just reached me and I feel bound to comment on the two opening articles on Lausanne (“Our Mandate From Lausanne ’74” and “Lausanne Twelve Months Later”). Together they make this an outstanding issue … because they outline a … foundation from which Christendom can pick up and go forward.

(THE REV.) MALCOLM MACRAE

Coatbridge, Scotland

Multiple Choice

By running successively (July 4 through Aug. 8) three cartoons of nudes, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is (check one or more) renaming that section “Eutychus and His Skin”; redefining “Bible buff”; or redemonstrating why the now carnal Church will need Great Tribulational purifying. p*rno mags should demand equal time and run a few Christian cartoons!

Kansas City, Kans.

Wrong Stop

Thank you for a real chuckle in Cheryl Forbes’s review of Rollerball (The Refiner’s Fire, Aug. 8). I always get a big laugh when someone tries to do something serious about an interpretation of a worldly production. Usually it is farthest from the writer’s or producer’s mind.

However I did see a similarity when I read the lead editorial about the reporter and Kissinger’s trash. It looks like you see a need for looking through trash and coming up with something profound. I hate to imagine what you look at and don’t write about.

Incidentally, in our area, after seeing the TV commercial and newspaper ads about Rollerball it took little imagination to recognize its worthlessness. Something like all the people who saw Henry’s trashbags and had enough sense not to stop and investigate.

Wheaton, Ill.

Your review on Rollerball was [darned] good.… There is hope for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Wittenburg Door

San Diego, Calif.

Fair To All

By implication, Robert D. Linder’s article on the Scopes trial (“Fifty Years After Scopes: Lessons to Learn, A Heritage to Reclaim,” July 18) leaves the impression that today’s press is still hostile to evangelical Christianity.

The bias evident against William Jennings Bryan in the 1920s is hardly comparable to modern journalism of the 1970s. Professional religion writers in the secular press today, including non-evangelicals like myself, provide fair and objective coverage, as best we can, to all religious traditions. Evangelicals should certainly look to journalism as a calling; not to right any wrongs, but because it offers a rewarding and stimulating career.

Religion Editor

The Hartford Courant

Hartford, Conn.

Every Christian should study carefully the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial to see how not to evangelize. Bryan was led and trapped off the main track and never regained it. Evolution was a surface issue. The real issue was integrity.… [But] the painful outcome did more good for fundamentalism than harm. Fundamentalism could no longer escape the difference between superficial manipulation and sympathetic perception of people’s basic needs.… Even Darrow at points seemed to know the Bible better than Bryan.

Upper Valley United Presbyterian Church

Dry Run, Pa.

‘Just’ An Innocent Diminutive

Hearty thanks to John Warwick Montgomery for his clear-headed and pertinent discussion of “Washington Christianity” (Current Religious Thought, Aug. 8). May his kind increase.

The prayer breakfast quotation (“Lord, just make us more loving when we just fellowship together here and just help us just to …”) has become tiresomely familiar. I wonder why just (along with share and, especially, just share) enjoys such unjust favor among us. No doubt there lurks some hidden renunciation of work (“Let’s just pray”) or of thinking (“Let’s just share”) or of broad and unseemly ambition (“Just make us more loving”) in our fascination with this previously innocent diminutive.

Montgomery is right. Just sharing—and other such self-indulgent activities—have in many cases become cloying substitutes for solid reflection on the revelation of God. Actually, we ought to take part in them only in the same way we eat fattening desserts—sparingly and with a certain amount of embarrassment.

Webster Christian Reformed Church

Webster, N. Y.

I have been in a simmer for a week with respect to “Washington Christianity.” He prophesied truly that, quote, “Readers from this area will doubtless be appalled at what follows.…” In part, the reason for such dismay is, as Montgomery suggests, his too brief contact with the Washington area complexities.…

But mainly I am appalled by the fact that neither your publication nor Montgomery came up to anything like the high standards your readers have come to expect. The piece is yellow innuendo and superficial observation. I imagine that Dick Halverson, who comes in for Montgomery’s lonely Award of Merit, will not be too happy about the distinction which falsely sets him apart from his Presbyterian brethren in the area.

One can detect without too much trouble some psychological sour grapism in view of his past year’s experience at the Law School in the District of Columbia. Again, Lutheran scholar that he is, it’s hard to look with objectivity through those spectacles. I was trapped on tour with John for eight days in East Germany at the turn of the year, and it is a recommended experience for any Presbyterian to discover new reasons to cherish his Westminster and Calvinistic heritage.

It might be well recalled, Luther’s very own caution. Said he: “If any of you consider your doctrine and theology to be completely true and right, you have only to feel your ears and find that they are the long furry ears of an ass.”

Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church

Alexandria, Va.

Women—Not In God’S Interests?

Cheryl Forbes’s assertion in the July 18 CHRISTIANITY TODAY that the subordination of women necessarily implies the inferiority of women is not the sort of reasoning one expects to find in a biblically founded statement (Books, Man as Male and Female). At least, I find no difficulty at all in utterly rejecting the idea that women are inferior to men, while continuing to hold that they should not rule in the church and in the home.…

As sinners, we are all … wholly unworthy of any place or office. If he has assigned the offices of elder in the church and head in the family to men, as I believe is the teaching of the apostles, it is not because men are of greater worth than women, but because he wills it so in the interest of his larger plan of redemption.

Staunton, Va.

ERRATUM

The reference to Psalm 119:29, 30 in the editorial “Keeping Uncle Sam Honest” (Aug. 8) should read Psalm 119:29, 30.

Leo Sowerby: His Life A Psalm

Beauty cannot equal truth. Every church musician must therefore pray that the two will be congruent in his ministry, through the upward call of the Word and the pressing on of artistic activity. Certainly there have been excelling church musicians who have not subscribed to this. But there have been and are some who have edged delightfully close.

God allows men at cross purposes with him to do beautiful things. But it is always necessary to distinguish between man’s heart and man’s art. While the former is uniquely God’s business, the latter is ours.

This in no way implies that Leo Sowerby was not a Christian. Whatever the answer to this, it remains that he was one of the few twentieth-century Americans who can be called the complete church musician: organist, excellent service player (there is a fundamental difference), choirmaster, composer, and educator. Unlike Ralph Vaughan Williams (see March 14 issue, page 41), whose involvement in church music seemed more to fit the description of Winston Churchill’s attitude toward the Church—“I support it from the outside, like a flying buttress”—Sowerby was essentially a church musician who worked from within while effectively making his mark outside the Church. Twice he won significant prizes: he was the first American to win the Prize of Rome, and in 1945 he won the Pulitzer prize with his Canticle of the Sun.

Sowerby’s long tenure as organist-choirmaster of St. James’ Cathedral, Chicago (1927–62), was exceeded by two years by his service as professor of composition at the American Conservatory (1925–62). He spent his last years as director of the College of Church Musicians, National Cathedral, Washington, D. C., 1962–68. He was one of the music editors of the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal and was in constant demand as a lecturer at church-music conferences.

Of his nearly seventy published organ compositions (see Corliss Arnold’s Organ Literature: A Comprehensive Survey, 1973, for a full listing), twenty-nine are based on church tunes. The rest were intended more for concert and recital use, though this distinction, to a well-prepared church musician, is somewhat artificial.

Stylistically, the organ compositions are conservative. Although there are noticeable changes in his later works, they are relatively slight compared to what was going on around him. Even so, as his style evolved it seemed sometimes to get away from the organic wholeness marking the best of his earlier works: Comes Autumn Time, Pageant, the Symphony in G Major. The harmonic language of these and others was honestly drawn from the late Romantic-Impressionist contexts. It combined an obvious technical mastery with a sense of architectural wholeness. The later works that move toward a more advanced harmonic and textural style sometimes lack consistency and flow.

His so-called concert pieces are at their best when they follow the French preference for what I like to call acoustical shape, found so often in Widor, Vierne, Jongen, Langlais, and, above all, Messiaen. Here, compositions, whatever their internal form or lack of it, find their glory in the fusion of brilliant passage work and carefully spaced sonorities, unique organ design and registration, and reverberant acoustics. Sowerby captures this very well in such works as Pageant, Toccota 1940, the Symphony, and the later Deus tuorum militum.

Of his compositions based on church tunes, perhaps the Meditations on Communion Hymns (1940) are the best known. Among the others often played are the preludes on Malabar, Land of Rest, and the aforementioned Deus tuorum.

The following is a listing of some of Sowerby’s anthems worth having in choral libraries: I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes; Now There Lightens Upon Us; I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me; Come Holy Ghost; Behold, O God, Our Defender; Fight the Good Fight; Love Came Down at Christmas; The Lord Ascendeth Upon High; Martyr of God; Psalm 70 Benedictus es, Domine; Jubilate Deo; The Armor of God; and The Snow Lay on the Ground. A trip to any good music store will uncover many, many more. They are not always easy, but their graciousness makes the struggle worth the while. (Much of the above listing comes from tributes to Sowerby by Paul Callaway and Robert Lodine in the July 1969 edition of Music Ministry.)

Those who make up the body of Christ have the right to pray for gifted artists and fearlessly welcome those whom God leads into the width and celebration of their worship. From all that can be gathered, Sowerby was gracious, self-giving, and humble. In the words of the Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr., at a memorial service for him in 1968, “his whole being was a psalm.…”

HAROLD M. BEST¹Harold Best is director of the Conservtory of Music, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Judged by standards of household or pulpit familiarity, Harry Edmund Martinson and Eyvind Johnson are scarcely in a class with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, T. S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway. But these two Swedish writers shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature and so ascended to stand with Solzhenitsyn and the rest as Nobel laureates.

For the person who does not read Swedish, assessing these writers is difficult. The only work to be found in English is Martinson’s epic poem Aniara, published in 1956 and translated in 1963. But this small work makes the search worthwhile. Aniara tells the story of a sorrowladen interplanetary vehicle, a refugee ship from stricken Earth to Mars, lost forever in the galactic gloom. The poem is of particular interest to the Christian reader because it depicts with unusual clarity the terrified state of mind of secular man when he is without hope and without God.

The plot is simple. Poisoned by repeated warfare, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. To escape, survivors of World War Thirty-Two emigrate to Mars on huge spaceships called “goldondas.” “Aniara” is one of these spaceships, measuring three miles long and half a mile wide and carrying 8,000 passengers. The poem is a first-hand record of that voyage, narrated by an engineer responsible for a godlike computer called the Mima. Among the Mima’s divine attributes are omniscience and compassion; its purpose is to entertain Earth’s orphans as they journey to Mars, looking toward the licentious freedoms that await them in the new Paradise.

But disaster overtakes “Aniara” when a near-collision with an asteroid causes the ship to swerve out of its course. Missing the orbit of Mars Aniara then attempts to steer toward some other refuge known to our galaxy. But hostile meteors and other forces prevent the earthship from succeeding, until at last, as the narrator laments, “we’d passed the point of no return.” Bound now for Lyra, a galaxy 15,000 light years away, the passengers resign themselves to the doom:

Our unhappy fate was certain now,

our only hope the Mima would

keep going to whatever end.

For six years the Mima, now revered as a female deity, devotes herself to comforting the despairing, who prostrate themselves before her shrine. Her screens project vistas of unknown and unknowable rapture somewhere in the cosmos, causing glimmers of hope. But these are even more futile than the sexual orgies in which the emigrants indulge—frenzied, goaded by rhythms of remorse, conscious that they are lost:

Slowly we realize the space

we travel in is a different kind

to what we always pictured in our minds

when the word “space” caught our imagination

on earth—it dawns upon us now

the extent to which we are cut off

must be far greater than we first feared

—that knowledge was a blue naïveté

which from a measured dose of thought

inferred the Mystery had form.

Instead, the narrator knows that “we are lost in oceans of the Spirit.”

When the Mima can no longer withstand cruel reality, she destroys herself. Gone with her exploding psycho-mechanism are illusions of rescue for those now eternally marooned. Earth’s displaced persons, bereft of the Mima, must turn back to long-forsaken primitive religions—the Cult of the vagin*, the Sect of Ticklers—and other hedonistic preoccupations to rid their minds of gnawing fear.

For the next two decades the narrator keeps up his logbook while the spaceship wallows in the void, every reason for human hope collapsing in the certainty that “the universe plays dice.” Indeed, like other phantoms of the imagination—“The Flying Dutchman” or the Ancient Mariner’s accursed vessel—“Aniara” is destined to drift forever without a landfall. For its ill-fated passengers, the future is a one-way trip to Nowhere.

Yet there is time to reflect on the profundities of the Unthinkable and on man’s place in that single cosmic flyspeck he calls “the world.” The reflection finds its norms in biblical allusion and uses terms familiar to the Christian. Eden, from which man was driven by sin, has been left behind in ruins; the curse of evil permeates our whole galaxy. Thus whatever Promised Land awaits must be somewhere in the outer reaches of the Beyond and must be struggled for. So a blind poetess sings:

Each fight for Heaven is a fight for joy.

The goal of every heart is Paradise.

Her prophetic witness is more than idle optimism. Like other spokesmen for the Lord of Hosts, she knows the difficulties of living the faith: “How hard to fuse one’s faith with daily living!”

There is even an old-style evangelistic camp meeting onboard “Aniara,” with hell-fire preaching and “dirges of repentance.” But at the time the narrator professes only revulsion for “the dreary chanting/of hideous songs by these grey fakirs of contrition.” He prefers to think about a question of greater immediate concern, namely, how to repair the Mima. Committed as he is to the panaceas of scientism, the narrator considers any Jacob’s Ladder to be ironic and tragic, for to summon man into the apparent presence of God is to lure him to his doom.

Moreover, the narrator believes, all creative and destroying power already lies in man’s possession; he needs no further divine intervention. Indeed, both God and Satan have deserted man, seeking to escape from “the King of Ashes,” hom*o destructus.

But with the inevitable looming ever closer, the narrator begins to change his priorities. He knows there is no way to “shut out the intolerable void”—a void both without and within. Outside the interplanetary omnibus yawns an immensity unfathomable to the human mind; through its “gaping gorges” rush all the pent-up shock waves of evil, forever imprisoning our galaxy and corroding human aspirations. Even so, the broad expanse without is no match for those gulfs and chasms within, “a void/ which must be constantly filled and embellished.” The narrator also begins to understand that “no one can hide his inner emptiness,” and he wishes to make known the message of truth as he now perceives it, no matter how late it may be.

That truth, hinted at from the beginning of the poem, crashes in upon the narrator as he approaches his end. “The sheer absurdity of living” in a technological nightmare whose only morality is “a contrived chaos” convinces the narrator to look somewhere beyond mechanistic theory for a means to fill the emptiness within. On the final night of human life aboard the spaceship “Aniara”—just before its final plunge into the frozen vacuum of Nothingness—the narrator realizes his error. In keeping with the literary conventions of the epic, the storyteller has the right to pass on his experience to later generations:

I had coveted a Paradise for this race

but since we left the one we had destroyed

the Zodiac’s lonely night became our only home,

a gasping chasm in which no god could hear us.

The eternal mystery of Heaven’s stars,

the miracle of the celestial mechanism,

is the law but not the Gospel.

Mercy can only thrive where there is life.

One of Aniara’s principal themes, then, is secular man’s ultimate realization of his appalling “inner emptiness” and the need to fill it. This awareness has been growing in the consciousness of Western man since his takeover by twentieth century technocrats midway through the 1950s. Drained of spiritual values and thereby reduced to the subexistence of a zombie, modern man careens through life like an animated doll in Toyland. He is perfectly described by Eliot in “The Hollow Men”:

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.

Even if the wind-up toy should run down, secular man is not without his resources. His highest aim now, according to an ebullient analysis by F. M. Esfandiary in the New York Times (September 24, 1974), is “to overcome aging and, in time, death itself” through the developing of “life-support technologies.” By this Esfandiary means the replacement of human parts with manmade substitutes: “We will continue to de-animalize our bodies, creating new durable attractive physiologies.” When these fail, there is always the prospect of anabiosis, “freezing of the body immediately after death until a suitable time in the future when the body can be revived.”

It is, of course, naïve for the supernaturalist to ask someone of a thoroughly secular mentality about the spiritual dimension of man, about the relation between cryogenics and the eternal soul. Yet Harry Martinson, the prophet-poet of the Space Age, is not afraid to ask; nor is he afraid to bring his protagonist across the secular desert and through the midnight of scientism’s despair, to find, at least, the ember-glow of truth that will not expire.

The vanities of scientism, as the Preacher of Ecclesiastes also knew, are merely a striving after wind. If we do not know its Creator, Nature “stabs us from behind”—in the words of Herman Melville—“with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way.” But the chronicler of the voyage of “Aniara” has not forgotten entirely the ageless cosmic promise of Good News—the coming of a hero-redeemer whose love heals the heart of its loneliness.

So man need not face the Unknown with empty, stoical resolve, or with crazy, libidinous desperation. Where the laws of ecstasy and entropy fail, the Gospel is sufficient unto the uttermost—the farthest ranges of condition, the deepest fathoms of need, the trackless tundras of egorspace, the frozen glaciers of doubt, even unto the astral graveyards of disbelief.

In the end, Martinson concurs with another poet, David of Bethlehem, who knew well enough the proportions of space to cry out in joyous relief. “If I take my flight to the frontiers of the morning or dwell at the limit of the western sea, even there thy hand will meet me and thy right hand will hold me” (Ps. 139:9, 10, NEB).

This assurance the Christian commends to every sojourner in time and space.

For a young movement, Gay Liberation has come a long way. The first Gay Liberation group was formed in 1969 after an incident in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police closed a hom*osexual bar, and patrons of the bar decided to fight back. They battled police with fists and bricks, set fires, and destroyed property. hom*osexual anti-war dissidents saw here an opportunity to radicalize the hom*osexual community, which previously had shunned publicity. Before long, Gay Liberation Fronts and Gay Activist groups were being organized across the country.

The Judeo-Christian heritage, on which this country’s civil and criminal codes are based, loomed large as a barrier to the success of Gay Liberation. As Christians spoke out against “equal rights” legislation before local government bodies, Gay Liberationists felt a need for anti-church programs. Now that many local governments have given legal protection to the hom*osexual, Liberationists have begun to campaign for recognition within the churches. Supporters of equal rights for hom*osexuals have been able to back Gay Liberation in its demands for civil legislation without church support. But they realize that support for change in the criminal codes will require church approval of hom*osexuality as a valid alternative life-style for its members.

Many denominations are being forced to face the issue of hom*osexuality within their membership and leadership. Ads for “gay caucuses” and “gay organizational meetings” within the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Southern Baptist, Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches are appearing in the leading national hom*ophile newspaper, The Advocate. Such groups are being formed to obtain “equal rights” for hom*osexual men and women within these denominations. The United Methodist Church is already experiencing the pangs of possible schism as sides are being taken on the hom*osexual issues to be brought up at the General Conference next year. Some gay organizations are advertising in the secular and religious media. Dignity, a gay Catholic group, advertises in national and local Roman Catholic papers. It has taken ads in the Washington Post stating it is “serving the Gay Catholic Community.” Such ads appear in the religious-news section of the paper; they are as large as the notices printed by many of the major churches in the area.

But the Church as a whole has not recognized the attack that is coming from within. It has concentrated on defending itself against the attacks of Gay Liberation from without. Many clergymen, seminarians, and lay leaders in all denominations are covertly supporting the demands of these “gay caucuses” as a matter of social justice.

The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches is a gay church group formed by Troy Perry, formerly an ordained Pentecostal minister. In less than six years it has come to have more than thirty-nine chartered congregations and forty-three missions and study groups with a combined membership of more than seventeen thousand.

Many hom*osexuals who formerly were interested in Christianity have turned away from God completely, or have joined other faiths where they are accepted as hom*osexuals. Many leaders in Gay Liberation have had seminary or Bible school and college training. Some have been ordained. These facts strongly suggest that the Church has failed to minister to the hom*osexual with an understanding of his problems. Its failure to do so has fostered the confrontation now taking place between the Church and hom*osexuals.

This lack of understanding is causing the churches to cater to the demands of a few Liberationists who are interested in selfishly achieving consent for their personal life-style. Gay Lib does not speak for the majority of the more than twenty million hom*osexuals in this country. It certainly does not speak for the many hom*osexuals who want to change their sexual habits. It should not be allowed to force the churches to accept its objective of sexual license. Gay Lib has validity as a movement when it deals with social, economic, legislative, and political problems of the hom*osexual. It has no validity in the areas of morality and theology.

Can the Christian Church emerge stronger from its confrontation with Gay Liberation? It can if it will stand upon the Word of God in full, not just those passages that condemn the sin of hom*osexuality but those that put forward the regenerative power of Jesus Christ. The truth of Scripture cannot be accepted one day and denied the next. Nor can it be applied to satisfy prejudice, or according to a personal interpretation based on acquired emotional reactions. We have much to learn from the account of how Christ ministered to the adulteress.

The churches can and should support legislation that would give the hom*osexual equal rights in employment, housing, and public accommodation. This support does not preclude a stand against changes in criminal or moral codes. When the churches give such support they thereby undermine one of the persuasive arguments of Gay Liberationists and clear the way for ministering to hom*osexuals in a positive way. When many of the discriminations of our civil laws fall, churches can then pursue in ministry the problem of the hom*osexual’s relation to God.

Scripture clearly shows that there can be no acceptance of hom*osexuality as a valid way of life. Yet Paul tells us in First Corinthians 6 that this problem appeared in the early Church and was overcome: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” If it was overcome then, it can be overcome today.

hom*osexuals are likely to be well aware of the biblical passages referring to Sodom and the sin of hom*osexuality. What they are waiting to hear is the regenerative message of Jesus Christ and his love for them. For most of them, love is a missing element. The hom*osexual has been written off as sick, perverse, unsalvageable. Active hom*osexual behavior occurs through an act of the will provoked by circ*mstance. It reflects a need to love and be loved. The behavior then becomes habitual. The only way to break this habit is to find something greater as a replacement.

For the hom*osexual to redirect his sexual attitudes, four steps are necessary: acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour; confession of all prior sin, not specifically the hom*osexual habit; commitment to God; acceptance into the Christian community and Church for fellowship and growth in continued study of the Word of God. The first three steps are a matter of individual will. The last is likely to be more difficult, because it may require Christians to set aside their previous attitudes toward hom*osexuals.

Christians need to practice the love spoken of throughout the New Testament, specifically in John 13:34—“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” With such love they can stop the rising tide of hom*osexuality. More than any other kind of sinner, the hom*osexual needs such love. He needs to know this pure emotion, not the physical act that man has superimposed as a definition of love.

Where there is love there is no fear. Gay Liberationists contend that the condemnation of Christians has created the atmosphere of fear in which hom*osexuals live. This may be true in situations where one’s relationship to the community, one’s life-style, is an open book for everyone to know and read. But the radicalism of Gay Liberationists disappears when the fear they preach disappears. It is important that the Church begin to teach its members to show the hom*osexual the love that is Jesus Christ.

A Roman Catholic sociologist and priest recently suggested the formation of non-sectarian groups within the Church in which hom*osexuals could discuss their problems. The suggestion is misguided. It makes the common mistake of attempting to find the solutions in man rather than in God. A group of hom*osexuals coming together to discuss their problems must necessarily talk about their sexuality. Such a discussion would be erotic rather than therapeutic for some of the participants. Small groups have been a very useful tool in the treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts. But the physical and mental conditions found in drug addiction and alcoholism are completely different from the sexual fantasy and relationships that are a part of the problems of the hom*osexual.

We do not need to set the hom*osexual apart for ministry and help, any more than we would any other type of sinner. What we need to do is stop considering hom*osexual behavior a greater sin than all others.

hom*osexual behavior is a sin, and God punishes sin. But God also forgives sin. The practicing hom*osexual who confesses his sin to God, repents of it, and commits himself to Jesus Christ can find in Christ the power to turn from his sin and be healed. This is the stand the churches should take in their confrontation with Gay Liberation.

THREE RONDEAUX FOR JOHN THE BAPTIST

1.

Be silent John. Keep your head.

Herodias, I admit, was quick to bed.

But she is quicker to anger and slow

To forgive. She’ll not grow

Soft nor come through guilt to dread

Your word. The lust that we once fed

Is love. Go easy. Let it be said

Your mercy was great, your anger slow.

Be silent John.

Mercy suits me, not anger. I dread

This word I speak and fear I will not shed

My prophet’s role without the swift flow

Of blood. Herodias, your grace, will know

Me dead for I will keep God’s head.

Be silent John.

2.

As Salome danced, John stooped in prayer.

He felt his matted hair

And faced the facts: his bell

Strong voice was finished. It would not tell

Christ again. Christ would bare

His kingdom and he would bear

The stench and wear

The onus of his cell,

as Salome danced.

She whirled and weaved and let her hair

Fall softly down, a snare

To catch a fox and quell

The anger of her mother’s guilty Hell.

John raged for air whirling in prayer,

as Salome danced.

3.

Bent in that prayer, he heard the jailer’s keys

Rattle in the dark. On his knees,

He heard the jailer stop before his door.

Hope, once more,

Pierced his gloom. He felt the breeze

That cooled him in the desert; he saw the trees

By the Jordan, and heard the bees

Sing the sweetness of their store.

Bent in that prayer,

He did not feel the cold hand seize

His hair and jerk him from his knees

Nor the quick knife pour

His blood onto the floor.

He felt God’s mercy like the desert breeze,

Bent in that prayer.

JOHN LEAX

Few parts of Scripture have been so violated in interpretation, from a psychological point of view, as Jesus’ statement “Happy are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.” Many Christians take that verse as a signal to cultivate a psychological “poorness.” The “such a worm as I” theology has become as useful to the masoch*stic Christian as the flagellation of the body with whips done in the Middle Ages.

Poorness of spirit is often wrongly identified with a self-effacement that amounts to a total lack of self-confidence. The result is an inability to function adequately. Feelings of inadequacy then become the excuse for refusing to take an active part in God’s work, except to pray and give a pittance. Such a person is unlikely to progress far in his vocation; an employer is not inspired to have confidence in a person who has no confidence in himself.

Where does this grim pattern begin? Perhaps childhood problems were associated with a wrong interpretation of the “poor in spirit” verse. Add to that other biblical teachings taken out of context, such as “turn the other cheek,” “never be angry,” “put your brother before you,” and one has biblically backed reasons for doing nothing—for being acted on instead of acting.

Once the pattern gets established, passages that seem to contradict it are ignored. No “love thy neighbor as thyself,” no “be angry and sin not,” no “faith without works is dead.” The “poor” person brushes away the need to see how these teachings too apply to his Christian life.

If “poor in spirit” doesn’t mean self-effacement, what does it mean? Or, to look at the other side, what would “rich in spirit” mean?

It seems to me that “rich in spirit” could describe the person who is convinced he has all the answers. The dogmatic teacher who teaches as though the textbook and his lectures present ultimate truth is an example. He knows it all. The student whose intelligent question points out a flaw in the teacher’s theory is squashed, often with sarcasm.

The fired employee who blames his difficulties entirely on others, refusing to admit his own shortcomings, might be another example of being “rich in spirit.” To admit failure would crumble the façade he has created to hide feelings of inferiority and insecurity, and so he spares no effort to make it known how wrong the others were.

“Richness of spirit” is, it seems to me, the conviction that one is right and has no need to explore further. “Poorness of spirit,” then, would be openness to correction, to further information that might change one’s views. Such a person realizes that there are many avenues to the ultimate truth that God provides. He knows also that each of us has the responsibility of developing his own way of service.

Does “poorness” mean total fluidity of opinion? Not at all. There is a central core of secure truth; the flexibility is on matters outside the core. Secure in his relationship with God and also with himself, this person is not threatened by differences of opinion. He does not need to shoot down everyone who doesn’t think exactly the way he does. He is open to questions and to new ideas.

I have had the privilege of studying under and working with many outstanding scientists in several fields, at the University of Chicago and elsewhere. I would say that the characteristic most common to these scientists is “poorness of spirit.” They don’t need to feel defensive when someone brings up a point that may be critical of their work. They usually say, in effect, “That’s interesting. Let’s look at it and see if there is something there that calls for readjusting or further study.”

This openness is an ingredient in their success. Someone else’s question may show them something they had overlooked or hadn’t thought of. Most of them attribute a part of their success to the fact that students’ or colleagues’ questions caused them to look further and find better answers.

The open or poor-in-spirit person who loses his job is likely to admit, “I had trouble. It may not have been all my fault, and others were in the wrong, too, but I’m the one who needs to learn how to handle those problems better.”

Knowing that their relationship with God is secure, Christians should be able to be shaken out of their complacency without feeling resentful and threatened. To grow, we need to be open to the stretching opportunities that God sends our way. “Happy are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.”

Beginning with this issue our annual book survey becomes semi-annual. We will continue surveying the previous year’s production of books on the Bible and on theology in a special spring issue. Our annual recommendation of choice evangelical books will also appear then. In a special fall issue, of which this is the first, we will be surveying recent releases on historical and related topics.

Because last spring we did not have room to survey books on North America, this issue includes a selection of those books that appeared over some eighteen months, all of 1974 and the first half of 1975. Books on the rest of the world, along with general titles that include North America along with other areas, are from the first six months of 1975; hence that section is much shorter in this issue.

Part I: North America

The enormous diversity of religion in North America is spread before the reader in our first group of books. Religions of America edited by Leo Rosten (Simon and Schuster) is a major updating and expansion of a work published in the 1950’s. Representatives of many of the larger groups answer pointed questions about their distinctives. Then a huge amount of data from various sources shows what the American people say they believe on a number of issues. There is also almanac-like coverage of institutions, holy days, and trends. A new edition, the sixth, of Handbook of Denominations by Frank Mead (Abingdon) has a narrower and deeper focus than the Rosten volume. It tries to present, impartially, information on as many distinct denominations as the author could find out about. In both books, much of the data is provided by more or less biased sources within the organizations.

The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches edited by Constant Jacquet, Jr. (Abingdon), gives current addresses, statistics, and officers’ names for denominations and many other religious organizations. A potentially useful statistical book gives, as of 1971, the numbers of congregations and members in every U. S. country for fifty-three denominations; it covers roughtly four-fifths of the nation’s church members. The book is Churches and Church Membership in the United States by Douglas Johnson, Paul Picard, and Bernard Quinn (Glenmary Research Center).

Two collections of essays are especially noteworthy. Religion American Style edited by Patrick McNamara (Harper & Row) covers the various roles of the major religious traditions. Religious Movements in Contemporary America edited by Irving Zaretsky and Mark Leone (Princeton) focuses on in-depth studies growing out of personal observations of dozens of “marginal” groups (though the distinction between “marginal” and “mainline” should not be accepted uncritically). With more than 800 pages this volume is likely to have something of interest to everyone. It is a helpful companion to the more ideologically based books that systematically refute the “cults.” Religious America by Philip Garvin (McGraw-Hill) offers photographs and text related to the television series of the same name. Both conventional and exotic religious expressions are movingly portrayed.

The most comprehensive book to be mentioned in this survey is Religion in America by George Bedell, Leo Sandon, Jr., and Charles Wellborn (Macmillan). It is intended as a college text, uses various disciplinary approaches, includes documents to illustrate the narrative, avoids excessive detail, and covers the range of American religion without ignoring or overstressing the smaller groups.

THEMES Several books treat key aspects of American religious history from the beginnings. Going back even before the beginning, from the European point of view, is Teachings From the American Earth edited by Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock (Live-right/Norton). The writers are either American Indians or sympathetic observers; what they say shows the variety and comprehensiveness of Indian religion. A different kind of non-Christian religion is discussed from a variety of angles in American Civil Religion edited by Russell Richey and Donald Jones (Harper & Row). The celebrated 1967 essay by Bellah is reprinted, and then he offers a concluding essay responding to the discussion he sparked. In The Broken Covenant (Seabury), Robert Bellah discusses civil religion at even greater length, sees it as being in a time of trial, and calls for a renewal of dedication to the best aspects of what America has professed to be about. Christian theologians disagree among themselves over whether civil religion should be opposed or, within clearly defined limits, accepted or even endorsed. However all theologians agree that the ordinary American Christian, whether or not otherwise orthodox, is all too likely to blur the essential distinction between biblical and civil religion.

The prolific and provocative Martin Marty has written a uniquely constructed volume, The Pro and Con Book of Religious America: A Bicentennial Argument (Word). Half of the book tells what is right with the American spiritual heritage. Turn the book upside down, start reading from what had been the back, and you are told in matching chapters what is wrong with the spiritual heritage. (Do it the other way around if you want to end on the positive note.) Four other books (these to be read only from front to back) reflect on the American experience: Defining America: A Christian Critique of the American Dream by Robert Benne and Philip Hefner (Fortress), The Future of the American Past by Earl Brill (Seabury), The American Search For Soul by Robert Michaelsen (Louisiana State University), and Warning Fires: The Quest For Community in America by James Sellers (Seabury). Along these lines, but with more attention to contemporary matters, is the prolific evangelical writer James Hefley’s America: One Nation Under God (Victor). The Bicentennial is sure to stimulate more such books.

GROUPS A long tradition of writing about American religion according to its denominational composition is matched by a long tradition of complaints that this writing is dull and that it unduly slights the broader context. In general, more recent writers have tried to correct these faults. The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607–1972 by Robert Baker (Broadman) has more detail than most people would care to absorb in a few sittings but will serve well as a reference source on America’s second-largest (after Roman Catholicism) denomination. Divided We Stand: The Baptists in American Life by Bynum Shaw (Moore Publishing Co.) has fewer details and is more opinionated. Baptist history buffs will want to read it. The third-largest denomination, the United Methodist Church, together with its many antecedents is the subject of The Story of American Methodism by Frederick Norwood (Abingdon). Some reference is made to many of the Methodist bodies that are not part of the union.

Smaller religious groups tend to be either ignored historigraphically or covered far out of proportion to their size and influence. Hutterite Society by John Hostetler (Johns Hopkins University) is an excellent overview, describing the beginnings of the movement as a branch of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, their travails in central Europe and eventual settlement in Russia, and then their development in North America, to which they all emigrated in the 1870s. The book is illustrated and has charts that show the relationships among the various communes. It is a rare model of both detailed accuracy and readability. The Hutterites are growing, but America’s other well-known communal group, the highly unorthodox Shakers, are almost extinct, no doubt because of one of their tenets (celibacy). The Perfect Life by Doris Faber (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a popular, entirely uncritical overview. (An unusual book is The Gift to Be Simple by Robert Peters [Liveright/Norton], who writes poetically and biographically as if he were Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, who was deemed the female counterpart to Christ.) The Shakers are one of three communal groups studied by sociologist John Whitworth in God’s Blueprints (Routledge and Regan Paul); the others are the Oneida Community and the Society of Brothers, a small twentieth-century group of German origin that recently entered into fellowship with one of the branches of Hutterites. Certainly the most striking book on the Shakers is Work and Worship which combines numerous photographs with text by Edward Andrews (New York Graphic Society).

The larger branch of surviving Anabaptists is the Mennonite family of denominations. Mennonites of Canada, 1786–1920 by Frank Epp (Macmillan of Canada) is an excellent, detailed study of all the many subdivisions. A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church by John Toews (Mennonite Brethren Publishing House) is about the third-largest Mennonite denomination, found mostly in western United States and Canada. A People of Two Kingdoms by James Juhnke (Faith and Life Press) is a study of the five largest of the nine or so Mennonite denominations represented in Kansas. South Central Frontiers by Paul Erb (Herald Press) gives more than 500 pages of information on the fifty or so surviving congregations in that area affiliated with the predominantly eastern (Old) Mennonite Church. If after reading all of this Mennonite history you want to know what they are like today, see Anabaptists Four Centuries Later by J. Howard Kauffman and Leland Harder (Herald Press), a sociological study based on responses by 3,500 representative members of four Mennonite bodies plus the somewhat related Brethren in Christ.

Although it has long been secular, through much of its history, beginning in 1701, Yale University played a major role in shaping American Protestantism. Hence we mention Yale, A History by Brooks Kelley (Yale).

Black religion is increasingly a subject for study, as is the rest of the black experience. A helpful collection of previously published writings is The Black Experience in Religion edited by C. Eric Lincoln (Doubleday). Both Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion by Leonard Barrett (Doubleday) and Black Belief: Folk Beliefs of Blacks in America and West Africa by Henry Mitchell (Harper & Row) focus on the influence of the African heritage in America. The influence of the American environment is examined in what has been hailed as a landmark study by Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Pantheon), and in Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity, 1787–1865 by Milton Sernett (Scarecrow). A more localized study is Black Pastors and Leaders: Memphis, 1819–1972 by David Tucker (Memphis State University).

COLONIAL PERIOD As usual, the Puritans were the subject of a number of valuable studies. Even better, however, is the reprinting in two volumes of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner of Truth). Nearly 1,900 double-column pages sell for $39.90 (instead of the $19.95 we previously stated, but still quite a bargain). Two books on America’s premier theologian are Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart by Harold Simonson (Eerdmans) and Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Influence edited by Charles Angoff (Fairleigh Dickinson University).

Studies of Puritan literature, preaching, sacraments, and politics, respectively, are: The American Body Imagination edited by Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge), Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England by Emory Elliott (Princeton), The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570–1720 by E. Brooks Holifield (Yale), and Kings, Commoners, and Colonists: Puritan Politics in Old and New England, 1603–1660 by Selma Williams (Atheneum).

Two of the leading Puritan theologians are introduced in Increase Mather by Mason Lowance, Jr. (Twayne), and The Shape of the Puritan Mind: The Thought of Samuel Willard by Ernest Lowrie (Yale). Two notable local studies are Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (Harvard) and A New England Church: 1730–1834 (Bedford, Massachusetts) by Ina Mansur (Bond Wheelwright).

To represent the colonies outside New England there is a popular biography, William Penn: Apostle of Dissentby Hans Fantel (William Morrow).

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A rather superficial, undiscriminating survey of a major strand of American religion is The Bible Belt Mystique by C. Dwight Dorough (Westminster). Nineteenth-century evangelicals, cultists, and charlatans are blended together with twentieth-century counterparts from the author’s own experience. More scholarly are And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 by Dickson Bruce, Jr. (University of Tennessee) and No Foot of Land: Folklore of American Methodist Itinerants by Donald Byrne, Jr. (Scarecrow). (On this subject, compare the pertinent chapters in The Eager Feet by J. Edwin Orr [Moody], which treats evangelical awakenings worldwide, 1790–1830.)

One major branch of evangelistic Protestantism is generally known as “holiness” and seeks to perpetuate the early Wesleyan emphases. A Guide to the Study of the Holiness Movement by Charles Edwin Jones (Scarecrow) is a massive 900-page bibliographical tool, carefully classified by denominations. The same author and publisher have also issued an authoritative narrative history, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936. One of the earlier holiness preachers can be read for himself in Five Sermons and a Tract by Luther Lee (Holrad House).

Religious participation in social action is related in The Abolitionists by Merton Dillon (Northern Illinois University), Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900 by Donald Pivar (Greenwood), and Medicine Man to Missionary: Missionaries as Agents of Change among the Indians of Southern Ontario, 1784–1867 by Elizabeth Graham (Peter Martin Associates).

Biographies of six evangelical leaders of the century are Unvanquished Puritan: A Portrait of Lyman Beecher by Stuart Henry (Eerdmans), Calvinism Versus Democracy: Timothy Dwight and the Origins of American Evangelical Orthodoxy by Stephen Berk (Archon), which is an important reminder of the New England as well as frontier origins of “revivalism,” The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton by Bennet Tyler and Andrew Bonar (Banner of Truth, a reprint), The Theological Development of Edwards Amasa Park: Last of the “Consistent Calvinists” by Anthony Cecil, Jr. (Scholars’ Press), The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell by B. M. Palmer (Banner of Truth, a reprint), and John Winebrenner: Nineteenth Century Reformer by Richard Kern (Central Publishing House).

Institutional histories that span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include: Women Who Carried the Good News by Eleanor Hull (Judson) and Multiplying the Witness by Lawrence Slaght (Judson), each about an agency that is now part of the American Baptist Churches, Taylor University: The First 125 Years by William Ringenberg (Eerdmans), Chautauqua by Theodore Morrison (University of Chicago), Two Centuries of Methodist Concern by James Brawley (Vantage), about the thirteen United Methodist colleges for blacks, and The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church by William Walls, published by the denomination.

In addition to the varieties of evangelicalism, America has been a fertile recipient and spawner of countless other forms of religious expression. Martin John Spaulding by Thomas Spaulding (Consortium Press) is a study of one of the leading Catholics in mid-century when his denomination had, starting from a very small colonial base, become the largest. Meanwhile many New Englanders were radically abandoning the faith of their fathers. Thoreau: Mystic, Prophet, Ecologist by William Wolf (Pilgrim Press) and Liberals Among the Orthodox: Unitarian Beginnings in New York City, 1819–1839 by Walter Kring (Beacon) describe examples.

Several major essays and a long bibliography make up The Rise of Adventism: A Commentary on the Social and Religious Ferment of Mid-Nineteenth Century America edited by Edwin Gaustad (Harper & Row).

A far more deviationist American movement is Mormonism. Its major school, Brigham Young University, published four books of special interest. A Believing People edited by Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert is an anthology of Mormon writings in both prose (including diaries) and poetry. Charles C. Rich by Leonard Arrington is the biography of a nineteenth-century leader who served as one of the group’s twelve apostles for almost forty years. Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A History and Commentary by Robert Matthews is a thorough critical examination of the version accepted as authoritative by the smaller Missouri-based branch of Mormonism but only as helpful by the larger Utah-based branch. Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years edited by Ernest Wilkinson is projected for three volumes, of which the first, covering 1870–1920, runs 600 pages!

A group that is almost as extreme, Jehovah’s Witnesses, is the subject of an appreciative survey by an outsider in The Witnesses by Chandler Sterling (Regnery).

Spanish-Americans are one of America’s largest minorities and perhaps the least written about religiously. Two books give responsible treatments of certain nineteenth-and twentieth-century developments: The Religious Dimension in Hispanic Los Angeles: A Protestant Case Study by Clifton Holland (William Carey) discusses almost all Protestant groups, and Iglesia Presbiteriana: A History of Presbyterians and Mexican Americans in the Southwest by R. Douglas Brackenridge and Francisco Garcia-Treto (Trinity University) is limited to one denomination.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Theauthors of books dealing with contemporary expressions of Christianity are likely to be either passionate advocates or detractors or professedly (not necessarily actually) detached social scientists. Both kinds of books are, generally speaking, more suitable as source materials for future historians than as balanced portrayals. In the meantime they can be used to inspire, to warn, and to provoke reflection.

Something of the range of evangelicalism is indicated by the following books. The Young Evangelicals by Richard Quebedeaux (Harper & Row) is about a certain style, endorsed by the author, of doctrine and practice that straddles the blurred border between the more and less orthodox wings of Protestantism. At another border, also blurred, that between orthodoxy and secular political extremism, is a hostile account by Gary Clabaugh, Thunder on the Right: The Protestant Fundamentalists (Nelson-Hall). A quite different kind of fundamentalism, one that is basically rural, is portrayed in quotations, photographs, and line drawings in Revival! by Eleanor Dickinson and Barbara Benziger (Harper & Row). Another portion of the spectrum is discussed in Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power by James Hefley and Edward Plowman (Tyndale). This is the book for those who wondered whether there are any Christian politicians or bureaucrats and for those who despair that there are but they don’t act like it. Especially noteworthy for its balanced presentation of a growing, controversial movement within Christianity is The Charismatic Movement edited by Michael Hamilton (Eerdmans). Worthwhile reflections on the varieties of a largely evangelical activity are offered in Model of Religious Broadcasting by J. Harold Ellens (Eerdmans). The story of Key ’73 is told by its leaders in Yesterday, Today, and Forever edited by T. A. Raedeke (Baker). Back to Jesus by Peter Michelmore (Fawcett) is one more journalistic overview of the Jesus movement. Everybody’s Afraid in the Ghetto by Keith Phillips (Regal) is a very good report of certain inner city ministries.

Turning from books about major segments to more specific institutional studies we have Community in a Black Pentecostal Church (in Pittsburgh) by anthropologist Melvin Williams (University of Pittsburgh). Beyond the Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson (Chosen/Revell) tells what has happened in an important ministry since its initial wide publicity. God’s Forever Family by Jack Sparks (Zondervan) is about the comparatively long-lived “Jesus people” organization, the Christian World Liberation Front, based in Berkeley, California. The old “Jesus” organizations are still very much alive. Attesting to this are Ten Fastest-Growing Southern Baptist Sunday Schools by Eugene Skelton (Broadman), Ten at the Top by Lee Lesback (New Hope Press) on ten large Assemblies of God congregations, World’s Largest Sunday School by Elmer Towns (Nelson), on First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, and, stressing quality rather than size, Three Churches in Renewal (one each in Arizona, California, and Washington) by Lawrence Richards (Zondervan). Much more staid expressions of orthodoxy are reported in Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and its American Environment, 1890–1918 by H. Zwaanstra (Eerdmans) and God’s Covenant Faithfulness edited by Gertrude Hoeksema (Kregal), on the twenty-congregation Protestant Reformed denomination.

Communalism has always been a part of Christianity and has always been easier to write about. A wide range of doctrinal stances is covered in New Christian Communities edited by Michael Zeik (Roth Publishing) and Running Free: New Life in Community by Richard Rodes (Judson). The report of a summer’s journey to numerous Hutterite historical sites in Europe is told in For the Sake of Divine Truth by Jacob Kleinsasser et al. (Plough).

Meanwhile, there is still the majority “mainstream” of Protestantism, greatly underrepresented among the books that have come to our attention. Moment of Truth For Protestant America: Interchurch Campaigns Following World War One by Eldon Ernst (Scholars’ Press) is a fine study of an early ecumenical social-action endeavor that proved to be controversial. So it has always been. The Prophetic Clergy by Harold Quinley (Wiley) is a sociological study based on responses from 1,500 pastors in nine California denominations. Gideon’s Gang by Jeffrey Hadden and Charles Longino, Jr. (Pilgrim Press), is about a socially activist congregation in Dayton, Ohio. An extremely critical history of the National Council of Churches (from the 1908 origin of its predecessor Federal Council) is provided by C. Gregg Singer in The Unholy Alliance (Arlington). The American Spirit in Theology is a title that could be applied to various contenders, such as revivalism. But Randolph Miller uses it to embrace an empiricist-process stream from William James through Dewey, Whitehead, and their disciples (Pilgrim Press).

American Catholicism by George Devine (Prentice-Hall) is a brief overview of the country’s largest religious body as it undergoes major changes in our time. These Priests Stay: The American Catholic Clergy in Crisis by Paul Wilkes (Simon and Schuster) tells the stories of ten men who didn’t do what so many, though far from a majority, of their colleagues did. The Catholic Cult of the Paraclete by Joseph Fichter (Sheed and Ward) is about the charismatic movement. In A Catholic Looksat Billy Graham Jesuit Charles Dullea is largely appreciative (Paulist). The Commonweal and American Catholicism by Rodger Van Allen (Fortress) is about a fifty-year old lay-edited magazine and its influence. The Academic Melting Pot by Stephen Steinberg (McGraw-Hill) compares the different paths that Catholics and Jews have taken in higher education. Secrecy in the Church by journalist Richard Ostling (Harper & Row) complains mainly, but not only, about excessive secrecy by Catholic leaders.

One of the most distinctive features of the United States is the relation between its religion and its government. God, Caesar and the Constitution: The Court as Referee of Church-State Confrontation by Leo Pfeffer (Beacon) is a major study of the Supreme Court and how its decisions, especially in this century, affect churches and their roles with regard to the family, the military, the schools, and “blue laws.” With Sovereign Reverence by Harold Fey is about the first twenty-five years of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, founded in 1947, and is distributed by that organization. In Freedom Under Siege the well-known atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair makes a responsible attempt to document her belief that church and state are not separate enough (Tarcher). Uphill For Peace by E. Raymond Wilson is a long history of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, founded in 1943, the Quaker group that until recently was the only officially registered religious lobby (Friends United Press).

In Cults and the Occult in the Age of Aquarius, Edmond Gruss gives a brief useful refutation of about a dozen of the older and newer deviations from historic Christianity (Baker or Presbyterian and Reformed). John Sladek gives a secular, humorous, informed put-down of “strange sciences and occult beliefs” in The New Apocrypha (Stein and Day). Those who think hardly anybody really holds such beliefs need only consult a large book from a major publisher, Putnam, entitled PSI, the Other World Catalogue: The Comprehensive Guide to the Dimensions of Psychic Phenomena by June and Nicholas Regush. There may be an increase in skepticism, but it seems more than matched by the increase in credulity. A different kind of deviation is reported and opposed in The Gay Church by Ronald Enroth and Gerald Jamison (Eerdmans). There may not be more practicing hom*osexuals than before, but there is certainly more openness about it; one sign of this is the formation of scores of hom*osexual congregations.

To keep things in balance, lest one think that exotic beliefs have run off with the country, two carefully structured, representative, and statistically laden social-scientific studies; Commitment on Campus: Changes in Religion and Values Over Five Decades by Dean Hoge (Westminster) and Responses to Religion: Studies in the Social Psychology of Religious Belief by Gary Marshall (University Press of Kansas).

TWENTIETH-CENTURY BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY There are so many books in this category, many of persons who are well known, others of persons who should be better known, that we must be unfairly terse.

Widely known religious figures: Charles Fillmore by Hugh D’Andraede (Harper & Row), on the founder of Unity School of Christianity; The Divine Yes by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon) missionary-author; Search For The Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp, Jr. (Judson); Never Far From Home by John Knox (Word), New Testament professor; To See the Kingdom: The Theological Vision of H. Richard Niebuhr by James Fowler (Abingdon); The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr edited by Nathan Scott, Jr. (University of Chicago); Man Alive! by Virginia Cason (Freedom House), on H. M. S. Richards, Adventist broadcaster; The Church and I by Frank Sheed (Doubleday), lay Catholic publisher-author; and Prophet of Reunion by Charles Angell and Charles LaFontaine (Seabury), on Paul Wattson, early promoter of Anglican-Catholic reunion.

Several books on America’s best-known monk appeared, including two with the same title: Thomas Merton: A Bibliography by Frank Dell’Isola (Kent State University) and by Marquita Breit (Scarecrow). Others are Thomas Merton, Monk, edited by Patrick Hart (Sheed and Ward) and Thomas Merton: The Man and His Work by Dennis McInerny (Consortium).

Many of the following books by evangelicals are more testimonies or memoirs than formal biographies. The World’s Strongest Man by Paul Anderson, weightlifter (Victor); There’s a Snake in My Garden by Jill Briscoe, minister’s wife (Zondervan); It’s Good to Know by Randy Bullock, actor (Mott Media); Walking and Leaping by Merlin Carothers, minister-author (Logos); Through It All by Andrae Crouch, singer (Word); William Culbertson: Man of God by Warren Wiersbe, on the late head of Moody Bible Institute (Moody); Tell It to the Mafia by Joe Donato, ex-criminal (Logos); These Strange Ashes by Elisabeth Elliot, missionary-author (Harper & Row); Why I Fight For a Christian America by Billy James Hargis, anti-Communist activist (Nelson); How to Live Like a King’s Kid by Harold Hill, businessman (Logos); Hansi’s New Life by Maria Anne Hirschmann, ex-Nazi (Revell); Letters to an Unborn Child by David Ireland, paralyzed family counselor (Harper & Row); Just Mahalia, Baby by Laurraine Goreau, on Mahalia Jackson, singer (Word); Disciple in Prison by Robert A. Johnson, converted murderer (Tidings); The Dino Story by Dino Kartsonakis, pianist (Revell); The Quiet Prince by Edwin Groenhoff, on Mel Larson, Evangelical Free Church leader (His International Service); Crying For My Mother by Wesley Nelson, Evangelical Covenant Church leader (Covenant); Yet Another Voice by Norman McDaniel, ex-POW in Vietnam (Hawthorn); One More Time by Don Musgraves, ex-prisoner (Bethany Fellowship); J. Frank Norris by Roy Falls, on the fundamentalist leader and published by the author; Payday Everyday by Robert G. Lee, Southern Baptist leader (Broadman); Miracle at City Hall by Al Palmquist, policeman (Bethany Fellowship); Praising God on the Las Vegas Strip by Jim Reid, on his unique ministry in Nevada (Zondervan); Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical by Jack Rogers, Fuller Seminary professor (Westminster); The Emancipation of Robert Sadler by Robert Sadler, black minister (Bethany Fellowship); Ivan Spencer by Marion Meloon, on the leading Elim Fellowship churchman (Logos); Oh, Kim! My Son! My Son! by Frank Stellema, on a young-teen cancer victim (Vantage); God Is My Record by James L. Sullivan, Southern Baptist leader (Broadman); Daws by Betty Lee Skinner, on the founder of the Navigators, Dawson Trotman (Zondervan); While It Is Day by Elton Trueblood, professor-author (Harper & Row); and The Devil Loves a Shining Mark by Jim Vaus, ex-underworld figure (Word).

Part Ii: Largely Outside North America

SPECIAL TOPICS J. Edwin Orr has long been associated with the study of evangelical awakenings. He defines them as movements “of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and in its related community.” Recently he has issued The Eager Feet (Moody), about awakenings from 1790 to 1830 in Europe and North America, with some reference to activities in other parts. The “other parts” are covered in considerable detail for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a series of five books by Orr published by Bethany Fellowship as Evangelical Awakenings.Each is characterized by attention to detail with thorough documentation, a long bibliography, and an index of names. The importance of these studies (the last two still to come) is great.

A different aspect of Christianity is studied comprehensively in Protestant Church Music: A History by Friedrich Blume et al. (Norton). Although not quite the definitive study claimed by the publisher, it is nevertheless a major work useful for both reading and reference. It is well illustrated and indexed and has a very extensive classified bibliography of articles and books.

The Drama of the Martyrs makes available 104 engravings, some rather gruesome, by Jan Luyken (1649–1712) covering atrocities from the apostles up to the engraver’s own time. A large percentage depict the various ways in which Anabaptists were tortured by professing fellow Christians. The book is available only from Mennonite Historical Associates (2215 Mill Stream Road, Lancaster, Pa. 17602; $6.45).

Two-thirds of Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century by Kenneth Rexroth (Seabury) treats examples from the Reformation to the present, both religious and secular.

The Dominicans by William Hinnebusch (Alba) briefly chronicles a major Roman Catholic order.

A helpful survey with reflections on Christian exorcism over the centuries is provided by Roger Baker in Binding the Devil (Hawthorn).

Ten essays in honor of Albert Outler fittingly reflect the diversity and unity of the prominent Methodist historical theologian’s active career: Our Common History as Christians edited by John Deschner, Leroy Howe, and Klaus Penzel (Oxford).

For those interested in scholarly treatments of the history of various kinds of niillenarian movements, there are three noteworthy titles: Disaster and the Millennium by Michael Barkun (Yale), Antichrist and the Millennium by E. R. Chamberlin (Dutton), and Respectable Folly by Clarke Garrett (Johns Hopkins).

EARLY AND MEDIEVAL A helpful book on Christianity in the Roman World by R. A. Markus (Scribners) conveys the flavor of the first centuries of the Church rather than burdening the reader with merely a succession of immediately forgotten names and dates. Includes seventy-four well-selected photographs. Another scholar has produced a book on a narrower theme that is equally appealing to the curious non-specialist: Historians in the Middle Ages by Beryl Smalley (Scribners). Nearly a hundred photographs enhance it. Of more specialized interest are Photius and the Carolingians by Richard Haugh (Nordland) and The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages by E. Randolph Daniel (University Press of Kentucky). Of contemporary interest is a book focusing on ethics from the biblical through medieval periods, hom*osexuality and the Western Christian Tradition by Derrick Bailey (Archon, reprinting a twenty-year-old British book). One Thousand Years edited by Richard DeMolen (Houghton Mifflin) has five specialists addressing major aspects of Western Europe in the Middle Ages in a way that conveys the broad trends to the general reader.

Of special note is Europe’s Inner Demons by Norman Cohn (Basic). His thesis is that the widespread belief by both friend and foe “that there really was a secret society of witches, or else a pagan cult which was so interpreted by the Church” is insupportable; “when scrutinized, the historical evidence simply dissolves.” The literary tradition of this fantasy is traced from the second century (when curiously, key elements of it were first attributed by pagans to Christians) through the Middle Ages. Cohn’s study cannot be ignored by any who want to speak responsibly about occultism and opposition to it.

REFORMATION In Search of God and Self by Donald Wilcox (Houghton Mifflin) is an introduction to Renaissance and Reformation history. It gives the basic aspects of the social, economic, and political developments but focuses, properly, on the intellectual (including theological) ferment of the age. Richard DeMolen has gathered eight specially written essays on The Meaning of the Renaissance and Reformation (Houghton Mifflin) that show the diversity of the period. Historians, like others, have a tendency to impose artificially unifying labels or interpretations.

The Anabaptist Story by William Estep (Eerdmans) is thoroughly revised from its first edition of twelve years ago. It is readable and authoritative. The Anabaptists along with all sorts of others who are lumped together as “radicals” can be read for themselves in Christianity and Revolution edited by Lowell Zuck (Temple University). Fifty-two documents from throughout Western Europe, 1520–1650, are conveniently collected. The increased interest in the Anabaptists and the willingness of the politically backed Reformation traditions to regard them with respect is symbolized by the launching of a series called Sixteenth Century Bibliography with Hans Hillerbrand’s A Bibliography of Anabautism, 1520–1630: A Sequel, 1962–1974. It updates his major bibliography, published in 1962.

Sponsor of the series is The Center for Reformation Research (6477 San Bonita Ave., St. Louis, Mo. 63105). Other projected volumes will list various categories of the Center’s own holdings as well as independent bibliographical projects.

More specialized works include a brief study, much of it in the subject’s own words, of Luther on Justification by Robin Leaver (Concordia); King James by Antonia Fraser (Knopf), with numerous illustrations; and Peter Martyr by Marvin Anderson (B. De Graaf/Publishers [Box 6, Nieuwkoop, Netherlands]). The last is a thorough study in English of the last twenty years of the ministry of Pietro Vermigli (1499–1562), a Reformed theologian with considerable influence in England and northern Europe.

Two books of note begin with the Reformation and continue coverage down to the present. A History of Christian Thought, Volume III by Justo González (Abingdon) completes a major survey by a Cuban Protestant who now teaches at a U.S. seminary. It is to be hoped that the publisher will soon issue a one-volume paperback edition for classroom use. Rome and Canterbury Through Four Centuries by Bernard and Margaret Pawley (Seabury) is on the now thawing relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. An American epilogue supplements the book for readers on this side of the Atlantic.

EUROPE SINCE THE REFORMATION From Enlightenment to Revolution by Eric Voegelin (Duke University) is a history of political ideas demonstrating the spiritual crisis underlying purportedly secular thought. The widespread rejection of Christianity that began in the eighteenth century in the name of progress carried within it the seeds of the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism.

More specialized are Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City by Hugh McLeod (Archon), about London 1880–1914; History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 1893–1970 edited by A. McPherson and published by the denomination; and The Herrnhuterian Pietism in the Baltic by Valdis Mezezers (Christopher).

William Barclay: A Spiritual Autobiography (Eerdmans) is about the well-known commentator. Biographies of other prominent religious leaders are The Lives of Philip and Matthew Henry by J. B. Williams (Banner of Truth), reprinting originally separate studies of the famous commentator and his father, Our Friend, Jacques Maritain by Julie Kernan (Doubleday), The Religion of Isaac Newton by Frank Manuel (Oxford), Charles Raven by F. W. Dillistone (Eerdmans), J. C. Ryle edited by Peter Toon (Reiner), Shaftesbury, The Great Reformer by Georgina Battiscombe (Houghton Mifflin), and Suenens: A Portrait by Elizabeth Hamilton (Doubleday). An anthology of Cardinal Newman’s voluminous writings is now available in an American edition, A Newman Treasury, edited by Charles Frederick Harrold (Arlington).

Documents by and about Christians in Communist lands are collected in The Church in Today’s Catacombs, edited by Sergui Grossu (Arlington).

ASIA, AFRICA, LATIN AMERICA Much of the American understanding of other peoples has been mediated through missionaries and their children. Distinguished historian John Fairbank has edited The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Harvard) not only to contribute to the history of Christianity in the world’s largest country but also to show the missionary’s roles in shaping American attitudes.

Specialized studies by scholars include People Movements in the Punjab by Frederick and Margaret Stock (William Carey), largely on what is now Pakistan; A New Day in Madras by Amirtharaj Nelson (William Carey), on Protestantism in one of India’s major cities; Church and State in Tonga by Sione Latukefu (University Press of Hawaii), on nineteenth-century developments in the now independent Pacific island group; Eden Revival by David Beckmann (Concordia), on Independent (non-missionary) churches in Ghana; A Younger Church in Search of Maturity by Paul Pierson (Trinity University), on Brazilian Presbyterianism from 1910 to 1959; and Trance, Healing, and Hallucination by Felicitas Goodman, Jeannette Henney, and Esther Pressel (Wiley), field studies of spiritist, tongues-speaking groups in the West Indies island of St. Vincent, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico.

Kidnapped by Karl and Debbie Dortzbach (Harper & Row) is the story of the abduction last year of an Orthodox Presbyterian missionary in Ethiopia and the successful negotiations for her release. In Famine He Shall Redeem Thee by Malcolm and Enid Forsberg (Sudan Interior Mission) tells about relief efforts in the same country.

From forty lands they came, more than 7,000 strong, to Brussels, home of the European Economic Community—and site of last month’s Eurofest ’75, a ten-day international evangelistic training conference for youth.

Four Swedish students on a vacation trip to southern France pulled a Eurofest brochure from a trash can in Germany and switched their destination to Brussels. A Greek trucker detoured to Brussels after some German girls he tried to pick up in Holland told him about Eurofest (where, he confided later, he became a Christian). When an airline employee at the Brussels airport asked why a planeload of Egyptians had come to Belgium, a young Arab replied: “to study the Bible.” Canadian Reg Esau spotted a Eurofest poster in a church in Montevideo, Uruguay, then scraped rust and painted his way across the Atlantic aboard a cargo ship. Some 2,000 Britons crossed the Channel, and participants from both the Irish Republic and embattled Ulster shared the same chartered plane. Delegations arrived from eastern Europe, and a hundred Gypsies set up camp in a field near the assembly hall, the Palais du Centenaire, on the grounds of the 1958 World’s Fair complex.

They seemed undeterred by an abnormal heat wave that baked Belgium, by the language difficulties, or by the spartan conditions (there were no chairs in the hall, only thin matting over a concrete floor, and most bedded down in sleeping bags on wooden pallets in dormitories; some camped in tents and trailers).

Days were spent in Bible-study assemblies, seminars, and “mini-group” sharing. At night the conferees moved next door to Heysel Stadium where a Billy Graham evangelistic campaign was being held.

The main morning speakers at Eurofest were Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere of Uganda and Mexico City-based evangelist Luis Palau of Argentina.

Both emphasized the importance of basic Christian living and involvement in the local church. In language-group seminars well-known evangelists and youth workers from a number of European countries amplified each day’s theme. These meetings were followed by discussion and prayer in the minigroups, composed of ten or fewer persons and led by a young person. These, asserted many, were the heart of Eurofest, where theory was hammered into life principles.

Musicians from all over Europe helped to spice the program. They included the well-liked Choralerna singers from Gothenburg, Sweden, and Cliff Richard of London, one of Britain’s top pop singers.

Platform proceedings were carried on in seven main languages and broadcast simultaneously over loud speakers placed throughout the hall. Language groups sat together under their respective speakers. At the edge of the crowd translators using bullhorns improvised for smaller groups speaking other languages. Up close it worked out well, but from a distance “it sounded like Babel all over again,” mused an observer. A similar procedure was employed at the Graham meetings in the stadium.

Eurofest was directed by the Graham organization in cooperation with evangelical leaders in Europe. American John Corts, a Graham official, was general director, but most other key staffers were Europeans.

Many Eurofest personalities were trained at Bible institutes founded since World War II by Greater Europe Mission (GEM), based in Wheaton, Illinois. “A new generation of young evangelical leadership has appeared in Europe,” commented a GEM executive, and Eurofest brought the young leaders together in “a uniquely European event.” The same spokesman voiced regret that despite the visibility of European leadership the principal plenary speakers did not include a European.

The heavy dosage of Bible teaching was extremely relevant, the GEM leader went on. In post-Christian Europe, he said, young believers confront a maze of complex issues. “Eurofest helped stiffen their spiritual spines to face the challenge,” he said. Indeed, many of the speakers suggested apocalyptically that the young people someday would probably face persecution and suffering for their faith.

Despite the large crowd, problems were minimal. There were differences in taste and style, and the language diversity accounted for some amusing twists. One memo had reminded participants to bring a toiletry kit. Translated into Swedish it became “Bring your own sink.”

Press coverage of both Eurofest and the Graham crusade was generous and generally sympathetic. U. S. ambassador Leonard Firestone provided a valuable assist by hosting a pre-crusade get-together between Graham and leading editors. The result was some of the best press attention Graham has ever received in Europe. Firestone also helped promote crusade attendance.

Crusade attendance ranged from about 8,000 to 14,000 (including Eurofest conferees) over nine nights, with an average of more than 11,000 per meeting—lower than most Graham crusades but the largest evangelistic turnout in the history of the country. Relatively few Belgians attended. Only 300 Eurofest participants were Belgians, and a number of delegations came by bus and train from other countries. An estimated one-third of Brussels’ residents were out of town on vacation. But, most importantly, Belgium’s 9.9 million population is predominantly Catholic, with Protestants making up less than 2 per cent.

More than 2,200 decisions for Christ were recorded, about half of them first-time professions of faith. Many of those who made public decisions were Catholics. Reporters noted that the papal nuncio (legate) was among those who walked forward at the close of the first service.

Part of the Catholic response, says a journalist, may have been encouraged by one of Graham’s repeated remarks: “I’m not asking you to change your church or to join any particular church.…” On the other hand, Graham did urge the inquirers to get into a Bible study or prayer group and to “get into a church where Christ is preached.”

As a result of Eurofest, observed Graham in shirtsleeves on the final sweltering day, “thousands of young people will be spreading across Europe as witnesses for Christ.” He exhorted the churches represented at the crusade to become part of that evangelistic outpouring.

WAYNE DETZLER and BILL THOMAS

GRAHAM THE GREATEST

The fifty-one contestants in this month’s Miss National Teen-Ager Pageant in Atlanta elected evangelist Billy Graham as “the greatest living American.” President Gerald Ford came in second and Henry Kissinger third. Last year comedian Bob Hope got first choice.

Graham: Issues And Answers

At press conferences during his recent Brussels crusade, evangelist Billy Graham was quizzed on a broad range of subjects, and some of his responses got international exposure.

He said he would not be opposed to the ordination of a repentant hom*osexual. hom*osexual behavior is a sin, because “any sex outside marriage is a sin, according to the Bible.” And, said he, hom*osexual marriage “is not a natural state of affairs from a biblical point of view.” But, he added, hom*osexuals are people whom God loves and whose sexual misdeeds God is willing to forgive if they repent.

Graham declined to take a stand on ordination of women, preferring to let denominations settle the issue as they see fit. In the past, he said, the church wrongfully tended to downgrade women, absorbing the culture in which the women lived. At the same time, Judeo-Christian beliefs have contributed to the liberation of women from inequities, he stated.

On the subject of South Viet Nam, he said he believes Americans introduced a culture there that “tended to corrupt the people. Religious leaders in Viet Nam have emphasized this to me time after time.” These corrupting influences, he suggested, may have paved the way for the recent Communist takeover.

One Hundred Years Of Spiritual Fitness

The little town of Keswick (pronounced Keh-sick) in the Cumbria Lake district of England is normally a quiet community whose population of 4,300 is swelled only by summer tourists. But last month 8,000 people from seventy-three countries swarmed into town for the week-long centennial celebration of the Keswick Convention, an annual series of inspirational meetings emphasizing “deeper life” and Christian service themes. It was launched in 1875 by Anglican clergyman Thomas Dundas Harford-Battersby of Keswick and Quaker layman Robert Wilson (see June 20 issue, page 6).

Among the visitors were many missionaries who had made their decisions to enter full-time Christian service during earlier visits to Keswick. Others included chairmen of Keswick-type ministries elsewhere in the world. High school students and college-age young people, many of them camping in the surrounding region, daily filled a 2,200-capacity tent, studying the holy life and listening to missionary challenges. One veteran Keswick visitor who had also attended the sixtieth anniversary meetings commented that the teachings on missions and holiness “have had a remarkable continuity.” Said Anglican cleric Alan S. Neech, the new Keswick chairman: “Last year I corresponded with 187 young people who signed cards for missionary service at the Keswick youth meetings.”

Speakers included evangelist Billy Graham and Anglican preacher-author John Stott. Among those giving testimonies was 97-year-old missionary Harold H. Cook of Brazil, probably the oldest serving missionary in the world.

ROGER PALMS

Neutrality Act

Earlier this year California broadcast consultants Jeremy D. Lansman and Lorenzo W. Milam petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to place a freeze on granting educational radio and television licenses to religious institutions. The pair complained that religious broadcasters were acquiring a disproportionate share of the available stations, and they raised questions about the content of much religious programming.

This prompted an avalanche of mail and thousands of telephone calls to the FCC from people having the mistaken notion that the petition proposed to ban all religious broadcasting.

This month the FCC unanimously rejected the petition, saying the commission cannot violate its neutrality toward religion. The commissioners also said Lansman and Milam had not proved their case regarding program content, and they suggested that this aspect was more a matter of personal taste than of public-interest obligations.

CHARGE IT

Offerings received during church services in five cities may soon be slimmer, but if all goes as planned church leaders won’t be alarmed, not even if the weather keeps a lot of people home four Sundays in a row. They’ll relax and watch the money pour in—from banks and credit card companies.

The National Council of Churches is setting up a two-year experiment that will involve ten denominations with churches in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City (Missouri), Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. By signing an authorization slip once, a churchgoer can authorize Master Charge or Bankamericard or his bank to transfer a monthly or quarterly fixed amount of money to the church, and the funds can even be designated.

Computers, credit cards, banks, and churches will be linked together under an umbrella agency to be known as ACTS (Authorized Contribution Transfer Service), based in suburban Los Angeles. ACTS will subtract a service charge of 65 cents from each transaction (and the credit card companies will charge an additional 3 per cent).

NCC people say the plan is aimed at making church income more consistent and dependable, and they hope it will encourage people to increase the amount they give.

Hymn Win

The U. S. Army now has a hymn—and its composer, Sergeant Ralph Lee Bowerman, is $7,500 richer. His three-stanza hymn, “Mighty Is Our Army,” was selected by six final judges from more than 1,200 civilian and military entries in a competition that was part of the Army Chaplain Corps’ 200th birthday observances this year. Bowerman, who was drafted in 1957 soon after immigrating from Canada, has an Assemblies of God background but attends an independent church in Norfolk, Virginia. He is a librarian at the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk.

The first stanza: “Mighty is our Army and mighty is our Lord. We stand for peace and liberty, our histories record. Each soldier is a fortress; united we defend the rights our fathers died for, eternal without end.” The refrain: “One nation, one Army; one people strong and free; tho’ worshiping in diff’rent ways one God eternally. Amen.”

Deadly Projection

Yoga experts and pathologists are still talking about the strange death of Robert Antosczcyk, 29, an Ann Arbor, Michigan, yoga instructor. On June 1 Antosczcyk told friends he was going into his room to attempt a state of astralprojection and did not want to be disturbed. Two days later he died. His body was found on the floor of his room in a yoga position used for deep meditation: he was flat on his back, his thumbs between his index and middle fingers.

Friends and relatives say he had been in excellent health. He did not smoke, drink, or use drugs, they said. Pathologists were baffled. One theorized that Antosczcyk had gone into such a deep, trance-like meditation that his heart slowed to the point where his brain no longer received enough blood.

The yoga specialists seem agreed that astralprojection should be avoided as “not a safe spiritual path.” They define it as a type of meditation in which a person’s soul journeys through the “astral plane” of the universe. The soul (or consciousness) is attached to the material world by a symbolic link called a “silver cord.” If the cord breaks, say the experts, the body dies.

If Antosczcyk died from excessive meditation, say pathologists, it was a medical first.

The Junaluska Affirmation

Evangelicals in the United Methodist Church asserted themselves in a major way last month by adopting a 1,500-word theological statement.

The document, officially called “An Affirmation of Scriptural Christianity for United Methodists,” was presented to the sixth national convocation of the group commonly known as the Good News movement. Nearly 2,000 persons registered for the four-day event, held at the United Methodist conference grounds at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.

“Scriptural Christianity,” the statement says, “affirms as the only written Word of God the Old and New Testaments.” It goes on to say that “the authority of Scripture derives from the fact that God, through His Spirit, inspired the authors, causing them to perceive God’s truth and record it with accuracy.” Accurate preservation of the Scriptures through copyists and translators is attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit.

The statement was drafted by a committee headed by Dr. Paul Mickey of Duke Divinity School and approved by the Good News board. Mickey said the statement was being offered to the church as “theological clarity in a time of theological confusion.”

In an address to the convocation, Pastor Ed Robb of Lubbock, Texas, called United Methodism “a sick denomination” and said it is “largely because we have sick seminaries.” He called on the denomination to set aside two seminaries for evangelicals and to establish “truly inclusive theological faculties” that would include evangelicals teaching biblical and systematic theology.

Getting Out The Word

A million copies every twenty-seven days. That, says the 47,000-member Gideons International, is the rate at which its people are distributing Scriptures around the world. At the organization’s seventy-sixth convention i n Denver, leaders announced that 13.5 million Bibles and New Testaments had been distributed last year in 107 countries and forty-three languages at a cost of $9.5 million.

Since 1908 nearly 150 million copies of Scripture have been distributed by the Gideons, a Protestant Christian business and professional men’s association. A recent emphasis has been Scripture distribution among high school and college students. More than 600,000 New Testaments will be given to students in India, thanks to a single convention banquet offering. Broadcaster David L. Hofer of Dinuba, california, was reelected president.

Unconventional

Promoters of Detroit’s convention business are currently using the slogan, “Take a Second Look at Detroit.” One of America’s largest church meetings this summer gave those promoters reason for taking a second look at church meetings as a source of convention traffic. More than 15,000 people came to the Motor City’s Cobo Hall for the four-day North American Christian Convention. Impressed tourist officials filmed part of the program to use in their sales pitch. They were said to be especially interested in the program’s appeal to all members of the family.

The Convention is the annual gathering of the loosely knit group of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental) who are not affiliated with either the Christian Church (Disciples) or with the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental). One of the unconventional aspects of the Convention is that many (over 22,000 this year) register for the gathering without attending. Their registration is considered a show of support for the fellowship.

Except for electing officers, the annual meeting is in no sense a legislative session. Named to the presidency this year was E. Ray Jones, minister of First Christian Church, Clearwater, Florida. Most of the program is devoted to inspirational addresses, Bible studies, and workshops.

The group has more than 5,400 congregations with a total membership of 1.03 million, according to yearbook figures.

Religion In Transit

The Orthodox Theological Society of America (OTSA), a seventy-five-member organization of American Eastern Orthodox theologians, criticized advance documents of the upcoming general assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi in November. The papers, objected the OTSA, condemn evils of Western societies but ignore Marxist repression and political excesses in the Third World. The OTSA said it rejects such conscious selective policy of WCC leaders as “prejudiced, dangerous, divisive, and supportive of human slavery.”

A New York Times story on church-state legal conflicts reported that the Jackson, Mississippi, city council donated $1,000 in city funds to help sponsor this year’s Billy Graham crusade there. Also, National Guard general E. A. Beby Turnage wrote a letter on official stationery to all Guard troops inviting them to attend the crusade. The crusade committee returned the city’s money after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue, but the general’s letter went unchallenged.

Guideposts magazine announced its annual Church Award will go to South Main Baptist Church in Houston for its ministry to single adults. Especially noted was its work with divorced persons (some 1,500 so far). Kenneth Chafin is pastor of the church.

“Deprogrammer” Ted Patrick’s legal troubles are mounting. He and nine others are being sued for $350,000 by John Gervasoni, a Connecticut follower of a cult leader known as Brother Julius. Gervasoni claims that Patrick and some relatives kidnapped him and tried to talk him out of his beliefs, then had him committed to a mental hospital after he tried to escape. Jail sentences and other lawsuits in several states are pending against Patrick, who reportedly charges between $1,000 and $1,500 plus travel expenses for his services.

United Methodists in Iowa and a national United Methodist agency posted $10,000 bail so that Dennis Banks, the controversial American Indian Movement leader, could be free pending appeal of his conviction for rioting and assault with a dangerous weapon in a Custer, South Dakota, incident. Banks failed to appear for sentencing and the bail was forfeited.

The Kansas Board of Education earlier this year declined to give permission to The Way College to confer degrees.

The school is run by The Way, an Ohio-based sect headed by Victor Weirwille.

The financially ailing WHCT-TV Channel 18 religious television station in Hartford, Connecticut, purchased in 1972 by Faith Center of Glendale, California, was sold last month to Christian Broadcasting Network of Norfolk, Virginia. Both are charismatic Protestant groups. Hartford’s population is largely Catholic.

At its recent convention held in Beth Eden Baptist Church in suburban Denver, the 106-year-old Prohibition Party nominated a presidential candidate:

Baptist clergyman Ben C. Bubar, Jr., 58, who heads the Christian Civic League of Maine. About 100 delegates from nineteen states attended the convention. Alcohol, integrity in government, erosion of individual rights, and the growing menace of Communism are all issues, says Bubar.

Pastor Timothy J. Kribs of suburban Portland, Oregon, was elected president of International Christian Endeavor at its recent convention in Portland. Some 1,600 youth and adult leaders attended. Kribs is a Disciples of Christ pastor.

Alaska Methodist University, about to close because of budget problems, will open this fall after all, thanks to action by the state legislature. The state will give each student $1,850 per year toward tuition and fees of $2,150. It will also give the school $2.3 million in a lease-option arrangement. If the school gets on its financial feet within two years the money will be considered a gift. If not, it will be deducted from a sale price.

Personalia

Pastor Kenneth M. Meyer of the 1,400-member First Evangelical Free Church of Rockford, Illinois, was elected president of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago at the recent annual meeting of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

The new Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), Forrest David Mathews, 39, is a Southern Baptist. He’s been a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for twenty years (and president of the University of Alabama for six years).

Among those recently honored by Religious Heritage of America: Pastor Bryant M. Kirkland of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City (Clergyman of the Year). Chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr., of the University of California at Irvine, a United Church of Christ member (Churchman of the Year), Executive Director Margaret J. Mealey of the National Council of Catholic Laity (Churchwoman of the Year), Religion Editor Adon C. Taft of the Miami Herald (journalism award), Congressman John B. Conlan of Arizona, a Campus Crusade for Christ backer (leadership award in government), and lecturer-author Carl F. H. Henry (leadership award in education).

New presidents: Educator and lay pastor Edward Albert Lindell, 46, to Gustavus Adolphus College, a Lutheran Church in America school in St. Peter, Minnesota; Wesleyan clergyman Leon Hynson to Evangelical Congregational School of Theology in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, the seminary of the Evangelical Congregational Church; and Donald W. Shriver, Jr., a Southern Presbyterian minister and educator, to Union Seminary in New York.

World Scene

Honduras is in the grips of a severe food shortage, with more than 200,000 in danger of starvation, according to reports circulated by World Relief, a National Association of Evangelicals agency. The country has been the scene of recent “hunger marches” that ended in violence. In the aftermath two Catholic priests, one of them an American missionary, were murdered, as were several peasant leaders, apparently by landowners.

Despite the sporadic street fighting between Muslims and non-Muslims in Beirut, most missionaries there decided to stay.

The new ruler of Nigeria, Muritala Rufai Mohammed, 38, is a Muslim. A tribesman, he replaced Yakubu Gowon in a bloodless coup while Gowon was at a meeting in Uganda. Although he was considered personally above reproach, Gowon—son of a Methodist evangelist—was unable to deal decisively with widespread government corruption.

At the recent Islamic conference of foreign ministers from forty nations of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia declared that the foremost goal of all Muslims must be to see Jerusalem “once again Arab, free, pure, and dedicated to Allah and the faith.”

Latin American evangelist Luis Palau is working on plans to use a three-week crusade in Managua, Nicaragua, in November to reach much of Central and South America for Christ. The plans call for hooking up simultaneously a radio and television network in twenty-two countries with a potential audience of 75 million.

Communist guerrillas are increasingly active in Thailand, say missionary sources. Several Christians were among those killed by Communists in recent ambushes. Meanwhile, Thais are building many temples throughout the land in an effort to bolster Buddhism as the national religion. But a number of new Christian churches are going up too. And, reports missionary James Rhoda, 2,000 Thais have recently professed Christ in the northeastern area. Many young people have been touched by a renewal movement, he says, and a number are training in Bible colleges for full-time Christian service.

Israel’s chief rabbinical council excommunicated an Orthodox member of the parliament, Rabbi Shlome Lorincz, for likening Chief Rabbi Shlome Goren to President Idi Amin of Uganda. Under the ban, other Jews are supposed to shun him.

Action by the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which met recently in Belfast, opened the way for a vote next year on whether to withdraw from the World Council of Churches. The church has 136,000 communicant members in 560 congregations in both Ulster and Erin. Criticism of the WCC is increasing, especially by younger ministers; the vote will be close.

Irish Methodists agreed recently to ordain women to the ministry.

Black and white South African participants at Lausanne last year failed to resolve their serious racial and theological tensions, but they agreed in a recent reunion meeting to maintain close, informal contact and fellowship. The issues were faced again during the reunion, and this time there was “marked progress,” reports evangelist Michael Cassidy, who was assigned to promote ongoing communication between the factions.

There are now 14,000 baptized believers among the Gypsy population in France, according to estimates, part of a total of 50,000 Gypsy Christians throughout Europe. Open-air Pentecostal conventions draw as many as 1,500 Gypsy caravans, say observers.

In four years of service Operation Mobilization’s oceangoing vesselLogos has called at ninety-six ports and hosted more than 1.5 million visitors at shipboard book and Bible displays and conferences. Much literature has been distributed, and ship-based evangelistic teams have fanned out through the port cities, presenting the Gospel to millions of people.

The first school for the blind in the Himalayan country of Bhutan is being built and financed by a German based evangelical agency, the Christoffel Mission to the Blind, and the Norwegian Santalmission group is providing the director. Christians aren’t allowed to evangelize in Bhutan, but the government encourages missions to undertake social projects.

Despite the political climate, Portuguese evangelicals “are enjoying complete freedom,” says leader Jaime Vieire of the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance. “We are having open air meetings, daily radio programs, and even street marches,” he says. An evangelism congress is scheduled this fall.

President Samora Machel has banned infant baptism in Mozambique. Machel, leader of FRELIMO, the liberation movement that took over the government in June, has been a critic of the Catholic Church for its alleged ties to the former Portuguese regime.

DEATHS

HUGH C. BENNER, 76, former general superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene and founding president of Nazarene Seminary; in Leawood, Kansas, of a heart attack.

NEVILLE RICHARD CLARK, 65, Canadian Anglican bishop noted for his association with Canada’s native people and fluency in the Cree language; in Noranda, Quebec.

Few current terms are less precise than “theological pluralism.” It is used to indicate, now a denominational policy, now a theological outlook, now a form of theology. The term gains prestige from the fact that our society is pluralistic. Should not Christian theology, then, grant “equal rights” to all shades of doctrinal opinion?

This sounds impressive, if one does not take seriously the claim of the Christian faith to present One who makes exclusive demands upon our lives. In the light of His claims, the appeal to democratic practice to justify theological pluralism seems to be a misapplication of a socio-political concept.

Theological pluralism rejects the Reformation principle of sola scriptura. In place of the finality of Scripture for the Christian faith, it substitutes a complex of “authorities.” Alongside historic creeds and confessions are placed newer and equivocal “creeds” so that the symbols that formerly were normative for Christian bodies become but part of a series of “statements of faith.”

Various figures of speech are used to justify this dilution of Christian doctrine. Earlier the illustration was the tripod: authority was said to rest upon three “sources,” revelation, tradition, and experience (or revelation, experience, and reason). More recently the favorite figure is the quadrilateral: authority is said to be derived (presumably in equal quantities) from revelation, tradition, reason, and experience.

As a gesture to the past, older standards and symbols are retained. But the juxtaposition of alternate “creeds” alongside those based upon biblical authority drains the latter of current validity. Appeals to historic faith are met with equivocations and evasions. Pluralistic thinkers refer to the differences of opinion concerning specific doctrines over the past nineteen centuries and to the religious wars, as if these proved the impossibility of any normative Christian belief.

Besides diluting Christian authority, theological pluralism also serves to give legitimacy to all sorts of deviations from historic faith. The advocates of pluralism do not merely acknowledge the presence of a wide range of beliefs within the churches. They also permit all who hold these forms to consider themselves Christian. All this is done in the name of toleration and fairness.

A practical result is that this permits the modification of ordination vows. Those who have radically departed from their former commitments can now live in clear conscience. The concept of theological pluralism makes “honest men” of those who have abandoned the faith to which they pledged fidelity.

In place of a commitment to the Scriptures as the infallible Word, there are such shabby substitutes as “the Bible is a witness to the Word,” or “the Bible witnesses to Christ in today’s world.” Such expedients permit pastors and theological teachers, to work comfortably within their institutions, no matter how gently their thinking deviates their denomination’s historic standards.

Theological pluralism offers also a symbol around which to rally the loyalties of confused constituencies. They are permitted to feel that all shades of belief, and those holding them, are being treated democratically. When one looks more closely, however, the openness and total fairness is more sham than reality. Liberal power-holders in the churches show no intention of surrendering power to non-establishment hands. They appear nervous when conservative minority groups congregate in an area and appear to threaten the established power base.

Some evangelicals have hoped that the pluralistic stance would gain equal time and equal treatment for evangelical groups within liberal church bodies. So far this is a forlorn hope. True, there are token gestures toward those who base their convictions upon biblical authority. Occasionally one of them is called as a guest professor to a liberal seminary—but for one or two semesters only, never as a regular faculty member. Evangelicals are invited to theological conferences—but they are excluded from caucuses where policies are hammered out. Their stated convictions seldom appear in resulting pronouncements.

Advocates of theological pluralism operate from the centers of ecclesiastical power. They gain prestige from the fact that ecumenical, liberal Christianity has produced many secularized philosophers of religion in recent years, but few theologians. As a consequence, the few who really “do theology” gain a large hearing. Their prestige is enhanced by the fact that they advocate views that appear to give legitimacy and honesty to developments within liberal churchmanship.

Seventy years of wrongheaded theological education have produced a climate in the church world of today that demands either legitimation or renewal from the ground up. The latter would require changes at the roots of things, which would be vastly too expensive to the theological establishment. The alternative is tempting.

One is reminded of the Indian who had to follow poorly marked trails through the forest. He had to depend upon marking a tree every hundred yards or so in order to return to his home. An enemy who wished to cause him to get lost did not obliterate the marks; he merely marked all the trees.

Advocates of theological pluralism often seem to operate on the basis of vivid rhetoric rather than fair dialogue. Many of the figures of speech that they use, notably those by which they attempt to redefine the “basis for religious authority,” are designed more to impress than to instruct, more to conceal than to reveal. Such formulations make explicit that which has long been implicit in theological liberalism, and give status to what has been de facto for years.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that for all the openness that the term seems to imply, theological pluralism is in reality a word game. It serves to divert the attention of the unwary from the crisis posed by the major departure from historic Christian faith in much of Christendom. It may also foster hope for a dispersal of ecclesiastical influence among non-establishment groups, a hope that seems unwarranted. When accommodations are made in the direction of evangelical minorities, they are tactical and superficial and contain little of substance. In practice, the term “theological pluralism” may serve merely to deflect attention from the techniques by which the theological status quo, which is at the root based upon humanistic rather than theistic principles, is perpetuated.