Page 5700 – Christianity Today (2024)

Some Recent Events And Happenings

Carl McIntire and Billy Melvin met for prayer last week.

Bill Pannell has revealed that he voted for Gerald Ford in the recent election, “as a matter of conscience.”

Bob Schuller just announced that Jim Wallis will speak at the dedication of his Crystal Cathedral.

John F. Alexander has accepted a position as fund-raiser for the Crystal Cathedral.

The other John Alexander is holding a seminar on witnessing at Arrowhead Springs, California.

Moody Bible Institute has extended an invitation to David Hubbard to speak at next year’s Founder’s Week.

Christianity Today’s board has just rescinded its decision to move the evangelical fortnightly to Carol Stream, Illinois. Instead, the magazine will relocate in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where property values and salaries are lower.

Nancy Hardesty has agreed to write the foreword to Marabel Morgan’s next book, Total Wow, Woof and Flutter.

Bob Jones, Jr., announced that BJU’s student admissions policy will be changed to a quota system in the fall. Quotas will reflect the racial mix in Greenville, South Carolina.

Jack Anderson has joined the Assemblies of God as director of public relations.

Russ Hitt has been given responsibility for future acquisitions by Rupert Murdoch. Hitt says his first recommendation will be that the Australian publisher acquire The Sword of the Lord and move it to Washington, D.C.

April Fool.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Forbidding Fuzziness

Kudos to A. Duane Litfin for “The Perils of Persuasive Preaching” (Feb. 4). What he said needs to be shouted to all of us involved in training men and women for the service of the Master. So much preaching and teaching is fuzzy because we forget that our task is to proclaim and explicate the Word. The God-given integrity of each individual forbids any attempt to manipulate others. “Behavior modification” is neither my task nor any other person’s. That is the Spirit’s task. This article ought to be required reading in every course in the social sciences, education, and homiletics.

G. LLOYD CARR

Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

Litfin missed the spirit of the New Testament. The early Church did not preach only to announce the Good News. They strove to convert all men. Can you imagine Paul saying, “My heart’s desire for Israel is that they might become cognizant of the truth”?

The article suggests that preaching should aim at comprehension rather than yielding. New Testament preaching seems to include all levels of conversion. It is filled with pleas for surrender and action. Part of the confusion comes from dividing preaching from the work of the Holy Spirit. Many people seem to think that the Spirit is anxious for the preaching to stop so he can work. Does a carpenter want his hammer to stop falling so he can drive the nail? Preaching is the work of the Spirit.… Litfin adeptly poses problems that modern preachers must face. What pastor is not vexed by the use of gimmicks to get people down the aisle? But these concerns should not turn us from attempting to lead people to Christ.

DAVID YOUNG

First Baptist Church

Warner, Okla.

The author might have mentioned another great danger in such preaching, namely, the strong possibility that anyone intelligent enough to see through it (which is, after all, no great feat in many cases) will be turned off by it. Part of this reaction has rational roots—if some view or product can’t stand on its own merits and has to be pushed by supersalesmen using high-pressure techniques, you wonder how good it is. But, at least in my case, the main ingredient is a strong emotional reaction—if I feel like I’m being conned into believing or doing something, I get mulish about it. And I wonder whether there are not many who might otherwise become Christians who are held back from it by such a reaction.… By the way, Filostrato was not the mad clergyman (“The Still Forbidden Fruit,” Jan. 21): he was the corrupted scientist, the “Italian eunuch” in Bill Hingest’s phrase; Straik was the name of his “mad parson.”

DAVID H. TUGGY

Tetelcingo, Morelos, Mexico

A. Duane Litfin appears to be the early leader in the 1977 Evangelical Straining-at-Gnats-While-Swallowing-Camels Competition for his stunning exposé of the “perils of persuasive preaching.” On the one hand we find a devastating critique of mere contentless homiletics (something that all of us cerebrating sheep outside the fold of the theological sanctuaries learned to despise long ago), but look what slipped through the back door in the form of a major premise: “It now seems to be within man’s power to alter experimentally another person’s basic values, and to control the direction of the change.”

Come now, gentlemen. To quote psychological megalomaniacs of the brand of McConnell, Marcuse, and Rokeach is one thing, to take them seriously quite another. From bitter personal experience, let me assure you that the naïve lay conception that psychiatrists possess mind-controlling powers is fortunately nothing more than popular mythology. Having myself despaired during a year of psychiatric training of finding the key to that mysterious ability, I have since turned to family practice, where I languish in the face of the common cold and warts.

The Zeitgeist has its rewards, of course. That hoary heresy, determinism, produces a most liberating release from personal responsibility, with predictable results in society. Now any sensible person realizes that environment modifies one’s personality at every step of development; but the Lord of both genes and environment (if I read my Bible aright) does not prorate the responsibility for our attitudes and actions on that score.

May I suggest to Dr. Litfin that he re-examine his anthropological presuppositions? We can well live without his proscription of pulpit theatrics; but can we long resist the pounding surf of modern materialism without the solid rock of personal responsibility?

DOUGLAS ILIFF

Fayetteville, N.C.

A Faulty Equation?

I have recently resubscribed to CHRISTIANITY TODAY after a lapse of two years. The fact that you are now carrying the Refiner’s Fire every edition pleases me.

Although I have been “absent” for some time, and you may have covered this point in previous editions, G. Aiken Taylor’s article “Is God as Good as His Word?” (Feb. 4) raises a question.… The author moves in an interesting and I think basically worthwhile way through inerrancy and infallibility and their various merits and faults or problems, but then falls into the perennial trap in this debate of equating inerrancy with literalness of interpretation. One could hold to a view that the Bible is inerrant but not feel that the Garden of Eden, the belly of a whale, or the size of an ark has anything to do with the discussion. That’s why I like his dependence on the authority of the Bible in the first place. To equate authority with a literal dependency is, I think, fallacious, and could be further developed.

You make me think, and I enjoy that.

JOHN H. BRAY

Barrie, Ontario

As a student who is aware of and concerned with the current issue of biblical authority, I wish to thank you for Dr. Taylor’s perceptive article. Seldom, if ever, has anything I have read on the subject elicited such affirmative response from both my heart and my mind, neither of which should be ignored.

JERRY L. WALLS

Houghton, N.Y.

G. Aiken Taylor’s article is another cordial attempt to build a bridge between those who find the Bible infallible but not inerrant, and those who imagine no way in which the Bible could be inerrant and still be infallible.

David E. Kucharksky’s editorial (“A Barrier to Christian Belief”) could well have been made part of Taylor’s discussion! As one who has moved from the “scientific” to the “theological” world, it appears to me that modern evangelicalism is too often ensnared by those “little errors in the beginning that have plagued modern philosophy since its start.” Kucharsky well states that there is not an equation between the “hard facts” and God’s reality.

One cannot help but wonder why so many evangelical “moderns” can accept the sovereignty of God vis-à-vis the freedom of man, the manhood of Christ vis-à-vis the deity of Christ and the concept of the Trinity, yet insist on applying Greek (and very Western!) thought to the rest of the Bible. If one can accept these three (obvious) scientific “errors,” well then why is it difficult to perceive that someone else might have the faith to accept God’s word as being fallible even while containing (what man has designated!) errors?

EDWARD R. DAYTON

Director

Monrovia, Calif.

MARC

Twenty centuries ago Jesus said, “I am alive forevermore.” One century ago Phillips Brooks looked at his parish book and noted the long list of those in his church who had died. He said, “Their deaths stood written there together like the mingled graves in the graveyard.… I could not think that they were gone.… They are not dead but living” forevermore. Let us lift up our heads and live for Him. Happy Easter, dear believer in Jesus!

In the Church’s task of evangelizing the world, India has a role of extreme significance. Its population of over 630 million is greater than the combined population of all the countries of Africa and Latin America. It has more people yet to be reached with the Gospel than all the rest of Asia, Red China excluded. One of the most exciting aspects of contemporary mission, therefore, is that the door is still open for the proclamation of the Gospel in this vast land. India’s constitution provides one the freedom to “profess, practice and propagate” the religion of one’s choice.

At a congress held at Devlali January 12–19 (see News, March 4 issue, page 49) more than 400 evangelical leaders of India grappled with various issues and challenges. One of their main purposes was to reaffirm the truth and absolute validity of the Gospel of Christ and its full relevance to their ministry in India. The congress made a breakthrough in that evangelicals in India have begun to take more seriously their “context” or life situation in society as related to their mission. This was reflected in the main problems studied. The statement that the congress produced, called “The Devlali Letter,” spoke clearly on several key issues. We might note two examples:

First, the Gospel and India’s culture. In India, as in many other Third World countries, the political and cultural expansion of Western powers and the Christian missions have, in the thinking of many people, been two sides of the same movement. Regrettably, Western culture and Christianity are closely associated in the thinking and life-style of many Christians in India. This has been a stumbling block to Christian witness.

The congress considered whether the Gospel can be presented and lived in India in such a way that Christ can meet and enter into fellowship with an Indian just where he is and just as he is. Can one who accepts Christ be quite at home in his own social and cultural environment?

According to the Devlali Letter, “The Church must be true to Christ and at the same time rooted in the soil. While belonging to Christ, it should belong to and be relevant to its socio-cultural context. There are various cultural and indigenous values which the Church in India can effectively make use of in its life, worship and witness, instead of uncritically using elements from foreign cultures.”

There is an increasing concern among evangelicals in India for indigenization of thought patterns, way of life, modes of worship, and methods of evangelization. What does this mean to the question of the moratorium on missionaries? The letter said, “Servants of Christ who have come to India from abroad have had a significant role to play. We continue to maintain a partnership with them in the work before us.”

Second, evangelism and Christian social responsibility. In a country such as India where a great segment of the population lives in poverty, hunger, and ill health, the relation of evangelism and social responsibility is a very live question. It is India, too, that produced some of the influential proponents of the theory of salvation as humanization, or evangelism as social action. The term “evangelism” itself is often wrongly interpreted in the broad sense, to include the total mission of the Church, in which socio-political action plays a primary role. The letter therefore affirmed, “To identify salvation entirely with the social and economic well-being of man is to present an incomplete and distorted view. This will lead to a false concept of evangelism and to an abandonment of proclaiming the Gospel with a view to personal commitment to Christ.”

The Christian who is commanded to love his neighbor as himself finds all around him in India living examples of Christ’s explanation of who is one’s “neighbor.” Christian love should be genuine and stand on its own feet without any ulterior motives. Social concern cannot be used as a bait or bribe to get people evangelized. It need not necessarily lead to evangelism. On the other hand, our proclamation need not in each case be manifested in social service. But evangelism occupies a central place in the total mission of the Church.

Only in a given situation, in the context of genuine love for others and full obedience to Christ, can we determine whether evangelism or social responsibility takes priority in that situation. Evangelism is the verbal expression, and social action the visible expression, of God’s love, and we cannot separate the two.

Basic to this conviction is our concept of God as Creator and Judge of all men and our understanding of man as created in God’s image. As the Delali Letter says, “This means that we cannot separate body and soul or individuals and society, in our concern. Thus evangelism and our concern for man and society should go hand in hand. Both are part of the mission God has given us and are the expressions of genuine love for others.”

The congress went a step further to affirm the prophetic ministry of the Church and the need for it to be a sign of God’s kingdom serving as the conscience of society. “We are to stand against falsehood. evil, and injustice at the personal, the social and the institutional levels in fearless obedience to Christ.”

It has been said that evangelicals have not until recently taken the world and their social responsibility seriously, and that at the Lausanne Congress a breakthrough in this was made (in, for example, clause five of the Lausanne Covenant). But is this assessment really valid? For leaders such as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, their evangelical theology was instrumental in bringing about radical social changes even on a national scale. Many of the most significant social-service and development programs in the Third World, until recently, were initiated and sponsored by conservative evangelical missions. And these were far from sporadic acts of mercy.

But two qualifications may be made. The evangelicals, unlike their critics, have not seriously spoken to the issue of oppressive structures in society, nor have they discussed the questions of the use of force and the Church’s involvement in liberation movements. One cannot separate the question of social renewal and that of sin and rebellion against God at the level of institutions and structures.

It may be that we should also ask ourselves to what extent our social concern springs from and is closely linked with our doctrine of creation and the doctrine of man. Evangelicals need to do more study in this area of developing an integrated theology of God’s love and concern for the total man.

Saphir P. Athyal is the principal of Union Biblical Seminary, Yeotmal, India. This is his first contribution to Current Religious Thought.

The following report is based largely on an account filed by correspondent Alan Scarfe. An Anglican, Scarfe was ejected on the second day of the two-day Romanian Baptist meeting that he was assigned to cover in Bucharest when officials discovered he was neither a Baptist nor an officially invited guest. Undeterred, Scarfe—a young British journalist-researcher who once studied at a Romanian university—completed his mission in less obtrusive fashion.

Few church congresses have had as controversial a prelude as last month’s two-day meeting of the 975-congregation Baptist Union of Romania. Some 2,000 Baptists from across the country jammed into the 1,000-seat Baptist Church on Titulescu Road in Bucharest; many had to follow the lively proceedings over loudspeakers in hallways and other rooms in the building. Among those present were fifty voting delegates and most of the other pastors and leaders of the movement—the fastest growing Baptist body in Europe (20,000 baptisms annually since 1972 and a baptized membership pegged officially at 160,000, but with a constituency much larger than that). Also present were a few government officials and a handful of specially invited Baptist leaders from other nations.

The triennial congress—the Union’s twenty-seventh—was supposed to have been held twelve months earlier. Elections had been held in December, 1975, to elect members of the denomination’s policy-making council. Few incumbents were reelected, and the government’s Department of Cults declined to accept two of the key officers who were elected. This caused an uproar among the churches, the congress was postponed, and the government decreed that the old council would govern church affairs until the congress convened. A campaign of protest ensued in many churches, and hundreds of letters poured into Baptist Union headquarters calling on the officers to resign. The issues were aired in open letters circulated among the churches.

Ploesti pastor Josif Ton, one of Romania’s best-known Baptist leaders (see November 22, 1974, issue, page 52, and March 26, 1976, issue, page 6), led a three-week vigil of prayer and fasting, and thousands joined in. The vigil became a symbol of opposition to state interference in church affairs. It was also intended to show solidarity with the students at the Baptist Seminary who earlier in the year had led a ten-day demonstration for a better level of theological training (see May 7, 1976, issue, page 44). Two of the seminarians were expelled in what appeared to be retaliation, adding to the ferment in the churches.

Toward the end of the vigil in late November, meetings were held between the old and new officers of the Union’s council and government officials, and some headway was made in easing tensions. Congress planning began again in earnest, and it was finally convened in early February.

The Friday morning session began with a half-hour prayer meeting, followed by the main reports of Union officials. Of special note were the ones by the general secretary, clergyman Ioachim Tunea, and the director of the seminary, loan Bunaciu. Both had been targets of widespread criticism.

There had been progress over the past five years, reported Tunea, but it had been accompanied by problems. He pointed to lagging care of the sick and elderly. Denominational unity had been jeopardized, he said, and he singled out Ton for much of the blame. Moreover, he asserted. Ton’s activities were responsible for the delay of the congress.

Bunaciu pursued a similar line: the seminary had prospered, there were now forty students, five future teachers were studying at the Protestant Institute in Cluj-Napoca, there were hopes of raising the seminary to university level soon, and a series of books by him were being printed. But 1976 was a difficult year because of the student protest, he added. Most of his students were in the congress audience. He said the dismissal of the two students was not related to the protest. They simply had not received further approval from their local associations to continue studies, he said. He criticized the intervention of theologian Pavel Niculescu, who had sent an appeal on the students’ behalf to Radio Free Europe—a station Bunaciu considers hostile to Romania. Niculescu’s involvement was neither biblical nor moral, he asserted.

The Friday afternoon session and the major part of the Saturday morning session were spent debating the reports and raising other issues. Nearly half the voting delegates spoke out, and congress chairman Pavel Barbatei, a lawyer from Cluj, was hard pressed in keeping things moving. A number of requests and resolutions were introduced, and it became obvious that it was impractical to vote upon them immediately. It was decided to let the new officers work on them and present them for vote at a special congress this December.

Two power groups clearly emerged: one pushing for a continuation of the middle way in the churches’ relations with the state, the other seeking a more independent course. Speakers from the Oradea, Cluj, and Bucharest associations of churches appealed for greater action on matters of church buildings, flexibility in scheduling services, and greater independence for pastors. Representatives of the Timisoara, Brasov, and Arad associations sought for greater restraint, a more appreciative attitude for gains, and a halt to the circulation of open letters.

Judging by the number of resounding “Amens” accorded speakers, the audience was clearly on the side of Oradea-Cluj-Bucharest.

Paster Geabo Pascu of the Bucharest Association complained about delays in getting permits for church construction and repairs, forcing many congregations to meet in dangerous conditions. Another Bucharest pastor pointed up the need to reopen many of the small churches that had been closed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A Cluj pastor said the uniform time schedules for church services throughout the country worked a hardship in village areas, and he asked Union headquarters to be more flexible.

Josif Ton called attention to the place of Baptists within society. He told how police had fined Baptists meeting in private homes under a law designed to deal with hooliganism and vandalism—an insult, in Ton’s opinion. He held up papers documenting a case in which a group of women had been fined for singing “illegal religious songs”—from the official Baptist hymnal. He also spoke of discrimination against Baptist children in the schools.

Secretary Tunea commented that the numbers fined were small, and Barbatei attempted to clarify the legal issues involved, saying he had successfully defended some victims of the law.

The climax of the second day was the election of the Union council members. Fourteen of the fifteen nominees elected by the six associations in late 1975 were ratified. The exception was Liviu Olah, dismissed from his pastorate last year at the behest of the Department of Cults. Barbatei succeeded Tunea as general secretary, and Tunea—not elected in 1975 by his Bucharest association—benefited from the vacancy by winning that seat on the council (he will edit the Union’s publications). Elected Union president was Cornel Mara of Brasov. The seminary’s Bunaciu retained his position.

Barbatei’s assistant at Union headquarters is Vasile Talos, who also is a lawyer. Talos delivered a well-received paper at the congress on the legal aspect of the Baptist churches in Romania. He contended that the authority of the denomination rests in the congress itself and not in the Union. (Many restrictions on church activities are the result of government pressure on the Union, and the government holds the Union responsible for regulating the churches. Thus Talos’s paper really represented a challenge to the government itself.)

Seminarians say they feel the congress let them down, and this may lead to more trouble, but for now the churches have survived the threat of schism.

The congress closed on triumphal notes of praise and unity with an old-fashioned Baptist evening service, Romanian style—complete with a brass band, a big choir, spirited congregational singing, and biblical exhortation. The public was invited, and more than fifty persons responded to the invitation to receive Christ.

A Dog’s Life

King Carl Gustaf of Sweden has been persuaded to change the name of his dog, Ali. It all happened after Ijaz Khan, a Calgary, Alberta, resident, read an account of the royal Labrador’s rescue of a young woman. Khan, a Muslim, was impressed by the pooch’s prowess but offended by his name. Ali, he pointed out, was the name of the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and naming the dog Ali was like naming him Jesus Christ.

A palace aide replied to Khan, saying the dog’s registered name is Eros and Ali is just a nickname commonly given to dogs in Sweden. But because of the misunderstanding, said he, “His Majesty has chosen to call the dog Charlie from now on.”

Church Watching In Chicago

Some ministers and agency officials of the United Methodist Church in the Chicago area are upset with the Chicago police department. More than twenty pages of police files detailing surveillance of activities related to the UMC’s Northern Illinois conference were disclosed recently by the conference’s Board of Church and Society, thanks to successful suits to obtain the information.

The documents cover the period from June 2, 1972, until “at least” October 14, 1974, according to board chairman Gregory Dell. The data were gathered by the police department’s intelligence division, sometimes referred to as the “Red Squad.” Much of the material relates to conference ties with the Alliance to End Repression, a Chicago-area alliance of some seventy human-relations and church groups concerned with civil liberties, prison reform, police affairs, and other issues provoking controversy.

Other pages, Dell says, cover appointments of pastors to churches, church allocations, routine church business, personal acquaintances of Methodist pastors and laymen, and correspondence of conference officials.

Some of the intelligence was faulty. The appointment of a district superintendent to a 1,200-member suburban church after six years’ service, for example, was labeled a “demotion.” The report failed to indicate that six years is the maximum time a pastor can serve consecutively in that position.

A Cook County (Chicago) grand jury in 1975 sharply criticized police surveillance practices, concluding that Chicago police had “assaulted the fundamental freedoms of speech, association, press, and religion, as well as the constitutional rights to privacy of hundreds of individuals.”

Declared Dell: “Spying upon the church as it seeks to carry out its business, including expression of the Gospel in social issues, is a deeply disturbing infringement upon the free expression of our religion … [and] we ask for an apology from the city of Chicago.”

Resisting A Probe

Federal agents checking records at the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York said they were looking for information that might lead to the arrest of the terrorists responsible for numerous bombings.

Two women employed at the headquarters claimed the agents were simply trying to destroy the Puerto Rican independence movement.

An ad hoc group of workers at the Interchurch Center in New York said the federal probe is being conducted “to intimidate and frighten the churches from carrying out their Christian mission of ministry to the oppressed and forgotten minorities.”

One National Council of Churches executive spoke of the “legal monster in our midst” while another warned that the government was trying to define religious work.

Episcopal bishops involved in the affair wish it had never happened.

The principal judge in the case, meanwhile, was unconvinced that it has anything at all to do with broader issues of the clergy’s privilege of confidentiality or church-state separation. The Episcopal National Commission on Hispanic Affairs, said Judge Lawrence Pierce, is a “social agency,” and its employees are “social workers” who cannot refuse to testify before a grand jury.

Another federal judge, Marvin Frankel, found one of the Episcopal commission employees. Raisa Nemikin, guilty of contempt of court for refusal to answer grand jury questions. Early this month she went to jail, all the while blasting top Episcopal officials for the degree of cooperation they gave to government probers.

Her colleague in resistance, commission executive director Maria Cueto, also faces a jail sentence for refusing to talk to the grand jury. Their terms could run as long as fourteen months, the life of the New York federal court jury.

Both women maintain that they did cooperate in the initial phases of the search for Carlos Alberto Torres, a member of the commission last year. He is now being sought as an alleged leader of FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist-terrorist group that has claimed credit for more than forty bombings. One of the explosions killed four people and injured more than fifty at Manhattan’s historic Fraunces Tavern in 1975. The string of bombings has caused widespread damage and a number of other injuries. Two more Manhattan skyscrapers were hit last month.

An FALN message found after the latest New York blasts demanded a halt to the grand jury proceedings. Among the other demands were release of the Puerto Ricans convicted of shootings in the House of Representatives in 1954 and the attempted assassination of President Truman in 1950.

Federal investigators believe that Torres showed up at Episcopal headquarters last October 26 and met with the two women then. According to Religious News Service, the authorities also believe that the church employees know his whereabouts. In the week following his visit to New York, Chicago police and federal agents raided a Chicago apartment in which Torres was living. They reported finding a “bomb factory” and among other items letterheads from the Episcopal commission. Evidence gathered in the raid also linked Torres to a typewriter used to write some of the FALN notes found after bombings.

Luis Rosado, formerly a member of the Episcopal commission’s staff and now on the staff of the ecumenical Joint Strategy and Action Committee (JSAC), confirmed that Torres was in New York last October and met with personnel at the commission’s offices.

Episcopal church officials said they first knew that the man was wanted when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents came to church headquarters November 18. Elizabeth Fink, lawyer for the two women, said they then told FBI agents “everything they know” about the case. After the investigators started looking into the files of the commission and requesting other material on its affairs, the pair decided to stop answering questions.

The search of the headquarters brought lawyers for Presiding Bishop John Allin and other top officials into the case. They told a federal attorney that they would seek to quash his subpoena for church records if it were not more limited. He agreed to specify the areas of inquiry, and the top executives agreed to hand over certain materials voluntarily. Bishop Milton Wood, national executive for administration, later explained that what was provided to federal agents was “quite public” material that anyone could have for the asking. However, he expressed his regret that he did not stay at the office the night FBI agents came to take samples from office machines. The church’s executive council has since given tentative approval to a policy on handling police inquiries.

At one point the case pitted two bishops against the presiding bishop. After Bishop Allin’s lawyers settled their differences with the federal attorney, lawyers representing Bishop Paul Moore of New York and Bishop Francisco Reus-Froylan of Puerto Rico tried to quash subpoenas against the women. Their motion was later withdrawn, however.

The two women have continued to seek support for their resistance. Just before going into court to be convicted of contempt, Ms. Nemikin charged that Bishop Allin “has prostituted the Church’s mission by completely and unthinkingly cooperating with the FBI and participating in grand jury abuse.” Her lawyer called a news conference at her office, but the women refused to answer many questions. Ms. Cueto maintained that the church did not advocate bombings, but when asked if she opposed the FALN actions, the lawyer interjected that the question was improper.

One object of the probe has been to learn of any movements by FALN leaders that might have been subsidized by the commission. While members were unsalaried, they did get travel expenses for meetings. The 1976 expenditures amounted to $361,000, of which $115,000 was earmarked for “community development” and $130,500 for “grants.”

Torres, 24, remains at large meanwhile. His wife is also being sought by the authorities. As probing has continued some top Episcopalians are wondering if all the uproar was worth it. They have discovered that the fugitive’s father is a United Church of Christ minister, and no one has turned up any evidence that he is a communicant in any Episcopal parish. Appointment of a non-communicant minority representative to a national church body is not an unusual practice, however.

Credentials Controversy

“Why,” asked Columbia Broadcasting System diplomatic correspondent Marvin Kalb, “take it out on one person?”

That one person, who believes he is being harassed by the National Council of Churches, is Washington clergyman-journalist Lester Kinsolving, no friend of the NCC. The Episcopal priest began this month minus his credentials for covering sessions of Congress and minus his membership in the Department of State Correspondents’ Association.

He believes the NCC is out to get him because of his less-than-flattering reports on its activities. In particular, he dates the attack to his exposure last year of the NCC board membership of Romanian Orthodox Archbishop Valerian Trifa, who has been accused of World War II crimes. As evidence, Kinsolving cites a letter to the Department of Justice dated last July 19 from Tim Smith, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), “a sponsored related movement” of the NCC. In that letter, Smith reported that Kinsolving countered ICCR arguments at a number of stockholder meetings where questions of corporate policy in southern Africa had been raised. He charged that the priest-journalist was sent to the meetings by a law firm representing the Republic of South Africa. Smith provided copies of the letter to various congressmen and to leaders of Washington correspondents’ associations.

The matter came to a head last month when action was taken in rapid succession by the Department of State Correspondents’ Association and the Standing Committee of Correspondents in the Capitol press gallery. The 350-member association at State voted 9–7 to drop Kinsolving from its rolls. The committee at the Capitol voted 4–0 to let his gallery pass expire at the end of February. The more serious of the two was the lifting of the gallery pass, since credentials are issued by that committee, and journalists are not admitted to the Capitol gallery without current passes. The State Department press office issues credentials directly without requiring the association’s endorsem*nt, so the action there does not deny Kinsolving access to the premises. Even though the Smith letter was also sent to the White House, Kinsolving does not consider his access in danger there since its press office issues credentials directly also.

The Episcopal journalist, who customarily wears clerical garb, writes a syndicated column now published in more than two hundred newspapers. He also has a daily commentary on four radio stations and edits a weekly religion supplement in a Washington suburban paper.

An NCC spokesperson discounted the charge that the council’s action against Kinsolving was related to the Trifa affair, noting that other reporters had written about federal probes into the Orthodox prelate’s past before the columnist wrote about allegations against him. There was no denial, however, of the fact that Kinsolving’s articles on the archbishop also identified him as a member of the NCC governing board, something other reports had not done. The clergyman-journalist charged the council with moral laxity for not removing Trifa from the position.

The controversy over Trifa disrupted the last NCC board meeting (see November 5, 1976, issue, page 58) and has since consumed many hours of meeting time for council officers and staffers. Kinsolving was at the board meeting last October when Jewish youths protested Trifa’s continued membership.

After weeks of negotiations with the hierarchy of Trifa’s denomination, the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the NCC announced last month that the controversial prelate “will not function as a member of the governing board” until current proceedings against him are concluded. The principal charge against him now is that he lied about his wartime activities when he came to the United States and sought citizenship. Jewish groups have accused him of leadership of Nazi organizations that exterminated Jews and Christians in Romania.

NCC president William R Thompson said the “practical effect” of the OCA action was to suspend the archbishop from membership on the governing board. His name remains on the roster, however. He has not been active in council affairs for several years, and the original Jewish protests were simply against keeping his name on the board’s roster.

Meanwhile, there has been no NCC apology for the action against Kinsolving. The spokesperson said his ties to the law firm representing South Africa are “well documented” and that his comments at stockholder meetings are a matter of record. Asked if the council had questioned the credentials of any other correspondents who had spoken before various audiences around the country, the spokesperson said no.

The columnist pointed out that long before he began speaking out on the African question he had spoken for the State of Israel and had received Israeli bonds as honoraria. Many other journalists and clergyman did the same, he noted.

Kalb, the CBS newsman, resigned from the correspondents’ group at State after it kicked out Kinsolving. In doing so he noted that other members of the group, specifically correspondents for Tass and other Eastern-bloc news services, received all their pay from foreign governments. In a letter to the congressional press galleries’ standing committee, another reporter reminded the panel that the Soviet Union’s ambassador had declared Tass to be “an organ of the council of ministers of the USSR.”

Gallery rules provide that passes will not be issued to writers “engaged in paid publicity or promotion work,” and Kinsolving plans to test whether the rules will be applied uniformly.

Death

CLIFFORD P MOREHOUSE, 72, well-known lay member of the Episcopal Church, long-time editor of the Living Church (an independent Episcopal weekly), and former president of the denomination’s important House of Deputies; in Sarasota, Florida, of a heart attack following an auto accident.

Religion in Transit

Pastor Robert H. Schuller of the 8,000-member Garden Grove Community Church in southern California has led his congregation in a successful $10 million fund-raising drive to dedicate debt-free by 1980 a 4,100-seat and 10,000 window “Crystal Cathedral.” Construction is expected to begin by this summer. “Our first offering in the cathedral will be used to build a hospital in Calcutta,” says Schuller, a popular television preacher and promoter of “possibility thinking.”

Minnesota Independent-Republican Arlan Stangeland, 47, a Lutheran, upset Democratic Farmer Labor candidate Michael Sullivan, a Catholic, in a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland. Controversy erupted in the campaign after it was learned that Catholic bishop Victor H. Balke sent a letter to his priests urging them to encourage their people to vote. Balke noted that Sullivan was “very pro-Church” and that Stangeland’s voting record was “negative” on Catholic issues (Stangeland had opposed a parochaid measure in the state legislature but had supported other bills favored by Catholics). A light turnout, cautioned Balke, would help Stangeland.

Geno Baroni, 46, an activist Catholic priest who has led a nationwide fight to save and revitalize urban ethnic neighborhoods, was nominated by President Carter to be assistant secretary for consumer affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Baroni has organized neighborhood groups in forty-five U.S. cities, and he is president of the Washington-based National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs. His main concerns will be retained as part of his new job description.

Mary Eleanor Wall, the wife of the editor of the Christian Century, was named to a nine-member blue-ribbon panel to advise President Carter on the selection of a new FBI director. Her husband James took a two-month leave of absence from his editorial position last year to be Illinois chairman of the Carter campaign. The Walls are United Methodists. Mrs. Wall holds an elective office in the DuPage County (Illinois) government.

A recent Gallup Poll shows that the number of families troubled by problem drinking—18 per cent of all the nation’s families—has increased 50 per cent since 1974, and that the number of women who drink (66 per cent) has increased by 8 per cent. Drinking is at an all-time high: 71 per cent of all adults, based on a 1,501-person sample. In the poll 81 per cent of Roman Catholics and 64 per cent of Protestants said they used alcohol.

Some conservatives in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod are unhappy with President J. A. O. Preus, and they have launched a movement to unseat him at the synod’s biennial convention this summer in Dallas in favor of theologian Walter A. Maier, Jr. And to Preus’s left, a few of the remaining “moderates” are looking for a more liberal candidate to challenge him.

The church-and-society unit of the National Council of Churches has launched a campaign to raise funds for a civil suit against police authorities in Chicago. The suit was filed by families of two Black Panther leaders killed in a 1969 shoot-out, but their funds are now depleted, explained NCC executive Lucius Walker, Jr. He believes there is new evidence indicating the two were “murdered” by police.

The Church of Scientology last month filed a $750 million damage suit against federal agencies (including the FBI, the CIA, the Postal Service, the National Security Agency, and the departments of Justice, Treasury, and Army), charging them with illegal intelligence activities and other alleged harassment aimed at the church and its members.

A religious person is more likely than a non-religious person to offer help in a crisis as well as on a day-to-day basis, according to a sociology study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

World Scene

Booklets containing forged sermons of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski have been circulated throughout Poland, say church sources. The sermon texts try to make the prelate appear to be a supporter of Marxism and state officials, say the sources. Meanwhile, Poland’s Catholic bishops called on the Communist regime to “appreciate and understand” the church’s “evangelical mission” and to accord the church “freedom to carry out its religious tasks in conformity with the needs of the faithful.”

Christian and Jewish leaders in Czechoslovakia were pressured into issuing declarations of loyalty to the Communist government, but they clearly attempted to be as vague as possible, according to press accounts. The government is publicly interpreting these utterances as condemnations of Charter 77, a landmark human-rights manifesto signed by clergymen and other leaders. It maintains among other things that religious freedom has been “systematically curbed with a despotic arbitrariness.”

A Ghana newspaper called for removal of the Billy Graham organization’s Hour of Decision radio broadcast from Ghana radio after the airing of a sermon by associate evangelist Roy Gustafson. The evangelist in his sermon denounced terrorism in Rhodesia, and he spoke positively about the country’s armed forces. The newspaper felt the sermon was a slap at the cause of black liberation.

The Ugandan church is full of widows and orphans.

The mercurial Muslim president of the country, Idi Amin, was reminded of this fact the week before he publicly accused Anglican archbishop Janani Luwum of plotting his overthrow. Now Mrs. Luwum is a widow, and their children are orphans. They are in exile in Kenya. Veteran observers of the Ugandan scene believe that the archbishop’s pointed reminder of the insecurity of Christians might have led to his own death last month.

The flight of his widow and children and of at least three of his eighteen bishops and thousands of other Christians is only one part of a bizarre drama that unfolded after Luwum was awakened at 1:30 A.M., Saturday, February 5. Armed men had broken down the fence around his house, and his dog was barking wildly. Before the night was over he had been threatened at gunpoint, and the troops had searched every room of his house.

Within a week, fifteen of the nation’s Anglican bishops joined the archbishop in signing a long protest to the president over the incident at the archbishop’s residence. (The other three were out of the country or otherwise unable to get to the meeting.)

“We are deeply disturbed” about the incident, they wrote on February 10. “In the history of our country such an incident in the Church has never before occurred.… Now that the security of the archbishop is at stake, the security of the bishops is even more in jeopardy.”

While expressing their shock and protest about the treatment of the church’s top official, the Anglican bishops said they were even more concerned about what had been happening to ordinary Ugandan Christians over a long period. They wrote: “The security of the ordinary Christian has been in jeopardy for quite a long time. It may be that what has happened to the archbishop and to the bishop of Bukedi [who was searched and arrested] is a climax of what is consistently happening to our Christians. We have buried many who have died as a result of being shot and there are many more whose bodies have not been found, yet their disappearance is connected with the activities of some members of the Security Forces. Your Excellency, if it is required we can give concrete evidence of what is happening because widows and orphans are members of our Church.”

The strongly worded letter, noting generally deteriorating conditions in the country as well as the loss of effective communication between Anglican authorities and the government, found its way out of Uganda. Its publication abroad was thought to have incensed Amin, who has been president since a coup in 1971.

Luwum delivered the letter to the president the next Monday (February 12) and told him in person that he was not involved in any overthrow plot. Amin was not convinced. Two days later (Wednesday) Amin brought in troops from all over the nation to be his audience at the public accusation meeting that has since claimed worldwide attention. Archbishop Luwum was also summoned to be there to hear the reading of a document implicating him in an overthrow plot. Amin claimed it had been written by his predecessor, Milton Obote, now in exile. Luwum, dressed in his purple robes, shook his head in denial as his name was read.

The carefully selected troops yelled “Kill them” when the charges were revealed, but Amin responded that the accused would be given military trials. The government radio announced that trials would be held, but a few hours later reports were broadcast of the deaths of Luwum and two government ministers.

One of the cabinet members, Lieutenant Colonel Erinayo Oryema, was from the same tribe as Luwum and was also an Anglican. Church sources in East Africa described him as an outstanding Christian. He handled the land-and-water resources portfolio in the government. Also killed was Charles Oboth-Ofumbe, whose cabinet assignment was internal affairs. He was also a Christian.

Reports leaking out of Uganda indicated that the two government ministers were marked for death by Amin after they refused to go along with his plans to eliminate Luwum. In Radio Uganda’s explanation of the deaths, the three were riding together to a military installation for questioning when they overpowered their driver and caused a car wreck that killed them instantly (see March 4 issue, page 54). The driver of the unescorted vehicle was said to have been injured seriously, but the man named as driver was seen the next day in an army barracks in good condition.

Refugees leaving Uganda brought out a different story of the deaths of the three prominent Ugandans. Amin ordered all three shot, they said, and the two government officials were promptly killed. When the president learned that his troops were reluctant to shoot the archbishop he is reported to have shot Luwum himself. Soldiers were also reported to have been reluctant to follow Amin’s order to run trucks over the bodies of the three; they finally agreed to crush the corpses of the cabinet members but not the archbishop’s.

Family members and church officials asked for the archbishop’s body after the deaths were announced, but they were not permitted even to view the corpse at the Kampala mortuary. Instead of turning the remains over to the survivors in the capital city, the government sent the coffin to Luwum’s native village in northern Uganda. Relatives and friends there were instructed to bury him, but they delayed until they could call in a priest to conduct a funeral. At that time the coffin was opened, and evidence of bullet wounds was found.

Among the church leaders trying to claim the body in Kampala was Festo Kivengere, bishop of Kigezi and probably the Ugandan evangelical who is best known in the rest of the world. According to the reports of refugees, Kivengere was still attempting to get official word on disposal of the body three days later (Saturday. February 19) when he was warned by friends that Amin planned to pick him up next. At the insistence of colleagues, he then began a dramatic flight to safety in an undisclosed location outside Uganda.

Kivengere and his wife almost drove into a trap set for them by security personnel, according to the reports. They were diverted by Christians who were waiting on the highway for them outside the town where troops planned to apprehend the bishop. Another vehicle was provided for a night-time ride to the border of a neighboring country. Driving over rugged and unfamiliar terrain in darkness, they lost their way once, and once they stopped just short of driving over the side of a cliff. They traveled the last five miles out of Uganda on foot. They reached the border about 6 A.M. Sunday (February 20).

Anglican archbishop Festo Olang of Kenya had planned to go to Kampala to conduct Luwum’s funeral that Sunday, but the plans were canceled when Amin announced he had been “thanked” by the family for taking care of funeral arrangements in the archbishop’s village. He also prohibited public meetings in the cathedral.

At the time when the original service was scheduled in Uganda, a crowd estimated at 10,000 gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for a memorial service. Bishop Leslie W. Brown of Ipswich, the last white archbishop in Uganda, represented the Church of England at the services. When he returned to London, he reported that his East African contacts spoke of the disappearance of prominent Christians from villages and towns throughout Uganda. Of accounts of the persecution of Christians he said, “I would never have believed this before.”

Luwum’s death and those of Amin’s last two Christian cabinet members apparently were just the beginning of a purge of Christians from important positions in the nation. Special targets in the sweep were members of the Langi and Acholi tribes, who were supporters of Milton Obote during his presidency and who are predominantly Christian.

When leaders around the world expressed disbelief in Amin’s explanation of the deaths, the unpredictable president went on another verbal rampage. He sent a message to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) naming the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican communion. Archbishop Donald Coggan of Canterbury, and the general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, Burgess Carr, as conspirators in the plot to oust him. Both had flatly rejected the auto-accident explanation for Luwum’s death. Joining in the condemnation of Amin’s slaughters were such worldwide groups as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists. The Vatican said it found the car-wreck story “unswallowable,” and the World Council of Churches’ executive committee condemned the Ugandan leader’s “inhuman behavior.” Billy Graham issued a statement deploring the “cold blooded murder.”

Amin was probably stung harder by the statements of leaders of governments, such as President Jimmy Carter’s declaration that his actions had “disgusted the entire civilized world.” Hearing that, Amin prohibited any Americans in the country from leaving, and he ordered them to appear before him at a Kampala meeting February 28. He also told them to bring along their chickens and goats. Although the United States closed its embassy there in 1973 and advised citizens to leave, an estimated 200 stayed, many of them missionaries. Among them were a few Southern Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, and Africa Inland Mission personnel. There were also some seventy Roman Catholic missionaries representing several orders.

Against a backdrop of growing suspense and quiet diplomatic contacts through Arab and African governments, Amin postponed the meeting, then canceled it. The prohibition on exits was also lifted.

Lifting the pressure on Americans did not lift the pressure on Ugandan Christians, however. Informed African sources said early this month that the killings were continuing and that thousands of refugees were pouring into neighboring nations. Church leaders inside and outside Uganda called for Christians around the world to pray for divine intervention. Anglicans in many nations declared a day of prayer February 20. Commenting on the flood of messages reporting prayer on that day, one Ugandan churchman said, “We don’t want it to stop.”

The appeal for intercession comes in the year when the Ugandan church is observing its centennial. A year-long series of events had been planned by a committee headed by Archbishop Luwum. There was some speculation that Amin feared a successful national celebration would threaten his power. Some Christian leaders have claimed that 80 per cent of the population is affiliated with one of the Christian bodies, and no published estimates show less than half of the population of over 11 million as Christian.

Luwum, who was 53, was consecrated a bishop in 1970 and became archbishop in 1974. He, like many other Christian leaders in the area, was considered a product of the East Africal revival movement (see September 26, 1975, issue, page 48, and May 21, 1976, issue, page 10). An active promoter of evangelical work, he was chairman of the East Africa committee of the African Enterprise organization. He was a participant in the 1974 Lausanne congress on evangelization and in last year’s Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly. Before the 1975 World Council of Churches assembly he was one of the Anglican members of the WCC’s Central Committee.

Confrontation In Southern Africa

World attention was riveted on Uganda last month, but further south on the African continent there was also bloodshed and other violence involving churchmen.

Black nationalist guerrillas killed seven white Roman Catholic missionaries at a mission station thirty-five miles north of Salisbury, Rhodesia. Three Jesuits and four Dominican nuns were murdered at St. Paul’s mission, Musami, the Rhodesian government reported. Blamed for the raid were terrorists from the ZANU organization of Robert Mugabe, one of four black leaders participating in the Geneva talks on the future of the country. The missionaries were all from Europe.

Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa of Salisbury, Rhodesia’s first black Catholic archbishop, condemned the killings, saying that the victims were “friends and servants of the African people.” The murders were puzzling to many observers because Catholics had been among those pushing for change in Rhodesia.

Another action that puzzled churchmen at least for a few days was the raid on a Lutheran mission school near Rhodesia’s southern border with Botswana. Some 400 students were marched across the border at gunpoint, and parents made desperate efforts to bring back their children. Many of the children refused to cross the border back into Rhodesia, however, and questions arose about whether they had been forced or whether they had planned to leave in order to join the nationalist guerrillas. When Lutherans from throughout southern Africa met in Botswana last month, they thanked that nation for receiving the “refugees.” Many of the young people were put on planes for training camps in Zambia.

Pressure for a quick settlement of the Rhodesian issue continued on all sides, but most of the action seemed to be inside the country rather than at Geneva. Killings continued on both sides, with the deaths of the missionaries being only the best publicized of the war deaths. Prime Minister Ian Smith unveiled a new plan to allow black participation in areas previously closed to them, startling many of his former supporters. He still maintained a hard line against guerrillas and those supporting them, however. As one example he announced plans to deport Irish-born Roman Catholic bishop Donal R. Lamont, 65. Proceedings were started to lift Lamont’s Rhodesian citizenship as soon as a high court reduced the bishop’s ten-year sentence to four years (with three suspended). He had been convicted of violating a law that prohibits aiding guerrillas. The bishop had failed to report a nationalist request for aid at a mission.

There was also church-state confrontation in the Republic of South Africa, where both Roman Catholic and Anglican authorities announced plans to step up their opposition to government apartheid policies. As a first step, schools opened their doors to blacks and white alike. Anglican archbishop Bill Burnett of Capetown said “the society we have created for ourselves is morally indefensible.” He specifically called for an end to “banning,” the South African form of house arrest that severely limits rights to speak out and to meet with others.

In the United States, meanwhile, a black clergyman made an announcement that might have as much effect on the situation in southern Africa as any development there. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, who is a member of the board of General Motors, said twelve of America’s largest corporations had quietly agreed to a set of six principles “aimed to end segregation” in South Africa. The agreement provides that black employees of the multi-national corporations will be treated as the whites are.

Pressure In Plains

In early February President Jimmy Carter traveled to Georgia for the weekend and dropped by for Sunday worship at his former home church, Plains Baptist. He had apparently heard reports of a move afoot to oust Bruce Edwards as pastor. A vote indeed did come up, but only to ban cameras from services. Insiders believe Carter’s presence forestalled the anti-Edwards move.

On February 20 Carter remained in Washington and taught a Sunday-school class at First Baptist. When Edwards entered the sanctuary of the Plains church that day he noticed a number of people in the congregation who hadn’t been around for a long time, including some members who had moved out of the area. There was to be a brief business meeting to discuss how to pay for a carload of corn that had been donated to a children’s home. During the meeting, Dale Gay, stepson of men’s-class teacher Clarence Dodson, moved that Edwards be requested to resign immediately. Amid the ensuing shouting and commotion Edwards realized his opponents had enough votes to fire him (procedural votes had gone against him 88 to 62), so he announced his resignation, effective April 30 but with an immediate leave of absence.

Edwards, who came to the church in 1974, feels his stand on integration was the main reason for the opposition even though race wasn’t mentioned during the meeting. Under his leadership in November the church voted to rescind a 1965 resolution that barred blacks from membership. A move to oust him at that time failed.

One observer close to people on both sides says that more than race is involved. Many Plains members resented Edwards’s campaign work on Carter’s behalf, the source said, especially since they felt he was neglecting pastoral duties to do it. Edwards attracted criticism in defending Carter’s Playboy interview; the Democratic National Committee mailed copies of his comments to Southern Baptist churches and leaders across America. Ninety-nine Plains residents, presumably all of them white, voted for Gerald Ford in the election; they included members of Plains Baptist. The pressures on Plains and the church by tourists and the media also took a toll, says the observer. And with Carter gone, there is a lack of strong lay leadership in the church.

Deacon George Harper blamed it all on “politics and a lack of communication.” Politics, said he, “will tear up any church it gets into.” The Holy Spirit led the congregation to the decision, he added.

But deacon Hugh Carter, the President’s cousin, described the occasion as “the blackest and bloodiest day” in the history of the Plains church.

A New York Times reporter quoted a handful of people in town as saying that some church members were upset because Edwards and his wife had adopted a child of “non-Caucasian” background late last year.

The President had no comment on the resignation, and White House press secretary Jody Powell said it was time “to allow the people of that church, to the extent possible, to return to running their own affairs without involving the whole nation in their business.”

Right now the church is hurting. A lot of people aren’t speaking to each other. Fewer than forty persons were in church on the last Sunday morning of February, and some of them were tourists. The organist announced she wasn’t playing for anybody there but “only for the Lord,” and she hoped he would help her get through the service.

The Dallas Plan

Officials of the public school board in Dallas, Texas, say implementation of court-ordered desegregation was made peaceful by the community’s strong religious consciousness.

“There has been much prayer on this board of education,” says Mrs. Sarah Haskins, a Baptist who is vice-president of the Dallas Independent School District. The other board members claim religion is a major focal point in their lives, according to a Dallas Times Herald story.

President Bill Hunter, a Methodist, talks about School Superintendent Nolan Estes this way: “We know that there’s a spiritual relationship between the two of us. That relationship enables us to speak more candidly and gives us a greater range of freedom.” Estes is a deacon and chairman of the stewardship committee of the First Baptist Church of Dallas.

Faith affects policy. For example, the board recently voted six to three to approve as a source book a biology text prepared by the Creation Research Society and published by Zondervan. Even though it was listed as supplementary material and does not replace any of the state-approved texts, approval of the book has brought the board a storm of protest. Some liberal clergymen have threatened to sue to prevent the teaching of creationism in Dallas schools.

Hunter said it was a religious consciousness that held the board together when it was obliged to grapple with the desegregation order.

Dallas churches have spearheaded a community movement to “adopt” public schools in an effort to avert bitter conflicts such as have engulfed communities faced with court-ordered desegregation. Churches and synagogues have been joined by business, civic, and service organizations. Special projects have been underwritten and problems confronted. Said one volunteer: “Some church volunteers, noticing that some youngsters had no shoes, provided them the next day. Another volunteer spent two years patiently teaching a young boy to read English.”

A school district spokesman added, “The community must remain a vital part of the problem-solving mechanism. The Dallas Plan has educational programs that may become models … with its sensitivity to cultural and ethnic needs and sociological and political realities.”

Trans-Atlantic Link

Keston College, the British Center for the Study of Religion and Communism, has been seeking an American academic base in recent years, and now it has found one. Michael Bourdeaux, the center’s founder and director, announced last month that Notre Dame University had invited Keston to establish a formallink. Details are being worked out so that collaboration can begin this year.

The first step will probably be for Notre Dame to appoint a Keston-trained scholar to its staff. From Notre Dame’s Indiana campus he would make available archival material from the British center. He would also assist in personnel exchanges and conference administration.

Bourdeaux is an Anglican and works with Christians of all denominations in Eastern Europe. He said the support that Keston received from the Ford Foundation (a $30,000 grant to study Roman Catholicism in the Soviet Union) attracted the attention of Professor Donald Kommers, new director of the Center for Civil Rights at Notre Dame.

Training For Pros

Dave Rowe, key defensive lineman for the champion Oakland Raiders football team, isn’t quite up to the physical dimensions of the biblical Goliath, but he doesn’t lack much. And when he towers over you with a positive assertion, you’re unlikely to fight back.

“When I first came into football,” he said, “you could count the Christian players on your hands. Now there are more than a hundred pro athletes getting together, everyone loving everybody else. Christianity is going through pro football and other sports like wildfire. It’s amazing. I praise the Lord for this.”

The 270-pound lineman made this comment at the close of a five-day Pro Training Conference held last month near Orlando, Florida. The pros and their wives refused to be distracted by Disney World and other diversions and stayed with Bible study and deep talks on family living and Christian commitment.

Arlis Priest, a Phoenix businessman, raised $70,000 through his organization known as Pro Athletes Outreach to pay most of the travel and housing costs for this seventh annual conference. Nearly ninety football players attended, and they were joined by nine baseball players plus token representatives from bowling and golf.

Babysitting arrangements made it possible for parents to bring children; fifty came, raising the conference total 300.

Eddie Waxer, onetime Michigan State University tennis player, raised $10,000 to fly in a dozen European pro athletes and sports chaplains for the conference.

A dominant conference figure was Norm Evans, now with the Seattle Sea-hawks after playing for several seasons with the Miami Dolphins. Evans heads the player committee that helps train athletes in the art of talking about Jesus.

“Every time I come to one of these conferences, I see a new depth of maturity,” he said. “These pros from all over the United States, and now even Europe, have a new concern to see their teammates come to know Christ. They are leaving here talking about Bible studies at home and how they can help each other grow in the Lord.”

Evans and Rowe aren’t alone in this view. Mike McCoy, Notre Dame alumnus with the Green Bay Packers, senses “an awakening in sports of what people can do with their lives.”

Some of the rugged athletes were perceptibly nervous in relating their faith. Amos Martin, of the Minnesota Vikings, said: “Good thing I remembered what Norm Evans told me, ‘Take a deep breath and let Jesus do the work.’”

One visitor from England noted the love shown between blacks and whites at the conference. “Jesus is color blind,” said Alan Godson. “Skin color is not remotely important here. I’ve noticed black athletes have a natural flow in competition. Use it; it is a gift of God.”

The conference was related in a sense to the Sunday chapel services that are held regularly during the football and baseball seasons. Many players attending the conference were chapel leaders. All twenty-six pro football teams conduct chapel at home and away. There will be chapel services in twenty-six baseball teams also when Seattle and Toronto start big-league play this spring.

“These pros have an influence and a platform for the Lord,” said Priest. “I woke up at 4:30 in the morning of our last day in Orlando thinking about this again. We are seeing signs of great awakening. The pros left Orlando saying, ‘We’ve got to get into the Word.’ There’s more of that than ever before.”

WATSON SPOELSTRA

Sexual Technique For Christians

The Act of Marriage, by Tim and Beverly LaHaye (Zondervan, 1976, 394 pp., $6.95, $3.95 pb), and Sex Technique and Sex Problems in Marriage, by Edward Wheat (Bible Believers Cassettes [130 Spring St., Springdale, Ark. 72764], four cassettes, $13.95lset), are reviewed by C. E. Cerling, Jr., minister of education, Hopevale Memorial Baptist Church, Saginaw, Michigan.

Public discussion of human sexuality took a large step forward in the late sixties. The two major works of Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy, were the primary stimuli of this development. However, even Masters and Johnson do not see their work as the most pivotal of this century. They give credit to earlier students of sexual behavior such as Van de Velde and Kinsey.

In 1966, when Masters and Johnson published their first book, medical schools did not offer courses in sex. Now almost all do. The day is probably not very far off when seminaries will offer such courses, since ministers deal with many sex problems in their counseling. (Incidentally, a prominent Baptist minister, Herbert Howard of Dallas, has recently been named associate in theology for the Reproduction Biology Research Foundation, which Masters and Johnson co-direct.)

Evangelicals are now beginning to publish sexual information from a Christian point of view. One of the first was Herbert J. Miles, whose book Sexual Happiness in Marriage (Zondervan, 1967; revised, 1977) has been widely used as a counseling resource by ministers, particularly in premarital counseling. As good as Miles is, there was a need for something better. In 1975 Edward Wheat recorded Sex Technique and Sex Problems in Marriage, a thorough presentation and analysis of Masters and Johnson’s most significant findings from a Christian perspective. This tape series cannot be praised too highly. Then in mid-1976 Tim and Beverly LaHaye came out with their book, which is also excellent. Wheat is also issuing a book, Intended For Pleasure (Revell), next month.

What are some of the things that a Christian should look for in a sex manual? The work should be undergirded by Christian principles. The author should have a positive attitude toward proper sexual behavior. Problem areas should be handled on the basis of Scripture rather than the author’s preferences. For example, although Tim and Beverly LaHaye are obviously not happy about oral-genital sex play, they admit that the Bible does not prohibit it; hence they do not condemn it. They approach a delicate subject in such a way as to present both sides, express their informed Christian opinion, but recognize the limits of the biblical data.

A manual should devote considerable space to the anatomy and physiology of sex. Many people know very little about how men and women are constructed sexually. Time spent in discussing physical aspects of sex is time well spent. In this connection there should be a thorough description of the Kegel exercise, an exercise of the female pubococcygeus muscle that plays a significant role in female sexual response. A manual that overlooks it omits an important modern discovery about sexual responsiveness.

Because premature ejacul*tion is the primary male failure in sexual relationships, the exercise developed by Masters and Johnson to overcome this difficulty should be included in any sex manual. Since a verbal description of this technique is difficult to understand, drawings should be used to clarify the procedure.

Judged by criteria such as these, both of these works are excellent. Wheat’s tapes cover each of these areas and many more in detail. He deals with almost every possible problem. The accompanying diagrams are tastefully done, yet sufficiently explicit to give the needed help. His manner on the tapes conveys confidence. And, surprisingly, at the conclusion of the second tape he presents the Gospel in a clear, forthright manner.

The LaHayes’ book is good for similar reasons. They cover the subject thoroughly and tastefully. They express their obviously heavy reliance on the work of others, particularly Wheat.

In using these as counseling tools, I have found that couples respond better to the tapes. But the LaHayes have the advantage of being better known and trusted even in very conservative circles. Of course, with Revell promoting Wheat, he is bound to become better known!

As a minister involved in both premarital and marriage counseling, I think that at the very least one copy of the tape series and one copy of the book should be in every church library. At our church, we always have a number of copies of the tapes in circulation, and the book is being widely read. Christians are coming to the realization that one can learn to improve sex techniques just as one improves other skills, instead of settling for, or resigning oneself to, less than the best that God wills for his creatures.

Major Multi-Volume Commentary

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 10 (Romans-Galatians), edited by Frank E. Gaebelein (Zondervan, 1976, 522 pp., $14.95), is reviewed by W. Ward Gasque, associate professor of New Testament studies, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

This attractively produced volume is the first of twelve in an ambitious new series. As the title suggests, the commentary is written with the needs of preachers and Bible teachers, rather than theological experts, in mind; it is, however, intended to represent the best of recent evangelical scholarship. The translation used is the New International Version, though the authors make frequent reference to the original and depart from the NIV when they think its rendering inadequate.

The general editor, Frank E. Gaebelein, former headmaster of Stony Brook School, is assisted in his work by four consulting editors: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., of Trinity seminary and Bruce K. Waltke of Regent College for the Old Testament, James Montgomery Boice of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church and Merrill C. Tenney of Wheaton Graduate School for the New Testament. The commentators in this volume are Everett F. Harrison of Fuller Seminary on Romans, W. Harold Mare of Covenant Seminary on First Corinthians, Murray J, Harris of Trinity on Second Corinthians, and Boice on Galatians.

The title invites comparison with the old Expositor’s Bible (1887–96) and Expositor’s Greek Testament (1897–1907), both edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, and both still in frequent use in the studies of evangelical ministers. The EBC is a bit more technical than the EB but not nearly so homiletical or long-winded, and it is less technical than the EGT. In references to Greek and Hebrew, for example, terms are normally both transliterated and translated. The EB and EGT were primarily the work of British scholars. The EBC will be mostly by North Americans. The theological orientation of the older series was rather mixed, ranging from evangelical to “mediating liberal.” But the EBC is unabashedly evangelical. It claims to have the intention of presenting “a general premillennial position” in matters of eschatology, but there is nothing in the first volume that strikes one as distinctively premillennial.

Judging volume ten by the general aim of the series, I would call it a roaring success. Both form and style contribute to readability—here one detects the skillful hand of the general editor—and the scholarship is sound without being pedantic or tedious. That is to say, the authors have avoided the common pitfall of writing a commentary for their fellow theological technicians under the guise of a commentary for a much broader audience.

Outstanding among the four contributions is Harris’s on Second Corinthians. Though brief (106 pages), it takes its place comfortably alongside the very best commentaries on this most difficult of all the letters of Paul. Scholars in the field will recognize that the author is on top of all of the most recent research on Paul and this epistle. His exegetical and critical judgment is sane and balanced, and his judicious use of language enables him to pack in more information per page than the other authors. Harris’s work alone is easily worth the price of the whole volume.

This is not to say that the commentaries on the other epistles are not also admirable. Each has special qualities that contribute to the fulfillment of the aim of the series. Boice’s exposition of Galatians provides the preacher/teacher with an exemplary model. Here the pastor will learn how to feed his flock with the “sincere milk of the word” instead of exhorting them to death. Harrison brings the insights of a long and fruitful career of careful study and teaching to bear on the text of Paul’s best-known epistle, Romans, and the results are very illuminating. His is perhaps the most theologically reflective of the four commentaries. Mare’s work on First Corinthians is studded with useful historical and bibliographical data that will be of value especially to theological students.

The high standard set by this first volume of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary augurs well for the series. No doubt the EBC will provide a service for many preachers of our day similar to that provided by its venerable ancestors. I look forward to the subsequent volumes, which the publisher promises to issue fairly regularly over the next few years.

The Importance Of Politics For Christians

Time Toward Home: The American Experiment as Revelation, by Richard John Neuhaus (Seabury, 1975, 231 pp., $9.50), is reviewed by Marlin J. Van Elderen, editor, Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Although there are Bicentennial references scattered throughout Time Toward Home, Richard Neuhaus’s subject matter can perhaps better be pursued apart from the context of dutiful self-examination imposed by the nation’s birthday celebration. For the basic matter with which he is concerned—the interplay between one’s Christian faith and one’s American citizenship—cannot, it would seem, fail to become more critical in the days and years ahead.

It is regrettable that a good many Christian people seem to have wearied of this discussion, for one suspects that the feasibility of rendering to Caesar and God what are theirs in the way to which we are accustomed depends on the widespread recognition that ultimately what is Caesar’s is God’s also. There are hints in recent American history that reflect exactly the opposite order of priorities. One can be concerned about this without being an alarmist, I think; but lack of concern now may create real cause for alarm later.

Time Toward Home engages its subjects at several levels. This makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to take up the author’s invitation to judge “whether the result is a reckless careening across interdisciplinary lines or a synthesis of usually diverse angles of vision.” Even if Neuhaus does not quite careen recklessly, he does have a tendency to free-associate and to shift back and forth among the various levels of discourse he chooses.

Sometimes Neuhaus the theologian is at the forefront, developing theological and ethical theses and criticizing those of others, with varying degrees of rigor. At other moments it is the cultural critic who takes over, pointedly scrutinizing and thundering against the numerous idolatries of the 1970s. Then again there is Neuhaus the preacher, sometimes almost lyrical as he trades in the vivid range of imagery suggested by his title. Although all this makes for more interesting reading, it does tend occasionally to obscure the main trail down which he hopes to lead the reader.

The theological heart of the argument of this book, found in chapter 7 after a long analysis of contemporary culture, is that on the contemporary American scene the contract imagery prevalent in attempts to describe social order (persons making promises to one another) must yield primacy to covenant imagery (persons making promises to Another, to the Absolute Future, to God). Needless to say, such an appeal to a transcendent point of reference and to the purposefulness of history will not find immediate favor in our secular day. But Neuhaus does not take as his chief aim to argue for the plausibility of these realities; instead, he means to persuade American Christians that the truth claims to which they subscribe “contain the resources by which the American experience can be creatively redefined.”

On the Christan view, Neuhaus argues, “the plan of salvation is nothing less than the fulfilment of history.” And the American experience is part of that history. That the warrant we have for believing that God has made a covenant with America is hardly as sturdy as that for believing that he has covenanted with all of creation “should not scare off people who are prepared to bet their lives upon the unlikely proposition that an itinerant rabbi who was executed in the boondocks of history almost two thousand years ago will be revealed as the Lord of the universe.” And so, the author expects, he—and you and I—will someday stand before God as Americans, those who have identified with the American social experiment and accepted partial responsibility for America’s use of power in the world.

This is a position with ethical implications. Neuhaus spells some of these out in terms of “destination ethics,” the ethics of the coming kingdom. In conclusion, he addresses himself to the question of civil religion, or public piety, as he prefers to call it. He finishes by suggesting a few of the urgent items to which the Church must address itself if it is to help revitalize American public piety: reconstruction of its own theology; abortion and the way our values have been changed by the 1973 Supreme Court decision; the misplaced reverence many Americans—including Christians—feel toward the public school system; war, peace, and national security; social policy in general; and world poverty and hunger. One could wish that Neuhaus had used more of his 240 pages to focus on these issues and to offer an even keener analysis than the brief outline in his final chapter.

Conservative evangelicals do not rate a good deal of space in this book. Neuhaus feels it is a great tragedy that revivalism in the United States has retrenched on the social concern that once characterized it. But given the evangelical penchant for separating religion from the rest of life, that is not surprising. It would be a pity, though, if evangelicals did not join the debate over some of the issues Neuhaus raises, even if they do not always find themselves comfortable with the terms in which he phrases things.

A number of areas of potential divergence between evangelicals and Neuhaus suggest themselves:

1. Many evangelicals will be uncomfortable with his stress, from the very outset, on politics. Politics, while not absolute, he holds to be “the chief enterprise to which we must attend in bringing about the changes we desire.” If that remark has about it the element of the “healthy corrective” to the naïveté of many well-meaning idealistic Christians, it also stands in need of some robust qualification; and we may ask whether the balance of Neuhaus’s book offers this.

2. The subtitle of the book also begs for clarification. There are notable hazards in speaking about “the American experiment as revelation.” Neuhaus seems well aware of these, though he perhaps should have dealt with them in more detail. Dale Vree quotes Barth: “Beside the Holy Scriptures as the unique source of revelation, the German Christians affirm the German nationhood, its history, and its contemporary political situation as a second source of revelation, and thereby betray themselves to be believers in ‘another God.’”

3. Many evangelicals who have pioneered in restoring social concern to the forefront of evangelical attention have identified closely with the “radically prophetic” stance of William Stringfellow, Jacques Ellul, and Daniel Berrigan, against whom Neuhaus argues quite forcefully. Can there be a profitable, mutually respectful exchange between these two groups?

4. The stress in the final chapter on the role of the Church as institution—here Neuhaus quotes Herbert Richardson—as an antidote to the inevitable efforts of the state to fill the transcendence void will not find ready assent among many evangelicals who have never identified comfortably with any church but the invisible.

5. Evangelicals may find Neuhaus too pluralistic for their taste, too ready to speak only to other Christians (though who does that more regularly than evangelicals!) without asserting the truth-claims of Christianity with the stringency they demand. On the other hand, within the Christian community he may seem to some too lax in his application of Paul’s “let no man judge before the time.”

6. Neuhaus simply does not conform to the prevailing evangelical doctrine of Scripture. (His discussion of the “Edenic myth” of the fall, pages 97–100. will be particularly troublesome on this score.) In some quarters, one fears, this problem will be enough to warrant ignoring him.

Though Time Toward Home is not, Neuhaus insists, “an upbeat book about America,” it is a hopeful book. It would seem that the hope would be more realistic if the ongoing dialogue about these things were to include more of those 40 million (?) of us who call themselves evangelical.

The Case Against Abortion

In Necessity and Sorrow, by Magda Denes (Basic, 1976, 247 pp., $10), Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophic View, by Baruch Brody (MIT, 1975, 162 pp., $8.95), and The Right to Live; The Right to Die, by C. Everett Koop, (Tyndale, 1976, 124 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Robert Case II, executive director, Christian Action Council, Washington, D.C.

The libertarian abortion climate in the United States continues to produce howls of outrage on one hand and cheers of support on the other. Each side in the debate keeps publishing books to clarify its position, encourage its allies, and nullify its opposition. The problem with these efforts is that the two sides tend either to talk only to the already convinced or to talk to each other on different wavelengths. For instance, one side will be talking biology (genetic makeup settled at conception) while the other side is talking linguistics (personhood vs. human being); or one side will claim revealed knowledge (Bible) while the other side is claiming reason (situationalism); or one side will be claiming historic tradition (opposition to abortion by the Church) while the other is claiming the contemporary relevance of religion (pluralism in our society). Seldom does one side read the work of the other.

The first two books will probably be distributed mainly among pro-abortion secular readers, and their messages may be found surprising. The third book is clearly evangelical and will probably surprise no one of that persuasion.

Magda Denes is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in her late thirties and the mother of two sons. She underwent an abortion, and out of this experience she decided to do a study of “what lies behind the abortion myth.” So she returned to the New York City abortion hospital in 1973 and began interviewing patients, parents, staff, nurses, and physicians. These interviews form the substance of her book.

Denes is openly pro-abortion, avidly so. In fact, she keeps assuring her readers of this since she knows what her book does to the abortion act. She describes in vivid detail the abortion procedure and what the abortion room looks like after a day’s work (“a death factory”). In fact, pro-abortionists will question the real intent of her work because of the blood and gore and callousness that she describes in the hospital. One will certainly be revulsed, if not educated, by her account of what goes on during and after an abortion.

Denes calls for more honesty and forthrightness on the part of pro-abortionists. For instance, she calls the argument that abortion is a backup for failed contraception pure “propaganda.” Later she writes, “To say that the lives of those living are of larger import than the lives of those to come is the hubris of degeneration.” In a letter to Commentary (December, 1976) she writes, “I do think abortion is murder—of a very special and necessary sort. What else would one call the deliberate stilling of a life? And no physician involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that.”

Denes describes herself as someone who is very pro-abortion but with a “bad secular conscience,” whatever that means. The aim of her book is to search for some answers to the question of why to be human is to bring on the paradox of abortion, which is, she assures us, “necessary” and yet “sorrowful.” Once again we see that without the lodestar of Scripture to guide the way, the pilgrim will end up lost. That’s the real “sorrow” of this book.

Baruch Brody’s book is also written with the general reading public in mind. It will probably find its way into the hands of those who are likely to be pro-abortion. And yet Brody, who chairs the philosophy department at Rice, is against abortion. In fact, MIT Press, in anticipation of readers’ reactions, felt an explanation of objectivity was in order.

Brody gives us perhaps the cleanest philosophical argument against abortion yet to appear. Reflecting a philosophical kinship with Daniel Callahan (of the Hastings Center), Brody approaches the subject by setting forth certain seemingly logical principles and then exposing them to rigorous analysis. The pro-abortion principles are invalidated one by one as Brody moves through his argument.

While I agree with much of what Brody says, I do not agree with his starting point: “I cannot imagine a moral argument that is not ultimately founded in intuition. Whatever we do, we act with what we have, and there is no way of getting beyond it.” It’s a shame he does not understand Deuteronomy 29:29.

His small book is divided into three parts. In Part I he argues that since “the fetus becomes a human being at some point before birth,” abortion is murder and ought to be prohibited by law. In Part II he tries to prove his Part I assumption that the fetus becomes a human being at some point before birth. He concludes that when the “fetus” has a “functioning brain” (six to twelve weeks, a la Callahan) it becomes a human being. He uses the example of brain-death to argue for his brain-life position.

Part III is a catchall in which he succinctly analyses the Supreme Court decision of 1973 and covers societal responsibilities in the abortion situation. In this section he brings some clarity to the debate by arguing that if abortion is homicide, then there is a real question whether society has any obligation to the pregnant woman who refrains from having an abortion. He writes, “Refraining from committing murder is … not such a heroic act. It is a requirement of morality that we all fulfill and we have no claim against society merely because we are in need owing to our having fulfilled this requirement.” In short, refusing to have an abortion is no more laudatory than refusing to shoot your neighbor—it’s just part of being a moral citizen.

The evangelical book among the three is C. Everett Koop’s, which treats both abortion and euthanasia. His treatment of “the right to die” is the most accessible evangelical opinion on the subject at the present time.

Koop is chief of pediatric surgery at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He is clearly writing to evangelical laypersons who are already convinced of his views or at least are likely converts. The book is neither medically detailed nor exegetically illuminating. He writes simply as a Bible-believing surgeon who is committed to saving the lives, biologically and socially, of as many infants as he can.

He notes the schizophrenic mentality of our American society in which we will go to great lengths to preserve and protect the lives of some people while callously killing others. (A recent NBC television special, “Violence in America,” made the same point while at the same time illustrating the mentality by not so much as mentioning the violence done to the unborn.)

Koop’s little book will convince very few pro-abortion people, and it will not advance the frontier of evangelical bioethics. But it is a valuable primer for those in the evangelical community who want to find out about the state of abortion in this country and to prepare for the upcoming debates over euthanasia. In the abortion section he covers such areas as “Origin of the Sanctity of Life.” “Development Before Birth,” “Techniques of Abortion,” “Abortion Is Not a Roman Catholic Issue” (Koop is a Presbyterian elder), and “Natural Consequences” of the Supreme Court’s decision. The Right to Live; The Right to Die may be the best buy for the average evangelical who wants to take the first dip into medical ethics.

Second of Two Parts

The first part of this survey of innovative religious filmstrips appeared in the February 18 issue. The categories it covered were Bible background, Bible books and stories, Bible related, and Christian history. The code letters used are: c—cassette; r—record; r/c—both record and cassette available; t—text only; and tgx—text, study guide, and extra suggestions.

EVANGELISM

ADULTS. Burt Martin Associates has inaugurated a fine series of filmstrips that interpret Christian paintings (r, t). These are not necessarily famous or even great paintings. The photography is superb in its detail, the narrative sensitive. The first three filmstrips feature the works of William Holman-Hunt, Eduard von Gebhardt, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The series is ideal for women’s and college groups and for all persons interested in the arts. The evangelical emphasis is subtle but present. So far the series has dealt just with nineteenth-century painters, a choice that might confirm the prejudices of some who are convinced that Christianity is still there. The producers are to be congratulated and encouraged; one hopes they will widen their scope.

CHILDREN. Child Evangelism Fellowship has produced two filmstrips, one aimed at boys. Lion Territory, and one for girls, Strawberry Ice Cream Cones (c, tgx). “Lion Territory” is a captivating story that successfully integrates the inner city and child evangelism. But the other is a tear-jerker that will turn off even the most sheltered girls.

INSPIRATIONAL

ADULTS. The Evangelical Alliance Mission has produced a pleasant little surprise entitled The Trees Rejoice (c, t) that is an evangelical paean to nature and nature’s Creator. It is the first of a projected series. The producer, TEAM, is unobtrusively mentioned once. Pilgrim Prayers For a Searching Earth (Paulist Press) is a four-filmstrip set (r, t) by Patrick Mooney that uses poetry and photography in an attempt to evoke awareness of the presence of God. The filmstrips—“Young Love’s Dream,” “The Search,” and the two-part “Sacrament For the Suffering Earth”—are often enigmatically powerful. Mooney’s Irish lilt helps. But there are discordant moments when all the esthetic sensations meld into the theology of Teilhard de Chardin, the poetry of Rod McKuen, and the background music of “As the World Turns.”

CHILDREN. For grades three to six Broadman has a two-part program; God’s Plan and God’s World and God’s Men of Today: Scientists and Explorers (c, t). The first is the Mickey Mouse Watch version of Paley’s Clock. Using basic facts of science to demonstrate the orderliness of nature, it leads children to consider God’s perfect plan for them. But the sequel does not have the same evangelistic edge. It ritualistically eulogizes Albert Schweitzer as a Christian missionary-scientist. That this was made by Southern Baptists is evident only in the credits. Abingdon Audio-Graphics’ Learning About God’s Universe (r/c, tgx) is for the same age group but sharply different. It is a highly realistic, hopeful presentation of the givenness of the creation, and does not skirt the problem of evil and suffering.

MISSIONS

ADULT. High quality marks TEAM’s presentations of its mission work in Aruba, Chad, Colombia, Japan, and Peru, and at its headquarters. Excellent photography, humor, and a compelling sense of urgency and dedication characterize the filmstrips (c, t) of this interdenominational evangelical agency. Another interdenominational agency is the American Leprosy Missions. Its work has close ties to the United Church of Christ in Thailand (Chansoon of Chiengmai) and the United Lutheran Church of Tanzania (New Hope at Iambi). It has two other filmstrips, very informative, on leprosy: Clinical Aspects of Leprosy (totally unsuitable for children) and A Doctor Teaches About Leprosy. No audio accompaniments complement the text, and someone versed in pronouncing medical terms ought to be the reader. Nowhere is it suggested that the leprosy of the Bible may differ from modern leprosy.

Lutheran World Relief channels the relief funds of the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Its work is seen in Miracle at Baramati (India), A Little Goes a Long Way (Ethiopia), and A Different Kind of Help (Latin America) (r, tgx). It is impressive to see Lutheran work keep stride in revolutionary, touchy Ethiopia, supplying recently liberated serfs with oxen denied them by their former aristocratic landlords. LWR is also progressive in Latin America, engaged largely in self-help programs.

SOCIAL ACTION

ADULTS. The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company has produced a two-part package on the aged: So Easy We Forget and Blessed Are the Lovers (c, tgx). It is well worth having.

Also Roman Catholic is the Paulist Press offering, Justice in the World (r, tgx). The three filmstrips show the activist side of the church in ferment. “Three Worlds” is representative of the other two (“Right to Develop,” “Church in the World”). The opening theological atmosphere is Teilhard de Chardin. From Teilhard’s Omega Point, the viewer is zipped through Charles Reich’s Consciousness III, McLuhan’s Global Village, Toffler’s Future Shock, Arnheim’s Visual Thinking, and then, breathlessly, into the planet of Three Worlds (ours). Events, however, swiftly overtake filmstrips like these; this one was produced before the category of Fourth World nations rose from the dust. Useful as discussion-provokers for well-read and skeptical evangelicals, this series comes complete with guitar background, folk-singer, and the kind of unctuous narrator that used to be associated by the social activists with piety-in-the-skiety-by-and-byety.

TRAINING

ADULTS.Church Leader Motivation (c, t) is a psychological rather than biblical offering of Broadman Films to meet the interest in discipling that is sweeping the churches.

CHILDREN. A model of childlike lucidity is Our Episcopal Church (r/c, tgx) from Winston House Filmstrips for grades kindergarten to two. Joan Mitchell’s narration shows a feeling for children. The second of the four filmstrips, “The Bible: A Book For Remembering,” is a wonderful presentation that would be good in any denomination.

VALUES

CHILDREN. Winston House is a producer of superior “values education” materials for children. Filmstrips are only one part of its multimedia line. Episcopal in sympathy, Winston House also produces for the secular market. That it successfully appeals to both religious and secular sectors is evident in two of its series. Living Our Christian Faith (c, tgx) is a good animated four-part series for grades one to three. Churches of various denominations can beneficially use it. On the other hand. Values in Action (c, tgx), for grades four to nine, can be used in church but is geared toward the public school. The goal is values clarification. The creators are Fannie Shaftel, an educator, and George Shaftel, a writer. They have organized a ten-part series around role-playing. The dramatization is believable and relevant; among the titles are: “Sticky Fingers,” “It’s All Your Fault,” and “The Instant Weirdo.”

Taking a different tack from role-playing, Encore Visual Education stresses discussion in Let’s Talk About What’s Right (c, tgx). The goal in these four filmstrips for grades one to four is responsible decision-making. Prepared by educator Ruth Bradley, these secular filmstrips can be profitably used in a Christian setting. Representative titles are “Cheryl Shares the Library” and “Who Took the Pictures?” The dramatization and narration of Winston House and those of Encore Visual Education are on a par—superior.

Ikonographics is the producer of the five-filmstrip Folksville Series (c, tgx), a distinctly Christian approach to values clarification and decision-making for grades three to six. Each situation is carefully described and closes with appropriate Scripture. Titles include “The Candy Store” and “Soap Box Derby.”

For teen-agers and older young people, Paulist Press has fantasy. In two stunning collections, Dragons and Other Scary Things and Tales of Wonder (r, tgx), the stories of James Carroll are brilliantly rendered. Carroll, a Catholic, is an important author of lyrical devotional prose. The four fairy tales (“Nobles Three,” “The Dragon War,” “The Tumbler and the Princess,” “Strawberry Bells”) are all from Carroll’s book Wonder and Worship: Stories For Celebration. The art, narration, and original music are beautifully coordinated. Violence and evil are the stuff real fairy tales are made of, and these stories help us get grips on reality as it is graciously superintended by God. That graciousness does not necessarily eliminate gore and ghastly this-worldly endings. Younger children may not ponder these as older viewers would, but they will relish the fairy tales for themselves.

I am impressed by the creative energies and the scriptural insights and applications of Roman Catholic filmstrip producers heretofore overlooked by Protestants. Who among Protestants is as innovative and true as Twenty-Third Productions, Alba House Communications, Ikonographics, and Paulist Press? (The first two were mentioned in Part I of this survey. Their addresses are included below.) Let us end our impoverishment by studying their catalogues and viewing their wares. Better yet, let us emulate them.—Dale Sanders, Myrtle Creek, Oregon.

ADDRESSES

Abingdon Audio-Graphics, 201 8th Avenue S., Nashville, Tennessee 37202.

Alba House Communications, Canfield, Ohio 44406.

American Leprosy Missions, 297 Park Avenue S., New York, New York 10010.

Broadman Films, 127 9th Avenue N., Nashville, Tennessee 37234.

Burt Martin Associates, P.O. Box 6337, Burbank, California 91510.

Child Evangelism Fellowship, Warrenton, Missouri 63383.

Encore Visual Education, 1235 S. Victory Boulevard, Burbank, California 91502.

Ikonographics, P.O. Box 4454, Louisville, Kentucky 40204.

Lutheran World Relief, 315 Park Avenue S., New York, New York 10010.

National Catholic Reporter Publishing

Company, P.O. Box 281, Kansas City, Missouri 64141.

Paulist Press, 545 Island Road, Ramsey, New Jersey 07446.

The Evangelical Alliance Mission, P.O. Box 969, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.

Twenty-Third Productions, P.O. Box 180, Mystic, Connecticut 06388.

Winston House Filmstrips, 25 Groveland Terrace, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.

We had come away for a few days, away from people who knew us, away from the telephone, away from questions. The snow was deep, and pushing along on cross-country skis was more work than usual. The beauty of mountain peaks and of flaming sunset colors filled our minds with a variety of thoughts. We reached a bench in front of a rock on which was inscribed a quotation from Nietzsche, and we sat there for a few minutes talking about this man. His yearning for—or as he put it, “lusting for”—eternity made us hurt for one whose questions were never answered with truth.

Suddenly two people walked up to gaze at the rock and began talking in German about its inscription. Although we had come away from people, human contact lay before us like a log ready to be kindled with the tiniest touch of a flaming match! The conversation begun there was resumed late that evening over coffee. The man, an official in the Swiss government, had been a complete stranger to us before that sunset moment of “chance meeting.” He was full of questions.

People of all ages, backgrounds, educations, and ways of life are full of questions from childhood to the grave. They ask questions as they chew a blade of grass, or sit on a park bench, ride on a train, or wash dishes. Why? How? When? Honest answers are important to human beings.

The next day as we pushed up a hill in silence I was suddenly hit with what we had read from Isaiah that morning. “Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?” (Isa. 55:2). God asks questions! I had never thought of this so vividly before. How often do we stop and ponder God’s questions, seeking for absolute honesty in our answers to him? God’s questions are penetratingly directed to each one of us. No matter where we are, deep in a coal mine or atop a snow-covered mountain, alone or in the midst of a crowd, walking down a city street or rushed with business in office or farm, God’s questions are constantly being asked. Why? Why are we spending money for that which is not bread, working day after day for that which isn’t satisfying us? God expects us to answer.

As I continued to slide and push along on my skis, I thought of other questions God asks us, and was eager to get back to my Bible to begin looking them up. How often had I, I wondered, spent time honestly considering God’s questions? How often had I attempted to give him an honest answer?

And he saith unto them, why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26). What were the circ*mstances? Wild wind and waves beating against a not very strong boat with men in it getting wet and cold, wondering if the next moment they would be in the surging water. A time to feel fear? Why not? What could prevent the fear? The question Jesus is asking penetrates the surface realities to a deeper fact—he was in the boat with them. The fact that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Creator of the wind and water, was there was a reason to examine the source of their fear. Although he immediately rebuked the sea and brought a great calm, the question hung in the air, needing an answer. Is he in the boat with us also? Does not this question come to us time after time when the ship rocks?

“And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matt. 14:31). Peter had had his cry answered and the Lord indeed had put out his hand and saved Peter from sinking, but the question is asked of Peter and of us in the midst of the supply of a need: “Why?” Why didn’t we demonstrate our trust when the great opportunity was there?

This brings us to another question to Peter, and to us: “But whom say ye that I am?” (Matt. 16:16). Peter answered clearly: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Among all the false answers that were flying thick and fast in those days and have increased in variety and quantity ever since, Peter’s answer—and ours, if it is the same—brings the gratifying response: “Blessed art thou. Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). Pushing aside such a question is unwise. In the next verse Jesus gives us something to consider along with the question: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” What gain could balance the loss of one’s soul? How high a price would make such an exchange valuable? Every person is involved in the consequences of action based on his answer to this question that God has so clearly asked.

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Luke 6:41) This is a question that the Lord asks us to consider over and over again, each time we begin to judge or criticize without first praying to have our own blind spot removed. What is our answer?

God asked Abraham why Sarah had laughed, and then asked, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Gen. 18:14). The same question was put to Jeremiah: “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jer. 32:27). Is our answer real? Are we just repeating a Scripture verse by memory or do we plead that God remove our veneer and make us solid all the way through when we answer with Jeremiah’s assertion, “Ah, Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.”

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.… Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great?” (Job 38:4, 21). A whole series of questions came from God to Job, and they are to us, too. Do we understand the treasures of the snow? Can we fathom such diversity of creation as the fact that no two snowflakes are alike? Job’s strong answer came in Job 42:2: “I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.” What is our personal answer in our conversation with God as we consider these questions, his Word in question form, sharper than any two-edged sword?

God’s first recorded question, as far as I know, was to Adam: “Where art thou?” Adam was in the place of having just fallen into Satan’s trap. Satan has a false answer ready to put into our minds whenever we consider one of God’s questions to us. But honest answers are important to God.

According to the latest statistics, the Jewish population in the world numbers a little over fourteen million, six million of them in North America. It is a magnificent accomplishment that so small a number could contribute so much in so many diverse areas of life.

Today Jews enjoy tremendous leverage in many nations, not least in the United States. Numbers of them hold important positions in the U.S. government. Their very substantial involvement in the media makes possible the widespread dissemination and promotion of their views. Christian church groups have responded to their concerns and reacted to their criticisms, as, for example, in the recent Trifa case before the National Council of Churches (see November 5, 1976, issue, page 58).

The Jews, and particularly Israel, have benefited immensely from evangelical support for their cause. Evangelicals have promoted tourism to Israel; they have spoken out in favor of the defense of Israel against external aggression since its founding; they have allowed the use of their names to help Jews press for social justice in the Soviet Union; and they have helped those Jews who have wanted to emigrate to Israel from Russia. In all this there remains a fuzziness that needs to be cleared up.

Not a few evangelicals confuse the political state of Israel with spiritual Israel and in so doing lose sight of one important fact: both in Israel and around the world, most Jews do not recognize Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Therefore the political state of Israel cannot be equated with spiritual Israel. We hope and pray that many Israelis will come to know Jesus as their Messiah, a hope signaled by the promise of Paul in Romans that the day is coming when multitudes of Israel will be saved.

The same point can be made another way. Evangelicals may love their Jewish friends and support Jewish causes without suggesting that they regard Judaism as a religion sufficient for salvation. This position is obviously a source of friction. Jews object strongly when evangelicals “proselytize” among their company. But for evangelicals to refrain from sharing the Good News with all men, including Jews, would be inconsistent with their faith. Our Jewish friends must live with our conviction, even as we recognize their right to try to make converts from among Gentiles. If evangelical-Jewish relations are to prosper, they and we must acknowledge the right of each group to make voluntary converts from among the followers of the other.

Touchier yet is the whole problem of anti-Semitism. At the heart of the monstrous wickedness that has been practiced against Jews lies a misunderstanding about the role of the Jews in the crucifixion of Jesus. But from the Christian standpoint, the New Testament is maligned when anyone alleges that the gospel writers were wrong in saying that some of the Jews in Jesus’ day were involved in his execution. In Face to Face, published by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, a statement appears that is wholly offensive to evangelicals. James W. Parkes, a Church of England clergyman, says:

“The modern scholar has no difficulty in distinguishing between the preaching of Jesus and the contemporary picture of the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel of Mark, from the sweeping and preposterous generalizations attributed to Jesus in the infamous chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew, or the still more absurd statement in the Fourth Gospel that, almost before Jesus had opened his mouth, ‘the Jews’ sought to kill him (John 5:16–18). But for the church, the Scriptures, whether those of the Jews, or those belonging to the church itself, were the infallible ‘Word of God’ ” (Face to Face: An Interreligious Bulletin, Summer-Fall, 1976, page 4).

Let it be said that some of the Jews in Jesus’ day did play a role in his death; let it be added that Gentiles also had a role in his death. And let it be shouted from the housetops that no one should blame today’s Jews and Gentiles for what their forebears did. Evangelicals are deeply troubled when the New Testament, which testifies authoritatively to the One on whom their faith is founded, is denigrated. They are equally troubled when it is misused as an excuse for anti-Semitism.

With the approach of the Easter season, which has in it days that are as important to Jews as to Christians, we should not forget each other. Nor should we Christians allow ourselves to forget that the psalmist urges us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. There is need for even more cooperation between evangelicals and Jews at a time when we sense the possibility of a resurgence of anti-Semitism and when the future of the state of Israel is in doubt. Evangelical cooperation with Jews should never be based upon a demand, implied or expressed, that Jews surrender views they hold dear. But evangelicals do expect their Jewish friends to accord them the same right, and not to denigrate the New Testament. The Jews need to realize that it is the New Testament that provides the basis for evangelicals’ concern for them and for their cause.

Controversy Has Its Price

Anita Bryant is a Christian working in the rough-and-tumble world of entertainment. Her face is known wherever there is a television screen in America.

While the Florida-based entertainer has made no secret of her Christian faith, she was considered a pleasant, uncontroversial personality until this year. But when her beliefs led her to take a stand on a public issue, she apparently committed the unpardonable sin: she became controversial. A firm that was about to produce a television series in which she would star notified her that the show was being canceled because of “extensive national publicity arising from the controversial political activities” in which she was involved.

In today’s topsy-turvey society this Christian is being penalized for her stand against evil, specifically the sin of hom*osexual behavior. As a citizen of Dade County, she led a campaign against a county ordinance that would have the effect of encouraging hom*osexuals to “come out” into the open. Supporters of the ordinance put the pressure on commercial sponsors and entertainment industry figures to hurt her economically.

Anita Bryant has lost a skirmish, but the war is far from over. As more Christians are willing to apply their faith (and perhaps become controversial), there will be more victories for right instead of wrong.

Herman Dooyeweerd

When Herman Dooyeweerd died February 12 in his native Amsterdam, the evangelical world lost one of its giants of thought. He spent forty of his eighty-two years (from 1926 until his retirement in 1965) teaching legal philosophy at the Free University, the institution founded in 1880 by Abraham Kuyper to provide the intellectual leadership of a resurgent reformed Protestantism. Dooyeweerd became known as the cofounder, with his brother-in-law Dirk Vollenhoven, of the philosophical system known as the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. It was one of the major intellectual efforts of twentieth-century orthodox Protestantism.

In North America, Dooyeweerd was known chiefly as the author of A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1953–58), which is his most outstanding but also his most obscure work. In these four volumes he presents a detailed Christian philosophy, based on the assumptions that religion is the human condition and that human reason is therefore inescapably imbedded in religion and because of sin is in need of divine revelation to understand the nature of man, the world, and society. His profound theoretical reflections were an attempt to give a philosophically and biblically responsible explanation of reality as creation, and because of sin the object of Christ’s redemptive acts in his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Such a philosophical endeavor is at odds with the spirit of the modern age; hence in many ways Dooyeweerd led a lonely intellectual life. Excommunication by the secular philosophical schools, however, burdened him less than the misunderstanding about his work within the orthodox Protestant world, first within the Free University itself and increasingly so in the English-speaking world. Much of what he considered misunderstanding was over his approach to the Bible. Even the most appreciative of his critics mentioned his extremely vague way of speaking about God’s written revelation. In response he insisted that he was not a theologian, and his defenders pointed out that some English translation of his work did not accurately convey his position on the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

Perhaps a more persistent struggle with his numerous and versatile publications in several disciplines besides philosophy—legal theory, political science, industrial economics, theory of history, and sociology—will in the future help to show Dooyeweerd’s alternative to secular, behavioralist trends in the modern university. The evangelical intelligentsia owes him a great debt.

Avoiding Sin Of All Kinds

There are Christians who, in effect, define righteousness by what they shun. They keep away from certain foods and drinks, from certain people, from certain places.

There certainly are occasions when Christians do well to keep their distance, but our Lord’s emphasis was against that way of defining unrighteousness. He stressed one’s internal attitude, regardless of the external surroundings: “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:20–22).

It is convenient to focus on the sins of others; this keeps the spotlight away from oneself. And it is convenient to understand sin in terms of actions that can be physically avoided; one can thereby avoid disturbing thoughts about attitudes such as coveting, envy, and pride, which our Lord includes on his list of “evil things” right along with theft, murder, and adultery.

God everywhere shows a lot of concern about sin, and so should we. But it is the nature of sin to deceive us, even when we think we’re being righteous. We must work at keeping our understandings and emphases in line with what God has revealed.

We announced in our February 18 issue that a new headquarters building had been purchased forCHRISTIANITY TODAYin the Chicago area. Readers’ reactions have ranged from congratulations to pointed questions. Some were sharply critical. We put some of these questions to the chairman of the magazine’s board, Dr. Harold J. Ockenga of Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

Question. You reported that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is in “the best financial shape of its history.” Why, then, is ownership of a building so important?

Answer. The publication has always had a very large annual subsidy. The board concluded a few years ago that we would be foolish to count on this lasting indefinitely. Therefore we set a goal: by 1980 we planned to be self-sufficient. This would require tight discipline and long-range plans. The board decided a building was a necessity, to build equity and reduce operating expenses.

Q. Couldn’t the magazine acquire property in the Washington area and remain financially viable there?

A. We tried. We looked at literally dozens of buildings and sites both in downtown Washington and in the suburbs. They were inordinately expensive. Land was about $200,000 an acre. We made a lower offer on one lot but were turned down.

This led to exploring possibilities in other cities. Chicago offered many advantages. It is centrally located. It has the greatest concentration of theological seminaries in the country. It has major publishing resources.

We intensively explored options near O’Hare Airport. We looked in Schaumburg, West Chicago, Geneva, Batavia, Downer’s Grove. Our executive committee reviewed the various options and found the building in Carol Stream was far superior to anything else available.

Q. Won’t your witness dissolve as you identify with small-town America? What will you do to prevent that?

A. Chicago is not small-town America. There is greater opportunity there for academic and theological exchange than anywhere in the country, with the possible exception of Boston. Almost all of our staff persons in Washington live in the suburbs now. Their personal surroundings will change very little.

Q. You will be near Wheaton. How can you move there in light of the Lausanne Covenant’s affirmation of the need to break out of our ecclesiastical ghettos and to permeate society? Aren’t you retreating into an evangelical ivory tower? Isn’t this departure from the centers of influence inconsistent with Christ’s call to be salt and light in the world?

A. Certainly not. Your questions presuppose we have an active ministry in Washington. We were never set up for that. Our constituency is international, and we must be vigorous economically and theologically. In many ways, Chicago is a superior place to publish a magazine.

Q. Evangelicals have counted on Christianity Today to provide an on-the-spot Christian perspective in Washington. Where will they turn now?

A. We will maintain just as active an interpretive reporting on the capital, with a representative there for in-depth interviews. This has always been a relatively small aspect of our publication—ours is a national and global news perspective, basically religious, not political.

Q. Since when are Christians called upon to abandon the “ungodly” world in order to escape its evil influence? Aren’t we supposed to infect our world with our Gospel rather than being afraid it will infect us?

A. You are referring, of course, to some quotes by me in the secular press, but these were taken out of context. I was asked questions about the deteriorating moral conditions in Washington, and I made some observations—but I pointed out that was not why we were leaving. Certainly Chicago is very little better than Washington in this respect.

But from a business standpoint, Washington does represent problems. One has to compete with an extremely generous employer, the federal government. Nicholas von Hoffman wrote a few weeks ago in the Washington Post, “Last year the average income per household in the Washington area was $23,602 … for Chicago, $18,017.… Government employees are paid far more—probably in excess of 20 per cent—than people in the private sector.… This is an easy money town with high prices for inferior goods and services.… The excessive salaries paid directly to employees and indirectly through firms making their money off government contractors has bid up the price of everything.”

Several of our board members have expressed deep concern about the future impact of inflation. Many publishing leaders view the chance for survival of journals like Christianity Today as marginal. However, we are optimistic. We are determined to make this publication not only survive but grow.

At our first meetings in founding Christianity Today, we discussed California, Philadelphia, and other locations. We selected Washington, but several of the same board members who helped us select Washington twenty years ago voted this January for Chicago. We must be realists, for geography is not the vital issue. I am convinced we can achieve our original purposes in a very effective manner in the Chicago area. The progress we have made the last two years is remarkable, and I believe the years ahead will also represent increased impact. Our staff has never been more effective, and we believe the careful decisions of the board over the past several years will result in a very strong publication which will continue to achieve our original purposes.

Cross-cultural communication of the Gospel is an exercise in “translation.” In principle, of course, it is no more difficult to translate the Gospel into an Asian culture than into American culture (indeed, the biblical world view is perhaps more Oriental than Western). But the problem becomes more acute for Christians working in countries with strong indigenous religious traditions—traditions that have developed without any influence of the Gospel. Although India contains a great variety of cultural traditions, perhaps we may note some of the general characteristics of its Hindu background in order to illustrate some of the problems of Asian Christian art.

Formally, the pictorial art of India is an art of line rather than form. Its line twists and swirls with an exuberant vitality. The bodies of figures are lithe and graceful; their movement seems fresh and spontaneous. This casual movement is incorporated into a composition that seems crowded and confused to Western eyes. Western logic wonders what is the “point” of the picture; Indian art seems to lack a “logic” of design.

The fullness gives a clue to the spiritual basis of Indian art—life as a continuum. That is to say, its stories stretch forward and backward in time apparently without origin or goal. The Indian epics—again to a Western reader—seem to meander along in a random fashion. Mircea Eliade sees this as a primary difference between Western and Eastern historiography; the latter is not historic at all in the Western sense but has as its function merely to provide exemplary models.

At the same time the continuum of life extends to all reality, sticks and stones as well as gods and goddesses. Life is one. Man sees himself not as standing apart from the world but as involved in the same reality. The Spirit of the world animates man as well as nature. So all of life is spiritual; even pictures of the reincarnation of Buddha are more like visions of the reincarnation of Spirit: gentle and selfless.

The central symbol in Indian art (which corresponds to the Dragon in Chinese art) is the dance of Shiva. This familiar dancing figure with four arms represents the impulse of primal energy. The dancer is the god of life and destruction, Shiva, but it represents in its movement all of life. We are invited to join in the dance:

The Spirit playing,

The Spirit longing,

The Spirit with fancy creating all

Surrenders himself to the bliss of love.…

Amid the flowers of his creation, he lingers in a kiss.…

Blinded by their beauty, He rushes, He frolics, He dances, He whirls.…

The art object then is to be seen not as something separate but as a “symbol” that is to evoke relish (“rasa”) in the viewer. That is, art is to stimulate the physical/spiritual appetite which represents man’s quest for union with “Spirit.” As a result, much of Indian art is characterized by an approving eroticism and a blatant sensuousness.

The world view expressed in Indian art is obviously opposed to the Christian view of God and history. God has created the world as something apart from himself in which he works to bring about salvation. Life is found in creative involvement with the world, not in a mystical identification with it. The individual and his or her concrete development are valued for their own sake. Though of course Western art may include narrative elements, there is a point to the story (and not only a moral), and thus a focal point to the picture. The Indian tradition by contrast tends to disparage the individual and to look at nature—for all its vitality and movement—as essentially unchanging.

Christians living in India of course sense these contradictions and have often responded by rejecting Indian cultural values totally. But the question the Christian Indian artist needs to ask is whether stylistic elements necessarily express the world view that created them. In other words, can formal qualities of art—a lively line, a crowded composition—be separated from their whole cultural context? Put another way, how much of the culture can be “redeemed” and put to work in a Christian context?

Some would say that Indian culture as it stands is suitable to express Christian truth. For example, in this view the ideal male body, reserved in Hindu iconography for gods, is appropriate to portray the divinity of Christ. This has been the approach of one famous Christian artist, Alfred David Thomas.

But others have criticized this attitude. S. S. Bundellu says: “If such pictures should get into Christian literature, the Hindus would think that Christianity is nothing else than another sect of Hinduism.” His own “Ten Virgins” shows the use he would make of his Indian heritage. The soft twisting line seems to dance along with the figures, reinforcing the confusion below and the quiet order of the prepared virgins above. Although the movement is continuous across the picture, the impact (one could say the “point”) of the parable is “translated” into pictorial elements. Hand gestures, so important in Indian art, here reinforce the movement of the whole. The crowded composition and the lively filled space mark it as distinctly Indian. It is interesting, however, that Bundellu has chosen to interpret a parable where the narrative need not “focus” but can suggest.

Angelo da Fonseca has drawn even more freely on his Indian heritage. In his “Last Supper” he uses a heavier line but one that expresses some of the same vitality. The regular rhythm of the figures directs the eye to Christ, who holds up the cup. We focus on the central figure; the picture is an obvious commemoration of this solemn moment of time. Certainly this artist has done much to realize his goal: “that we shall learn to treasure our birthright and welcome it into our homes.”

From this distance of course we cannot judge how successful these translations are; that must be done finally by Indian Christians themselves. But we can take the attempts as an encouragement to all of us. For being a Christian in a particular culture is a challenge not only for missionaries but for every Christian. It is not an option. Even if we wanted to, we could not escape giving expression to the cultures that formed us. But our cultures need to be reinterpreted in the light of God’s word.

On the one hand, our dance is before the Lord. He is watching us. So what we do has a focus and a meaning; it is decisive. On the other hand, God has marked history with his steps—exodus, Calvary, Pentecost, and the hope of his return. So we watch him. Here too is a focus on real events. So for the Christian life is found not in escaping but in remembering, and his art will serve this goal.

William A. Dyrness is professor of theology at Asian Theological Seminary, Manila, the Philippines.