Page 5782 – Christianity Today (2024)

Both believers and unbelievers show signs of a need for great biblical preaching. Among believers the need manifests itself in, among other things, the proliferation of home Bible studies and the large sales of religious books. Unbelievers reveal the need in their frantic pursuit of personal fulfillment and in disillusionment with much of modern life, including traditional forms of religion. Yet this is a time also when preaching has fallen from its formerly impregnable position in church life. In recent years, the majority of sermons (even in conservative pulpits) have failed to interest or challenge their hearers, and even the very word “preaching” has taken on a negative tone.

If preaching really is outmoded, as many of its detractors affirm, then current opinion should not trouble the preachers of the Gospel; ministers should surrender their preaching ministry and take up some other worthwhile pursuits. But if this is not true—if preaching is still the primary means under God’s grace by which men and women are won to faith in Jesus Christ and are built up into the fullness of Christ’s stature—then the current trends should trouble them and they should look diligently for the causes of the decline in good preaching and for a cure.

The Authority Of Scripture

What makes preaching the kind of proclamation that God intended it to be? What is required of the minister? Clearly the first and essential requirement is a joyful and total commitment to the absolute authority of God’s written revelation. There has never been a great expository preacher who has not held this high conviction; there have been pulpiteers who have not, but never expositors. Since belief in the Scriptures as the infallible and authoritative Word of God has declined in the life of the Church generally, it is not surprising that the eloquence and power of the proclamation of this Word have diminished also.

What is the result? It is well put in this description of a panel discussion involving a rabbi, a priest, and a Protestant minister. The rabbi stood up and said, “I speak according to the law of Moses.” The priest said, “I speak according to the Church.” The clergyman rose to his feet and said, “It seems to me.…”

This is an entirely abnormal situation. From the beginning of the Christian Church until well into the eighteenth century, the vast majority of Christians of all denominations, even heretics, acknowledged that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are uniquely the Word of God. In these books God speaks to men. And because God speaks to men in Scripture—as he does in the same way nowhere else—all who claimed to be Christians recognized the Bible as the divine authority binding upon all men, a body of objective truth that transcends subjective understanding. In these books God’s saving acts in history are made known to men so that men can believe. And the events of that history are divinely interpreted so that men can understand the Gospel and respond to it intelligently both in thought and in action. The Bible is the written Word of God, therefore it is authoritative and infallible. This was earnestly believed and became the basis for biblical preaching.

It was the glory of the Church that in the first sixteen or seventeen centuries all Christians everywhere, despite their differences of opinion on theology or on questions of church order, showed at least a mental allegiance to the Bible as the supreme authority for the Christian in all matters. It might have been neglected. There might have been disagreements about what is teaches. It might even have been contradicted. But it was still the Word of God. It was the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

Unfortunately, in the post-Reformation period the orthodox view of Scripture came under increasingly devastating attacks. In 1546 the Roman Catholic Church, already weakened by centuries of appealing to the Fathers rather than to the Scripture in its defense of doctrine and in its violent reaction to the Protestant Reformation, officially placed the tradition of the church alongside Scripture as an equally valid form and source of Christian doctrine. The full significance of this decision was doubtlessly overlooked at the time of the Council of Trent. But it was monumental. And the act had tragic consequences for the church of Rome, as seen in the continuing development of debilitating doctrines such as Mariology and the veneration of the saints.

The Protestant Church, as the result of its heritage and its sharp polemic against Catholicism, held on longer—for two hundred years. But in the eighteenth century and even more in the nineteenth, a critical appraisal of the Scriptures, backed by a naturalistic rationalism, succeeded in dislodging the Bible from the place it had previously held. For the Church of the age of rationalism, the Bible became man’s word about God rather than God’s word about man. And when men rejected the unique, divine character of the Bible, they rejected its authority also.

The Catholic Church weakened the orthodox view of the Bible by exalting human traditions to the stature of Scripture. The Protestant Church weakened the orthodox view of Scripture by lowering the Bible to the level of traditions. The differences are great, but the results were similar. In both cases the unique character of Scripture was lost, its divine authority was forfeited, and the function of the Bible as the reforming voice of God within the Church was forgotten.

Fortunately, neither position is tenable. And so, the confusion that haunts today’s religious scene is an opportunity for all who believe the Word. The Protestant Church is finding that without a valid basis for religious authority, theology withers and the Church becomes increasingly powerless to preach the Gospel. The Roman communion is discovering that although two sources of authority are better than none, Scripture and tradition will often conflict, and the deep human preference for traditions rather than Scripture inevitably shifts the balance of authority away from the written Word. In such a time a challenge emerges for those who, holding the orthodox view of Scripture, boldly exalt the Word as the revelation of the Father and proclaim it with power as the final arbiter of human thought and conduct.

Depth Of Doctrine

The second requirement for an effective pulpit ministry is a profound understanding of the doctrines contained in Scripture and a fearless proclamation of them. By these I mean not merely the so-called basic or evangelistic doctrines but all doctrines, particularly those having to do with the sovereignty and grace of God.

Paul exhorted the young man Timothy to preach sound doctrine, that is, to preach all those themes that Paul had taught him. He wrote, “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be diligent in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:1, 2). Elsewhere in the same letter he says, “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me” (1:13). And again, “The things that thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2:2). In First Timothy, Paul declares, “If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, unto which thou hast attained” (4:6).

Are these weighty exhortations being followed today? Generally not, I fear. Pick up a Saturday paper listing sermon topics for the next day in some city. The crisis in the Mideast will be discussed. There will probably be sermons on the problems of race, the economy, Sino-American relations, and other current matters. Many ministers will be expounding on some biblical story. Many will be using a text in order to bring an essay on ethics. But where in this long list of topics are the titles of those expositional sermons that set forth the themes of God’s sovereignty in all human affairs, his grace to the undeserving, his love, his hatred of sin, the nature and specific object of the atonement, irresistible grace, the keeping power of God, repentance, forgiveness, God’s plan for the ages, the plans and ultimate defeat of Satan, the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so on? There are not even many serious attempts to do this in the context of exegetical preaching in which a certain part of the Bible is preached on over a period of time.

“Current” themes should be preached on and will be preached on as the result of good doctrinal and exegetical preaching. The point is that it is not these themes but rather the great themes of the Scriptures that touch men’s lives, convert them, fill the churches, and satisfy the hungering soul.

I am told that the doctrines of grace cannot be preached today, that such teaching will drive listeners away. That may be. At any rate, I am sure that at least one of these things will happen. Either these truths will drive the people away, or the people will drive the minister away, or there will be a great awakening, as there has been at many different points in church history.

Some ask, “Where is revival today?”

I reply, “Where are the faithful teachers of the whole counsels of the Word of God?” Let the angry God be proclaimed, as well as the God of Love, and men’s hearts will be stirred to repentance. Let the sovereign God be proclaimed, and some will bow before him. They have done it before. They will do it again. Preach doctrine, and many will, out of a true sense of need, flee to the Saviour.

The Devotional Life

The third requirement for power in preaching is a personal closeness to God expressed in the devotional life. There was a time when it could be assumed that the preacher observed set times for prayer and Bible study. The need for the devotional life was taught in the seminaries, and it was practiced in the manse and study. Today this has changed. In a recent survey of a theological college in the United States 93 per cent of the students preparing for the ministry confessed, “I have no devotional life.” Without this communion with God, preaching lacks power and will inevitably be despised.

If power in the preaching of the Gospel came from human ability, there might be shortcuts to success and the devotional life could be discarded. However, since the power comes from God, the preacher’s pursuit of God is essential. Knowledge and meticulous preparation will never be enough. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit there will be no power, and even the most eloquent preaching will be ineffective.

No wonder, then, that Paul adds to his exhortations to pursue sound doctrine such words as these: “Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness” (1 Tim. 6:11); “flee also youthful lusts” (2 Tim. 2:22); “let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). Or, as the author of Hebrews also writes, “Follow … holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

The Love Of Christ

Fourth, if we are to be effective in our preaching ministry our words, works, and attitudes must all be characterized by love. Nothing else wins men. We may be orthodox; our teaching may be filled with doctrine; indeed, we may have “the gift of prophecy, and understanding all mysteries, and all knowledge, and … have all faith so that (we could) remove mountains”—but without love all this will profit us nothing (1 Cor. 13:2).

When E. Stanley Jones was in India years ago and met Mahatma Gandhi, Jones asked him, “What must the Christians do to win India for the Lord Jesus Christ?” Gandhi was not Christian but he understood Christianity well, and he replied: “First, Christians must live like Jesus Christ. Second, they must not compromise their faith. Third, they must learn all they can about the non-Christian religions. And fourth, they must let everything they do be characterized by love.” I believe that Paul would have concurred heartily with Gandhi, and would have stressed the fourth of Gandhi’s prescriptions.

Toward A New Day In Preaching

What must we do to see a new day dawn in preaching? Let me summarize my suggestions.

First, we must recognize once again that the primary task of the Church and of the Christian minister is to preach the Word of God. There are other perfectly valid forms of ministry, and there are various ways of preaching the Word. My point is, however, that the preaching of the Word is primary and that, in a sense, only it is essential.

Second, we must firmly believe that the Bible is the inspired and therefore totally authoritative Word of God. If any minister does not believe this, I strongly urge him to seek a form of ministry other than preaching. He can teach. He can counsel. He can administer programs. But he ought not to preach. Great preaching, true preaching, comes from an awareness that in this Book God Almighty speaks, and by means of it does a transforming work in the lives of men and women.

Third, in our preaching we must resist the temptation to moralize on the biblical stories or, worse yet, extrapolate from them in order to deal on an entirely different level with “real” events of our world. In Scripture we are dealing with facts. Treat them as facts. Treat the biblical people as real people. And then proclaim that the same God who dealt with the biblical characters in such and such a way will deal in similar ways with us also.

Fourth, let us preach the great doctrines of Scripture and not withhold them in the mistaken notion that they are too deep or too “theological” for our people. This will require diligent study coupled with intellectual and spiritual growth on the part of the minister.

Fifth, we must be certain of our own relationship to Jesus Christ and, if necessary, take the required steps to rekindle the altar of our devotional life.

Finally, we must be aware of the effect of our own example upon the next generation of ministers, all of whom are now sitting in our pews. I am convinced that under God nothing so moves young men into the ministry as the example of an effective and God-glorifying ministry on the part of an older preacher. We have been so stimulated ourselves in many instances. This should now happen again and again through you as God uses you to influence others in preparation for a better day.

The place of preaching has declined, it is true. But this is a day of new and unparalleled opportunities. They can be seized as those who know the Word seek to confront the weak and conflicting ideologies of our age by the eternally valid and dynamic Word of God.

Seventy-five years ago, on December 23, 1899, newspapers across North America were filled with stories of a man whose death the day before marked the end of an era in American Christianity. Lay evangelist Dwight L. Moody had for a quarter of a century stirred audiences of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. Life had hardly left his huge frame before publishers were feverishly vying for biographies of the man who was eulogized as “the great evangelist of the nineteenth century” and even the “world’s greatest evangelist.” Fourteen biographies appeared within twelve months of his death!

Within a very few years eulogy turned into controversy as various persons and institutions claimed to be the heirs to Moody’s mantle. An interesting sidelight of the modernist-fundamentalist debate in the 1920s can be partially traced in the pages of the Christian Century and the Moody Bible Institute Monthly as they debated whether Moody’s sympathies would have been with the modernists or the fundamentalists.

From our perspective seventy-five years after his death both the eulogies and the controversies seem to be uncritical and overdrawn, but this should not obscure the significance that Moody had for both British and American Christianity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, historians have recently begun to take another look at the man who Martin E. Marty has said “could plausibly have been called Mr. Revivalist and perhaps even Mr. Protestant” at a critical stage in American religious history. Having spent three years in detailed research in the life and sermons of D. L. Moody, I have not only been impressed with his significance for his own time but have also seen that certain themes emphasized and exemplified in his ministry need very much to be reiterated today. (Most of the following quotations from Moody may be found with documentation in a book compiled by Patricia Gundry and me, The Wit and Wisdom of D. L. Moody, Moody Press, 1974.)

Moody’s life itself was an example of a principle that he himself often emphasized: God can take what seems small and insignificant to the human eye and use it greatly if it is given over completely to him. Moody declared:

It will be found that more has been done by people of one talent than by those who have many. If each one with one talent would wake up to realize his responsibility, what a work would be done—to wake up and say, “Here am I, use me to do the work Thou hast for me to do”.… Look at the widow’s two mites—her all; look at Mary’s precious box of ointment. Empires have come and gone since then and are no more heard of, but her name has come through the ages with the sweet savour of her loving service.

Moody’s early years gave no indication of the impact he was to have later, and his natural endowments and circ*mstances offered no such promise. It is thought that he had no more than a fifth-or sixth-grade education, and the quality of even that is suspect. His widowed mother struggled to keep the family together, and apparently there was little religious training in the home. When young Moody left his Northfield, Massachusetts, home for Boston in 1854 and attended his first Sunday-school class, he thumbed through Genesis looking for the Gospel of John.

Moody’s Sunday-school teacher shortly thereafter led him to Christ, but when the young convert presented himself to the membership committee of the Mount Vernon Congregational Church his application was deferred because of his utter ignorance of Christian teaching. His Sunday-school teacher, Edward Kimball, was on that committee and years later testified that he had seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than Moody’s and that the committee had seldom had applicants who seemed more unlikely to fill any sphere of public or extended usefulness. And yet Moody was drawn into evangelical Christian circles in Boston and later in Chicago, eventually becoming a leader in the YMCA and in the Sunday-school movement. He began to read and to educate himself by plying Christian ministers and teachers with questions whenever he found himself in their presence.

By the late 1860s Moody was widely sought after as a speaker, but it was not until the fall of 1873 that he and Ira Sankey began to capture the attention of the English-speaking world with their evangelistic meetings in England and Scotland. Their tour continued through Scotland, Ireland, and back into the great industrial cities of England till mid-1875. Large churches and public halls were packed with thousands, even at inconvenient hours and in bitter cold, to hear the two Yankees sing and preach the Gospel. They returned to America as celebrities and made an evangelistic tour of large cities here between 1875 and 1878.

Although these years were the high-water mark of Moody’s ministry, till the end of the century he normally attracted thousands whenever he preached and captured front-page headlines wherever he went. Verbatim accounts of his sermons appeared in newspapers for a quarter of a century, and scores of books reprinting the sermons were published. And his impact went far beyond this. He started a Sunday school that developed into one of America’s great churches, established three schools, opened a summer Bible conference, and exerted his influence in countless other ways. Although historians disagree in their estimates of Moody, there can be no contesting the fact that no religious leader of his time had greater public visibility or impact.

How do we account for this? While Moody did have natural leadership qualities and developed into a forceful speaker, his limited training and abilities gave little hint in his early life of his future achievements! His ministry is an example of the principle that God can take what seems to be small and insignificant and use it greatly if it is given over completely to him. In 1867 Moody heard Henry Varley say, “The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to him.” Moody determined to be that man.

In 1871 he experienced a spiritual crisis in which he was driven to give up selfish ambition and submit himself to the Spirit’s power and control. Shortly thereafter came his sudden rise to fame as an evangelist. In view of his own commitment to God, it is not surprising that at the beginning of his meetings he would warn Christians, “It is not our strength we want.” “It is not our work to make them believe. That is the work of the Spirit. Our work is to give them the Word of God.” “I cannot convert men; I can only proclaim the Gospel.”

Moody lived and preached consecration to God and reliance upon him, but he also believed that God held human beings responsible to do their best, using their energies wisely for him. Moody said:

I want to add another word to “consecrate,” and that is “concentrate.” We are living in an intense age. The trouble with a great many men is that they spread themselves out over too much ground. They fail in everything. If they would only put their life into one channel, and keep in it, they would accomplish something. They make no impression, because they do a little work here and a little work there. They spread themselves out so thin they make no impression at all. Lay yourselves on the altar of God, and then concentrate on some one work.

“Many people are working and working, like children on a rocking horse,” he said; “it is a beautiful motion, but there is no progress.”

Today we are devotees of the cult of bigness and success. We can relearn from Moody that what seems small and unpromising can become very effective when God is in it.

One cannot study the life and sermons of D. L. Moody very long without being forcefully reminded of another basic Christian tenet: God wants his people to be real. Two insidious tendencies threaten the evangelical cause in our own day, the thin veneer of pretended piety and the false image often projected for public-relations purposes. What a tragedy when decisions are made on the basis of image more than on the basis of conviction! Although Moody understood the value of advertising, he did not project a false image, and he pointedly rejected anything that smelled of sanctimony. He was not a sensationalist in either his programming or his preaching. Even those who were not especially sympathetic to his message were impressed with his evident genuineness, as are many recent scholars who have studied his career.

He was free of pretensions and hypocrisy and had a realistic view of himself. He knew that he was nothing more than simply “Mr. Moody.”

He spoke often against what he called “religious cant,” by which he meant something akin to religious pretension. Long public prayers were especially irksome to him because they seemed to be showy. “Some men’s prayers need to be cut short at both ends and set on fire in the middle,” he would warn. “A man who prays much in private will make short prayers in public.” Moody said:

Any place where God is is holy, and this putting on another air and a sanctimonious look when we come into the house of God and laying it aside when we go out, thinking that this is going to be acceptable to God, is all wrong. Every place ought to be holy to a true child of God.

“We may sing our hymns and psalms, and offer prayers, but they will be an abomination to God, unless we are willing to be thoroughly straightforward in our daily life.” Repeatedly he would say words to this effect:

What we want is to be real. Let us not appear to be more than we are. Don’t let us put on any cant, any assumed humility, but let us be real men and women, and if we profess to be what we are not, God knows all about us. God hates a sham.

Moody not only said it; he lived it!

Some of Moody’s most eloquent statements were on a theme for which he carried a burden throughout his career: There is a unity that binds all true Christians together for work and fellowship. John Pollock has called Moody the “grandfather of ecumenism.” That is reasonable if one remembers that Moody’s ecumenism was founded on an evangelical understanding of the Gospel and basic Christian doctrine. Nineteenth-century evangelicals were not noteworthy for their sense of Christian unity. Petty denominational interests and doctrinal controversy did anything but bring them together. And yet Moody, while recognizing the legitimacy of denominational concerns, succeeded in placing them in proper perspective by emphasizing the centrality of the gospel message: ruin by the fall, redemption by the blood, regeneration by the Spirit. By focusing on this he was able to galvanize British and American Christians of widely divergent theological traditions into fellowshiping and working units. Speaking of the English ecclesiastical scene he suggested:

Suppose Paul and Cephas were to come down to us now, they would hear at once about our Churchmen and Dissenters. “A Dissenter!” says Paul, “what is that?” “We have the Church of England, and there are those who dissent from the Church.” “Oh, indeed! Are there two classes of Christians here, then?” “I am sorry to say there are a good many more divisions. The Dissenters themselves are split up. There are the Wesleyans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Independents, and so on; even these are all divided up.” “Is it possible,” says Paul, “that there are so many divisions?” “Yes: the Church of England is pretty well divided itself. There is the Broad Church, the High Church, the Low Church, and the High-Lows. Then there is the Lutheran Church; and away in Russia they have the Greek Church, and so on.” I declare I do not know what Paul and Cephas would think if they came back to the world; they would find a strange state of things. It is one of the most humiliating things in the present day to see how God’s family is divided up. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ the burden of our hearts will be that God may bring us closer together, so that we may love one another and rise above all party feeling.

Typically, Moody would warn believers in cities where he ministered:

Talk not of this sect and that sect, of this party and that party, but solely and exclusively of the great comprehensive cause of Christ.… In this ideal brotherhood there should be one faith, one mind, one spirit, and in this city let us starve it out for a season, to actualize this glorious truth.… Oh that God may so fill us with His love, and the love of souls, that no thought of minor sectarian parties can come in; that there may be no room for them in our atmosphere whatever; and that the Spirit of God may give us one mind and one spirit to glorify His holy name.

One of the more divisive issues among evangelicals of Moody’s day was eschatology. Premillennial schemes of interpretation were rising in popularity, but by the 1890s the premillennialists were finding their own ranks rent by controversy. A premillennialist himself, Moody nevertheless warned, “Don’t criticize if our watches don’t agree about the time we know he is coming.” He even extended the olive branch to post-millennialists and said, “We will not have division.” The evangelical climate today suggests that many of us still need to take these words to heart.

Moody’s concern for Christian unity points to another theme that pervaded his preaching from beginning to end: God is love, and love is the mark of God’s people. Moody’s emphasis on the love of God rather than the terrors of hell was a departure from what had been characteristic in American revivals and evangelism. While he would occasionally affirm his orthodoxy by stating his belief in the wrath of God and the existence of hell, it was more typical for him to say:

A great many people say I don’t preach up the terrors of religion. I don’t want to—don’t want to scare men into the kingdom of God. I don’t believe in preaching that way.… If I wanted to scare men into Heaven, I would just hold the terrors of hell over their heads and say, “Go right in.” But that is not the way to win men. They don’t have any slaves in Heaven; they are all sons, and they must accept salvation voluntarily.

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Sons would be drawn to God by love, not fear; fear would only produce slaves. “If I could only make people believe God loves them, what a rush we would see for the Kingdom of God.”

You ask me why God loves. You might as well ask me why the sun shines. It can’t help shining, and neither can He help loving, because He is love Himself, and any one that says He is not love does not know anything about love. If we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts we will show it in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the earth proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say or do.

What was true of God was to be true of God’s people. “If you go through the world with love in your heart, you will make the world love you; and love is the badge that Christ gave His disciples.” “The test of religion is not religiousness, but love.” “The man that hasn’t any love in his religion, I don’t want it; it is human. The man that hasn’t any love in his creed may let it go to the winds: I don’t want it.” Similarly, work that did not spring from love was of no value. “I am tired of the word duty,” Moody declared, “tired of hearing duty, duty, duty.” “God hates the great things in which love is not the motive power; but He delights in the little things that are prompted by a feeling of love.” “There is no use working without love. A doctor, a lawyer, may do good work without love, but God’s work cannot be done without love.”

Moody was painfully aware of the Church’s inconsistency in not holding to the necessity of love. He observed:

If love don’t prompt all work, all work is for naught. If a man in the church ain’t sound in his faith, we draw our ecclesiastical sword and cut his head right off; but he may not be sound in love, yet we do nothing in his case. The great want in our churches is the want of love in them.

If D. L. Moody were to look at the church today, seventy-five years later, would he still find this “great want”?

Truth, though it may long be submerged, tends to surface again. We are witnessing now the recovery of the sacred, of transcendence, under the impact not of any divine disclosure but of secular events.

During the era of “paperback theologies” in the sixties, some of us were tempted to wonder whether secularity had not entrenched itself to the point that “sacred” would shortly be a meaningless category. It is perhaps ironic that a theologian who, scarcely a decade ago, declared that the term “God” was dead and who implored an end to “God-talk” has in recent months called upon us to look for traces of transcendence. It does not reduce our feeling of surprise that Paul van Buren has so far reversed himself that he now encourages us to look in the secular for hints and traces of this kind.

It is noteworthy also that Volume IX of the series “New Theology” makes a place for the same theme, the quest for transcendence. Contributors to this volume seek for intimations of “the sacred” in the diverse experiences of peoples as they strive for “peoplehood” or group identity. Among the chapters, none is more direct in its thrust than that by Samuel E. Karff with the intriguing title: “Jewish Peoplehood—a Signal of Transcendence.” Rabbi Karff finds elements of “the sacred” in both religious (orthodox) and secular (liberal) Judaism, with each element reinforcing the conviction that God is actively at work in our world.

Such discoveries must upon occasion strive for recognition against the spirit of the times. For example, the secularist mood has no need for a “God who acts” in history, and may indeed find the very suggestions of such to be perverse. Yet some are perceiving in today’s events reinforcement of this thesis.

It is true that acknowledgment of the transcendent (we use the term in a broad sense to connote the presence and/or operation of that which is above man and human action) may lead to perplexities, and even to ironically inconsistent conclusions. Perhaps it may also seem that God’s actions appear at times to be bifocal and ambiguous. Far from producing despair, this fact should serve to challenge and to fascinate us.

One of the most recent examples of spiritual serendipity has been that of the rediscovery of the role of confession and of contrition as preconditions for forgiveness. This has surfaced in much of the discussion of President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. With an urgency seldom seen in religious journalism, a chorus of voices has insisted that only an advance public act of contrition would justify the granting of executive clemency.

An Associated Press article quoted several clergymen—Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic—who agreed that, in the words of George Cornell, the author of the article, “President Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon was not in keeping with the way forgiveness works in a religious sense.” Rabbi Robert Gordis is quoted as saying that President Ford’s “act does not meet the requisites of forgiveness in religious tradition.”

This is no doubt true of mainline Jewish tradition. It has unquestionably not been a point of insistence upon the part of many Protestant clergymen, whose affair with existentialist modes of thinking and with the neo-universalism of “theologies of acceptance” is a matter of record. It will be salutary in the extreme if Protestantism in general recovers the largely submerged message of repentance as a condition for acceptance with God.

It is by no means clear why many who oppose the presidential pardon (and the writer includes himself among those for whom the pardon of Mr. Nixon does raise genuine problems) are so insistent that draft evaders shall be accepted back into our national life without any required acts or gestures of contrition or restitution. True, some point to the difference between amnesty and pardon. But the distinction is merely technical—unless it be urged that deserters and draft resisters have violated no law.

A more moderate view at this point would be, it seems to this writer, to recognize deep ambiguities in all matters touching the relation of transgressor to law and justice. Whether or not the factor of Mr. Nixon’s health should be weighed heavily in any judgment here, certainly the elements of personal inconvenience and sacrifices for consceince’ sake should not be regarded lightly in the case of expatriates. Yet it seems reasonable that at least some gesture toward established order, such as is implied in the oath of allegiance, should be required.

Time’s essay entitled “The Theology of Forgiveness” (Sept. 23 issue) indicates the interest of the secular press in this question. There, as in segments of the religious press, the question of a double standard of justice was given prominence. Roger L. Shinn is quoted as observing rightly that “what bothers so many is that the demand for justice and punishment applies to the poor and the weak, and mercy applies to the powerful.”

While this point is well taken, we need to discount seriously the anguished and fanatical cries of some sentimentalists, that “equality before the law died on September 8, 1974.” Regretfully we must admit that inequities of this kind seem built into our American system of justice. To cite what may seem a minor example: when a boy playing ball in the street breaks a plate-glass window, he (or his father) pays for the damage. But so far as this writer has heard, no Ivy League student has been compelled to pay for windows broken as he and his peers “in service to a higher law” “trashed” entire streets.

The presidential pardon does indeed raise questions, but it is scarcely a sudden and unique instance of “exceptional” justice. If it appears to be a case of unreasonable softness, it is not the only such instance. And whether the demands of compassion were sufficient to justify it is a matter for continuing debate.

There remain yawning gaps in the information that the American people, long deceived and kept in the dark, have received about the cover-up in Washington. It is to be hoped that the presidential pardon does not prevent a full disclosure of Watergate’s turgid mysteries. Certainly as a people we deserve to have at least some of our national anguish relieved.

Meanwhile, may we not, as evangelicals rejoice that the message of repentance as an essential prerequisite for pardon is being rediscovered and re-emphasized? Should it not gratify us that this truth, so long obscured, is being given a new push from a secular direction?

Perhaps a paradigm for the view that evangelicals ought to have concerning the “theology of repentance” as it is emerging from secular considerations may be found in the New Testament. Why not, in the spirit of Philippians 1:18 and 19, rejoice that for whatever reason, repentance is again being preached?

On November 8 Virginia Bell, the widow of L. Nelson Bell, who was co-founder of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and its long-time executive editor, went to be with the Lord and with our dear friend Nelson. Her death followed his by less than a year and a half. Blessed indeed are the dead who die in the Lord. All of us who knew her can testify to her gracious spirit, her deep spiritual commitment, her guiding presence in the home, her influence on her children, and the mutual love she shared with her husband. Virginia had been confined to a wheel chair for several years and her sight was nearly gone from cataracts, but she lived above her infirmities. Now she has gone to the land of eternal life, where neither sickness, death, nor tears hold sway. A tribute written by her son appears on page 29 of this issue.

I am writing this note from the Near East, and in an upcoming issue I expect to report my observations on conditions here and the threat of an early war.

Buoyed by an agreement to accept one another’s baptism as the gateway to full membership in any one of the nine Protestant churches involved in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), elated delegates to the twelfth COCU Plenary in Cincinnati left town convinced they had inched a little closer toward a Church of Christ Uniting.

COCU enthusiasts yearn for the day when the 23 million members of their denominations* will “all be one” inside a superchurch—the shape of which is still to be defined. Because of earlier disagreement over structure proposals, the de facto merger plan is years behind its original planners’ schedule.

But if the “mutual recognition” of one another’s baptism is a high-water mark in the ecumenical movement—as COCU leaders proclaimed—it may be at the expense of unity among congregations within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) that practice “believer’s baptism” by immersion. Applicants for Disciples’ membership who were baptized as infants in other denominations and not immersed are required to be rebaptized. The other eight COCU churches practice infant baptism, and even for adults the usual mode is sprinkling or pouring.

“We have on our hands a considerable pastoral problem,” warned Professor Ronald E. Osborn, a Disciples delegate from Claremont, California. “Many of our congregations insist on immersion as a direct commandment of the Lord,” he said.

But delegates of the other eight communions seemed willing for the Disciples to pay the price of compromise. A statement in one of the COCU documents referring to the distinctions between infant and believer’s baptism noted: “This fact presses on eight of the churches the responsibility for assessing such a declaration as meaningful enough for them to make worthwhile the agony which one will face.”

Generally, churches of the eight other COCU denominations already accept one another’s baptized members with no requirement for rebaptism. But it was the “putting it in writing” that seemed to cheer the ecumenists. Methodists among the 250 delegates voted against the proposal, but only because it didn’t go far enough. They wanted a stronger statement calling for outright recognition of mutual membership. As it was, the approved document, “An Affirmation Toward the Mutual Recognition of Members,” was somewhat ambiguous. It said, in part:

Affirming our oneness in baptism does not abolish membership in a particular church and substitute a common membership in all particular Churches, nor does it mean plural simultaneous membership in several nor does it refer merely to the practice of transferring membership from one particular church to another.

Full effect of the COCU action must await formal approval by the respective denominations.

COCU still has a selling job to do at the congregational level, both leaders and delegates freely admitted. COCU’s new general secretary, Gerald F. Moede (pronounced May-dee), formerly a World Council of Churches executive, cautioned delegates with a line from cynical Nixon power brokers who often asked before making policy: “Will it play in Peoria?” Clergyman Harold A. Thomas, a United Presbyterian delegate from Fairway, Kansas, was even more blunt. “At the local level,” he said in a workshop session, “COCU is not alive. It hasn’t filtered down to where the ordinary person can say, ‘Hey, this concerns me.’”

To broaden its base of support among member churches, COCU is now attempting to penetrate the “middle judicatories”—dioceses, presbyteries, conferences, districts, synods, and the like. In the phraseology of COCU technicians, “it is important now for the ‘ownership’ of COCU to move outward from the national ecumenical offices and program agencies to the decision-making arenas of middle judicatories and their leaders.” COCU has decided, explained Moede, “not to alter the goal, but to affirm a new approach … to move from designing union from the top … to ‘living’ our way to union, especially by growing together at local and regional levels.”

COCU leaders also discussed “generating communities”—another new phrase in the COCU lexicon. Translated, it means local congregations that covenant to work and worship together; they will, it is hoped, produce a grass-roots model of togetherness that could be copied at the national level when the fullness of time comes for organic union.

Debated at length was whether COCU-sponsored generating communities should include representatives from at least one of the three black churches involved in COCU (the four existing generating communities are all white). Several black churchmen said all-white communities projected an image of racism and exclusiveness.

Black cleric U. Z. McKinnon of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Cincinnati noted that in some parts of the country there are no black churches. He said that under those conditions the only way to insure a black-white mix in the generating communities would be to resort to “ecclesiastical busing.”

The delegates finally adopted an amended motion stating that future COCU-initiated generating communities should include representatives from at least one of the three black denominations involved in COCU.

Professor Paul L. Lehmann of Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, aroused the ire of women delegates when he said that COCU should concentrate all its energies on eradicating institutional racism before moving to deal with sexism.

Episcopal delegate Cynthia Wedel, former president of the National Council of Churches, led the revolt. Charging that Lehmann was expressing the way men think—a linear way that does only one thing at a time—she persuaded the delegates to adopt a resolution setting up a task force on women. Its basic purpose will be to assemble and release materials related to women and the church.

Dr. Wedel also got in the last word by saying that women, unlike men, can keep in mind and work on a number of things at one time.

At least one major speech may jolt some COCU constituents. Dr. John H. Satterwhite, COCU’s associate general secretary (he and Dr. Moede were installed on opening night of the COCU sessions), in a talk entitled “Church Union for Justice and Liberation” suggested that church union is the first step toward solving all of society’s major problems. But, he said, “we may … find it necessary to give a place in our tragic historic circ*mstances to force in really making ‘human life more human.’”

He said that many church persons are “ready to enter upon the tactics of confrontation in order to provoke this nation and our world to recognize the seriousness of the demands for justice and liberation.…”

“I am not suggesting,” he said, “that our churches abstain from force and violence in seeking alternative strategies for justice and liberation out of fear of our lives.”

It was the sound of the sixties all over again.

BURNING THE BOX

A lot of churchgoers around the country are upset about this year’s spate of profanity and suggestive programming on television. Most of them grumble a bit and go on watching. Not everyone, though. Members of the 1,100-congregant Pennfield Church of the Nazarene in Battle Creek, Michigan, staged a Sunday-night television bonfire on the church parking lot after talks by Michigan evangelist Paul Wilde on “Who controls your mind?” At least eleven sets worth a total of about $1,400 were thrown into the fire.

Pastor Earl Burdick, who hasn’t owned a TV set for seven years, said that the action was a spontaneous one on the part of a few concerned people, and that now others want to get rid of their sets, too. The TV network news shows will cover the next burning.

“The programs are poisoning our children’s minds,” complained Mary Lou Bax, a Sunday-school teacher whose family destroyed two sets, one of them a $600 color model.

Another church member blew out the picture tube of his set with a shotgun before throwing the sin box into the flames.

Courtship In Question

Canadian Anglican opposition to the proposed merger with the United Church of Canada and the Church of Christ (Disciples) is surfacing in two influential quarters.

Several bishops have objected that the Plan of Union discards the traditional Anglican view of the office of a bishop. The protesting bishops were confirmed and hardened in their opposition on receiving comments on the Plan of Union from the international Anglican Consultative Committee. The committee reminded Canadian Anglicans that the church’s traditional view of the bishop conceived him to be a spiritual father and not merely an administrative officer.

In September, a second voice of dissent was heard. The national long-range planning committee of the Anglican Church issued a surprisingly blunt statement: “In the light of the hurt which has accompanied the development of the Plan of Union and that which we foresee will be caused by proceeding with it, we feel that the Anglican Church should be honest and forthright in saying to the other churches, in penitence, that we cannot go ahead with the Plan.”

The bishops’ apparent reluctance, the planning committee’s statement, and the utterances of other individual Anglicans and interest groups within the church are adding up to an Anglican rejection of the Plan of Union as it now stands.

LESLIE K. TARR

The Tide That Binds

Sorrow and joy were intermingled last month as evangelist Billy Graham conducted a ten-day crusade in the populous Tidewater region of Virginia. The sad note was the death on November 8 of his widely revered mother-in-law, Mrs. Virginia Myers Leftwich Bell. The happy part was the enthusiastic support given Graham and his team despite intensive criticism from separatists, most of them independent Baptists. Graham was so moved by the spirit of Tidewater Christians that he made a rare public commitment to return for another event during bicentennial year.

Mrs. Bell, widow of Dr. L. Nelson Bell, succumbed to a stroke. Graham immediately returned to his Montreat, North Carolina, home to be with his wife and to participate in a private graveside service and a public memorial service. Associate evangelist Grady Wilson preached in Graham’s place at one meeting. Graham returned the next day and spoke at the closing two services.

The crusade was divided into two parts to accommodate people on both sides of the waterway known as Hampton Roads. The first four services were held in the Hampton Coliseum, and two of them were relayed by closed circuit television to an arena in Norfolk’s new Scope convention and cultural complex. The remaining meetings took place at Scope and were televised back to Hampton. The two Tidewater areas, connected by a toll tunnel, are often considered distinct in a number of respects. Local churchmen said the crusade produced a spiritual tide that united the people of the two areas as few events have.

Average daily attendance at the twin crusades was more than 18,000, and 6,296 commitments to Christ were recorded.

The participation of military personnel was a notable point of the crusade. There are more than twenty major military installations and commands in the Tidewater region, including the naval base at Norfolk, which is said to be the largest in the world.

Among guest celebrities at the crusade was Navy secretary J. William Middendorf, who told of his conversion six years ago under the influence of Corrie Ten Boom. Middendorf was U. S. ambassador to Holland at the time. Others who spoke included Virginia governor Mills Godwin, Johnny and June Carter Cash, and Admiral Jeremiah Denton, a former prisoner of war in North Viet Nam.

There were also testimonies from students at the nearby College of William and Mary, after Harvard the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and like Harvard a school originally founded to propagate the Christian faith.

Several of the Tidewater services were videotaped and will appear on television in hundreds of places beginning early next year. A crusade official expressed hope that the meetings, which were held at the place where America was born, would contribute to the nation’s spiritual rebirth. The allusion was to the English settlers who landed in Virginia in 1607 to establish the first permanent colony in what was to become the United States of America.

Graham turned the other cheek to his separatist detractors. “We thank even those who felt they could not support the crusade,” he said. The evangelist asked the crowd not to criticize them.

Graham paid tribute to his mother-in-law when he returned from the funeral. Both she and Dr. Bell, the executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, who died last year, were born and reared in Virginia. They were high school sweethearts who played on the tennis team together and went on to become medical missionaries to China for twenty-five years. They are survived by three daughters and a son.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Bolivia In Time

Evangelist Luis Palau and his team got in three weeks of evangelistic meetings in Bolivia just in time. As they were leaving, a coup attempt took place, resulting in martial law and a ban on public gatherings.

Palau, an Argentine-born staffer of the California-based Overseas Crusades mission agency, described the meetings as some of the most fruitful of his career. They began in mid-October in the mining-district city of Oruro (elevation: 14,600 feet). Despite cold weather large crowds gathered for the nightly open-air meetings. Local radio stations carried some of the services live.

From Oruro, the team moved to the warmer lowland city of Santa Cruz. Heavy rains fell at times, but an average attendance of 5,000 was recorded at the stadium meetings. Some 3,000 decision cards were signed. Among the counselors were Catholic charismatics. Every participating church in Santa Cruz reported new converts in their services (one had sixty), and a new Assembly of God church was organized as a result.

The crusade series concluded in Cochabamba. Palau also appeared on television in La Paz, the capital. Local pastors and missionaries organized the meetings.

Accompanying Palau was Larry Ward of Food for the Hungry, who lined up relief programs with authorities. (Bolivia is South America’s poorest country, and many people go hungry.)

BRUNO R. FRIGOLI

SON OF BIG FLATROCK

Big Flatrock Christian Church of Rushville, Indiana, was recently the scene of commemorative services honoring the 140th anniversary of the birth of Knowles Shaw. Shaw, a Disciples of Christ singing evangelist and hymn-writer, preached his first sermon in the little church. He was born and buried nearby. In between, he preached across the country and wrote 119 hymns, among them “Bringing in the Sheaves,” one of the most popular hymns in the world. He was killed in 1878 in Texas in a train accident en route to an evangelistic service. Several of Shaw’s descendents and a number of Big Flatrock oldtimers were among those attending.

Religion In Transit

For the second year in a row a private, non-profit organization will sponsor the annual nativity scene in Washington, D. C. The American Christian Heritage Association took over sponsorship when an appeals court decided that government sponsorship was “excessive entanglement” in religion.

A new Lutheran Television holiday special, “The City That Forgot About Christmas,” will be aired nationally this month. It features Benji and Waldo, the popular animated boy and shaggy dog team who made their TV debut in 1970 in “Christmas Is” and appeared later in “Easter Is,” both produced by Lutheran Television, communications arm of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The shows have brought hundreds of thousands of responses.

Last summer Bible Presbyterian minister Carl McIntire nearly lost his 300-acre Cape Canaveral, Florida, complex for nonpayment. He won a reprieve until December 27, when a $1 million payment is due; the remainder of the $14.5 million mortgage will be due over the next seven years. The site includes McIntire’s Shelton College and a Bible conference facility that apparently will be secured by the $1 million even if the balance is defaulted. Shuford Mills, a North Carolina textiles firm, owns the complex.

Alaska has only two four-year colleges, the University of Alaska and the 428-student Alaska Methodist University in Anchorage. AMU will close in July barring a major financial windfall. The United Methodist Church has pumped $9.6 million into the school since its founding in 1958, but officials turned down a request in October for a $1 million loan. AMU trustees voted last month to try to sell the property and facilities to the state university.

The home-missions board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) terminated four important staff positions in an effort to cope with a budget crunch. Phased out: the associate executive secretary over women’s work, the director of worship programming, a social-concerns position, and the director of youth ministry. Other reorganization and program cutbacks were also announced.

Navigators executive Waldron Scott, 45, of Colorado has been appointed international administrator of World Evangelical Fellowship, WEF’s top international liaison post. Prime attention will be given to establishing new regional fellowships and nurturing existing ones.

Dr. Dow Kirkpatrick, 57, the embattled pastor of First Methodist Church in Evanston, Illinois, has resigned to work with an ecumenical project in Latin America under an arrangement with the United Methodist missions board. First’s membership has declined more than 2,000 to its present 1,200 since Kirkpatrick arrived in 1962. Last summer Bishop Paul Washburn stepped in as “chief pastor” during a dispute in which hundreds of members asked for Kirkpatrick’s ouster.

Every two yearsCHRISTIANITY TODAYreports the religious aspects of the national elections and publishes a census showing the religious lineup of the new Congress. This year’s census (right) was compiled by news assistant Deborah Miller.

Last month’s Democratic landslide at the polls resulted in few notable shifts in congressional religious-affiliation listings, according to CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S findings. Roman Catholic representation in the new Congress increased by eight for a total of 123, the most in the nation’s history. Jewish members increased by ten and the Unitarians by four, but Presbyterian representation decreased by thirteen. (Records over the years indicate that Catholics and Jews benefit in a Democratic year while Presbyterians take it on the chin.)

Disciples of Christ members of Congress decreased by four. The other major groups fluctuated by no more than two (Baptists gained two; Episcopalians, Mormons, and Eastern Orthodox remained the same; Methodists and Christian Scientists lost one each; and the United Church of Christ, Lutherans, Quakers, and Churches of Christ lost two each).

Two more clergymen were elected to Congress.

In a surprise upset, United Methodist minister Robert W. Edgar, 31, won against a Republican district attorney in suburban Philadelphia. It was his first venture into politics. A graduate of Drew seminary in Madison, New Jersey, and formerly pastor of a Methodist church in East Falls, Pennsylvania, he is the Protestant chaplain at Drexel University. He says his pastoral experience taught him how to organize volunteers and carry out projects, and, he notes, political speeches aren’t far removed from sermons. He doesn’t want to be characterized as liberal or conservative.

Democrat Robert J. Cornell of De Pere, Wisconsin, became the second Catholic priest elected to Congress. (Jesuit Robert F. Drinan, one of the first to telephone congratulations to Cornell, won reelection in a close race in Massachusetts.) Cornell, 54, a member of the Norbertine Order and a teacher and administrator at St. Norbert College, defeated incumbent Harold V. Froelich, a Lutheran. His main campaign issue was the national economy. It was his third try for the seat.

Ordained congressmen who were reelected include Democrat Andrew Young of Georgia (United Church of Christ), Republican John Buchanan of Alabama (Southern Baptist), and Democrat Delegate Walter Fauntroy of Washington, D. C. (Progressive National Baptist). Swept out by the Democratic tide was one-termer William H. Hudnut, a United Presbyterian pastor in Indianapolis.

Among active evangelical laymen who weren’t returned to the House of Representatives were Republican Wilmer Mizell of North Carolina (Christian and Missionary Alliance) and Republican Edward Young, a Southern Baptist. Young commuted on weekends to his home in Florence, South Carolina, to teach an adult Sunday-school class and conduct a weekly Bible-study program on radio. Republican Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, a Lutheran layman who made headlines two years ago when he was expelled by the Soviet Union for distributing Bibles, lost to a Methodist, Floyd J. Fithian.

Baptist William Jennings Bryan Dorn gave up his seat to run for governor in South Carolina but lost that race. Another loser was Republican John Dellenback, a Presbyterian elder of Medford, Oregon, active in the prayer-cell movement on Capitol Hill. He went to Congress in 1966.

In North Carolina, Republican incumbent Earl Ruth, 58, a Presbyterian, lost to W. C. “Bill” Hefner, 44, a Baptist in rural Concord who owns a radio station and promotes gospel music.

Democrat Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, a Methodist active in an independent charismatic church and one of the most vocal evangelical witnesses on Capitol Hill, is retiring from the Senate to head up a rescue mission of sorts for people in national leadership. His seat was won by Democrat John C. Culver, a United Presbyterian.

One of the big issues in church circles this year is the role of women, and it figured in the polls. None were elected to the Senate, but eighteen were elected to the House (fourteen Democrats and four Republicans), a gain of two over the current lineup. Women and blacks made big gains at the state level, with women winning 750 seats in state legislatures, an increase of 280. Theoretically, this will improve chances for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (thirty-three of thirty-eight states voting on it so far have favored it, but Nebraska and Tennessee legislatures voted to rescind approval in action that may end up in the courts).

New Jersey voters overwhelmingly—and surprisingly—defeated a proposal to allow casino gambling at seashore resorts. It was the first gambling proposition to be rejected in New Jersey in thirty-five years. Strong opposition came from a united front of Catholic and Protestant leaders. The religious coalition was co-chaired by Dr. Samuel Jeanes, pastor of an American Baptist church in Merchantville who heads up legislative affairs for the New Jersey Council of Churches, and Catholic Conference executive Edward J. Leadem of Trenton. The state’s Catholic bishops were among those denouncing the proposal.

Fifty-seven of Virginia’s 133 counties and cities voted on Sunday closing laws; twenty-nine voted to repeal them. Spokesman Ed Doerr of Americans United for Separation of Church and State commented afterward:

Defeats of Sunday closing laws are victories for religious freedom. The laws were clumsy and almost unenforceable and a source of irritation in many communities. They really didn’t do what the purpose of a Sunday closing law is anyway, which is to stimulate interest in Sunday as a day of worship and rest.

(Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that state’s so-called blue laws; the justices said the citizens do indeed need a day of rest and these laws help them get it.)

Virginia voters also rejected a measure permitting the state to make scholarship grants to students attending private and church-related colleges. Americans United had emphatically denounced the proposal.

Maryland voters turned down an indirect parochaid measure that would have provided $9.7 million yearly in textbooks, supplies, and transportation to private schools. Opposition was led by PEARL (Public Education and Religious Liberty), a Washington, D. C.-based coalition that has Americans United and a number of church groups as members. A similar proposal was defeated in 1972.

Local churches also led the way in a Cocoa Beach, Florida, referendum outlawing topless bathing and in Rush Springs, Oklahoma (population, 1,381), where all dancing in public was outlawed.

Other names cropped up in election stories around the country. Sister Clare Dunn, 39, a high school teacher in Arizona, became the first Catholic nun to win a state legislature seat. Her campaign was handled by other sisters in the St. Joseph of Carondolet order. Admitted lesbian Elaine Noble of Boston won a seat in the state legislature on the Gay Liberation ticket. But out in Nevada, Beverly Harrel lost in a bid for a state seat. The operator of a legal brothel, she issued a campign vow: “I’ll show them how to run an orderly house.” Democrat Wilbur Mills, an Arkansas Methodist, won his race despite misgivings of a lot of church people (including his pastor) over a widely publicized drinking incident involving an exotic dancer.

In Pennsylvania, insurance broker Stephen DePue, 42, a graduate of Philadelphia College of Bible and of Baptist Bible Seminary, got only a handful of votes in his bid for governor on the Constitutionalist ticket.

The election underscored a modern trend in American politics: by and large, a candidate’s religion—or lack of it—is no longer a campaign issue. For example, New York elected Democrat Hugh L. Carey, the first Roman Catholic governor since the days of Al Smith. His opponent, incumbent Malcolm Wilson, who moved up when Nelson Rockefeller became Vice President-designate, and both running mates were Catholics.

Overall, it was a big day for Catholics, Jews, blacks, and women—especially if they happened to be Democrats.

THE SECOND MILE

A Winborne, England, judge fined Elijah Edwards $84 for carrying fourteen passengers in his car. Three of them rode on the roof. “I was on a camping holiday with fourteen youngsters from a church group,” explained Edwards. “One car broke down and the kids were hungry so I took them all in my car. I didn’t know it was an offense.”

A FERTILE FIELD

Fertilizer isn’t the only thing that can help crops grow better in the fight against world hunger: prayer brings results too, according to communications teacher Gus Alexander of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Alexander says he conducted an experiment in which members of the spiritualist Church of the Golden Key in Dayton prayed for plots of soybeans. Soybeans in five of six experimental plots receiving the “prayer power” outweighed their counterparts in control plots, he claims. Pastor Noel Comely of Golden Key explains that the experiment “deals with the direct communication of energy, as a kind of nourishment.”

Other experimenters in recent years have reported similar findings. A Scottish group that grew enormous vegetables and flowers in rugged terrain attributed success to “communicating with the spirits that animate [the] plants.” Two Baltimore psychic healers reportedly increased the growth of some rye grass seedlings by 840 per cent when they began praying for the seedlings.

United Presbyterians: A Call For Overhaul

A generation ago the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was the world’s largest missionary organization. No longer. In recent years its overseas missionary personnel have decreased from a high of nearly 2,000 to a mere 486. Concerned church officials are grasping about for solutions.

Will they choose an evangelical one? The hope that they might drew 120 evangelical ministers, missionary workers, and lay persons to Chicago last month to restate the evangelical view of evangelism and call upon the denomination’s missions council to restructure its missionary enterprise. The document, entitled, “A Declaration and a Call,” was signed by most of those present. It declares: “We require nothing less than a reformation of missions theology and a corresponding alteration of missionary structures within our denomination.” Alterations focus on carving out of the present structure a separate foreign-missions board with responsibility for selecting and training missionaries and with authority to implement the UPC role in world evangelization. It would have a separate budget and would be able to solicit funds. A separate mission “order” within the UPC is seen as an alternative to the separate, independent board that some conservatives advocated.

The declaration denies that social action, political liberation, or mere moral reform are evangelism, though it recognizes Christian responsibility in these areas. It joins with the signers of the Lausanne Covenant (1974) in defining evangelism as “the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Savior and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God.” The statement also affirms a high view of Scripture, the lostness of man apart from Christ, and faith in Christ as the sole channel of salvation.

The consultation was called by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, an evangelical bloc within the three-million-member denomination.

Outpaced

Members of U. S. churches are giving more than ever to their churches but failing to keep pace with inflation, according to a National Council of Churches survey of forty-one Protestant bodies with 46 million members. Members of these churches contributed nearly $5 billion last year at a record-breaking per capita rate of $107.78 ($4.19 billion was for congregational expenses). While the giving rose by 7.7 per cent, however, the dollar declined 9.6 per cent in purchasing power.

Churches where tithing is stressed showed the highest rates of per capita giving. The Seventh-day Adventists led with $453.19.

In Canada, twenty-three denominations with 2.7 million members reported contributions of $196.7 million, about $150 million of it for congregational expenses, with a per capita rate of $71.70.

Bugging The Bishops

The Episcopal bishops have asked everybody to wait until the 1976 denominational convention before doing anything more about ordaining women to the Episcopal priesthood. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the issue may have to be thrashed out before then.

Last month Deacon Alison Cheek of Annandale, Virginia, became the first known woman to celebrate holy communion in an Episcopal church in the United States. The event took place at the Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D. C., a church known for its liberal and sometimes way-out ways. Father William Wendt, the pastor, noted in his sermon that he and his church were defying the orders of church authorities. He also read a letter from Washington bishop William F. Creighton. The bishop acknowledged the act of disobedience but said he would take no disciplinary action because to do so would not make “a positive contribution to the solution of the present dilemma.”

A member of the pastoral staff resigned in protest, and a fellow clergyman filed formal charges against Wendt for permitting “a person not lawfully authorized” to celebrate communion. A five-member board will study the charges to determine whether Creighton should proceed with a trial. Discipline can range from reprimand to defrocking.

Mrs. Cheek is one of eleven women deacons who were elevated to the priesthood in a rebel service conducted by four retired bishops in Philadelphia last summer. The action was later invalidated by the House of Bishops in an emergency meeting. Three more of the eleven say they will celebrate communion at Christ (Episcopal) Church in Oberlin, Ohio, this month.

In October Mrs. Cheek and two of the other women celebrated communion in an interdenominational service at the non-Episcopal Riverside Church in New York City. An offering of $672 received in the service was sent to Episcopal presiding bishop John M. Allin for the church’s hunger campaign but he returned it, citing reasons of conscience. An outcry ensued. Meanwhile, Allin transferred to the relief account $672 of funds available to him, and New York bishop Paul Moore quietly forwarded the original $672 to the hunger campaign, where it was accepted.

The United Church of Christ and other church bodies have indicated they accept the eleven ordinations as valid, straining ecumenical relations.

Diocesan standing committees in Ohio and Massachusetts each have approved a woman for ordination, which may lead to a showdown before 1976. One of the reasons the bishops gave for invalidating the Philadelphia consecration service was that diocesan standing committees were bypassed.

Baptists On The Issues

What issues are Southern Baptists talking about? A check of last month’s state meetings of Southern Baptist Convention churches showed that the charismatic movement, a proposed name change of the denomination, and the financial condition of SBC-related colleges rank among the most discussed. (The SBC’s 34,665 churches and 12.3 million members are divided into thirty-three state and regional conventions embracing all fifty states.)

Resolutions critical of the charismatic movement were adopted by messengers (delegates) in Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. SBC president Jaroy Weber himself spoke unfavorably of it at the Texas convention. Oklahoma messengers labeled it “a new extremism” that is “doctrinally dangerous.”

The Illinois and New York conventions called for a change in the SBC’s name to reflect a broader constituency (a denominational study committee is to report on the issue at the national convention), but Mississippi messengers went on record opposing any change.

Several state bodies noted the financial distress afflicting their colleges but voiced caution or outright disapproval in the matter of accepting federal aid.

Illinois and Missouri approved reform of financial procedures aimed at preventing repeats of financial scandals in which certain staff executives were accused of misappropriation of funds.

Oklahoma opposed the ordination of women and the showing of X-and R-rated movies on television, and Texas deplored widespread abortion—a de facto rebuke of SBC lobbyists who have spoken out in favor of liberal abortion policies.

Apologetics: Strong And Weak

Judge For Yourself, by Gordon R. Lewis (InterVarsity, 1974, 127 pp., $2.25 pb), and Reason to Believe, by Richard L. Purtill (Eerdmans, 1974, 166 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Milton D. Hunnex, professor of philosophy, Williamette University, Salem, Oregon.

In Judge For Yourself Gordon Lewis gives us an “apologetic workbook” that identifies “questions Christians are most frequently asked on college campuses.” He also tells us where scriptural answers to these questions can be found.

As a compilation of the questions of non-Christians and the locations of scriptural answers, this is a very useful handbook. But Lewis says that his book deals with questions asked by “non-Christians who do not presuppose the finality of Christ or the authority of Scripture, but are willing to examine the evidence,” and notes that his efforts “focus primarily upon justifying the claims” (italics mine). Non-Christians will find here, however what Christians believe rather than what justifies that belief. Scripture can be used to validate its own claim if one includes a premise asserting its authority, and Lewis has said that the non-Christian he addresses does not acknowledge the authority of Scripture, though he is “willing to examine the evidence.”

Lewis’s method of dealing with the questions of non-Christians is to identify a number of options for example, mysticism or secular theology—and then ask, “Which of these views fits the greatest amount of relevant Scripture with the fewest difficulties?” Now of course the Christian view fits Scripture best because what the Scriptures say is the scriptural or Christian view. Lewis confuses the elaboration and persuasive power of a view, in this case the scriptural view and especially the Gospel, with reasons for accepting it.

Moreover, he cites a variety of non-biblical sources as though they support the biblical position in some way when it isn’t clear whether his intention is to identify reasons for believing the Bible or reasons for encouraging its study. For example, Bonhoeffer is cited in the preface as claiming that “one who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian.” Yet if the inquirer were impressed by the best of Bonhoeffer that Lewis quotes on behalf of evangelical belief and decided to read the prophet of secular theology for himself, he might run into puzzling things like, “Our coming of age … is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him [i.e., God],” and, “Individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all.… There are more important things than bothering about such a matter.” Whatever being an evangelical Christian may have meant to Bonhoeffer in Life Together, it probably doesn’t mean what Lewis has in mind by the time of Bonhoeffer’s last writings, collected as Letters and Papers From Prison.

In contrast, Richard Purtill’s Reasons to Believe does provide independent logical grounds for belief. Purtill uses logically sound and readable arguments to show that Christian belief not only is reasonable but is the only reasonable belief if one is to preserve “confidence in the understandability of the world.”

In a striking chapter entitled “The Accusation of Credulity” Purtill identifies four basic views of the universe: the Christian view, the chance view, the determinist view, and the mixed view. The problem reduces to the question of how to account for the credibility of our thought about the world. “If our thinking is caused by nonrational forces of any kind,” Purtill argues, “there is no reason to suppose our thinking is valid. It might happen to be valid, but we could have no way of knowing that it was.” Non-Christian alternatives “are self-defeating,” he continues, because “even if they were true we could never have any good reason to think that they were true.” Any truth claim a non-Christian would want to make could be justified only by the conviction he happened to have that things are really as he happens to think they are. The result of non-Christian theory is that it “destroys our confidence in the validity of any reasoning—including the reasoning that may have led us to adopt these theories!” Hence even if we allow that mindless forces could have produced our thinking about these forces, we could not know that they had. Purtill is led to conclude that “every view except the Christian view destroys our confidence in reason, and therefore science (itself).” This kind of apologetical argument that exploits the rich potential of C. S. Lewis’s arguments as well as contemporary philosophy is one that commends itself to any evangelical who would like to be reassured that what he believes on spiritual or other grounds can also be justified by rational argument.

Purtill’s book divides neatly into three major sections that deal first with the objections to belief, then with the reasons for belief, and finally with the special problem of Christian revelation. Although somewhat abbreviated, the arguments are clear and persuasive. They deal with fundamental metaphysical issues that must be confronted if any soundly argued philosophical case is to be made for evangelical Christian belief.

God And Women

All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty (Word, 1974, 233 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is one of the finest books to come out on the controversial subject of women’s liberation. Among its strong points are that it deals in a balanced way with the concerns of both married and single living and that its authors do not shirk exegetical study of some sticky Scripture passages that seem to deny equality between the sexes.

Scanzoni and Hardesty want to waken more Christian women to the possibilities and responsibilities of fully using their God-given talents and gifts. With their serious, exegetical approach to the Bible, thorough research into attitudes and actions in our society, and personal observation and experience, they stand a good chance of succeeding. Even those who disagree with some of their biblical interpretations—e.g., that Scripture does not prohibit the ordination of women—will find in All We’re Meant to Be encouragement, inspiration, and discussion-provoking material.

This book attempts to dispel some traditional misunderstandings about Scripture. Is God always spoken of in masculine terms? In both the Old and the New Testament one image for God is maternal. In Isaiah 42:14 God says, “I will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant.” Then there is Christ’s familiar statement about Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37: here Christ uses a feminine figure of speech. The same is true of Luke 15:8–10. We readily accept the image of God as father waiting for the prodigal son, but, Scanzoni and Hardesty tellingly ask, “how often do we think of God as the woman who swept out her entire house in search of one precious coin?” The point is not that God is feminine—or masculine—but that God is neither.

What of Jesus’ attitudes toward women? Some evangelicals think Jesus did not free women from the home, but Scanzoni and Hardesty cite several passages that contradict this view, among them the well-known episode with Mary and Martha. They also use Dorothy Sayers’s statement in “Are Women Human?”—women were first at the cradle and last at the cross—to explain that “Jesus’ life on earth from beginning to end outlines a paradigm for women’s place.”

The chapter “Your Daughters Shall Prophesy” explores such “proof texts” as First Corinthians 14:34 and First Timothy 2:11, 12. “From the beginning [of the Christian church] women participated fully and equally with men,” and throughout the chapter Scanzoni and Hardesty list women named in the Bible who taught, prophesied, and administered in the early Church. Such women traditionally have been overlooked by some commentators.

Perhaps the best chapter is one dealing with a subject that is difficult to treat sensitively and practically: “The Single Woman.” Many books or essays on that subject offend and even repel, but Nancy Hardesty, single herself, handles the topic with understanding. Without offering any easy answers she gives concrete suggestions on how the single woman can fill her needs for love and sharing. She points out that married and single people have in common needs for sex, touch, and affirmation. Single living has its advantages and joys, and this writer does not overlook them.

Although All We’re Meant to Be wants to encourage women to use their gifts and is primarily written for women, men, too, should read it. Many women who long to use their gifts in God’s service find male-created barriers blocking them. For some readers perhaps the authors’ examples of such barriers will seem like overkill rhetoric, but those women who have struggled against male prejudices will disagree. As CHRISTIANITY TODAY has stated editorially and this book reaffirms, the churches are wasting a good portion of the resources available to them by refusing to make full use of talented, creative women.

What, then, is the “women’s liberation movement” all about? According to Scanzoni and Hardesty women want to be regarded and treated as full human beings:

We ask for the right to make our own choices, to define our own lives, not out of selfish motivations but because God calls us and commands us to develop the gifts he has given us.… God does have daughters as well as sons; Christ does have sisters as well as brothers. Now is the time for the church to recognize this—and to act upon it. That’s what the Christian woman’s liberation is all about.

Resisting Seduction

Christians Under the Hammer and Sickle, by Winrich Scheffbuch (Zondervan, 1974, 214 pp., $4.95, $2.95 pb), is reviewed by Paul D. Steeves, assistant professor of history, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida.

The high school fellowship was planning the worship service for youth Sunday. In the wake of the publicity attending Solzhenitsyn’s arrival in the West, the young people decided to stage a “Russian church service,” and summoned me, as one who had studied in the Soviet Union, for consultation. The highlight of the service was to be the police raid, complete with clubs and “arrests” of worshipers, to cause us to reflect on the contrast between the situations of believers in the two countries. Plans were scrapped when the teenagers learned, to their great surprise, that every Sunday morning, hundreds of thousands of evangelical believers across the U.S.S.R. gather to worship and to hear the Gospel preached openly, legally, and without hindrance, and that this is repeated on Sunday evenings and several nights during the week.

It is understandable that many American Christians, like these young people, are unaware of this situation. A virtual deluge of books from Western publishing houses leaves the overwhelming impression that truly biblical faith is ruthlessly suppressed by the Communist government throughout the Soviet Union. From the misunderstanding begotten by such books arises the appeal of well-known Bible smuggling operations and even more drastic and bizarre attempts to defy the authority of the Soviet government under the pretext of evangelizing an otherwise unreachable field. Unless it is read with critical caution, the work under review here, which in its own right is a responsible presentation of the suffering borne by a few believers in the Soviet Union, will do little to balance the distorted impression.

The German author, Winrich Scheffbuch, provides a useful update of reliable information concerning dissident Baptist activity, the origins of which have been well described by Michael Bourdeaux’s studies, particularly his Religious Ferment in Russia. Extensive translations of Russian documents are skillfully woven together by thoughtful and competent interpretation. In the course of describing the repressions and restrictions being endured by a fractional proportion of Soviet evangelicals, Scheffbuch eloquently spells out lessons that those who have suffered for their religious activity can teach to Western believers. The seriousness with which he explores the meaning of persecution gives this book a value much greater than that of recent books that, in my judgment, irresponsibly sensationalize and misrepresent the religious picture in the Soviet Union (for example, Nick Savoca, Roadblock to Moscow; Myrna Grant, Vanya; Sergei Kourdakov, The Persecutor; and books by Richard Wurmbrand).

A superficial, frequently inaccurate and incoherrent introductory chapter describes the past century of Soviet evangelical activity. This section is best ignored. The rest of the book, dealing with the latter part of the 1960s and the early 1970s, gives a considerably more trustworthy account of the activities of evangelicals who have raised a revolt against the legal Protestant union in the U.S.S.R., and have suffered for it. This union, which includes Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, Mennonites, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals (usually designated simply “Baptists” for convenience), continues to bear a vigorous witness to biblical faith in a society whose leaders pursue the elimination of religion. One may raise some legitimate questions about the specific ways in which the union has chosen to express its submission to the powers ordained by God. Unfortunately, when a study such as this focuses upon those who, whether courageously or unwisely, dissent from the policies of the union, the value of the witness that the legal church bears is easily overlooked.

Scheffbuch’s own statistics show that fewer than one thousand of the nearly five million Soviet evangelicals have suffered judicial penalties in the past fifteen years. It is true that even one Christian’s suffering for his faith should inspire our prayerful sympathy. Nevertheless, when only one-fiftieth of 1 per cent of the evangelical believers endure harsh reprisals for their Christian witness, it should be clear that the common view, reflected by the youth group above, fails to appreciate the work that God is doing through his church in the Soviet Union.

The excellent article by CHRISTIANITY TODAY managing editor David Kucharsky, reprinted as an appendix, can provide some guidance for the reader who desires to acquire a balanced view of the Russian situation. It will, for example, help him to identify the significance of Scheffbuch’s easily overlooked statement: “Church groups enjoy, for the most part, considerable freedom.” This perspective should reveal the error of a claim, such as that made by Brother Andrew, that only the “sanctified brutality” in which Western adventurists have indulged will maintain the gospel witness in the U.S.S.R.

This book can be recommended to those who want accurate information about persecution of believers in the Soviet Union if they will remember that the situation is fraught with complexities and ambiguities. The translation from the German by Mark Noll is both accurate and lucid.

We surely need to be aware of the plight of our brethren in Communist lands, whether they are suffering under judicial measures or the psychological pressures of living under a hostile, atheistic government. Our prayers for them and public notice of their situation may lead to an easing of their burdens. But we should resist the seductions of the glamour and sensationalism that distort the picture.

Marital First Aid

Cherishable: Love and Marriage, by David W. Augsburger (Herald Press, 1973, 159 pp., $4.95), and Marriage Is For Love, by Richard L. Strauss (Tyndale, 1973, 116 pp., $2.95, $1.95 pb), are reviewed by Robert E. Weinman, pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Columbiana, Ohio.

Problems in marriage are inevitable. Children, finances, sex, and inlaws are common areas of conflict. Pastors find themselves being asked for help in troubled marital and family situations as never before, and it is important for them to build up their resources and competence in this area. But pastors also need a “first aid kit” that can help revive a marriage through simple dynamic principles. These two helpful little books contain the right spiritual equipment to give insights and provide resources to enrich any marriage.

Cherishable: Love and Marriage is an excellent conversation starter to use with couples in exploring creative relationships within marriage and in examining potential areas of conflict. In a fresh, challenging way, Augsburger capsules some of the frequent areas of stress in marriage and family living. His fearless exploration of the joys and hurts of living together as husband and wife probes the reader to think through his own feelings, to respond, and when necessary to act again in a different way. A couple who really desire happiness, understanding, and maturity in their relationship can find here the right kind of spiritual and mental equipment. If they react to Augsburger’s pithy suggestions in the right way, they can find a new quality in their marriage, a new power to cope with the inevitable problems. A pastor would perform a tremendous service by giving a copy of this book to every couple he counsels.

Richard Strauss’s Marriage Is For Love is a more prosaic approach to the problem of marriage enrichment. Beginning with the premise that most marital discord is rooted in personal spiritual problems, Strauss presents a simple, down-to-earth solution to the spiritual disorders of the persons involved. In dealing with such subjects as “What every husband needs to know,” “Grow up!,” and “In step with the Spirit” Strauss offers principles that are neither new nor original. Their source is the Bible, and when couples obey God’s Word their marriages take on fresh significance. Although the reader may differ now and then with the author’s application of spiritual truth, a careful reading of this little book will provide a treasure of resources by which any couple can enrich their marriage and make it not only a bearable state but a fulfilling relationship.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

The Literature of the Bible, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan, 370 pp., $7.95). A Wheaton College English professor surveys the Bible from the viewpoint of modern categories of literary criticism (such as epic, tragedy, poetry, and satire). He also gives special attention to books of distinctive literary form such as Job, Psalms, and Revelation. Very well done.

Ecumenical Directory of Retreat and Conference Centers, edited by Philip Deemer (Jarrow Press [29 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass. 02116], 232 pp., $15). Guide to hundreds of camps, schools, monasteries, and other places of various denominational ownership where one may attend or rent facilities for religious gatherings.

The Idea of a Christian Philosophy, edited by K. A. Bril, H. Hart, and J. Klapwijk (Wedge [229 College St., Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R4], 232 pp., n.p. pb), The Dooyeweerdian Concept of the Word of God, by Robert Morey (Presbyterian and Reformed, 53 pp., $1.50 pb), and Power-Word and Text-Word in Recent Reformed Thought, by Harry Downs (also P & R, 144 pp., $3.50 pb). The first contains thirteen essays, in English translation, in honor of Dirk Vollenhoven, a cofounder of the contemporary Calvinist school of thought often called Dooyeweerdianism. The last two are strongly critical of that school.

The Heritage of the Early Church, edited by David Neiman and Margaret Schatkin (available from the latter at Box C-35, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02167; 473 pp., $13 pb). Published by Rome’s Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, this volume contains twenty-four essays in honor of Georges Florovsky, one of this century’s foremost Orthodox scholars. Will be appreciated by students of early church history.

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlsadt, by Ronald Sider (Brill [Leiden, Netherlands], 323 pp., 80 guilders). Karlstadt was at first, an ally of Luther but later was bitterly opposed by him. Sider studies the development of Karlstadt’s thought from 1517 to 1525 from the sources instead of from the perspective of Lutheran critics. Corrects much calumny.

Walking and Leaping, by Merlin Carothers (Logos, 129 pp., $2.50 pb), and Beyond the Cross and the Switchblade, by David Wilkerson (Chosen/Revell, 191 pp., $5.95). About what has happened to two best-selling authors since their first books appeared.

The Family Guide to Children’s Television, by Evelyn Kaye (Random, 194 pp., $2.95 pb). Though not written explicitly with Christian values in mind, this is a very helpful guide to an important aspect of responsible Christian parenthood. Brief evaluations (usually critical) of most of the current TV shows for all ages.

Sunday: A Minister’s Story, by John Harper (Little, Brown, 238 pp., $6.95). Reflections of the pastor of the Episcopal church across from the White House, which President Ford now frequents.

Disciples Are Made—Not Born, by Walter Henrichsen (Victor, 160 pp., $1.75 pb). A Navigators leader gives a very practical guide to discipling for Christ.

The Gospel and the Land, by W. D. Davies (University of California, 521 pp., $15). A leading scholar’s study of territorialism (Palestine and Jerusalem) as a doctrine in the Old Testament and how the early Christians, as recorded in the New Testament, came to terms with it. Though historical, the book has obvious implications for the current Middle East conflict.

Translating the Word of God, by John Beekman and John Callow (Zondervan, 399 pp., $5.95 pb). A valuable tool not only for those who would translate the Bible into another written language but also for those who would translate its meaning through teaching in their own language.

The Octavius, by Minucius Felix (Newman, 414 pp., $10). Originally written (probably) early in the third century, this is a delightful defense of Christianity in the time of its persecution by the empire. G. W. Clarke has provided annotations that are longer than the text itself. This is volume 39 of the “Ancient Christian Writers” series, which began in 1946 and belongs in all major theological libraries.

Jewish intellectuals frequently say that the continuing politico-economic oppression on earth is proof that Messiah has not yet come. The meaning of messianic realization is such, they argue, that to dissociate the Gospel from an end to political oppression annuls the case for Jesus’ divine sonship.

Radical activist theologians have insisted that Jesus’ gospel was centrally political, that its very essence is liberation of the oppressed from socio-political injustices. But it is impossible to square this emphasis with the fact that Jesus’ program involved no direct challenge to the political system of the Romans, whose oppression was the source of the social, economic, and political grievances that dominated Jewish life in his day. Moreover, Jesus’ ministry was more concerned with personal spiritual relationships than with any forcible alteration of socio-political structures. Those who consider socio-political liberation to be the essence of the Gospel should ask themselves, furthermore, where and when the proclamation of their message has achieved such utopian results.

The New Testament does indeed emphasize—as in the Book of Revelation—that oppressive powers will ultimately be overthrown. But are we to infer that the real Messiah has not yet come because evil has not yet been wholly subordinated? Does Christianity proclaim messianism wholly without politico-economic liberation?

To make socio-political liberation the criterion of Messiah’s presence blurs the biblical picture of Messiah. Such a criterion is too open-ended, since one can intend the cessation of exploitation and oppression—that is, an improved economic and political outlook—without intending love in community. Even where nourished by noble intentions, revolution has often begotten more revolution as projections of a better future have succumbed to human passions. Those who are economically and politically liberated, even for a season, often fail to sense how truly enslaved they remain. In the Bible, liberation has in view man’s moral and spiritual plight, the need for meaningful selfhood, the problems of sin and guilt and identity and destiny. To deal with freedom only in relation to either external structures or internal considerations parochializes messianic meaning.

The Exodus story is often made paradigmatic in a way that oversimplifies the redemptive message. Political liberation is not the sole or even central theme of biblical redemption. The covenant at Sinai and God’s choosing of a people stands much nearer the center. The Gospels notably mention that Jesus went to accomplish his “exodus” in Jerusalem, a text hardly congenial to the notion of a master political program. The weakness of all motif-research is that it tendentially orients the evidence and overlooks what falls outside its purview.

The Bible does indeed have a message for all the afflicted and oppressed—widows and orphans, the poor and destitute, the downtrodden and exploited. This theme is progressively reinterpreted as features of the Exodus are expanded, but without jettisoning the original elements. The message is still addressed to the poor and needy, but as R. K. Harrison notes, “the Hebrew term ‘poor’ took on an additional, non-economic meaning … the poor, harrassed remnant of spiritual fidelity in a vast morass of Hellenistic paganism. Thus ‘the poor’ also meant ‘the faithful’.… Christ used the term ‘poor’ in Matt. 5:3, Luke 6:20 in this same sense, promising the Kingdom to the “spiritually loyal,’ not to the economically or spiritually deprived” (“Poor” in Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, pp. 515 f.).

The New Testament does not, however, ignore the socio-political question, even if it does not begin with it. The discussion of redemption and reconciliation is put in a profounder context, however. It tolerates no total depoliticizing of the Gospel, even if it does not put Jesus Christ in the primary role of a contemporary socio-political liberator; indeed, he deliberately resisted a mob movement to make him king on a mistaken materialistic premise (John 6:15). But Jesus’ followers nonetheless owned the crucified and risen one as “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15). Jesus had reminded Pilate that the Roman procurator’s political power was a temporary divine entrustment, and he let it be known that he considered Herod a sly fox.

The New Testament teaches that at the Lord’s return in power and glory all nations will be finally judged (Matt. 25:32) and government will at last rest upon Messiah’s shoulders. The interim dimension is not avoided, however, even if Jesus’ followers have tended to ignore it and thus have needlessly engendered questions about the relation of the crucified and risen Christ to the political scene. Church creeds have emphasized that Christ, who does not yet reign, nonetheless even now rules by his providence and governance, and the New Testament associates even the regathering of Israel with God’s purpose in Christ.

The interim dimension has two prongs, and it is the great tragedy of the contemporary religious scene that they are so dulled, one by many non-evangelical Christians’ misconception of the nature and task of the Church, and the other by many evangelical Christians’ narrowing of their task in the world.

God’s ideal order involves a new society of transformed men and women. The Church as the body of renewed humanity was and is to exemplify to the world the principles and practice of personal and social righteousness and love in community that Messiah approves. The whole point of Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus was that the indispensable beginning of the kingdom of God is a divine regeneration of sinful selves. It was therefore a profoundly misguided venture when politicized ecclesiastics sought the kingdom of God by repoliticizing an unregenerate society.

A second consideration is equally important. Although the New Testament places a temporary “hold” on the forced messianic overthrow of world-powers during the Church age, it places no “hold” whatever on the divine demand for justice in the public order. Christ’s followers are to exemplify the standards of God’s kingdom, and they are to be “light” and “salt” in a dark and rotting society where God intends civil government to promote justice and restrain disorder. The New Testament locates the Christian attitude toward the political scene not only in the future eschatological context of Revelation 13 but also in the present sociological context of Romans 13.

“She has a bigger sand box and swing set. I want bigger ones, too.” “His bike is nicer than mine—I need a new one!” “They have two houses, one at the beach and one in the city. We ought to have two by now, too.” “That company has its men work only five days a week; why am I working five and a half?” “That mission board gives its missionaries refrigerators, cars, and good schools for their children. Why can’t ours?” “Those professors have a whole year off to study. I want to study, too.” “I’ve worked more years than that person—why shouldn’t I get more time off?” “What is she getting in that envelope? I want just as much on my birthday.”

Comparisons start early and continue through life. Children compare what they have, what they can do, what work they are being made to contribute, what privileges they are given. Teenagers do the same thing, but no more than those in their twenties, thirties, fifties, seventies! So often we are so busy craning our necks to try to see what is happening to someone else and what we might be missing by comparison that we never compare ourselves with ourselves.

Think back to the time when Jesus in his resurrected body ate fish and bread with his disciples on the seashore. You remember that the men had been fishing all night and had caught nothing. Jesus called out from the shore to ask what they had caught, and when the answer came in a disappointed negative, he told them to put the nets on the other side of the boat. When they did this, there were so many fish that they couldn’t draw the net into the boat and had to drag it along to shore.

Peter couldn’t wait for that. He impatiently jumped into the sea and came in first to see Jesus. It was an exciting thing for Peter to see the risen Lord and to rush in to touch him and be served bread and fish by him.

Peter was probably thinking about how easy it had been to fish after Jesus told them where to put the net, and of how splendid it was to come in wet and tired and be served fresh bread and sizzling hot fish straight from the coals. He might well have been feeling happy and relaxed, expecting easy times ahead. The One who had died and crushed his hopes was now risen. He could do even greater miracles, and here he was with them. The others were probably feeling the same way. They had been through terrible fears and doubts; now they were eating together with the Master, and all was well.

After the meal, Jesus singled out Peter for a serious time of questioning. “Simon Peter, lovest thou me more than these?” “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” Each time Peter answered, “Lord you know I love you.” When Jesus asked the question a third time, Peter was hurt, and he insisted that Jesus, who knew all things, must know that he loved Him. As each answer was given Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, His lambs—that is, to offer from God’s Word to those who would believe on Jesus and become his followers.

Peter, well fed, dry, and warm, full of love for Jesus, accepted this commission to feed the lambs with pleasure, I feel sure. A feeling of satisfaction may have flooded him as he imagined himself sitting and feeding gatherings of hungry people with the spiritual food they longed for. He would be glad to do this.

Suddenly into the midst of his satisfied contemplation came Jesus’ next words like a grenade, shattering the peaceful emotions with fragments of fear:

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me [John 21:18, 19].

What is Jesus saying? He is letting Peter have a glimpse of his future, a future that included death by crucifixion, martyrdom! And in the midst of Peter’s dismay, the words continue: “Follow me.” Very simple, very direct.

Peter’s first reaction was to crane his neck and look around. There were all those other disciples there, wiping the crumbs from their lips, looking satisfied. It would be quite natural for Peter to think, “I wonder what is going to happen to each of them? What is in their future? Why should I …” Whatever was going on in his head, what he did was to look suddenly at John. John had leaned on Jesus’ breast at the last supper, Peter remembered, and was specially loved by Jesus. Peter burst forth to Jesus, “Lord what shall this man do?” Or, “What’s going to happen to John?”

Can’t we each feel the question inside our own emotions? “What about this person living so long on that quiet farm?” “What about that one in Hawaii?” “What about the one who has no dangers at all in his country?” “What about that man and woman who haven’t known serious illness?” “What’s going to happen to John?” The idea is comparison, of course; it all has to be equal.

What was Jesus’ reply? “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.”

Jesus did not tell Peter that all the stresses and strains would balance out. He did not say that because he is perfect love and perfect justice, each of his children would have equal experience. Jesus said, in effect: “If John is to live until I come back a second time, that is none of your affair: you are to follow my plan for your life. You, Peter, are to love me enough to trust me and follow me wherever that following leads, even to martyrdom for God’s glory.”

There was misreporting in those days as there is now. The next verses say that people reported that Jesus had said John would never die but would live until Jesus returned. This is not so. Jesus had only said, “If John is to live until I come back and you are to be martyred, it is not a reason for you to make comparisons. The only comparison for you to make is between what I tell you to do and what you really do. Follow me!”

We are brought up short. Each of us is in danger of craning his neck to see whether God is giving someone else more, less, an easier life, bigger things, more exciting things to do, and in the process we are apt to take our eyes completely off the directions the Lord has given us. We can miss our own signposts, our own guidance, by being too anxious to compare. And Jesus has the same word for each of us: “Never mind about John—follow me.”

The following tribute to the widow of Dr. L. Nelson Bell, executive editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, was written at our request by her son, Dr. Clayton Bell, minister of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas:

King Lemuel was right: the children of a virtuous woman do rise up and call her blessed! And my sisters and I have every reason to rise and bestow double blessing and thanks upon our mother’s memory.

In a day when many marriages wither before they ever take root, she left us a heritage of staying married to the same man for fifty-six years, making of the marriage not an endurance contest but a romantic partnership. In a society where the family is being weakened by non-family entertainment, women’s liberation, and a multitude of other social and philosophical pressures, she left us an example of homemaking, often under unbelievably difficult odds, that will provide inspiration and guidance for years to come.

Mother was a “helpmeet” in every sense of that word. Throughout Dad’s life as a surgeon, missionary, journalist, and “churchman,” she stood behind him providing the support he needed. He was the head of the home, but she was the heart. Whether it was in the coal fields of West Virginia—with crates for furniture, or under attack by bandits in China, or amid the ecclesiastical pressures of a divided denomination, Mother made the home for Dad and us children. She often served as his nurse in the hospital, his secretary in his journalistic endeavors. She was the sounding board for his editorials, and often his conscience in his schedules, too.

C. S. Lewis, illustrating how it is possible for two to “be one flesh,” refers to the lock and key as one mechanism, the violin and bow as one instrument. Mother was the key that unlocked Dad’s creativity, and the bow that brought forth the music of his soul.

The home she made was a haven into which the family could retreat, and where it could refuel for the journey of life. We got more than delicious food at the table around which we all gathered with regularity, often with guests. Our spirits grew and our souls were fed as we experienced the fellowship of parents who enjoyed each other and their children. No wonder that the children enjoyed their parents.

Ours has been a “goodly heritage.” We had a mother who possessed a great faith, who expressed a great love, and who moved forward to a certain hope. She worked hard and loved faithfully. She was a great helper and companion for a man who deserved all she had to give.