Page 5800 – Christianity Today (2024)

When Rochunga Pudaite came from India to Wheaton College in suburban Chicago he knew only eight people in the United States. One—a missionary who had known him as a tribal boy in northeast India—asked in a letter, “who in the world squandered the Lord’s money to bring a little native boy like you to Wheaton?”

The “little native boy” recently mailed his millionth copy of the New Testament to Asia. As president of the Wheaton-based Bibles for the World organization, Pudaite, 46, has fewer than 300 million Bibles and Testaments to go before reaching his goal of sending Scripture to every telephone subscriber in the world.

Living Bible version New Testaments have gone to all persons having telephones in India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Singapore, and Malaysia. Pudaite’s native India received the most, 730,000; he estimates they will be read by more than 2.5 million leaders and their families. “Only the educated and professional elite can afford telephones in countries like India—the ones missionaries and national Christians have found hardest to reach,” he explains.

He describes the response as “overwhelming, more than we could imagine.” The first 50,000 Testaments mailed from Wheaton to India drew 20,000 inquiries and acknowledgments, many from non-Christian leaders, and only 100 or so were hostile (a letter bomb was addressed to his New Delhi office, from which many of the Testaments were mailed, but it was discovered and defused). Hindus and Muslims alike have written to express a newfound interest in Christ as a result of reading the New Testament. A minor hassle erupted when a leader of the World Home Bible League, a mission aiming to get Bibles into homes throughout the world, complained that Pudaite’s program had enraged Malaysian government leaders and jeopardized the work of other evangelicals in that land. (Pudaite had mailed New Testaments to all the cabinet members; national law prohibits conversion to Christianity.) No direct complaint was received from Malaysian officials, however, and everything is apparently all right.

Pudaite’s mailing schedule for 1974 includes Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Burma, Pakistan, Ireland, Indonesia, and Korea—about one million New Testaments in all. His goal for 1975 is two million, with projected increases each year to 200 million in 1984.

Pudaite plans to use translations of the Living Bible (it’s being translated into seventy-two languages) as needed, but he points out that English is spoken by most educated persons in India and in other countries in Asia and Africa.

The pro-rated cost of mailing each large-print Living New Testament is one dollar including printing, postage, mailing, follow-up, and other related expenses. Each respondent receives answers to his questions and a booklet entitled “How to Read the Bible Profitably.” “We encourage others to follow up further,” Pudaite says. “One evangelical group is already planning a correspondence course for India.”

Pudaite has imaginative plans for raising the $400 million needed for mailing the Living New Testament to all the world’s telephone users. He encourages individual families and churches to be responsible for small towns and countries. The Lud Golz family of Novelty, Ohio, for example, chose Sikkim (250 telephones); their children helped paste on labels and stamps. Christians in Alabama adopted Bangladesh (110,000 phones) and held a rally last year at which Pat Boone and Governor George Wallace boosted support. Presently Pudaite is driving to enlist “a million committed Christians to provide for ten Bibles or more a year” and a “core group of 100,000 to give one Bible a day.” Among Pudaite’s biggest backers is Kenneth Taylor, publisher of the Living Bible, and his Tyndale House foundation. Pudaite’s board members include well-known evangelical leaders.

A short, polished, urbane man, Pudaite speaks of himself as “a tribal man accustomed to shooting arrows at targets.” “We’re sitting at the switchboard of the world with direct lines to over 300 million homes,” he says. “We have the message of life and death. And there are no busy signals!” His recently published biography, God’s Tribesman (A. J. Holman), describes his meteoric rise from the Hmar tribe in the backwoods of northeast India to his present role as a missionary leader. The Hmars were headhunters who long kept the British colonials at bay. A Welsh missionary layman named Watkin Roberts risked his life to enter the tribe in 1910, and he won five converts. One was Pudaite’s father, Chawnga, who evangelized thousands of Hmars after Watkin Roberts was dismissed by his mission board for insisting on having a national as field supervisor.

Chawnga stressed to his son the importance of getting an education. Pudaite recalls that from his early years he had a desire to translate the Bible into the Hmar language. He left home at age ten and walked ninety-six miles through the jungles to a school operated by the Northeast India General Mission, where he milked thirty-five cows a day for his keep. By working at odd jobs he got through an American Baptist high school in Jorhat and went on to St. Paul’s College in Calcutta. Here he gave himself a last name (the first in his tribe to do so) and met Jawaharlal Nehru, then prime minister. The Indian leader granted him the first government scholarship ever given to a tribesman. He later transferred to Allahabad University, where one day he met Bob Pierce, a traveling Youth for Christ evangelist who had just founded World Vision. Pierce was impressed by the Hmar youth’s vision to translate the Bible for his people and promised to help him come abroad for special study.

Pudaite meanwhile had kept up his acquaintance with Nehru and on a visit to New Delhi persuaded the Indian leader to put the Hmars on the national census list and provide them with post offices. “How would you feel if your father had to walk eighty miles to mail you a letter?” he asked Nehru.

After graduation he returned to Hmarland a hero. Tribal leaders elected him to head the first Hmar political party, but on the eve of his acceptance he received a cable from Watkin Roberts offering to pay for Bible training in Britain. He flew to England and stopped first at the London office of the British and Foreign Bible Society to show an official the translation he had been working on in college. After receiving suggestions for revision, he went on to the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow. Here he met evangelist Billy Graham, who joined with Bob Pierce in arranging for his enrollment in Wheaton College graduate school under a scholarship grant from World Vision. While studying at Wheaton and Northern Illinois University he completed the Hmar New Testament.

Pudaite returned home in 1959, married a Hmar girl, and organized nine Christian schools. But the supply of funds did not keep abreast of his vast vision and the work he wanted to accomplish. He took his bride Mawii back to Wheaton and organized Partnership Mission under a board of local laymen. During the next twelve years the mission raised funds to support fifty-six more schools, including a high school and a college, a twenty-five-bed hospital, a “partnership parent” program caring for nearly 1,000 needy children, and 350 full-time national pastors and evangelists in India and Burma.

In 1971 Hmar leaders again pressed him to enter politics. This time he answered the call, but because of a flight delay en route he arrived two hours past the filing deadline. Back in Wheaton again he was praying about the future when the telephone-company slogan “Let your fingers do the walking” slipped into his mind. Thus was born “Bibles for the World,” the new name of the mission.

“With this program God has given us,” comments Pudaite, “550,000 post offices become our mission stations and 4.5 million mailmen our messengers to deliver the Word of God. It is an idea whose time has come.”

Australia: Fight Truth Decay

Jesus people, bikers in leather, monks in brown garb, nuns in white, ministers in clerical collars—people of all ages and backgrounds were there. The placards they held aloft proclaimed such slogans as “Keep Australia Clean,” “Ban p*rn,” and “Fight Truth Decay.” In all, more than 25,000 persons, a third of them teen-agers, gathered last month in Hyde Park, Sydney, for a witness rally sponsored by the Australian Festival of Light (FOL), an organization headed by evangelicals. The event was described as a witness against p*rnography and moral pollution and for wholesome family life and love for God.

It was the first time Catholic cardinal James D. Freeman and Anglican archbishop Marcus Loane shared a public platform. Relations between the two top churchmen had been somewhat strained. In 1970 Loane declined to participate in an ecumenical service when Pope Paul visited Sydney, and he later warned fellow Protestants to be on guard against “the ambitions of the Catholic Church.” The differences were not visible at the FOL rally, however. Both spoke briefly, condemning permissive attitudes and p*rnography (“a perverted and destructive presentation of human sexuality and inter-personal relationships,” said Freeman).

The main speaker was Anglican dean Lance Shilton. He urged Australians to demand that the nation’s political leaders announce their views on p*rnography, divorce, euthanasia, and abortion before elections. Votes would depend on right answers, he implied.

Other FOL rallies are planned for Melbourne and Adelaide.

Mount Ararat: Off Limits

The Turkish government last month announced a ban on travel by foreigners to Mount Ararat, which is located in a desolate region close to the Soviet border. All new maps printed by travel agencies are required to indicate Mount Ararat as an off-limits area for foreigners. No detailed explanation was given by authorities; the interior ministry merely cited problems caused by increasing numbers of foreigners wanting to climb the mountain “under varying pretenses.” It did not say what the pretenses were, but a number of teams of Americans and Europeans have recently climbed Ararat hoping to find Noah’s Ark, which they believe may be buried under the ice. Several teams, including one sponsored by the Institute of Creation Research in San Diego, had planned expeditions this summer.

Turkey’s new head of the interior, Oguz Asiltürk, is a strict Muslim deputy of the religion-oriented National Salvation party, which constitutes the lesser right-wing segment of the otherwise leftist Turkish government. In other recent moves, Asiltürk ordered the removal of a modern statue of a nude woman in one of the squares of Istanbul and banned the sale of beer except in licensed taverns. Observers believe he’ll pursue further Islamic-oriented policies.

The intellectuals of the country are unhappy with the right-wing element of the government, but Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit needs it in order to govern. Ecevit, the leader of the leftist Republican People’s party, emerged from the last election with the highest number of deputies, but he lacked the absolute majority in the Parliament, and no party could form a new government for three months. Finally, Ecevit, whose party adheres to the tenet of a secular state, was compelled to form a strange coalition with the most extreme right-wing party. This brought a number of embarrassing developments to him (he’s an intellectual who translated T. S. Eliot into Turkish). The members of his cabinet hailing from the National Salvation party openly court Islamic state precepts in outright defiance of the constitution.

Religion In Transit

Among award-winners announced at last month’s annual meeting of the Religious Public Relations Council were William Wineke of the Wisconsin State Journal, Tom Harpur of the Toronto Star, and Kay Longcope of the Boston Globe. They and their papers were cited for excellent coverage of religion. Editor James Newton of the Southern Baptists’ World Mission Journal won the top citations in print and writing for persons in the religious press.

Still another report from Xenia, Ohio: Among those killed in the recent tornado disaster was Mrs. Ollie Grooms, a retired minister of the Churches of Christ in Christian Union. Destroyed were her home and the denomination’s church building in Xenia.

More than 200 Indiana religious leaders at an interfaith conference on the crisis in public morality last month acknowledged their own shortcomings, then pledged to marshal support back home for fifteen legislative and administrative proposals they submitted to the governor. “We admit our failure to apply fully in our personal lives and the structures and operations of our institutions those moral and ethical principles which stand as foundations of our faith,” they confessed.

U. S. churches contributed $635,000 to the $2 million general administrative budget of the World Council of Churches last year. Nearly half that amount was given by the United Presbyterian Church and the United Methodist Church. Meanwhile, WCC leaders at a meeting of the WCC’s U. S. conference in Kansas City expressed disappointment over “a general ignorance” of what the WCC is. “Negative impressions last much longer than positive ones,” said U. S. leader Charles H. Long, Jr. Where there is information, he added, it is often misinformation.

DEATH

TIM SPENCER, 65, writer of hit cowboy, country, and gospel music (“We’ve Got a Great Big Wonderful God”), founder of Manna Music publishing firm, and one of the original “Sons of the Pioneers”; in Los Angeles, after a long illness.

Greater Europe Mission, based in Wheaton, Illinois, last month observed its twenty-fifth anniversary. GEM has more than 160 career missionaries and nearly 200 short-term workers. Since 1949, when it was founded by Dr. Robert P. Evans, GEM has trained nearly 2,000 students in the seven Bible institutes it operates. It has ministries in ten western European nations.

Remember the Black Manifesto, the demand for reparations issued to white churches five years ago? It’s a forgotten episode among most U. S. churches, but not at Riverside Church in New York City, where James Forman interrupted worship on May 4, 1969, to demand reparations. The church responded with a Fund for Social Justice. It has raised more than $350,000 of a $450,000 goal for black self-help projects in New York.

The schism-torn Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) encountered more trouble last month. Four presbyteries (regional governing bodies) criticized PCUS moderator Charles E. S. Kraemer for not calling a special meeting of the national governing body. They wanted an emergency meeting to discuss controversial action by the denominational policy-making board involving the church in three national coalitions on government priorities (budget, military, and human needs). Kraemer says it may be discussed at the June General Assembly.

Personalia

Retired: Joseph C. Dey, 66, respected commissioner of the Tournament Players Division of the Professional Golf Association and former executive director of the U. S. Golf Association. Known for his Bible reading and quoting, Dey is a trustee of the Episcopal General Seminary in New York and is an active layman in an Episcopal church on Long Island. One can have a valuable ministry through sports, he tells reporters.

World Scene

South Korea’s seventh annual presidential prayer breakfast was held this month without the participation of some of the nation’s leading Christians; some boycotted it in protest against President Park Chung Hee’s alleged repressive policies, others were in prison for having protested earlier (nearly two dozen church leaders were reportedly in jail or interrogation centers). There was no mention at the breakfast of the church-government confrontation or arrests.

In a rare display of unity, the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union opposed the granting of United Nations consultative status to the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). Their protest was rejected. The Soviets complained the group was among those non-governmental organizations which have “small memberships and narrow spheres of interest” (there are 67 million Baptists worldwide). The Liberians reminded the Soviets that the late Liberian president William Tubman had been president of the BWA, adding that “church groups have done much work in education and health throughout Africa.”

Officials of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship were still trying early this month to contact two missionaries apparently abducted by guerrillas in southern Thailand. They are Margaret Morgan, 35, a British subject, and Minka Hanskamp, 30, of New Zealand. They were carrying medical supplies when kidnapped; authorities theorized the abductors wanted medical treatment by the women.

Thousands of Muslims marched last month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, demanding equal rights for citizens of all faiths (about half of Ethiopia’s 26 million people are identified with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, part of Coptic Christianity). Many thousands of Orthodox countered two days later with their own march, complaining that the Muslims showed an anti-Christian prejudice and asking church leaders to assert themselves against the Muslims.

A capacity crowd was on hand at the Quito, Ecuador, coliseum as evangelist Luis Palau concluded a three-week crusade (more than 3,100 made public professions of faith). Radio HCJB beamed the crusade live throughout South and Central America. In addition, Palau appeared on thirty-one telecasts. He was invited to visit Ecuador president Guillermo Roderiquez Lara and gave Lara a Spanish-version Living Bible.

Not even the cool, wet, cloudy New England spring weather could dampen spirits at the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Boston last month. National troubles were largely bypassed as participants exulted over evangelical progress in the last decade and honored retirement-bound general director Clyde W. Taylor.

Setting the tone, Illinois congressman John B. Anderson—fresh from the Watergate-charged atmosphere of Capitol Hill—stressed evangelical church and mission growth with only passing references to Watergate and its ilk. Anderson, an Evangelical Free Church member, delighted the nearly 750 delegates with his tongue-in-cheek assessment of the contrasting positions of evangelicals and liberals today. Once, he said, “they [the liberals] were the beautiful people and we—you will recall—were the kooks.” Changing times, however, find evangelical seminaries and churches growing while liberal institutions are declining, he said.

Picking up the theme was outgoing NAE president Myron C. Boyd, a Free Methodist, who reported that more than 25,000 evangelically oriented missionaries are active worldwide, nearly 7,000 hours of evangelical radio and TV programs are broadcast to North Americans weekly, and more than seventy-five evangelical missionary broadcast stations operate around the world. Most people, he said, “are unaware of all that is being done in the world by evangelicals.”

The delegates did approve a five-page statement of concerns, and former president Harold J. Ockenga said publicly and privately that Watergate had weakened the American image. After pinpointing problem areas, including corruption on national, local, and personal levels, the delegates warned against dissipation of “evangelistic and missionary passion” and called for support of the forthcoming world evangelization congress in Lausanne, Switzerland. They also asked for support of the national day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting, held a few days later, and called for member churches to set aside the last day of each month as a day of prayer for the nation.

There was a recognition, too, that in seeking cooperation among evangelicals, the NAE must find those of like mind among mainline Protestant churches. That, says executive committee member Bob Dugan, may be the hinge on which the NAE swings in the future. Without active participation by evangelicals in non-NAE-related churches, NAE growth could be stunted, says Dugan, a Conservative Baptist pastor in Colorado. Already, some staunch evangelical mainliners are active in the NAE. (One of these is United Presbyterian John Huffman, whose Easter sermon on sin in hidden corners gained him national attention when President Nixon attended his Key Biscayne, Florida, church last year. Huffman has since moved to Pittsburgh.)

Meeting in Boston with the NAE were its affiliate associations, and they too were projecting bright pictures. The Evangelical Foreign Missions Association—one of the largest affiliates—reported a membership of sixty-nine mission organizations with a combined budget of $70 million supporting some 8,000 missionaries. EFMA spent the time studying the mass media with an eye toward increasing cooperation in media outreach. EFMA delegates heard results of a study by students of Wheaton College’s graduate communications course showing that about 20 per cent of all mission personnel were involved in some form of media work (EFMA has some radio and print missions as members); that they majored in books dealing with church growth and Bible study rather than evangelism (newspapers and magazines ran a close second); and that they rarely did market studies to see if their message was getting through. The study also showed that religious material was the prime product with education and information running second, and news, sports, entertainment, and cultural activities of minimal importance. Some study recommendations: upgrade news, education, and information services, and start making market studies.

Other affiliates plugged holes on executive boards and charged new drives for 1974. The World Relief Commission—overseas relief arm of the NAE—pled for more and bigger donations from NAE members (3.5 million of them in 36,000 churches) to meet the costs of relief efforts in Sahel Africa, Bangladesh, and India. Of the nearly $1 million raised last year, two-thirds came from non-NAE members, WRC officials said. The WRC will also start acting as a transmittal agency for domestic relief, said executive vice-president Everett S. Graffam (he was named 1974 Layman of the Year by the NAE). Graffam stressed that the WRC would not be involved in domestic relief efforts but would channel monies to the appropriate agencies.

Meanwhile new board members were selected for the National Association of Christian Schools to replace those who quit when efforts to take the NACS out of the NAE failed last fall (see following story). The new board is expected to select a new director next month.

The Boston convention was the last for outgoing general director Clyde Taylor, who plans to retire at the end of the year. The final banquet was turned into a tribute night for Taylor’s thirty years of NAE service (besides heading the NAE he directs its Washington, D. C., public affairs office and is also executive secretary of the EFMA) and was marked with live and taped tributes from evangelical leaders, including a leather-bound book of letters from more than 300 church leaders around the world. While laying down his NAE hats, Taylor will remain as executive secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship.

Pastor Paul E. Toms, of Park Street Congregational Church in Boston, was elected president of the NAE for a two-year term.

The Boston convention was, for most delegates, a time of reflection on evangelical advances and successes coupled with warnings against complacency. Indeed, many seemed inclined toward an attitude like that of Washington Redskins football coach George Allen: for evangelicals, “the future is now.”

Jumping Ship?

While members of the National Association of Evangelicals contemplated the bright evangelical picture (see preceding story), the NAE boat itself was rocking as some of its affiliates considered jumping ship.

Leading the independence movement was the National Association of Christian Schools, which last year sought release from its affiliate status with the NAE. Not far behind was the board of the National Sunday School Association, which approved a similar request but which has yet, apparently, to forward that request to the NAE.

The NACS (composed of 257 Christian day schools) requested the release early last year. Stephen Shoe, NACS administrative assistant, said member schools were upset over NAE statements that they felt did not reflect their schools’ positions. For example, NACS members were irked by the NAE’s support of the prayer amendment because they were not consulted. (NAE officials said the issue involved public, not private, Christian schools.) Shoe described the NAE-NACS differences as primarily “theological and ideological.” Apparently several of the schools had difficulty explaining NAE actions and their own connection with the NAE to their constituents. ‘They got tired of fighting NAE’s battles,” he said.

Roy Lowrie, former NACS executive director, said the board first discussed independence in March, 1973, and was given to understand by NAE representatives that independence would eventually be granted. By October, however, the NAE had firmed its position and nixed the idea. Board members quit only because an NAE representative suggested they should if they felt strongly about the issue, Lowrie said. In all, sixteen of the eighteen board members including Lowrie did so. Lowrie has since formed a rival organization, the National Christian Schools Education Association. He is reluctant to discuss the NACS matter except to say that relations with NAE leaders remain amicable and that the affair was handled “quietly and prayerfully.”

The troubles cost the NACS some members. From a high of 375 in 1972 and 308 last year, the membership now stands at 257. In all, 120 schools dropped NACS membership last year, though seventy new ones joined.

Other NAE affiliates have looked into independence. Ben Armstrong, executive secretary of the National Religious Broadcasters, confirmed it had been discussed by NRB members, though not by the executive committee. The advantages of NAE ties outweighed the disadvantages, he said.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association solidified its NAE ties in Boston last month by requiring that all future bylaw and constitutional changes be approved by the NAE administration board and that reports on finances and actions be given to the board annually. Said EFMA officials: If members were contemplating change, word hadn’t reached them.

A Home For C. S. Lewis

When former White House Special Counsel Charles W. Colson—one of those indicted in the Watergate affair—revealed just before Christmas that he had become a Christian, he said one of the catalysts had been C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (see January 4 issue, page 49). “Arrogance was the great sin of Watergate, the great sin of a lot of us—that was the chapter in Lewis’s book that had the greatest impact,” Colson said in an interview.

For years, evangelical Christians, intellectuals, and the literate knew that Clive Staples Lewis, a British scholar who was one of the world’s experts on medieval and Renaissance literature, was also one of the twentieth century’s greatest Christian thinkers. Wheaton College near Chicago has become the repository of much of the world’s knowledge about Lewis. It and the Bodleian Library at Oxford in England are the leading centers for serious Lewis study. Wheaton literature professor Clyde S. Kilby started the Lewis collection in 1965. His project to cement Wheaton’s claim has been aided by a recent $200,000 memorial to the late Lewis devotee Marion E. Wade, founder and chairman of ServiceMaster, Inc., a Chicago business firm.

Kilby has expanded the Lewis collection to include the works of other Christian literary luminaries: Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, George Macdonald, Dorothy Sayers, and G. K. Chesterton. Lewis was the close friend of Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield, and they all belonged to “The Inklings,” a small circle of writers at Oxford who met weekly to read one another’s manuscripts and to discuss literary and Christian topics. Dorothy Sayers was a friend of Lewis and others. Macdonald was a nineteenth-century author, Chesterton, a well-known twentieth-century writer of essays, poems, and fiction.

Most of these writers used fantasy to portray Christianity. Macdonald wrote children’s books. Sayers and Chesterton wrote detective stories. Barfield, a retired London attorney, wrote with a philosophical bent. Lewis wrote for children, scholars, and Christians, and he has even been called “the apostle to the atheist.”

Kilby, a balding, bespectacled, slightly rotund scholar who bears a slight resemblance to Lewis, is well on the way to his objective of acquiring first editions of all of their works and all significant books and articles dealing with them. Wheaton now has photographs from almost every year of Lewis’s Jife and 850 Lewis letters, including a batch to his late brother Warren, a close friend of Kilby’s who bequeathed them to the college. In the collection are several recordings Lewis made for the British Broadcasting Corporation; to be added soon is a recording in which Colson tells of Lewis’s impact on his life.

The collection is currently housed in Wheaton’s old Blanchard Hall, but for permanent quarters Kilby hopes to build a replica of Lewis’s house on a site to the rear of Edman Chapel, adjacent to the newly planned library of Billy Graham papers on the crowded campus. Wade’s memorial will provide a big initial step toward its construction, on which Kilby has set a price tag of $600,000 and a target date of 1980.

WESLEY G. PIPPERT

Observing The Day

In the end lacking a congressional proclamation and without much fanfare in the press, millions of Americans nevertheless in some way observed April 30 as a national day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of churches across the nation were open for day-long prayer vigils, and many conducted public services. The nation’s Catholic bishops voiced their support, and Metropolitan Ireney, primate of the one-million-member Orthodox Church in America, instructed his congregation to participate.

One of the big surprises, said Republican Senator Mark Hatfield (he got the Senate to pass a resolution endorsing the special-day proclamation but it got buried in the House Judiciary Committee), was the interest and leadership given to the observance by evangelicals and the comparative lack of interest shown by liberals “who usually go in for things like this.”

Campus Crusade for Christ engaged in a nationwide effort to promote the day. In Washington, D. C., Crusade staffers distributed 70,000 leaflets to churches and other groups urging observance of the day, and they sponsored a prayer vigil on the mall in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial (see photos). Spiritual-life director Thomas Carruth of Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, rented a wide-area telephone line; he and others succeeded in persuading at least thirty-five state governors to proclaim the day. He worked in close association with Ohio evangelist Geraldine Conway and Leadership Foundation, a pro-morality group in Washington headed by former TV personality Martha Rountree. Several street evangelists demonstrated near the White House, wearing sackcloth and ashes. Scores of government employees gathered in lunch-time groups for prayer.

Black clergyman David L. Gray, national chairman of the United Prayer Movement, sponsored an inter-religious service attended by 2,000 at the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City, Missouri, and evangelicals—including separatists known in the past for their opposition to sharing a platform with non-separatists—were among the key speakers.

Hatfield himself took the day off and spoke to a lunch-hour audience of 350 or so at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington. He stressed the need that exists in both personal and corporate life to confess error and to turn to God. Earlier in the day Senate chaplain Edward L. R. Elson mentioned the observance, sparking comment on the Senate floor. “There is a great need to repent, to seek God’s guidance,” said Democrat senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, who plans to enter full-time Christian work in January. “We have come to rely more on bitterness and hatred than on love for our fellow man.” Senator Barry Goldwater said he couldn’t agree if “there is to be any suggestion that we as a nation and people should feel humiliated.” Democrat Senator Lawton Chiles replied that the resolution was intended to make Americans “show a little humility before the Creator,” not to make them feel ashamed of their country. A group of senators who regularly meet for a prayer breakfast each Wednesday had lunch together to discuss ideas raised by the resolution.

That night at an inter-religious service attended by about 200 in the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (where President Abraham Lincoln sometimes worshiped), Republican congressman Paul McCloskey of California called on Americans to “tithe” their time; the national sins that led so many to feel a national day of repentance was necessary might not have been committed if citizens spent 10 per cent of their time working in government at local, state, or national levels.

The idea for a special day originated when a California friend of Washington interior decorator Ray Bates, a member of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, showed him a proclamation for April 30, 1863, by President Lincoln. A printer friend in Washington ran off some copies for Bates. Bates showed a copy to Rosemary Woods, President Nixon’s secretary, suggesting it would be well for the President to follow Lincoln’s example and proclaim a special day. Meanwhile, Hatfield one Sunday found a copy of the Lincoln replica at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington. He edited it, deleted Civil War references, adding a section to fit with the times (see February 1 issue, page 28), and pushed it through the Senate.

Honoring The Press

Advice and awards were handed out at annual meetings of the nation’s religious press associations held recently in Denver and Colorado Springs.

The Associated Church Press (ACP), representing 160 periodicals with a total circulation of about 18 million, met jointly with the Catholic Press Association (CPA) in Denver.

First-place ACP awards for general excellence, by category:

General church magazines: Together, a United Methodist monthly succeeded this year by United Methodists Today; magazines of opinion: The Christian Century, an independent ecumenical weekly (CHRISTIANITY TODAY placed second); special audience magazines: Face to Face, a United Methodist monthly; mission magazines: New World Outlook, a joint United Methodist and United Presbyterian monthly; national news journals: (tie) Canadian Churchman, an Anglican monthly, and United Methodist Reporter, a Texas-based weekly; regional news journals: Western Catholic Reporter, a Canadian weekly.

First place in the general magazine category went to U. S. Catholic for the best article (“A Jew Looks at Christmas”), the United Presbyterian edition of A.D. for the best editorial (one that questioned the way the denomination carried out staff reductions), and Together for photography. In the opinion category, first-place awards went to the Reformed Journal for both the best article (on South African apartheid) and the best editorial (on the controversy over action by the Federal Communications Commission involving King’s Garden of Seattle).

Journalism professor John DeMott of Northern Illinois University, chief judge of the ACP contest, commented that despite financial difficulties the religious press had achieved a new level of professional competence. “The contents of more publications appear to reflect a genuine respect for the reader as a human being trying to fit his faith to the hard realities of everyday living, rather than appearing to regard the reader as a political animal or as a constituent of the church,” he said.

A full-time executive secretary, Dennis E. Shoemaker, a United Presbyterian executive of suburban Philadelphia, was chosen to succeed Alfred P. Klausler, an editor and broadcaster who has served part time since 1961.

The top Catholic press awards went to the National Catholic Reporter, a Kansas City, Missouri, weekly; the Monitor of San Francisco; and the Church World of Portland, Maine.

In Colorado Springs nearly 200 attended the 26th annual Evangelical Press Association (EPA), which represents 190 publications. EPA president Peter Meeuwsen of The Banner, a Christian Reformed Church publication, and EPA executive secretary Norman Rohrer reported that membership, interest, and finances were up. But postage costs are up too, warned postal service watcher Russell Hitt, of Eternity magazine.

Awards for excellence were given in “Periodical of the Year” and “Higher Goals” contests. Youth Alive (Assemblies of God) won top place in the periodical competition. First place awards, by category, included: general, CHRISTIANITY TODAY; denominational, The Church Herald (Reformed Church in America); missionary, World Vision.

There were seventeen Higher Goals categories; first-place winners included: poetry, CHRISTIANITY TODAY (“A Conversion” by Eugene Warren); news, CHRISTIANITY TODAY (“Underground Evangelism: The Rumors That Won’t Go Away” by Edward E. Plowman); general article, Church Herald; editorial, Wittenburg Door (on death, by Ben Patterson); humor, Eternity (“Funny Birds in the Sanctuary”) by LeRoy Koopman).

Armstrong Church: Split Decision

One stayed, one quit. So decided two former vice-presidents of Herbert W. and Gamer Ted Armstrong’s beleaguered Worldwide Church of God early this month as about 600 ministers and elders of the sect began pouring into its Pasadena, California, headquarters for what was called “the largest meeting in the history of this work.”

The two men had resigned briefly in late February over doctrinal and administrative grievances, then reconsidered and were ordered to take sixty-day leaves (see March 29 issue, page 44).

For Albert J. Portune, who had been chief financial officer for the 85,000-member WCG until last September, Armstrong strong-armism was too much: “I simply cannot accept the continued accusations against and labeling of dozens of men—whose lives and fruits show they are sincere men of God and love God’s people and have a deep desire to follow the truth of the Bible—as ministers of Satan whose only purpose is to devour the flock for themselves and greedily gain their money.”

Portune’s disenchantment had come gradually; he stepped down from the finance post because, he said, he “didn’t feel clean” about signing checks for things like the two multi-million-dollar jets the Armstrongs lease for worldwide junketing. But Portune, who cast his lot with the splitting Associated Churches of God¹Portune said he will soon move to Washington, D.C., where he will be director of evangelism for the Associated Churches of God. Four other executive directors at the Washington headquarters will be Dr. Ernest Martin (chairman of biblical doctrine), Ken Westby, George Kimnetz, and Daniel Porter. that siphoned off thirty-five former WCG ministers and several thousand laymen, was blunter still in his final resignation, spelling out “neglect, errors, continuing oppression … misrepresentations, corruption, and ungodly methods.”

David Antion, former vice-president in charge of church administration, was more sanguine. An Armstrong family member by marriage, Antion repented of his “defeatist attitude,” saying he would now stay because the Armstrongs “desire to bring about understanding and harmony as well as to reconcile any difficulties in a fair and equitable way.” His new duties weren’t perfectly clear. No longer a top officer, he is a teacher at Ambassador College and an evangelist, he said.

Meanwhile, speculation raged over the effect of the whole upheaval on WCG income, which last year averaged $1 million a week. Sources unfriendly to the WCG say income is hurting; officials deny it. But an eighty-seven-page bulletin from Ambassador College’s controller indicated the church intends to sell and lease back three of its large festival sites as part of a massive revision of financial policy.

The same report outlined budget cuts on “support functions”—schools, transportation, physical plant and grounds at Ambassador’s three locations; the slashes include 27 per cent in academic expenditures and 21 per cent in plant and grounds at Pasadena, where a new $10 million concert hall was dedicated last month. (Two sisters and a young man who “streaked” the ceremony were put on six months’ probation in the first streaking trial in Los Angeles County. Wearing only sneakers and socks, they sprinted past the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and tuxedoed dignitaries.)

The worldwide ministry meetings in Pasadena this month were sure to deal with the WCG crisis, and Stanley Rader, Armstrong legal counsel and chief media spokesman, assured that input would be sought from all on every matter of doctrine and administration. In a radical departure from the past, Rader said WCG officials (below Armstrong rank) will be available to the press in the future. He even hinted that some WCG ministry meetings might be opened to reporters.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Denominations: The Downward Drift

The number of North Americans having some religious affiliation has leveled out at 62.4 per cent, according to an annual tabulation by the National Council of Churches. A total of 131,424,564 members of churches and synagogues, 13.8 million of them in Canada, is reported in the 1974 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, up only 35,000 from the previous tally (the yearbook’s figures are compiled mostly from calendar 1972 statistics). If any trend is shown by the new figures, the NCC said, it is that the older, so-called mainline Protestant denominations continue to lose members while theologically conservative or strongly evangelistic groups are generally gaining.

The report shows 71,648,521 Protestants, 48,640,427 Roman Catholics, 6,115,000 Jews, and 3,739,620 members of Eastern churches. (Included in the Protestant total are Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, non-Protestant groups. The yearbook reports that Mormons registered the largest percentage membership gain—2.5 per cent—of the seventeen largest churches, reaching 2,133,072. The largest decrease was 5 per cent among congregations of the American Baptist Churches, which dropped to 1,484,393.)

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, had a 2 per cent increase, moving to slightly more than 12 million in the period covered by the yearbook. Losses in membership were reported in the American Lutheran Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, and the United Methodist Church.

Same As The Ice Age

“Unsecular Man, by Andrew M. Greeley (Schocken, 280 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, professor of religious studies, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.

Andrew Greeley is, among other things, a Catholic priest, a sociologist (ten years at the University of Chicago), a prolific author (some forty books), a weekly columnist (fifty U. S. newspapers), and “the Howard Cosell of the Catholic church” who, according to a recent Time article, has labeled the present leadership of the church “morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt.” Little wonder that his reading public anticipates every new volume with a sort of intellectual breathlessness. His three latest books—all published within a three-month span—deal with politics (Building Coalition), theology (The New Agenda), and sex (Sexual Intimacy).

Unsecular Man is a well-written, interesting elaboration of the thesis that man’s religious needs are essentially the same now as they were in the Ice Age. Whatever minor changes have occurred make religious questions more rather than less critical in the contemporary world. Greeley is not at all bothered by the conventional wisdom that sees man evolving away from any need for faith and the sacred. In fact, the opening chapter begins, “Let us be clear at the beginning: this is a volume of dissent. It rejects most of the conventional wisdom about the contemporary religious situation.” Greeley argues that the “man come of age” mentality is based not on empirical evidence but on a priori assumptions about the nature of the evolutionary process. It simply does not face up to the persistence of religion among the overwhelming majority of people in the Western world, nor can it explain the resurgence of bizarre forms of religious behavior among today’s young.

The basic thesis of man as hom*o religiosus is supported and expanded by a number of secondary themes. Perhaps the most important is man’s need for a meaning system. It is not by choice but by an absolute biological necessity that man is driven to the search for meaning. As a symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking being, man demands form, order, and direction in life. Man without meaning is not man. Religion provides him with an interpretive scheme about the nature of ultimate reality. Since the search for meaning is indispensable for many, so also is an interpretive scheme (which by definition must be labeled religion). These maps that chart man’s course in the areas of bafflement he encounters in life are conveyed by means of symbols or myths. Questions about the “truth” of myth result from the repression of our mythopoetic instincts by positivist education. Myths are true in the sense that they purport to interpret the meaning that underlies the events of history.

Since Greeley faults his opposition for not basing its opinion of man’s increasing secularity on any empirical evidence, we may ask if Greeley provides evidence for the counter position. The answer must be, Perhaps. He cites the conclusions of several surveys that seem to establish the premise that religion has in fact persisted in the modern world. Careful scholars would wish to examine the studies more thoroughly before yielding to Greeley’s conclusion that the evidence is “overwhelming.” Greeley, however, is a bit piqued by the intellectual community which, while it may itself be involved in a religious crisis, mistakenly asserts that its problem reflects the religious situation of the mass of people. His “kinky Irish tongue” (conceded by Greeley, according to Time) encourages him to say that Roszak is “clearly in love with his own erudition and powers of articulation,” that a certain article in Commentary is “the sort of superficial smartness that one has come to expect from intellectual journals,” and that Harvey Cox has made statements that “in a lesser man” would be contradictions. Such a style makes for interesting reading but fails to promote constructive dialogue or to further understanding.

The book is laden with long verbatim quotations from a galaxy of contemporary writers. Take chapter 7, on religion and sex, for example. If I counted correctly, of the 1,046 lines, 468 are Greeley’s and 578 are quotations from other authors. Some quotations are more than a page in length. I would appreciate more of Greeley and less of what he has been reading.

Contrasting Evaluations

The Supreme Court and Religion, by Richard E. Morgan (Free Press, 1972, 216 pp., $7.95), and The Great Church-State Fraud, by C. Stanley Lowell, (Robert B. Luce, 1973, 224 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by Ruth Pinches, student, National Law Center, Washington, D. C.

The proper relation between church and state has been a controversial issue since the earliest days of the colonies. Although church membership was generally a requirement for holding office and voting during the seventeenth century, the church and state served different functions in the communities, and the state could not in any sense be considered the police arm of the church. When the framers sat down to write a constitution for the new nation in the late 1780s, they defined this doctrine in that first and vital amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This writing did not solve the question of the exact relation between church and state. In fact, it had provoked nearly two centuries of discussion, in book and newspaper, classroom and courtroom. The two authors in view here approach the question from different perspectives and arrive at different conclusions.

In The Supreme Court and Religion, Richard Morgan provides a relatively objective historical view, from the time of the colonies through controversial questions of 1972. His treatment, specifically of litigation that has reached the Supreme Court, would hardly qualify as a text for a constitutional scholar, but it provides a good overview for the interested lay person. Only in his concluding chapter does Morgan specifically reveal his own views. C. Stanley Lowell’s opinions are more evident throughout his work. It is quite clear from the first chapter of The Great Church-State Fraud that he is a vehement proponent of “the wall of separation between church and state” (a phrase first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association around 1800 to describe his view of the proper effect of the First Amendment).

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Lord, Make My Life a Miracle!, by Raymond Ortlund (Regal, 154 pp., $1.25 pb). Challenging call to and survey of discipleship, with references to how it has worked in the author’s own congregation.

The Bible and Drug Abuse, by R. A. Morey (Baker, 1974, 110 pp., $1.45 pb). A brief but convincing argument from Scripture against the use of drugs. Also contains practical counseling advice for teachers, pastors, and parents of drug abusers.

The Nabataeans in Historical Perspective, by John Irving Lawlor (Baker, 159 pp., $3.95). Archaeological findings about the next-door neighbors (to the east) of first-century Palestine. Geared to the layman.

Works of Richard Sibbes (Banner of Truth, 587 pp., $7.95). Reprinting of all the writings of one of the foremost Puritans published during his lifetime (1577–1635). Includes a lengthy memoir by Alexander Grosart.

The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church, edited by Vilmos Vajta (Fortress, 239 pp., $8.95). The church will be significant to society when it remembers and retains its history. Seven articles stress various aspects of this theme, including “The Gospel of the Kingdom of God and the Church,” “The Gathering of the Congregation,” and “Authority in the Church.”

Christian-Muslim Dialogue, edited by Samartha and J. B. Taylor (World Council of Churches [150 route de Ferney, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland], 167 pp., n.p., pb). Some of the papers presented at the 1972 consultations in Lebanon between Islamic and World Council of Churches leaders promoting interfaith dialogue.

Unvanquished Puritan: A Portrait of Lyman Beecher, by Stuart C. Henry (Eerdmans, 299 pp., $7.95). Fascinating and authoritative portrait of the theology and activities of the famous nineteenth-century evangelical minister.

Face to Face and Leading Groups in Personal Growth, both by Jackie M. Smith (John Knox, 143 and 180 pp., $3.45 pb and $4.95 pb). The first is a self-directed improvement guide that offers psychological aids based on general scriptural understanding. The second is a leader’s guide for group use of Face to Face. Both stress the psychology of self-acceptance far more than specific biblical teachings on the subject.

Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Volume I, edited by Jacques Waardenburg (Mouton [The Hague, Netherlands], 741 pp., 50 guilders). Anthology of selections illustrating the development of the academic study of religion from the works of forty-one of the pioneering scholars of two to four generations ago. Well indexed. Important for university and seminary libraries.

Find Yourself in the Bible, by Karl A. Olsson (Augsburg, 1974, 126 pp., $2.95 pb). An honest account of Olsson’s own struggle with interpersonal relations and the help he found in group Bible study. Offers guidance for setting up such groups. Includes thought-provoking relational studies of some Bible passages.

New Testament Words, by William Barclay (Westminster, 300 pp., $3.95). Excellent studies of the meanings of sixty key Greek words used in the New Testament. For laymen (and as an example for scholars).

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, by C. K. Barrett (Harper & Row, 354 pp., $8.95). Seventh volume in “Harper’s New Testament Commentaries.”

Behold My Servant, by Gaëtan Bourbonnais (Liturgical Press, 158 pp., $3.95 pb). Scholarly study from Genesis to Revelation of what the Bible teaches regarding servants and service.

Ethics For Environment: Three Religious Strategies, edited by Dave Steffensen, Walter Herrscher, and Robert Cook (University of Wisconsin Ecumenical Center [Green Bay, Wis. 54302], 132 pp., $2 pb). Report of a conference that attempted to pull together ethical implications for environmental responsibility from the Judeo-Christian, Asian, and American-Indian traditions.

Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, edited by Barnabas Lindars and Stephen Smalley (Cambridge, 440 pp., $23.50). Twenty-seven scholarly essays in honor of C. F. D. Moule, including studies of Christology in Mark, the punctuation of Romans 9:5, the “grievous wolves” of Acts 20:29, and the Spirit in the Apocalypse.

Esther: For Such a Time as This, by Carl Armerding (Good News Publishers, 96 pp., $.95 pb). Helpful commentary by a widely respected evangelical elder statesman.

Future Hope, by John Wesley White (Creation, 149 pp., $4.95). Excerpts from fourteen television programs conducted by the Canadian evangelist and college president.

When God Says No, by William P. Barker (Revell, 160 pp., $4.95). Fourteen expanded, modernized accounts of biblical figures who demonstrate the idea of God’s rejection of our plans for his own. The point is stretched with some of the illustrations, especially Joseph.

FitzRoy of the Beagle, by H. E. L. Mellersh (Mason and Lipscomb, 308 pp., $8.95). Biography of the devout captain of the ship on which the young Darwin sailed. (He later was governor of New Zealand.) Recounts the influence of the men upon each other, especially in areas of religious convictions.

The Image of Joy, by Jeanette Lockerbie (Revell, 125 pp., $3.95). Examination of the joyless existence and practical suggestions for the joyful life promised the Christian. Informal and challenging.

Charles Fillmore, by Hugh D’Andrade (Harper & Row, 145 pp., $5.95). Sympathetic biography of the founder of the Unity School of Christianity movement, which next to Christian Science is the best-known expression of “metaphysical Christianity.”

God Incognito, by S. Paul Schilling (Abingdon, 207 pp., $5.95). On the basis of human experiences—his own, those of others, and those who have reflected on them scientifically and artistically—the author attempts to point toward the reality of some kind of transcendent God.

Capturing a Town for Christ, by Elmer Towns and Jerry Falwell (Revell, 191 pp., $5.95). The same two men recently wrote Church Aflame (Impact, 1971) about the same fast-growing congregation: Thomas Road Baptist of Lynchburg, Virginia. The later book differs only in that the account of the church, by Towns, is much briefer, and six representative sermons of Pastor Falwell are included.

Identity and Faith in Young Adults, by Jacques de Lorimier, Roger Graveline, and Hubert April (Paulist, 275 pp., $4.95 pb). Translation of a French Canadian study of the psychosociological aspects of religious instruction of college-age students. For the specialist in campus ministries.

Lowell deals exclusively with the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion, charging deceit, gimmickry and trickery to those who have, in his opinion, violated the constitutional provision by soliciting government funds for religious purposes. The worst accusations are directed at the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church! Lowell ignores, or is unaware of, the difficulties caused by the second aspect of the freedom of religion clause—that of protecting the “free exercise of religion.”

Morgan’s more scholarly work illuminates this problem and how the Court has attempted to reconcile the two clauses throughout the years. The key question is: When does allowing free exercise become establishing, and conversely, at what point does non-establishment prohibit free exercise? Recent issues involving this question are conscientious objection (is not its exclusive nature an establishment of religion as opposed to irreligion?); compulsory school attendance (is not this a restriction on the free exercise of religion by such groups as the Amish?); prayer in the schools and released time for religious instruction (establishment?); and government funding for church-related schools, hospitals, and other welfare projects.

This last issue is viewed as particularly explosive since it involves the use of taxes, and both authors spend a good deal of space on it. They agree that recent interest in government funding stems from the decline in church strength in the United States; both membership and giving have dropped sharply in recent years. Morgan’s solution is to place less emphasis on strict separation. He believes government subsidy would be appropriate to preserve the diversity provided by sectarian organizations:

It is important to encourage the development of private charitable and educational styles.… I believe that the conventional liberal positions on the religion clauses are obsolescent—that they no longer serve the liberal goal of maximum diversity and individualism consistent with a decently ordered government and society.

Lowell’s conclusions are somewhat different. Although he does not oppose the influence of church-related schools and charities, he abhors the idea of their continuance only through government subsidy. He particularly praises the Southern Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists for standing firm against the acceptance of government funds. This “has kept the muscles firm and accentuated the reliance of these votaries upon their own efforts and the help of their God.” The breaking down of the wall of church and state causes harm to both sides. The church is sapped of its religious significance, and the state loses the prophetic voice of the church. “When the state needs the voice of the church and listens for it, all it hears is its own voice.”

More evangelicals would probably agree with Lowell’s conclusions, despite his rather violent attacks on certain religious bodies. In any case, for a person interested in the church-state relationship, Morgan and Lowell provide an informative contrast, and if one studies both books he will touch on all the major points of present-day controversy.

Call To Missionary Urgency

Breaking the Stained Glass Barrier, by David A. Womack (Harper & Row, 1973, 167 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Leroy Birney, Christian Missions in Many Lands, Medellín, Colombia.

Womack charges that present missionary methods result in little more than a token presence in each country, and that radical changes are required to fulfill the Great Commission. The strategy he proposes is to begin national churches that are not merely indigenous but capable of inciting the conditions in which spontaneous lay movements of church expansion may occur. The national churches would thereby evangelize their own nations. Easier said than done, but nonetheless necessary. The intention of this book is to show how to do it.

Womack finds in Paul’s evangelism of Ephesus and the Province of Asia an example of successful strategic missionary work that may be followed today. From Paul’s ministry he draws ten principles which he applies to the development of missionary methods for evangelizing today’s world.

The book generally seems well researched, but it is not documented, and there are cases of overstatement or inaccuracy. For example, the assertion that there was one pastor (elder or bishop) over each city to whom the deacon (minister) of each house church was responsible is contradicted by the case of Ephesus itself, which had a plurality of elders (Acts 20:17, 18, 28; see also Philippians 1:1 and Titus 1:5).

It is also questionable to regard the twelve former disciples of John the Baptist as the initial nucleus of the congregation in Ephesus (Acts 18:26–19:2).

We thank God for the growth of evangelical Pentécostal churches, but it hardly seems accurate to write, “It [Pentecostalism] is the only kind of Christianity that is growing at any realistic rate in the world today.” The Plymouth Brethren in Venezuela, the Seventh-day Adventists in Peru, and the Methodists in Honduras are all outperforming their Pentecostal brethren in their respective countries (described in Latin American Church Growth, by Read et al.).

Nevertheless, the positive contributions of both ideas and information far outweigh any flaws. For example, Womack claims that there are three facets of apostolic ministry—not only kerygma (gospel proclamation) and didache (teaching) but also semeia (signs, miraculous answers to prayer). If the primary value of the signs in the New Testament was communication of the power and veracity of the Gospel, we should not ignore their value for communicating the same message to the masses today. The thesis that our evangelistic ministry today will be enhanced by including these same three elements is worthy of further study, both exegetical and observational.

The chapter on teamwork relates specific plateaus of church growth to degrees of organization, with each increase in number requiring increased lay involvement and more efficient teamwork by leaders.

Also helpful is Womack’s conceptualization of the church-planting process, from the lonely beginning to the emergence of a vigorous movement of spontaneous lay witness. First is the patient formation of a control group with all the important characteristics that the final result should exhibit (apostolic doctrine, experience, practice, and priorities). This is necessary because the next step is to go to the masses, which are irrational and will simply follow the pattern already established.

The only purpose and result of mass communication, he says, is to make the Gospel an issue and gain favorably disposed contacts who can then be fully taught and assimilated into the original group. As the group grows, congregations should be multiplied. They will take the Gospel to the masses again, assimilate the results, and return to the masses for another group of favorable contacts.

Such expansion will require more leadership, which implies a realistic method of financing and the training of fresh leaders who can maintain the momentum of the expansion. The Assemblies of God mission, of which Womack is home secretary, is a rather good example of this process.

The author refers several times to a factor that is too often unmentioned in books on missionary methods and unmeasured in church growth studies. It is the effect on church growth of having and inspiring a militant sense of cause, a powerful religious enthusiasm, an attitude of intense dedication. It is perhaps true that “most missionary work … is far too casual ever to fulfill the Great Commission even locally, far less on a worldwide scale.”

This book is not a theoretical discussion. It is an urgent proposal of a plan of action for right now. With a world population of four billion living persons (half of whom are outside even nominal Christendom) soaring toward 6.5 billion in the year 2000, untold millions of persons live and die with no opportunity to know the Saviour Jesus Christ. Caring about these persons gives a sense of urgency that makes missionary strategy and methods a matter of (eternal) life and death.

The following guest column is by Gladys M. Hunt, author, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1963 Helmut Thielicke, well-known German preacher, visited the United States. When asked by reporters what he considered the most important question of OUT time, especially in America, Thielicke spoke of his concern that Americans did not know how to deal with suffering, that they did not expect suffering to be part of life. He said, “Again and again, I have the feeling that suffering is regarded as something which is fundamentally inadmissible, disturbing, embarrassing and not to be endured.” If life is inconvenient or hard, there are pills and anodynes for everything.

In view of severe drug problems among old and young alike in the last ten years, his comments seem prophetic. Alcohol consumption increases among teens as drug abuse works its way down into elementary schools. While deploring both dope and booze, others regularly consume tranquilizers and pain-killers. It’s un-American to suffer. It spoils our pursuit of happiness.

To our shame, some contemporary evangelism leads people to believe that trusting Jesus will be like taking a giant aspirin. Testimonies of bubbling enthusiasm, where troubles always have a glib, happy ending because of Jesus, increase the expectation that this is what the Christian life is all about. Trust Jesus and be rid of suffering.

But the Bible never promises that. Instead, the words of Jesus and the apostles assure us that we will in fact suffer. How hard it is to hear that; in fact, we prefer not to hear it. We like some of the beatitudes, especially the one about peacemakers being called the children of God. But we don’t linger long over “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kind of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad …” (Matt. 5:11).

Jesus did not deceive his disciples: “In the world you will have trouble.”

God sent Ananias to a blind, submissive Saul with the news of “how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:16). Later Paul and Barnabas on a missionary journey strengthened and encouraged new disciples with the same word: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

James writes to believers, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (Jas. 1:2).

After struggling before the Lord, Paul says that his own “thorn in the flesh” became a cause for glorying. He came to the point of saying, “I delight … in difficulties” (2 Cor. 12:10). He insists that those who have been given the righteousness of Christ are able to rejoice in their suffering (Rom. 5:4).

How can this be? When we suffer we are tempted to ask if God doesn’t love us enough to answer our prayers for deliverance. And the admonishment to rejoice seems to be not in spite of but because of suffering—which confuses us even more.

But verses must not be taken out of context. Our Lord never fools us in calling us to himself. He never said that he would give us a flower-strewn path. He did say, “I will be with you.” Take heart, he said, for I have overcome the world.

We are not called to be stoics or to have a stiff upper lip. Nor are we lured into a kind of nirvana where we do not feel anything. Rather, we are called to a point of view about all of life. Suffering is only one expected ingredient.

Christian faith takes us beyond the immediate pain; it gives us the long look of faith to see Who is in charge and what is the ultimate goal. And that is cause for rejoicing.

Christians are not masoch*sts. We are not glad when bad things happen. That would indeed be a psychological oddity. And some people are like that; they are happy only when they are miserable. Scripture gives no support to such abnormality.

Biblical teaching, and our own experience, tells us that suffering produces. Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope (Rom. 5:4, 5).

For James the joy in suffering is the maturing and completing of our faith. Peter talks about burning off the dross so that faith is proved genuine as gold (1 Pet. 1:7). Suffering does not have pain as its end product, but rather righteousness.

But righteousness does not have very high priority with us. We want our sins forgiven and assurance of heaven, but we resist the process of being made like Jesus. How easily we lie when we sing about being soldiers of the cross. We seldom want to die to that which is earthly in us, let alone suffer for the sake of the Gospel.

I used to think of suffering in fanciful, dramatic, scary scenes. Like being on trial for my faith before some contemporary Festus or Agrippa. It may come to that. But there are many ways to suffer, and most of them are not dramatic. The very ordinariness of the suffering makes it and us less noble.

Situations arise; life is complicated; decisions are made that seem wrong to us; we are misunderstood. Physical problems, job tensions, family crises. And we cry out to God about the pressure and the confusion, only to find that he is more concerned about us than the situation. It is almost in comic relief. He is using our suffering to make us into the people he wants us to be.

How shallow are those who have resisted suffering! And how superficial the faith of those who haven’t waded in the deep love of Jesus because life was hard!

No wonder the writer to Hebrew Christians said, “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:10, 11).

In a very real sense, suffering actualizes our hope—our hope of sharing the glory of God. “The doom of our greatness,” to quote P. T. Forsyth, is that God wants us to be like Jesus Christ. We will not only be with him in his glory—understanding, appreciating all that is true about him—but we ourselves are “being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

God is using our suffering to rub off sharp corners, to refine our temperaments, to loosen our hold on what is unworthy, and to implement the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Rejoice that he loves us that much. Be glad that he wants us to be a little breathless for heaven. Be thankful that he never wastes any of our experiences.

“Don’t be surprised, dear friends, at the painful trials you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in Christ’s suffering, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.” So wrote Peter to first-century Christians (1 Pet. 4:12, 13), and it applies to us today.

“As far as I can tell,” writes a history professor at a large Midwestern university, “the evangelical Christian groups are hardly making a ripple on campus. They work independently of one another, even in competition with each other. There is no book table, and no jointly sponsored campus-wide activities. Nor is there any attempt to write on current issues in the school newspaper or to be involved in student volunteer services such as tutoring and visiting old peoples’ homes, although hundreds of humanists are involved. The Christians are typically holding each other’s hands in prayer meetings and Bible studies, and ‘discipling.’ But I see no vision for a united Christian outreach to the campus community that is socially relevant and intellectually respectable in terms of a Christian apologetic.”

This indictment raises at least two major questions that should be seriously heeded by every evangelical believer: Is this an isolated instance or is it typical of the Christian life and witness on campus? And second, should we expect Christian students to do the things this professor mentions? After all, young people go to college primarily to learn, to invest time and energy in a course of study that will enable them to work effectively in the world in subsequent years. Should evangelistic outreach be a significant part of their life structure during this preparatory period?

A reply to the first question is not easily drafted. The picture is mixed. Here and there, campus outreach appears to be vigorous and fruitful, and there is some evidence of coordination. When Korean prophet Sun Myung Moon visited Berkeley, for example, seven evangelical campus groups acting in concert as the Christian Student Coalition of the University of California took out a full-page advertisem*nt in the Daily Californian. They challenged Moon’s Christian claims and gave a brief summation of what the Gospel is really all about.

But to seize the initiative and offer an evangelical speaker who would draw crowds of students is much more difficult. One is hard pressed to come up with an evangelical with anything like the drawing power of Bobby Seale or William Kuntzler, for instance. Collegians still respect status and success and are attracted to celebrities, of whom, besides Billy Graham, there are few in the evangelical world.

Moreover, even evangelicals are not always inclined to work together simply around the theme of redemption. That the Good News of salvation is central to Christianity is an undisputed point among all evangelicals, but they are not always eager to rally around that alone. Demands are invariably raised that concern be widened, and with that comes disagreement and division.

In contrast to what good reports there are about Spirit-blessed evangelistic programs on secular campuses across North America, we can count many disappointments, as brought out poignantly by the history professor. Perhaps the biggest letdown recently was that virtually nothing was done to carry out Key 73 at either Christian or secular colleges.

Our second question asked whether we should even expect group (as distinguished from individual) evangelistic efforts on campus. No doubt many have concluded that the campus is for learning and that religious witness except on a one-to-one basis is inappropriate there.

We reject that conclusion. Its view of evangelism is parochial, and it does a grave injustice to the pervasiveness of biblical truth in a total life and world view. “Should we evangelize?” is really not the question, for how can we avoid it? Someone has to have the, last word, and if Christians are not making the Bible the ultimate referent, then they must be granting that position to some competing principle.

The fact that we can go about our business, whether it be study or vocation, oblivious to the biblical claims upon us to use our time and talents as Christ’s witnesses in every area of life indicates how far our culture has shifted from its biblical undergirding. Some people construe the Lordship of Christ over all of life in such a way as to deny the freedom we have in Christ and the Gospel. That too is a mistake. However, for the Christian the search for truth as a whole cannot be carried out independent of biblical principles.

One day the profound way in which the Bible confronts man’s predicaments will be rediscovered in a dramatic new way. May God hasten the day.

Off On The Right Foot

The joint Committee on Merger Exploration of the Wesleyan and Free Methodist churches is recommending a strong statement on Scripture. If a new denomination does come into being, it will be getting off to a good theological start with a doctrinal stand like this. A crucial portion of the proposed statement reads as follows:

These Holy Scriptures are God’s true record, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit. They have been given without error and transmitted without corruption of any essential doctrine. They are the singularly authentic and authoritative revelation of God’s acts in creation, in history, in our salvation, and especially in His Son, Jesus Christ.

We hope that any attempts to dilute the position will be resisted.

Billy Graham’S Twenty-Fifth

A year ago the Board of Directors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY approved, in principle, some kind of celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Billy Graham’s ministry, which dates back to his Los Angeles crusade in 1949. Later Lloyd Ogilvie, minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, suggested a series of special meetings at the Hollywood Bowl. From these two independent ideas there have developed plans for a three-day (September 19–21) stand at the Hollywood Bowl sponsored jointly by churches, ministers, and laymen of Southern California, and CHRISTIANITY TODAY. On the closing night CHRISTIANITY TODAY will arrange the program and offer its salute to Mr. Graham, co-founder with L. Nelson Bell of this magazine, member of our board, and longtime friend. Join us in Hollywood as we honor God’s servant on this happy occasion!

New Directions In Portugal

Usually a military takeover of a government heralds the end of any democracy and the beginning or intensification of dictatorship. Portugal’s nearly bloodless revolt under General Spínola may prove to be a happy exception. We should fervently hope and pray that this will be so, for the sake of the people as a whole and of the evangelical community in both European Portugal and her overseas (primarily African) territories.

A legitimate concern about Portugal and Portuguese Africa, however, is that a right-wing dictatorship that severely restricted Protestantism might be replaced in time by left-wing dictatorships and African nationalist movements that forbid Christianity altogether. Reaction to one totalitarian extreme—or the fear of it—seems to breed some other form of totalitarianism rather than a firm commitment to responsible freedom. The Portuguese Communist party seems to be emerging as the best organized of the various long suppressed alternatives to the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship.

In the providence of God may leaders emerge wherever the Portuguese flag flies who will govern with the consent of the governed and with firm commitments to freedom of religion. No denomination should be favored by the state above others, nor should any for religious reasons be repressed.

Feeding The Hungry

The famine in Africa continues unabated; the outlook is even more grisly than when we spoke on the subject last fall (Sept. 14 issue). At that time we published the names and addresses of some agencies engaged in famine relief in Africa. We list them again, and urge every reader to get out his checkbook right now. Your sacrificial gift will help to save the lives of helpless and hopeless people. Churches can take up special offerings for this purpose. The Scripture says: “You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.… You shall give to him freely … because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake” (Deut. 15:7 ff.).

Sudan Interior Mission Cedar Grove, New Jersey 07009

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association 1300 Harmon Place Minneapolis, Minnesota 55400

World Relief Commission National Association of Evangelicals P.O. Box 44 Valley Forge, Pa. 19481

World Vision International 919 W. Huntington Drive Monrovia, California 91016

C.A.R.E. 660 First Avenue New York, New York 10016

Church World Service 475 Riverside Drive New York, New York 10027

Designate contributions for famine relief in Africa.

The Mitchell-Stans Verdict

Americans like to think their leaders are a notch or two higher on the moral scale than the rank and file. They respect good leadership. They are disturbed at reports of chicanery in high government circles—so much so that they tend to resist hearing about it, or to refuse to believe it.

Thus for the bulk of the American people, the Mitchell-Stans verdict was as widely welcome a piece of news as they have heard in a long time. For a very brief period many people began to hope that maybe the scandals uncovered within the last year or two were not so pervasive after all. Watergate developments following quickly on the heels of that verdict dashed those hopes.

This terrible moral mess in which our leadership is now involved is creating a vacuum. The populace should keep alert to trade-offs it might be offered to fill that vacuum.

Holiday Haze

On Monday, May 27, Americans are observing Memorial Day, honoring the war dead of bygone years. Since 1969 the last Monday in May has also been set aside by presidential proclamation as a day of prayer for peace. On the Jewish calendar, May 27 of this year marks the Feast of Weeks as well (the Christian counterpart of this festival, Pentecost, falls on the following Sunday, June 2).

How many people will take any of the reasons for commemoration into account when deciding how to spend that Monday? The great temptation is to look at it simply as a day off from work, a part of a long weekend, the kick-off day for summer. For many Memorial Day means opening up the summer home, or taking the first camping trip of the year, or launching the picnic season. In recent years Americans have gone to doing their own thing to such an extent that little is left of the old-fashioned community commemorations.

If nothing else, fly your flag on Memorial Day. Or make it a point to do at least one other thing especially appropriate to the occasion.

The Tapes: Tardy, Tempered Truth

For $12.50 anyone can buy the edited version of the White House tapes put out by the Government Printing Office. Few of us will wade through all the material, but there is one lesson evident from even a skimming of the conversations: It is better to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to do it right away. To do so may be costly, but the cost is always less now than later. God says, “I the LORD speak the truth” (Isa. 45:19).

Faint Not

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The saying is reportedly a favorite of President Nixon, who has certainly shown “toughness” even though there is wide disagreement about his handling of Watergate. Unambiguous examples of righteous toughness abound in Scripture.

The going got tough for the Apostle Paul, as he relates in Second Corinthians 11. He was beaten, jailed, stoned, shipwrecked, adrift at sea; imperiled by rivers, robbers, fellow countrymen, pagans, false brethren; exhausted, hungry, cold, in pain. Any one of us, in similar circ*mstances, might conclude we were not in the will of God and return to home and hearth, where life might be less demanding. But not Paul.

In Galatians Paul said: “In due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (6:9). No doubt many of us have missed the harvest because we “fainted” (the word here is translated in other versions “lose heart,” “throw in our hand,” “slacken our efforts”). Suppose Abraham and Sarah had quit before Isaac was bom? Suppose Noah had quit before the ark was finished? Suppose Moses had quit because there was no water in the wilderness? Suppose Joshua had lost heart before Israel entered the Promised Land?

And suppose Jesus had quit before Calvary?

Alive In The Andes

“We decided that this book should be written and the truth known because of the many rumors about what happened,” wrote the sixteen survivors of a plane crash in the Andes Mountains over a year ago. The sixteen, all rugby players, lived for ten weeks in the mountains between Uruguay and Chile, eating the snow-refrigerated flesh of their companions who had died. Alive (Lippincott, 1974), by Piers Paul Read, dramatically and graphically tells the story.

Throughout the book the question of God’s providence recurs. Several of the men believed that God had given them human meat to survive in the same way that “Christ … gave his body to us so that we could have spiritual life” (p. 91). And after being rescued, those same people gave God all the credit for preserving their lives and sanity: “I can assure you that God is there. We all felt it, inside ourselves, and not because we were the kind of pious youths who are always praying all day long.… One feels, above all, what is called the hand of God, and allows oneself to be guided by it” (p. 338). Others refused to admit that God did anything, believing that they themselves were responsible for their survival.

Perhaps the skepticism stems from a question asked but not answered in the book: “Why does God let us suffer like this?” This question is perhaps the most difficult one for any Christian to answer, and it is one that hinders many from accepting Christ’s way. “If God had helped them to live, then He had allowed the others to die; and if God was good, how could He possibly have permitted [this]?”

Paul tells us that God’s “ways are past finding out.” If we accept God as he is presented to us in Scripture, we know that ultimately all suffering works to our good when we trust him. And reading Alive ought to make us thankful that God gives most of us comparatively simple problems to face, for few of us must literally fight to live.

Theological Economics

Years ago there was a periodical known as Christian Economics. After animated controversy as to whether its views were either Christian or good economics, or neither, it changed its name to Applied Christianity. Nevertheless, despite the ground-breaking by C.E./A.C., it has not yet been systematically proved that there is or can be a direct relation between Christianity and economics—or, more broadly speaking, between theology and economics.

In the days of hard money, the relation between economics and morality was easier to descry. Thus as early as the eighth century B.C. Amos castigated (morally) manipulation (economically) of currency and of weights and measures (Amos 8:5). Amos’s attitude was reflected in the view of the later academicians that economics is a branch of moral science. Unfortunately, the invention of paper money (somewhat prejudicially described in Goethe, Faust II, as the work of the devil) has obscured the direct relation between the two spheres.

The problem is self-evident: confining ourselves to the realm of one currency, the U. S. dollar, we note that with the abandonment first of the internal gold standard under Roosevelt, then of the silver dollar under Johnson, and finally of the external convertibility of the dollar into gold under Nixon, the dollar has ceased to be real, in either an ontological or an economic sense. Since morality deals with actions, and actions involve realities, the tie between morality and dollar economics appears to be broken.

The unreality of the dollar can be shown by a simple analysis: the price of gold has remained virtually constant in terms of real things, such as oil (one troy ounce being worth just about six double-barrels in 1973 just as in 1971), but not of dollars. The dollar is un-definable, hence meaningless in the sense of linguistic analysis. From the ontological perspective, the dollar is never more than a small piece of paper (frequently less, as many bills are denominated five, ten, and more dollars). Even worse, ontologically speaking, only a small percentage of the “dollars” in circulation are bills of any kind. The rest are only ledger figures or switchings in computer memory banks—hence abstract, if not actually unreal in the Thomistic sense.

Everyone agrees that the manipulation (including theft) of real values is wrong. By contrast, there can be no moral quarrel with the manipulation of mathematical abstractions. Thus it would appear, from an ontological perspective, that there is no theological basis for a moral criticism of any actions involving money (at least money denominated in dollars), inasmuch as money itself is only an abstraction, a social convention. This of course relieves us of any sense that “debts,” such as the so-called national debt, represent obligations, for obligations are a moral concept, not a mathematical one.

It will readily be seen that the theological discovery of the ontological unreality of money in the modern world will immediately relieve burdened consciences, lighten the work load of courts, empty the prisons, and make tax-paying a pleasant game rather than an onerous chore. It seems fair to say that the systematic application of Christianity, or at the very least of ontological theology, to economic issues will take us beyond the limited vision of Adam Smith, Kenneth Galbraith, and even Horatio Alger.

EUTYCHUS VI

Into Words

I’m glad you included the poem entitled “A Story” in the April 12 edition of your magazine. It expressed a feeling I’ve had but could never quite put into words. I’m glad John Leax did it so well. The [article] written by him was also very insightful (“The Refiner’s Fire”). I appreciate your magazine and what it stands for and will continue to read it.

VAUN HODGES

Greenville, Ill.

Thank you for a great issue: Leax on poetry and Christianity’s rejection [of it]. If one could teach kids this! C. F. H. Henry’s peppery but true view of modern humanism. The attack on Baptist bombast. And such even-handed book reviews. Actually sounds British! Barrie Doyle’s … view of church aid for Africa’s famine.

LOUIS SOLOMAN, S. J.

Xavier High School

New York, N. Y.

Ranking Poor

David E. Aune’s book review (“The Historical Jesus: A Continuing Quest,” Jan. 4) ranks as about the poorest I’ve ever seen in his perception of what he is doing.… When one is to review a book which presents itself as a sequel to a previous book, it should be supposed that he has equal familiarity with the book which preceded it.… The nature of the two-volume study is as follows: Volume one summarizes several modern attempts to uncover the historical Jesus. Volume two presents my response.… I do plead guilty to the charge that the book is mistitled. The title was the choice of the publisher.… Regarding my “awareness of the more important literary, historical, and exegetical studies” of certain conservative scholars, of those he mentions I refer repeatedly to F. F. Bruce and G. E. Ladd, and mention M. C. Tenney.… Of the “more conservative non-evangelicals” that he complains I say little about, I make extended use of O. Cullmann and make mention of T. W. Manson. What is of even greater importance is the fact that J. Jeremias is given a significant place in the first volume.… His evaluation of my understanding of the place of Wrede in the development of form criticism once again exhibits that he has not read the first volume.… His perception of my view of the importance of historical research is also in error. I point to its importance on pages 49–51, 67, etc. But my approach to such research is accompanied by a much more confident view of the reliability of the gospel accounts than is apparent in most segments of the critical movement. His lecturette on the relationship of historical research to interpretation of the data in the biblical record is almost precisely what I say on pages 58–63.

CHARLES ANDERSON

Professor of Religion

Ottawa University

Ottawa, Kans.

Unbinding

In the April 12 issue in the editorial “Baptist Bombast,” thgre is an error. You state, “The American Baptist Churches went on record in 1968 in favor of what many would regard as abortion on demand.” The American Baptists did meet in Boston in 1968 and pass such a resolution, but all one can conclude from that action is that those delegates present and voting favored such action. American Baptists are autonomous. Repeatedly it has been stated that the passing of a resolution does not bind any church but is only the expression of delegates present and voting.

JOHN D. WALDEN, SR.

University Baptist Church

East Lansing, Mich.

Between Speech And Act

Thank you for your editorial in opposition to the deception that is practiced in the smuggling of Bibles into atheistic nations (“Smuggling Reexamined,” April 26).

I doubt if the customs agents of those countries would experience much conviction of spiritual truth if they heard one of the smugglers preaching on, “Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”

DANIEL G. REGIER

First Mennonite Church

Clinton, Okla.

Eccentric Prince Of Paradox

Somehow it would seem an affront to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, born one hundred years ago this month, to attempt anything but a cheerful salute to his memory. Son of a Kensington estate agent, Gilbert contrived for himself a deprived background: “I regret that I have no gloomy and savage father to offer to the public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage … and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am.” On the second page of his Autobiography he tells of the maternal influence upon him. His father mentioned that he had been asked to go on The Vestry (parish council). “At this my mother … uttered something like a cry of pain; she said, ‘Oh, Edward, don’t!… We never have been respectable yet; don’t let’s begin now.’ ”

In 1887 Gilbert went to St. Paul’s School, where, apart from a certain talent in handling the English language, he did not distinguish himself. He left in 1892 and for three years studied art at the famous Slade School and English literature at London University. The writer in him won (he remained a competent artist), and a toe-hold was established in the world of words—reviewing, publisher’s dogsbody, freelance reporting. In 1900 he was on his way with publication of The Wild Knight and Other Poems. In 1901, to family misgiving, he married on a small income and boundless optimism.

Chesterton early discovered the value of paradox as “truth standing on its head to gain attention,” and exploited it to such good purpose that Fleet Street and Edwardian England took notice of the young man who had strong views on literary and social criticism and a whimsical way with words. He called himself a Socialist because the only alternative was not being a Socialist, but in fact he was stubbornly un-classifiable as much in politics as in other areas.

Chesterton disliked injustice and shiftiness, his onslaught on them being the more telling because he came at them from unlikely angles. Always, however, his animus was directed against policies and ideas, not against people. He produced works on Browning, Dickens, Shaw, Blake, Cobbett, and Stevenson, and formed lasting friendships with literary giants such as Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Hilaire Belloc. With the latter he championed “Distributism,” a system that combined magnificent principle and total impracticability.

A reputation for mild eccentricity is a tremendous asset, and Chesterton made the most of it. His sartorial quirks were pressed into the same service. If he made fun of others he laughed most of all at himself. This rare virtue may have saved him from summary lynching when he said about the emancipation of women, “Twenty million women rise to their feet with the cry, We will not be dictated to—and proceeded to become stenographers.”

Endowed naturally with absent-mindedness, he capitalized on that, too, and on the helplessness not uncommon in the truly gifted. He could not fix his necktie; his wife told friends that he did not even know how to take it out of the drawer. He never came to terms with the telephone. He detested vegetarianism and teetotalism (though spirits were almost as evil as wine and beer were good). He habitually got lost or mislaid; hence the immortal telegram to his wife: “Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be.” Came the answer, “Home,” Frances having reasoned that once she got him back it would be easier to point him in the right direction.

It is staggering to find that this disorganized man produced more than one hundred books on a vast range of subjects and with evocative titles such as The Man Who Was Thursday, The Barbarism of Berlin, and Sidelights on New London and Newer York. He gave us Father Brown, the mild-mannered priest-detective who knew much much more about human depravity than the two callow Cambridge students who pitied his simplicity (or rather that of the Yorkshire priest on whom the character was based), and whose investigations were interspersed with comments like, “One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place,” and “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

Chesterton’s immoderation was known to all men. He worked, ate, and drank too much. He grew fatter and fatter. His nostalgic hankering after the robust Catholicism of the Middle Ages included the feasts and the hogsheads of wine but stopped at the fasting. Notre Dame’s famous chauffeur, Johnnie Mangan, tells of his visit for lectures and an LL.D.:

He was close to 400 lbs. but he’d never give it away.… I brought him under the main building, he got stuck in the door of the car. Father O’Donnell tried to help. Mr. Chesterton said it reminded him of an old Irishwoman: “Why don’t you get out sideways?” “I have no sideways.”

Not surprisingly, Americans loved him. Journalists were delighted by his bons mots. Thus his remark on Broadway’s dazzling lights: “What a glorious garden of wonders this would be to any-one lucky enough not to be able to read.” In a remark quoted in the New York Times in 1931 he observed: “There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.” To an American interviewer on another occasion he said: “Slang is too sacred and precious to be used promiscuously. It should be led up to reverently for it expresses what the King’s English could not.”

Like his friend Ronald Knox he was both entertainer and Christian apologist. The world never fails to appreciate the combination when it is well done; even evangelicals sometimes give the impression of bestowing a waiver on deviations if a man is enough of a genius. For one who could be careless about wider implications in other fields, Chesterton held to a notably reasoned Christianity, perhaps because he never considered the answers until he formulated the questions.

And he made others think, through pronouncements zany enough to pass their defenses and explode devastatingly within their minds. He was a master of the metaphorical Mickey Finn which (because paradox is involved?) has the opposite effect, galvanizing people into action or into self-examination, making them vulnerable.

He locked horns with the modernistic teaching of R. J. Campbell and the so-called New Theology, which even seventy years ago was identified as old heresy. Early Christians not only saw our modern problems, but saw through them. Claiming to be a development, modernism was actually an abandonment of the Christian idea.

Chesterton marveled that religious liberty now meant that hardly anyone was allowed to mention the subject. He complained that “the act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.” Orthodoxy (the title he gave his most telling book) was widely regarded as the one unpardonable heresy. “Critics were almost entirely complimentary to what they were pleased to call my brilliant paradoxes; until they discovered that I really meant what I said.”

Though orthodoxy had received a bad press, he held that nothing in reality was so dangerous or so exciting. Along the historic path of Christendom there have been open traps of error and exaggeration, to fall into which would have been simple. “There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.” To lapse into “any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure.” The ages have seen “dull heresies sprawling and prostrate … wild truth reeling but erect.”

That work was published some thirteen years before he created a sensation in 1922 by becoming a Roman Catholic—the only church, he concluded, that “dared to go down with me into the depths of myself.” For long he had held back, partly in the hope that his wife would join him (she eventually did), partly because he was “much too frightened of that tremendous Reality on the altar.” That latter view is an improbable echo of something held by Kierkegaard, a Christian of very different temperament, who said there were “no longer the men living who could bear the pressure and weight of having a personal God.”

It is odd to imagine Chesterton, in many ways antinomian and individualistic, “submitting” to Rome. True, he had always had a high respect for tradition, “the democracy of the dead [that] refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” Whatever the inner conflict and the resultant changes, it made him no less irrepressible. He still evinced an old characteristic and justified it: “What can one be but frivolous about serious things?” he would ask. “Without frivolity they are simply too tremendous.”

His prophetic voice was never more clearly seen than during his last years when the British Broadcasting Corporation discovered his aptitude on that medium. In one memorable talk he uttered a warning:

Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which moderns call a dull life, our whole civilisation will be in ruins in about fifteen years.… Unless we can make daybreak and daily bread and the creative secrets of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our civilisation a fatigue which is the one disease from which civilisations do not recover.

Chesterton was continually thankful for the “birthday present of birth,” and eagerly embraced the news that ditch-water, far from being dull, “teems with quiet fun.” Perhaps he would wish most of all to be remembered for commending to the human race a sense of gratitude. In that at least there was neither profundity nor paradox, but simply

Give me a little time,

I shall not be able to appreciate

them all;

If you open so many doors

And give me so many presents,

O Lord God.

Note: The latest biography of Chesterton is that by Dudley Barker (Stein and Day, 1973). The 1944 biography by Maisie Ward remains the standard.

The first major decision in the lives of many young people today is whether or not to go to college. There have been times when the question was mainly an economic one, and perhaps it is boiling down to that again, with costs increasing alarmingly so that many private colleges now cost up to ten times as much as state or community ones. But the question needs to be raised often as to whether indeed college is a good thing for all. I am convinced that it is wasteful, dangerous, and unjust to insist that all high school graduates continue their studies for a degree. It is wasteful because many people neither want nor need a college education. It is dangerous because of the unwarranted pressure it puts on reluctant students and on harried teachers. It is unjust as it would be unjust to insist that a hare should learn to walk like a tortoise. Different life-styles make different demands.

Some questions beyond the basic ones (Have you the aptitude? and Can you get the money?) that may help the pre-college young person and those who counsel him are these:

Do you want to go to college? If so, why? To satisfy those who expect you to go? To gain prestige? To find a mate? To get a job? To learn? Unless your reasons include the last, forget about college altogether. If you want to learn, decide whether it is only specific training for a vocation that you are after or whether you want more than a job skill—you want actually to be educated. You may have only a hazy idea of what it is that you want to learn, and this is understandable. You have as yet little ground for making a choice of subject matter. But you must have an “empty cup,” and know that you have it. You must want to be filled. You must be aware that a college is a place where there are people who know more than you do, and you must want what they have to offer.

Then, how badly do you want it? Have you the maturity and the strength of character to stick with your choice? Higher education is a privilege. To decide to accept this privilege is in itself binding. You don’t go into it with a cavalier “I’ll just see if I like it” attitude.

Not long ago a girl who had decided to drop out of college came to me. She wasn’t asking advice about that decision—it had already been made, she kept reminding me. She was asking advice about a boyfriend problem that in some ill-defined way was related to the dropping out. I hadn’t much to say about the boyfriend, but I had plenty to say about her leaving college, and I said it even though she didn’t want to hear it. She had godly parents who had prayed for her and paid for her. She had been doing well in her studies. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, but to go on for a degree, I told her, would at least increase her options. She didn’t seem to care about options. Something would turn up. Well, I said, if nothing else makes sense, how about sticking at a job just because you’ve started it? That idea rang no bells at all with her. “That decision has already been made,” she said again. She meant that it had been made in her own mind, only the night before, although she had not yet informed the authorities. This was the third college she had attended and the grass always looked greener elsewhere. She had not yet learned that circ*mstances do not entirely determine happiness. No amount of reasoning budged her.

Have you the maturity of character not only to stick with a choice but to pay the price it entails? Education is not a gift. Nobody can give you an education. Others can make it available, but you have to exercise will, the will to work, the strong resolve to give yourself to a rigorous and costly task that requires attention over a long period. For anything worthwhile there are if … then conditions. If this is what you want, then this is what you do. To choose to do this is to choose not to do a thousand other things that may be highly attractive. We are fond of saying things like “I’d give anything if I could play the piano like that,” meaning, of course, anything but what it takes. Having a degree is nice, but getting there is not necessarily fun.

Have you the humility to submit to something greater than yourself? There are young people to whom this question would be bewildering. They have been reared in homes and schools where their own opinions on any and all subjects, from the age of two or three, were given rapt hearing and awestruck acceptance. They have been taught that all opinions are of equal value, that the most slapdash sally into the writing of Japanese poetry or the use of finger paints is to be taken seriously and even, heaven forgive us, to be called “creative.” They are unacquainted with any demands for form, logic, or accuracy. Such demands have been felt by parents and teachers to be chilling to young ardent minds—let them somehow grow, learn, “develop,” all by themselves. Their views are, bless their hearts, “original,” and originality, even in spelling, seems to be always commendable.

It is generally thought that when children are allowed to speak out freely on any and all matters they are being encouraged to think. I suspect that the very opposite is true. To encourage the utterance of opinion without reference to any fundamental knowledge of the subject is actually to discourage thought. It is to prejudice the student against thinking altogether. His feelings, his ability to parrot others, and his most superficial reactions “off the top of his head” supplant the intellectual exertion of obtaining and processing data.

Before going on to college it is well to take stock of all this and acknowledge that there is a long road to travel before one’s opinions are worth much, and that the informed opinions of others who have traveled that road are likely to be not only worth much more but infinitely more interesting. Submit. Give in to them. Be quiet long enough to hear them. There may be some glories up that stony road that will dazzle you.

If the student has ascertained that he has the aptitude, the money, and the earnest desire to get a college education, the next crucial question is which college he will choose. Surely it is better to have no degree at all than to have a mere degree attained at the cost of the student’s soul—i.e., his sense of direction, his values, his goals.

There are, I think, approximately two thousand colleges to choose from. Some of these are nominally, and some distinctively, “Christian.” To choose one college out of two thousand is, of course, to eliminate one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others, each of which might have offered something particularly desirable. But the student has to settle on one and accept the limitations of that one and, I hope, stay there. So it is a choice that ought to be made with extreme care.

There is much to be said for attending Christian colleges, and there are strong arguments for attending secular universities. It is not my purpose here to persuade either way. But the choice must be made with the understanding that a liberal arts education, as opposed to vocational training, ought to lay the foundation for an intelligent view of the world and life, a Weltanschauung. The climate of the school—the physical surroundings of classroom, dormitory, and common rooms, the people with whom one lives and studies—is of immense importance in the shaping of this view. Whether the campus is serene and quiet, with beautiful elms and ivied halls, or whether it is unidentifiable as a campus in the midst of a concrete jungle has its effect on the person. Whether there is order or chaos—in classrooms, in dining halls, in the appearance and dress of students and faculty, in the way bedrooms are maintained, in library behavior—cannot help but affect the formation of the Weltanschauung.

A liberal education ought to lead toward civilization, not toward barbarity. Civilization is “a natural agreement not to burden one another with our excessive humanity,” or, as G. K. Chesterton put it, it is the full authority of the human spirit over all externals. The general look and climate of some institutions of higher learning would make one question whether there was to be found there any full authority over anything, and I have on occasions been greatly burdened—oppressed, in fact—by the excessive humanity of loose-jointed “youth.”

But indisputably it is the professors themselves who exercise the most profound influence on the student. It is not physical plant or athletic teams or numbers of Ph.D’s listed in the catalogue or the latest methods of unstructured classes, group sharing, independent studies, or “creative” courses that in the last analysis educate (a word that derives from the idea of leading or drawing out). It is the professors. Who are these people? Professor used to be defined as one who avows or declares openly his beliefs. There are many who bear the name unworthily. In the modern university, where an atmosphere of almost morbidly exaggerated neutrality on certain subjects often seems to prevail, any open avowal of religious belief would be looked upon as a classroom obscenity. But many professors still do profess. They are intelligent, courageous, convinced, and competent to teach, and of these some are Christians. I think a Christian student who wants to learn to see life whole should go where there are some Christian professors who do.

The student will be exposed to many differing points of view in a secular university, and, to some extent, in a Christian college. This is as it should be. The educated man is the man who can make distinctions, and he must confront the issues before he can distinguish between them. But he should be permitted to confront them honestly, and Christianity should be given “equal time” with the rest. Is the intellectual atmosphere favorable to the fair consideration of any and all philosophies of life, including the Christian philosophy? An honest professor will acknowledge that every philosophy of life either requires God or leaves him out, believes that there is a revelation of God in Christ or there is not. Neutrality on this issue is denial. The Christian student will hope to find some teachers whose Christian beliefs are strongly held and clearly stated, and whose lives are manifestly shaped by those beliefs. For the shape of professors’ lives will have a great deal to do with the shaping of the student’s life. There is no impact in lecture or argument so powerful as the impact of character itself. One cannot expect to find many people who live up to one’s ideals. I consider myself very lucky to have had one great teacher in elementary school, two or three in college, and one in Bible school. “Choose your professors, not your courses,” was good advice, and perhaps this means one should choose professors, if possible, and not colleges. The obvious difficulty often is that one has no way of knowing ahead of time what he will find. But he ought at least to know what he is looking for.

Finally, in deciding whether or not to go to college, a student ought not to underestimate the effect that that kind of communal life will have upon him. It has been called a “four-year house party.” The student is out from under his parents’ roof, usually for the first time. He is thrown with hundreds or thousands of unmarried people of his own age, all day every day and probably all night, in a situation comparable to resort living in that he is provided with room and meals, with only minimal responsibility for the room and no responsibility for the meals, his bills are all paid for him, and he has nothing to do for anybody else. If he chooses, his life can be unredeemedly selfish and thoughtless. The conversation around him most of the time is likely to deal not with philosophy and religion but with entertainment. The noise level may seem conducive not to the improvement but to the destruction of the mind. (One of the best pieces of news I have heard in a long time is that at some state universities it is now possible to elect to live in a quiet dormitory, where all residents have agreed that they are in college to study. I have not yet heard of such a dormitory on any Christian college campus.)

The prospective student ought to consider whether he is prepared to conform to the social environment of the college of his choice, or, if not to conform, to swim against the current. If he doubts his preparedness, perhaps another year of living with his parents, if they are sympathetic, and working outside his home is indicated. A year’s moratorium on studying may give a fresh perspective from which to assess his goals and gifts. It may also give time for reflection and prayer. The guidance of God is promised scores of times in Scripture, and the student who seriously wants it can have it.

Do students go to Christian colleges to find shelter from the violent intellectual storms that have battered the Christian faith in the past 200 years? Some do. On the other hand, do not the pervading secularism and implicit naturalism in most state and private colleges and universities seriously threaten the Christian student’s faith today? Can we have the best of both worlds?

We need models that preserve the strengths of the Christian college and at the same time make use of the advantages of the large secular university. In the hope that this approach could be developed, John W. Snyder asked in this journal in 1967: “Why Not a Christian College on a University Campus?” (February 17, 1967, issue). Today Christian cluster colleges at secular universities are a reality. Advocates of the Christian cluster college assert that this new model preserves the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of both the traditional Christian college and the secular university. What are these strengths and weaknesses?

The Secular University: Pro And Con

Many Christian students are attracted by the secular universities’ excellent facilities, huge libraries, extensive academic and cultural offerings, inexpensive tuition (state universities), or academic prestige (Ivy League). Regrettably, despite the best efforts of Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, and other Christian campus ministries, many of these same students are no longer committed to historic Christian faith at graduation.

Although the days of militant atheism and aggressive agnosticism are largely past, secular universities still tend to foster non-Christian views and life-styles in their classes and dorms. The “practical atheism” that falsely suggests one can be neutral about the ultimate questions of value and meaning is probably more deadly than militant atheism.

Everyone decries the fragmentation of knowledge that has resulted from the explosive increase of data, and everyone recognizes that some principle of selection is necessary in every educational enterprise. But here the secular university is at a loss. A principle of selection has to be drawn from some conviction about the nature and purpose of man, and the secular university claims to be neutral at precisely this point.

In practice, of course, several images of man, all non-Christian, have dominated secular universities. For a time, a rationalist view of man as discarnate mind prompted the university to strive to free the rational soul enslaved by ignorance so that reason could exercise sovereign control over the baser passions. But then the sciences came to dominate the university, and the resulting naturalist view of man as a very complex organism that needs to be adjusted to its environment prevailed. And of course, if the Marxists and/or behaviorists are correct in holding that the individual has no freedom and dignity, why should higher education be anything more than a process of programming the student with the party line that will make him a tool of the society that produces him? But if Christians are correct in believing that knowledge is not virtue (contra Socrates and the rationalists) and that man does possess ultimate freedom and dignity (contra the naturalists), then participation as a student or professor in an educational enterprise that presupposes a rationalist or naturalist doctrine of man is highly problematic.

The Christian College: Pro And Con

The ideal of the Christian college as presented by Christian educators from Cardinal Newman to Carl Henry and Frank Gaebelein is exhilarating. Beginning with the biblical view of man and the world, the Christian college can integrate all branches of knowledge in its curriculum and help its students develop a contemporary Christian Weltanschauung. Aware that students are not disembodied spirits, the Christian college will provide a program designed to meet the needs of the whole man. It will strive to provide a setting that encourages the students to hear and answer the call of Him who can remove the egocentrism that mere knowledge cannot conquer.

The fundamental oneness in Christ shared by students and faculty in the Christian college creates the type of supportive community in which it is possible to examine old beliefs. Beliefs held fondly since childhood are so much a part of oneself that it is unsettling to think of abandoning them. One study concluded that the factor most likely to change student values was professors “whose value-commitments are firm and openly expressed, and who are out-going and warm in their personal relations with students” (P. E. Jacob, Changing Values in College). The small Christian college where faculty and students worship, fellowship, and study together should provide the ideal setting for the adoption and maturation of a Christian world-view and life-style.

Reality, unfortunately, differs somewhat from the ideal. In addition to desperate financial pressures, the Christian college has other disadvantages. It lacks academic diversity both because it can only offer a small range of majors and because its small departments cannot have representatives of all the major theories and methodological approaches in a field. Its library is often small.

Most serious, perhaps, the Christian college far too frequently exists in intellectual isolation from modern secular society. Carl Henry has repeatedly lamented the fact that Christian colleges have too often “provided a sanctuary from secular ideas and ideals rather than confronting and disputing the tide of contemporary unbelief” (e.g., “The Need for a Christian University,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 17, 1967). Studies conducted for the Carnegie Commission show that students in evangelical colleges score significantly lower than students in most other liberal arts colleges in their awareness of their environment (C. R. Pace, Education and Evangelism). To fulfill the Great Commission, we must understand secular society. In practice, then, the Christian college like the secular university has significant disadvantages. Are these our only options?

The cluster college concept, which is as old as Oxford and not uncommon in England, India, and Canada, offers a third possibility. During the last decade, when decentralization was in vogue and many universities were establishing their own sub-colleges, three distinctly different Christian cluster colleges began: Conrad Grebel College, Satellite Christian Institute, and Messiah College’s Philadelphia Campus. Their experience is important for future evangelical strategy.

1. Conrad Grebel College. Established in 1964 by Mennonites in Ontario, Conrad Grebel is a Christian residential college located on the campus of the University of Waterloo. Conrad Grebel’s 106 students enroll in both the college and the university. To help students develop an understanding of Christian faith, Conrad Grebel encourages them to take at least one course each semester in the college from Conrad Grebel faculty (about 25 per cent are regularly excused because of conflicts with courses in the student’s major offered in the university). Students take the rest of their courses in the university, which grants the degree. They pay the normal university tuition for all their courses at the college and the university. By having its own courses, residence hall, a resident student personnel person, and so on, Conrad Grebel can retain many of the strengths of the Christian college.

A Significant New Model

It is also deeply involved in the university. A college representative sits on the university senate. College faculty have joint appointments in the university and are responsible for offering specific courses for the university’s department of religion. Conrad Grebel’s more than forty courses are listed in the university’s roster of curricular offerings and can be credited toward the degree of any university undergraduate. Because well over 1,000 students regularly enroll in these courses (the university reimburses the college), the college can employ eight full-time faculty, and it regularly enjoys a budget surplus. A highly successful Christian cluster college with nine years’ experience, Conrad Grebel College provides a significant new model for the church.

2. Satellite Christian Institute. SCI in San Diego, California, has experimented with two types of Christian cluster college. In the residential approach (1970–73), a common residence, courses taught by evangelical faculty at SCI, and daily chapel provided the context for developing a Christian world-view. Acceptance at SCI was normally contingent on acceptance in one of several nearby universities, from which the student received his degree. Since SCI’s courses were not approved by the secular universities, they usually did not count toward graduation; hence an extra year was envisaged for completion of the B.A. Tuition costs at the institute were in addition to the tuition at the student’s secular institution.

In the fall of 1973, SCI adopted a decentralized approach. With a permanent location only for an administrative office, SCI will go where the students are by recruiting Christian faculty to teach one or more courses on any secular campus for as many semesters as enough Christian students can be found (through contacts with Christian student organizations, local Christian faculty, and so on). It is too soon to judge the effectiveness of this approach.

3. Messiah College’s Philadelphia Campus. A fully accredited liberal arts college of about 850 students, Messiah College has two campuses—one in the rolling hills of southeastern Pennsylvania, the other on the campus of one of America’s huge state universities. When the second campus opened at Temple University in the fall of 1968, it was the first arrangement of its kind between a church-related college and a secular, state university in the United States.

The juniors and seniors who attend the Philadelphia Campus take three or four courses each semester from the university, which considers them full-time students and grants them all its privileges. The students fall into two classes: those taking majors offered at the college’s main campus at Grantham and those taking majors offered only in conjunction with Temple. Those majoring in programs given at the home campus can gain depth within their discipline by selecting from a wider range of courses taught by many more professors with differing methodological approaches. Students interested in one of the many majors that the small liberal arts college cannot afford to offer spend their last two years at the Philadelphia Campus and take their specialized courses at the university. Unlike Conrad Grebel and SCI, however, Messiah College still grants the degree. Through this cooperative program Messiah has enriched its traditional curricula and expanded the number of its majors. It now offers more majors (more than forty-five) than any other Christian college in the United States.

Students accepted at the Philadelphia Campus are automatically enrolled in the university. The university bills the college, which in turn bills the students (Messiah students pay the same tuition at both campuses) and handles their financial aid. Although most students at the Philadelphia Campus are from Messiah’s Grantham Campus, visiting students have come for one or two semesters from other Christian colleges.

The campus at the secular university enables Messiah undergraduates to experience the full force of the secular challenge to Christian faith, but it does not leave them to face modern secularism alone. Resident Christian faculty and fellow Christian students provide a supportive community. Each semester, every student must take at least one of the college’s courses designed to help students understand and challenge the naturalism and hedonism of the university (e.g., “Christianity and Contemporary Problems,” “Personal Ethics,” “Modem Images of Man,” “Contemporary Theology”). Public lectures open to the university community, an evangelistic coffeehouse, and informal daily contacts with students and faculty all present opportunities for Christian witness. If Christian college students want frequent and challenging opportunities to witness to non-Christians, then the Christian campus on the secular university is an ideal setting.

A First-Name Basis

The informal, intimate atmosphere in the five row-houses that contain the classrooms, library, dormitories, dining hall, faculty offices, and apartments for about sixty students and faculty families is in striking contrast to the impersonal, bureaucratic tone that of necessity prevails on the huge university campus across the street. Students on work-study are responsible for the entire food-service operation. Resident faculty families, community dinners, uniform use of first names, and regular chapel all help to create a close-knit community.

Believing that genuine education in today’s world requires cross-cultural experiences, the college has taken advantage of its location in the heart of the black community. Minority lecturers in class and chapel, association with students from various ethnic backgrounds, attendance at minority churches, and volunteer activity in the surrounding community all provide highly significant cross-cultural learning experiences. Each fall all freshmen from the Grantham Campus attend a weekend seminar on race relations at the Philadelphia Campus. New cross-cultural courses designed to immerse students more deeply in black and Puerto Rican culture are a substitute for the traditional language requirement.

Messiah College’s Philadelphia Campus is a successful experiment with another type of cluster college. (For a longer description, see chapter four of the forthcoming book The Urban Mission, edited by Craig Ellison [Eerdmans].) This model could enrich the programs of scores of evangelical colleges without diluting their theological orientation. A second Christian college, John Wesley, plans to open a cluster college at the edge of the campus of a major university, Michigan State, this fall.

While preserving the strengths of the traditional Christian college, the cluster college also enjoys the benefits of the large university—vast library holdings, many majors and a wider range of courses in each major, better equipped laboratories and athletic facilities, and a larger selection of cultural events. The Church’s limited funds can be devoted to things that are directly related to its unique value orientation. Instead of having an expensive library, for instance, the cluster college need only develop a small, specialized collection of evangelical publications.

The Christian cluster college on the secular university has an ideal location for overcoming Carl Henry’s charge that Christian colleges have too often been quiet sanctuaries isolated from secular ideas rather than centers where modern secular man was confronted with a thoroughly biblical option. Isolation is impossible when Christian faculty regularly rub shoulders with secular colleagues and Christian students frequently come knocking on faculty doors with searching questions about challenges to Christian faith raised in classes and other contacts in the secular university. The danger, of course, is that this model could dilute the Christian impact of the college. Surrounded by non-Christian life-styles and taking most courses from the secular faculty in the universities, students in the cluster college could slowly lose their Christian commitment. This need not occur, however, if the cluster college takes account of the secularizing impact of the setting and carefully develops ways to help the students combat the secular challenge. Resident Christian faculty, regular chapel, and required religion courses specifically designed for the cluster-college setting are crucial. The cluster colleges must develop a thoroughly Christian atmosphere in which a supportive community of believers helps each student to work out his or her own response to contemporary unbelief and ethical relativism.

To the Church, the evangelical cluster college offers a new way to fulfill the evangelistic mandate in a highly strategic part of today’s world. If the quality of their life together validates their proclamation, a community of evangelical students and faculty in a Christian cluster college can offer a contagious Christian witness in the secular university.

Although it may avoid some of the weaknesses of typical Christian colleges, the Christian cluster college (at least the model developed at Messiah College’s Philadelphia Campus) does not compete with established institutions. Rather, it builds on their existing administrative machinery and degree-granting powers and strengthens them. The new curricula offered to juniors and seniors at the satellite campus attracts students to the college’s main campus for the freshman and sophom*ore years. As faculty and students circulate between the two campuses, new ideas, methods, and contacts enrich the home campus.

This new model of the Christian campus at the secular university is highly viable academically, financially, and theologically. Dozens of Christian colleges should explore its possibilities in the coming decade. The evangelical cluster college may be an ideal way for the Church today to be in the secular academic world but not of it.

The secular American university campus in the mid-seventies is a curious blend of lethargy and dedication, hedonistic pursuits and spiritual arousal. Students share with their elders disillusionment over political corruption, economic manipulations, and turgid social reform; they recognize the severity of the problems facing our society. Yet they no longer are motivated to demonstrate in the streets for social change, perhaps because they have seen that such tactics have little lasting effect. They have largely abandoned the idea of the inevitability of human progress. Many are now more dedicated than their predecessors to the task of preparing themselves for life in a world of tighter vocational competition, limited natural resources, and continuing international tensions. Beer busts and pot parties still abound, but collegians also are more seriously confronting basic questions about the meaning of life. At the same time that hard rock, soft drugs, and free sex are captivating many students, the quest for spiritual truth and inner satisfaction is gaining momentum. Academia with its disinterested pursuit of knowledge finds itself caught in the crosscurrents as flesh and spirit vie for student allegiance.

Although social thinkers of the past predicted that scientific advances would scuttle religious concerns, spiritual interest in many forms, both orthodox and bizarre, is flourishing on campus. August Comte’s positivism and his rational religion of faith in the destiny of man have proved inadequate. Karl Marx’s vision of the withering away of religion has not been fulfilled. Max Weber was correct in predicting that technology and bureaucracy would limit the great human passions, poetic imagination, and heroic aspirations, but he erred in believing that religious experience, too, would vanish. Sociologist Andrew M. Greeley offers empirical observations that “(1) the available statistical data simply do not indicate a declining religiousness in the United States; (2) the resurgence of bizarre forms of the sacred on the secular university campus has now persisted long enough that it cannot simply be written off as a passing fashion” (Unsecular Man: The Persistance of Religion, Schocken, 1972, p. 7). Students are involved in a variety of unusual spiritual pilgrimages: Zen and Nicherin Buddhism, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, Carlos Castaneda’s spiritual thought, Guru Maharaj Ji’s Divine Light, astrology, drug-induced mysticism, doomsday cults, even witchcraft and Satanism, as well as the more traditional cults.

But the involvement in bizarre religion is minor compared with the groundswell of interest in evangelical Christianity. Organizations such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the Navigators are among the largest campus clubs as students meet for Bible study, evangelism, prayer, and sharing of Christian concerns. On our campus, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, regular IVCF meetings consistently attract more than 200 students and five times that many for special events. Campus evangelical advance is seen in staff growth in college ministries: the Campus Crusade for Christ staff has increased from 1,500 in 1966 to 4,000 in 1974, and that of IVCF from 90 in 1969 to 225 in 1974.

Evangelical students today are not smug pietists but committed, open, and active believers with an awareness of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the totality of life and a zeal to share their life-transforming faith. They are a splendid body of Christian men and women whose influence is being felt throughout their university communities. The Holy Spirit of God—sovereign, free, and mighty—is moving in the lives of college students today.

The spiritual upsurge evident in collegians’ private lives is not, however, significantly reflected in university curricula. Secular, humanistic philosophies continue to dominate course offerings and content. References are made to Christian influences in history, art, music, and literature courses, and most colleges offer classes in comparative religion. A few universities have a department of religious studies. But rarely are students exposed in their curricula to an objective and comprehensive view of the biblical message that centers in Jesus Christ. Rarely are they acquainted with the depth of influence that the Christian world view has had on Western values. I have been appalled at the lack of biblical knowledge shown by seniors, graduate students, and even incoming seminary students educated at secular universities. Abraham Lincoln would be even more appalled: he once said that if he had to choose between a college education without a knowledge of the Bible and a knowledge of the Bible without a college education, he would choose the latter.

The failure of most of our universities to offer a full objective treatment of the Bible and Christian theology is academically indefensible in view of the role Christianity has played in shaping the society they serve. Such an omission may be due to a non-Christian bias by some academicians or to a misunderstanding of the legal status of instruction about religion in tax-supported schools. The United States Supreme Court has ruled against the practice of religion in public schools, but not against the study of the Bible and religion “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education” (Schempp decision).

In view of renewed interest in religious concerns and the significance of Christian and other religious thought in the study of the contemporary human situation, universities must catch up with their students and offer studies that consider objectively the spiritual dimensions of life. Such content should not be restricted to a single department or to specialized courses but should be brought to bear wherever questions of philosophy, values, origins, and ethics are considered. Revealed Christian truth should not be advanced as normative in a college classroom serving a pluralistic public, but neither should it be excluded, distorted, or relegated to the academic antique collection.

The responsibility for giving Christianity greater visibility on campus rests largely with Christian professors. Universities need Christian professors who profess! By this I mean that these professors need to identify themselves openly with the biblical view of God and man and work actively to advance it. This is not to be done by evangelistic efforts or dogmatism in the classroom. But it should be done by a scholarly, objective presentation of Christian content as it relates to the subject matter under discussion. It should also be done as Christian professors work with colleagues to hammer out new courses and curricula that serve the cause of truth. A teacher’s objectivity need not be compromised by his making known his Christian viewpoint and his reasons for holding it—as long as he treats divergent positions fairly. Students usually are eager to learn a professor’s position in order to understand him better and evaluate his academic presentations. Knowing that a respected professor is a Christian may lead students to be open to considering the claims of Christ in their own lives.

A professor’s success depends, of course, on his knowledge of his discipline, his teaching ability, his research and creative projects, and his involvements with university colleagues and administrators. Piety is no substitute for professional competence. A Christian professor’s basic witness to his students is seen in the quality of his life and in his concern and effectiveness in carrying out his academic responsibilities. But it’s not enough for the Christian teacher to be a successful educator in the classroom. He must move beyond the classroom and its objective of helping students to understand factual knowledge, ideas, and methods. He must plunge into the intellectual ferment on the campus and persuasively advocate the truth of the Christian faith in the midst of the university’s conflicting viewpoints.

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson called “The American Scholar”—a man shaped by nature, by books, and by action—to speak his own mind self-reliantly. In 1881 Wendell Phillips summoned “The Scholar in a Republic” to lead in the agitation of the great social questions. Today, the Christian professor—a man of God, of scholarship, of action—must take his stand for Jesus Christ and the relevance of his truth for the problems of mankind. He should use every opportunity to advocate his Christian convictions in public lectures, open forums, campus debates, and faculty-student bull sessions. The Christian should make himself heard on questions of ethics, economics, politics, social problems, sexuality, ecology, culture, life philosophy, and other topics under discussion. As Paul the Apostle proclaimed the Gospel to the academicians on Mars Hill, so should the Christian scholar assert the Christian message in today’s university forums. Many Christian professors in secular universities have ducked their responsibility to expound their biblical faith and its relevance to the burning issues of the day. The reawakened interest in spiritual matters today provides a great setting for the Christian professor not only to respond to prevailing humanistic or materialistic viewpoints but also to challenge and direct university people to recognize that Jesus Christ is the central issue in life.

The Christian professor can contribute further to the cause of Christ on the university campus by becoming involved with Christian student organizations such as Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, Navigators, and church-related groups. He not only can address their meetings, serve as an adviser for their activities, and help in their Christian training program, but also can assist them in gaining university recognition and using facilities, and help to insure their right to practice their freedom of religion on campus. He should do all he can to encourage evangelism and church attendance.

Personal counseling offers another means for the Christian professor to share his faith on campus. But when a student comes to his office for academic assistance, he must not lay a religious lecture on him. If a student needs help in organizing ideas for a term paper, he doesn’t expect to be nailed with the Four Spiritual Laws. Yet the instructor should realize that often a student seeking help with studies has other concerns he wants to discuss. A respected Christian professor is at times sought out to help with a student’s most personal problems. By being a good listener and showing concern, he may find the right moment to share his faith. Office dialogue may serve the purpose of pre-evangelism.

Some Christian professors who choose to profess their faith on the university campus may have to take a few lumps or be typed as “very religious” (ugh!). Their reputation in the eyes of some academicians may suffer, for the world does not always take kindly to the intrusion of Christian faith into a humanistic framework of thought. One may also expect a few good-natured jibes from certain students. At our department’s annual banquets I have received as tributes a “Moses in the Wilderness Scroll” and a bottle of wine—Christian Brothers! I prize them. A forthright Christian professor may be criticized, but academic freedom prevails at the majority of secular American universities, so he is free to express his faith. With the university tide running to greater spiritual interests and God moving in the lives of students, the time for the Christian professor to profess is now.