Page 5606 – Christianity Today (2024)

A tiny band of far outnumbered Christians once turned the world upside down. But in more recent years, the churches have often wandered into the trap of thinking that might makes right, so if we ever reached the time when there were more of “us” than “them,” we would really begin to see things happen. First came the post-World War II upsurge in religious interest and church membership, then the big evangelistic crusades, and next the “Jesus movement” of the late sixties. Right along came the boom in Christian publishing, education, missions, music, audio-visuals, camping, retirement centers, and so on. Then, for some, the proof that Christians had finally turned the corner and made the world sit up and take notice came in 1976, when Time Magazine called the country’s bicentennial year the “year of the evangelicals.”

The facts reported in the CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll in this issue confirm the conclusion that more and more people are affirming evangelical Christianity as their personal religious commitment. That in itself is cause for rejoicing, even as evangelical revivals in the past have been, because of the long-term consequences for the overall good of church and society. There is also ample cause for thanksgiving because of the confirmation of biblical truth that says, in effect, that when Jesus Christ is confessed and proclaimed as Lord and Savior, people recognize that he is indeed the way, the truth, and the life. No Christian dare be defeatist about the inherent power of God’s gospel of grace.

On the other hand, the facts about evangelical growth in the population as a whole may also stir up considerable skepticism. People always want to know if religious professions are genuine. Again, we need not apologize if some professions are spurious, because Jesus and the apostles consistently warned of this possibility, as well as of the danger of hypocrisy. Pollsters are not the only ones who form impressions on the basis of what people tell them: we all do the same. The fact that we know there is a possibility of false profession does not nullify the conclusion that there is a strong commitment to evangelical belief among the public.

But while we rejoice in those who, in one way or another confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and while we admit the possibility of confused and phony professions of faith, we also remind ourselves that certain areas for growth in both knowledge and practice are obvious. Evangelicals need clearer understanding of what they believe and why—even about the person and work of Christ. Their proclamation must be backed by both biblical doctrine and practice. We too easily slip into a vague, subjective gospel and fall short of full-orbed Christian discipleship. And we need exhortation and instruction regarding the grace of giving and the motive and dynamic of evangelistic witnessing.

Beyond these practical matters there is the long-range task of the churches. We cannot at this stage go home exulting as if we had won the great cosmic Super Bowl. Both history and eschatology teach us that the forces of evil will never withdraw. In fact, if anything is clear, it is that the more the cause of Christ advances, the more serious and insidious will be the Enemy’s counterattacks. The parable of the mustard seed teaches us to expect phenomenal growth; the parable of the wheat and the weeds teaches us to expect continued confusion about and counterfeiting of God’s truth revealed in Jesus Christ. No doubt even the word evangelical itself is being used as a cover for various false religious schemes and promotions.

This is not the time to be gathered around our evangelical fires warming our hands and congratulating ourselves. The church of Jesus Christ faces awesome foes. We’re marching to Zion, but we haven’t arrived. Even if George Gallup, Jr., told us that 99 out of 100 people were evangelicals, as Christians we are committed to Christ’s own church-building mandate, so that all he desires for his own will be confessed and lived out in our lives.

Did Christianity Corrupt Lewis?

Probably no twentieth-century author has done more for evangelical Christianity than C. S. Lewis. His apologetic works have convinced skeptics, strengthened evangelicals, and established the credibility of the faith for today’s thinking person. Children, college students, and adults enjoy his fantasies. Sixteen years after his death, his books are still selling two million copies a year.

But you know all that. What you might not know is that recent reviewers in the secular press, especially in the New York Times, have tried to put Lewis in his place. Three times in the past year the Times’s Sunday book section has printed critical reviews of books about Lewis. The wry problem with these reviews is that their criticism seems to be aimed more at Lewis himself—and his faith—than at the books in question.

For example, the reviewers deride Lewis for dressing like a slob, tending to be reactionary, and hating modern literature. One review by Samuel Hynes labeled Lewis’s Christianity “an outsider’s religion” that “gave him a secure position apart from which to deplore the modern world that he couldn’t or wouldn’t belong to. His novels are myths of that rejection, of escape from history to another place where faith can function and even prosper, and where Christians can be heroic instead of just quarrelsome.” Comments like these leave one surprised, but not by joy.

Now it’s one thing for people to say they don’t like Lewis’s mythopoeic approach to fiction. Who ever said everyone had to like fantasy? But Hynes’s distaste goes beyond fantasy: “To the realist, these fantasies make fiction too easy, dress up moral problems in fancy clothes and magic, and evade the difficulties of being merely human.” In other words, Lewis has retreated into the dream world of Christianity.

Why do these reviewers seem so eager to bring about Lewis’s demise? First, because they don’t share Lewis’s Christian faith, and second, because Lewis’s understanding of Christianity defies their stereotypic categories. Hynes states that all Lewis readers are either children or Christians, and that they “share one quality of imagination—a common willingness to extend reality beyond the visible.” He implies that supernaturalism is absurd.

Rather than admit that Lewis is a well-reasoned, articulate spokesman for the faith, critics prefer to retain the stereotype and brand him as an oddball—a man whose escapist books are the product of an unhappy childhood. That way they can avoid having to consider the truly biblical Christianity he sets forth.

On the other hand, some evangelicals probably spend more time reading Lewis’s books and quoting Lewis than they do reading the Book and worshiping the One Lewis sought to defend. Lewis would never have wanted it that way. He was only a “mere” Christian; like most of us, he claimed to understand more of Christianity than he was able to appropriate.

No one who has heard of the Fall can say that Lewis is above all criticism. But ultimately, the New York Times reviewers are denouncing not C. S. Lewis, but Jesus Christ. Fortunately, He will survive.

Cambodia: A Test Case For Christians

Christians sometimes are criticized as praying, but not acting. Fortunately, the church has responded with prayers and action with regard to Cambodia’s agony. Various church bodies and relief agencies, as well as individual Christians, have earmarked thousands of relief dollars for Cambodia, where millions may starve to death.

Ironically, our intentions have been thwarted by maniacal Southeast Asian politics, in which two Cambodian factions, supported by Communist superpowers, block most outside relief assistance and watch their own people die. Television news coverage, showing the emaciated, stick-figure Cambodians, reminds us again of man’s capacity for inhumanity to man. We watch with helpless outrage.

But now is not the time for being shocked stiff. The U.S. committee for UNICEF says, “What is needed most now is money.” Christians must cry out against those barriers stopping distribution of this relief aid.

The Cambodian people require our prayers—the powerful Abramic kind that saved Lot from Sodom. Individual Cambodian Christians remain in the country and God may use them powerfully during, and after, this holocaust.

Christians have this knowledge: that God is far greater than any slaughter. And that history books, as well as the Judgment Book, will record whether we did our part to alleviate the suffering in Cambodia.

If you have seriously heeded “The Chicago Call,” then no doubt you are deep into a study of the church fathers and looking for ways to share this wealth with others.

Have no fear, for Tradition House is here! We have prepared an exciting visual aids kit that will make the fathers and the councils as real and important as next month’s payment on the church building.

Heading the list of visual assistants is a quaint puppet named Aunty Nicene. She is an old lady with a broom, and she is forever digging up ancient things and making them look new. She is aided by several animal puppets, among them Augustine the Hippo and Polly Carp the fish. (Since the fish is an ancient Christian symbol, we felt it was important to include Polly.) There is also a family of aquatic birds known as the Ortho Ducks. They flock together and lament the fact that too many things are new. Occasionally one of them will dive to the bottom of the lake (not supplied in the kit) and come up with something he claims is a pearl.

Aunty Nicene has a pet basset hound who helps to teach people dogmatic theology. She also has a pet feline who handles the catechism. This delightful evangelical zoo is bound to create interest and excitement, even among those in the church who don’t brake for pets.

The kit also contains a set of priceless slides depicting the church fathers at work in those early centuries. A special feature is a long-playing record of ancient chants and songs, played on copies of the original instruments. On the record are new arrangements of songs by Bernard of Clairvaux, all tastefully done by Bill and Gloria Gaither. Add to these items a generous assortment of candles, a tin of dust swept from ancient ruins, several parchments, and three paint-by-number icons, and you can see that the kit is a bargain.

Tradition House is proud to offer this valuable teaching tool to the waiting public. Be the first in your town to lead your church forward—or is it backward? I keep forgetting. Well, at least you’ll be going somewhere!

EUTYCHUS X

Articulate

Roland Miller’s lead article “Renaissance of the Muslim Spirit” (Nov. 16) was the most articulate and succinct overview of Islam I have ever read. He has highlighted both facts and moods in the shifting, often contradictory tides of the Islamic renaissance. My only suggestion would be to add a reference concerning the impact of the Crusades on the Muslim outlook toward the West and toward Christianity in general.

PHIL PARSHALL

International Christian Fellowship

Wheaton, Ill.

Objective?

I wish that Ed Plowman’s news article “Is Morality All Right?” (Nov. 16) had been done with at least the semblance of objectivity.

No question that he is talking about some folks who aren’t altogether forthright in their intentions. But why not edit the piece to remove some of his more glaring prejudices? For example, what group would not “reject the accusation that they are reactionaries hopelessly mired in negativism”?

While I don’t agree with Ed’s politics, I must say that I am absolutely against the right wing religious-political alliances he refers to in his article.

WILLIAM KEMSLEY

Editor and Publisher

Backpacker Magazine

Bedford Hills, N.Y.

While it is good that Christians are speaking out on the issues, there is the danger of determining if one is a Christian based on his liberal or conservative political views rather than on the evidence of the grace of God in his life. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus said. Not if one votes conservative do we know if he or she is a Christian.

ROBERT SILLING

Smithfield, Va.

Muddies the Issue

I appreciate your editorial about the less than enthusiastic response to Francis Schaeffer’s new film series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (“Beyond Personal Piety,” Nov. 16). However, I must ask whether you muddy the issue with words like, “We are not advocating absolute rejection of all abortions,” and “Whether or not a one-day fetus is fully human life, it is at the very least potential human life.”

While trying to agree with Schaeffer’s premise, aren’t you qualifying and weakening your own stand with phrases like this? Abortion must be attacked for what it is and the sacredness of human life must be accepted with no qualifications.

REV. WILLIS SCHWICHTENBERG

Our Savior Lutheran Church

Milford, Ill.

In your November 2 news report on Evangelicals for Social Action (“Stacking Sandbags against a Conservative Flood”), you stated that “The Sojourners and Other Side constituencies tended to disengage from ESA after its 1977 reorganization.”

It is true that most of the staff of both magazines left the board of ESA at that time, but I don’t think our “constituencies” disengaged. Certainly our subscribers have not disengaged. A large part of the ESA membership comes from the mailing lists of the two magazines.

That is because we continue to work closely together. Both magazines have allowed ESA the use of their mailing list, The Other Side has recommended that its readers join ESA, we share office space with ESA, one of our coeditors (Al Krass) served a term on their board, and three of our four coeditors belong to ESA.

You also imply that one reason some of us disengaged from ESA was that we wanted to build radical alternatives and ESA wanted to change the system. That is inaccurate. The disagreement was over how radical a change we should call for, not over whether to do it by building alternatives or by working within the system.

But even then the disagreement was mild. We did not feel that ESA was making a bad choice. We just felt that we were called to something different from what they were called to.

JOHN F. ALEXANDER

Coeditor

The Other Side

Philadelphia, Pa.

Well-chosen Word

The editorial “The Indispensable Christian College” (Nov. 2) and the three articles on the Christian college were excellent presentations of the rationale for and impact of the Christian college today. Indispensable is a word well chosen to describe its role.

As I read these articles, I was struck that “Christian day school” could have been substituted for the words “Christian college” in almost every instance. It struck me how inconsistent some of us can be. When it comes to college education, Christian education is indispensable, but when it comes to our young children and our teenagers, secular education is somehow supposed to satisfy the need to develop in our children a Christian world-and-life view.

PHILIP ELVE

Editor

Christian Home and School

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Your editorial was very helpful. Could it be that one of the significant reasons enrollment in Christian colleges has increased above the national average is that financial aid for students has dramatically increased?

Federal and state student aid has increased 1,500 percent over the past ten years. Studies have shown that 40–50 percent of the students attending private colleges would have attended a state-subsidized institution if it were not for public assistance in the form of student aid.

Without federal and state financial assistance for students over the past 15 years, the Christian college would not be nearly as healthy financially as it is today. At many Christian colleges the public dollars students bring with them amount to 25–30 percent of the operating budget.

HAROLD A. ANKENY

Director of student aid and government relations

George Fox College

Newburg, Oreg.

Not by Power

Thank you for David Wells’s article “Prayer: Rebelling against the Status Quo” (Nov. 2). I especially appreciated the call to prayer based on the character of God, rather than the appeals to power so often heard. I too believe that prayer is an appropriate method of rebelling against the evil and injustice that mankind has introduced into God’s world.

KENNETH W. CAMPBELL

Association of Church Missions Committees

Pasadena, Calif.

Sensitive and Honest

I’m so thankful that Gerald Oosterveen’s sensitive, honest, and comprehensive piece “In Support of Parents with Handicapped Children” found a place in the October 19 issue.

As parents of a beautiful eight-year-old daughter who suffered massive diffused brain injury when she was but 18 hours old, my wife and I can attest to the psychological and spiritual turmoil parents of a hurt child experience.

And I have witnessed both intentional and unintentional discrimination toward families with handicapped children by many who should be sources of comfort, strength, and love.

STEPHEN I. KOSKA

Executive Director

Bethany Manor

Downey, Calif.

With this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, we conclude not only the year 1979 but also the decade of the seventies. And what a decade! For evangelicals, the seventies represented greater change than the sixties. Former associate editor H.O.J. Brown assesses the gains and losses of evangelicals during these swiftly moving years.

The pièce de résistance in this issue, however, is the CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup poll, for which we have waited long and eagerly. The poll consists of four main parts: (1) the religious views of Americans; (2) the religious beliefs and attitudes of evangelicals; (3) the religious beliefs and attitudes of American clergy; and (4) the social, political, and ethical stance of evangelicals.

During the course of the coming year, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will bring to its readers the results of the poll in a series of articles, begun in this issue. The editors will seek to provide some interpretation of the data, but even more they will encourage readers to draw their own conclusions from the facts brought to light by the poll. The first article introduces the poll and provides an initial survey of religious views of the general populace and some significant findings about evangelicals. We expect highly divergent responses. Some will see the doughnut; others, the hole. For example, shall we rejoice because more than half of the evangelicals share their faith with others at least once a month—or shall we weep that 10 percent never share their faith with anyone who is not a fellow evangelical?

“Of what value will all these data be to me?” you may ask. Remember the very Christian words of a well known anti-Christian thinker: “The point is not to understand the world, but to change it.”

In a final article Donald Williams seeks to adjust the halo over the head of C. S. Lewis that shines even more brilliantly than at his death.

We have made Christmas into a time of ballyhoo. In a modern “Christian” community Christmas is a fun time, an occasion when the family foregathers. Preeminently it is the festival of children. The kids visit stores with Father Christmas in attendance and hang up their stockings (or pillowcases) with gusto. Stores reap their annual harvest as people prepare to exchange presents. And when the great day comes it is celebrated with the consumption of prodigious quantities of food and drink. A visitor from a distant planet might be forgiven for concluding that Christmas is the festival of fun and self-indulgence.

Now, I have no objection to a festival of fun; there is far too much sadness and sorrow in our modern society. Anything that can lift our depressed spirits and introduce some genuine enjoyment into a sad old world is to be welcomed. It is the misunderstanding of a great Christian festival that troubles me. Christmas is too great and too important to be caricatured as no more than a fun time.

Traditionally, the church has seen things very differently. She has regarded Christmas as a time to think of the meaning of the Incarnation, the coming of her Lord in lowliness and deep humility. So solemn and significant is this that the church has set aside a whole month to get ready for it. The season of Advent (from the fourth Sunday before Christmas until Christmas Day) is meant to be a solemn season of preparation.

During Advent the church has thought it important to give emphasis to two great thoughts: Christ will come again, and Christ will come in judgment. There are other aspects of Advent, but let us think about these two.

Christ will come again. This thought is repeated again and again in the New Testament. I have read that this doctrine is referred to on an average of once in every 13 verses from the beginning of Matthew to the end of Revelation. Whether that calculation is exact or not, there is no doubt that the New Testament Christians came back to this doctrine again and again. It is the most frequently mentioned doctrine in the whole New Testament.

For the early Christians, it was wonderful to know that the Savior would return. They were but a little band. And they were confronted by strong forces of evil. Sometimes they were imprisoned for their faith, and there were martyrs among them. But the final victory would not lie with their tormentors; it would lie rather with their God and Savior. So they looked with eager longing for the day of his coming, the day when the kingdom of this world would be the kingdom of their God and of his Christ (Rev. 11:15). That day stood for the decisive overthrow of evil. It meant the triumph of good and of God.

It is extraordinary how the church has trivialized this great doctrine. Some of its members have argued that it was all a mistake. It arose, they have said, out of the unreal expectations of the early church. The first Christians expected that Jesus would return within their own lifetime, and the fact that he did not do so is held to discredit the whole doctrine.

It does no such thing, of course. To begin with, it is not at all clear that the early Christians did expect the Lord’s return quite so soon. They remembered the words of Jesus that he did not know when the coming would be (Mark 13:32). And if he did not know, how could they?

Sometimes Paul is brought in to bolster the argument. His words, “we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up” (1 Thess. 4:17), are said to prove that he thought that he would still be living when the Lord came. But by parity of reasoning, 1 Corinthians 6:14 shows that Paul thought he would be dead: “God will raise us up through his power.” Paul never claimed he would be alive at that day and he should not be quoted as though he did.

Neither the fact that the coming did not take place in New Testament days, nor the fact that it has not yet occurred, affects its truth. It is still in Scripture and it is still needed, for it expresses the precious truth that the evil we see in the modern world will not triumph finally. In the end, Christ will return and sweep it all away. This is a truth we cannot live without.

Evangelicals have often put their emphasis instead on particular views of the millennium. They have discussed the relative merits of pre-, post-, and a-millennial views. Such discussions are important—but they are not as important as the main fact. Christ will come again. In our world this great truth demands continued emphasis.

The other part of the Advent emphasis to which I would draw attention is that the coming of the Lord means judgment. He will come to judge the living and the dead. In other words, while the thought of the coming brings comfort as we reflect on the certainty of the final overthrow of evil, it does not encourage complacency. There will be a judgment of all, and Peter reminds us of the uncomfortable fact that judgment begins with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). We are accountable people; the coming means that one day we will give account of ourselves to God.

Our generation would do well to give this more heed. We are inclined to pride ourselves on our scientific and technological achievements and to overlook our considerable moral shortcomings. Indeed, we typically deny moral failure. We simply assert that in earlier days people were too straitlaced. We are more enlightened, we think, and our relaxation of standards is a mark, not of moral failure, but of enlightenment.

This is simply a failure to look clearly at what we have done with our world. A few years ago D.R. Davies wrote a book he called The Art of Dodging Repentance. In it, he refers among other things to “the generation of our blood-soaked, cruelty-ridden world.” He further says, “Of all the men who have lived and died since Calvary, we men of today can least pretend to the possession of superior virtue, of a deeper, finer, more responsible morality. The unnumbered millions done to death and the millions condemned to a living death in remote spaces scream denial of any such pretension. No century has more clearly recrucified Christ than the twentieth.”

No fair-minded examination of the world in which we live can deny the justice of Davies’s accusation. We live in a world where it is possible to produce abundance of food and where millions are starving. And while they starve, the governments of the world spend uncountable amounts of money on armaments, while the world (the nonstarving part) goes complacently on its way.

Is Christmas a fun time? The judgment of God stands over our modern world.

Leon Morris is principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The Second Latin American Congress on Evangelization (CLADE II) in Peru last month was a thoroughly Latin affair. Invited non-Latin missionaries were limited to 10 percent of the 250 participants (although a few more attended as observers).

The gathering, on the outskirts of Lima, was in no sense antimission, but it did offer a marked contrast to CLADE I, which had assembled more than 900 participants a decade earlier in Bogotá, Colombia. That congress, organized largely by Clyde Taylor (a former Colombia missionary) of the World Evangelical Fellowship, had been mission dominated and totally financed from outside. CLADE II, with roughly half of the finances raised inside Latin America, demonstrated that the evangelical church in Latin America is coming of age.

Although the Latin church has been quietly maturing at both local and national levels, observers note there had been a void in interchurch activity at the continental level. After the 1969 meetings, the Latins had made clear there should be no more mission-initiated congresses; but it took a decade for the Latin initiative to ripen.

The initiative, when it did come, issued from the 50-member Latin American Theological Fraternity, the only organizational child of CLADE I. Its president, Samuel Escobar of Peru, and its coordinator, Pedro Savage of Argentina, served in the same capacities for the congress.

One aim of the congress was to provide evangelicals with a forum in which they could restate their positions in the aftermath of the Catholic CELAM III at Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979, and interact with those Protestants (the great majority) who did not participate in the World Council of Churches-sponsored conference at Oaxtepec, Mexico, last September.

The emphases on the theological foundations of evangelism and social concerns vexed some participants who had come expecting a greater concentration on techniques for evangelism. But, as one observer commented, evangelism needs theology or it wanders off base. And theology requires dialogue if it is not to splinter. Evangelism techniques that do not grow out of the context are usually only marginally effective, Escobar pointed out.

Participants were exposed to one religious liberal speaker, but the congress and its concluding letter were theologically conservative and socially centrist.

The Central Americans, subjected to political turmoil, followed by those from some of the Andean countries, were the most vocal about the relation of faith to political and social issues. Brazilians and participants from South America’s “southern cone” were mostly disinterested.

Russell Shedd, respected Conservative Baptist missionary to Brazil, pointed out, though, that if evangelicals fail to grapple with Third World problems, other ideologies are sure to move in.

Theologian Orlando Costas, originally from Puerto Rico, articulated the social activist case most forcefully. He defined evangelism as the proclamation of the gospel that calls the individual to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, incorporates him into faith, and puts him into the battles of the kingdom and against the forces of evil. The demand of faith, he insisted, is always contextualized, and its response must be as well. The rich young ruler sold his possessions; Zacchaeus made restitution to those he had defrauded.

Speaking on the topic of Christ and antichrist, René Padilla of Argentina stressed that antichrist is not only future but present, and not only persecutes, but also seduces. Christ is not only opposed by forces such as spiritism, rampant in much of the continent, but also by the absolutism of consumerism. Placing economic progress above other values, he declared, leads to abuses from both

left and right in the name of national security. He cited imprisonments without trial, torture, and disappearances as indications of the antichrist. The church’s task, he said, is to maintain a faithful witness, proclaiming the gospel and living true to its values. Oscar Perreira of Chile stressed that this involved, among other things, the church parting ways with the surrounding “machismo” society and its “high-handed” treatment of women.

CLADE II organizers worked to keep lines of communication open with the ecumenically oriented Council of Latin American Churches (CLAI), presently in formation. Indeed, CLAI held a “pre-Melbourne” meeting for four days immediately following CLADE II at the same location, and some participants attended both gatherings.

The smaller ecumenical wing, like the Roman Catholic liberation theologians and Marxists, is almost totally absorbed in the social causes of the poor and oppressed. In that context, as Pablo Pérez of Mexico noted, it took some courage for CLADE II organizers to include a session on reaching the elite.

Escobar, citing Roger Greenway, the Latin America secretary of the Christian Reformed Board of Foreign Missions, asserted that evangelicals are the true revolutionaries because lives are changed. Christians, he said, work for solutions within any society. Marxists, by contrast, exploit despair, working to sabotage reform.

Full involvement by Pentecostals at CLADE II showed that they have been accepted into the evangelical mainstream. They were still underrepresented, however, in relation to their numerical strength.

One of the themes explored by the congress was the relationship of Scripture and the Holy Spirit to evangelization. As a congress organizer explained, Pentecostals sometimes have been charged with emphasizing the Spirit at the expense of the Word. Other churches have been charged with an emphasis on the Word at the expense of living manifestation of the Spirit. The conferees readily agreed that the written Word judges both the spoken word and the promptings of the Spirit. The easy consensus may mean that the Pentecostal position had been incorrectly perceived.

The World Council of Churches conspicuously has been wooing the Latin American Pentecostal movement in the last few years with some initial successes. At the initiative of Argentinian Pentecostal Norberto Saracco, 36 Pentecostal participants arrived a week early and formed a Confraternity of Pentecostal Movements. The confraternity acknowledges theological diversity in the movement as a strength, but will probably serve as a counterweight to the WCC inroads. A commission of five was elected, and a Latin American Pentecostal conference was slated for late 1981.

The congress was launched deliberately on Reformation Day to underscore the Protestant distinctives of a church set in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic context. Speaking from the pulpit of Lima’s impressive, modern Pueblo Libre Christian and Missionary Alliance Church structure (2,000 seating capacity), Emilio Nuñez, president of the Central American Seminary in Guatemala, reiterated the Reformation themes of Scripture alone, faith alone, and grace alone.

The evangelical churches of Lima used the presence of the congress as an occasion for raising their visibility. With congress participants at the head, they formed a “parade of witness,” organized according to city districts, and replete with banners and more than one band. The church members paraded downtown, singing hymns and reciting Scripture. One participant from Colombia joked that all the parade needed to make it a (religious) procession was images of Saint Luther and Saint Calvin, the marchers converged on Manco Capac Plaza, where for two hours the massed group of almost 10,000 cheered, prayed, sang, and listened to messages and Quichua Indian gospel music over loudspeakers.

No doubt the parade boosted evangelical morale, but some observers wondered if the parade and Reformation Day emphases, appropriate a decade earlier, were not reflex actions that no longer fit the increasing openness in sectors of the Roman Catholic church.

(Last May 10,000 Roman Catholics gathered in a Lima soccer stadium for ECCLA VI, the Sixth Catholic Charismatic Encounter in Latin America. They listened intently to preaching of the basic salvation steps, interspersed with testimonies of priests, nuns, and lay people. Many testified to their new life in Christ and the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit. Hundreds responded to the invitation.)

Perhaps 95 percent of Latin Americans are baptized Roman Catholics. But evangelicals, conferees were advised, would do well to think of their fellow Latins as culturally Roman Catholic, more than religiously so.

Costas told the congress that God had raised up the Pentecostals and the renewal movement in the Catholic church to evangelize the continent on a scale historic evangelicals were too small to cope with. The evangelicals, he maintained, would serve as a prophetic voice to keep the evangelistic wave from degenerating. Conferees were cool to his interpretation of current events. Escobar noted that the base communities concept being pursued so successfully by Catholics was copied from evangelical house meetings of earlier years.

A1 Shannon, Wycliffe missionary to Peru, maintains that evangelicals could relate to the Catholic renewal movement more easily than to the Protestant ecumenical movement. For one thing, he said, charismatic Catholics have no time for liberation theology. They are also wide open to Protestant teaching. Millions are predisposed to evangelism if it can be done within their church culture, instead of dragging them out “kicking and screaming” one by one into the evangelical subculture, he said.

CLADE II spokesmen indicated that uniformly the situation is not so favorable as it is in Peru. Catholic authorities in Colombia, for example, have recently moved to suppress the charismatic groups.

Savage, in consultation with John Stott, is engaged in dialogue with some Catholics. But efforts over the last five months to find an opening to the new secretary of CELAM so far have been unavailing.

Nicaragua: the Shaking and Shifting of the Church

God used the devastating earthquake of 1974 to set in motion developments that prepared the evangelical church in Nicaragua for the national convulsion that culminated in the ouster of dictator Anastasio Somoza. The eight Nicaraguan Christian workers who participated in CLADE II were united in this assessment.

Meeting disaster needs after the earthquake prodded the churches to work together as never before. They jointly organized CEPAD, the Evangelical Committee for the Relief of Victims, for channeling relief efforts. It involved them in the wider Nicaraguan society as never before. It also redeployed the church as members were relocated from destroyed homes.

CEPAD early moved beyond immediate relief efforts to development programs and the study of church involvement in society. A weeklong seminar on social issues brought together 280 pastors. They organized a 10-member central committee and 14 regional committees of pastors.

In this way a ferment of creative ideas was begun. Church members at the district level made suggestions on the church’s role and priorities and sent them to the central committee. Sessions were organized to help orient church members to community functions they could fill, to inform them of theological currents, and to help them improve church administration. Women’s and youth retreats were included. In October 1978, 500 pastors met for a retreat, after the event had been postponed four times in the midst of the growing unrest.

None of the increased activity was focused on politics, nor related either to or against the government. But the “national agony,” as believers called it, intruded increasingly. A human rights committee was formed in 1976 representing 48 Protestant denominations.

The committee first focused on reports of persons who disappeared—often from parents reporting a missing son. It became experienced in locating where these persons were imprisoned and negotiating their release, which always involved payment. “It became a business.”

Many individuals who learned that they were marked for extermination took refuge in foreign embassies in Managua. The committee supplied them with food.

It also assisted those who went into exile, providing guidance and financial help. Procuring their exit visas also invariably required payment.

As word of indiscriminate barbarities by the National Guard against rural people in the northern sector of the country accumulated, the committee decided to act. It collected specifics—those killed and tortured, with names, dates, and places—and requested an interview with Somoza. A three-man delegation obtained a 45-minute audience at Somoza’s bunker. He said he would do all in his power to correct the abuses; but no improvements resulted.

Rodolfo Fonseca Castro, who is pastor of a Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) congregation in Managua (140 members after the earthquake relocations), is representative of the gradual change in political perceptions for many believers.

He says that as long ago as 1968 he took part in passive resistance to the oppression of the Somoza regime. Being party to violence, however, never occurred to him since his training included the tenets of submission to the existing authorities and noninvolvement in politics. But the pressures on his inherited stance became overpowering. The National Guard began indiscriminately to kill youths just because many youth were attracted to the Sandinistas. (The ironic result was that the young were forced to escape to the Sandinistas as their only refuge.)

Fonseca said he searched for a weapon, and then, when he had acquired one, prayed that God would spare him from ever having to use it to save his sons from death or his daughters from violation.

Starting last spring, he rose daily at five o’clock to pray that the Somoza regime would experience a change of heart. But increasingly he began to doubt that Romans 13 meant that Somoza’s regime was God-ordained. “How,” he pled, “can such injustice come from You?”

Eventually, he recalls, he received the distinct impression that God was repeating to him his words to Samuel about Saul: How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?

The following Sunday he announced his conclusion from his pulpit.

Undoubtedly elements of believers either supported the government out of a grim conviction that theirs was the biblical stance, or attempted to cling to neutrality. But, as Fonseca’s poignant narrative demonstrates, most were driven into reluctant opposition.

Cambodia

Traces of the Church Remain after Pol Pot

World Vision president Stanley Mooneyham, who had contacts with the small Cambodian Christian community prior to the 1975 takeover by the genocidal Pol Pot regime, wrote this article following his recent four-day relief assistance visit to the capital city, Phnom Penh.

Pol Pot may have thought he buried religion in his efforts to create a new “classless and glorious” society in Cambodia, but now green shoots of new life are springing out of the ground.

When the Khmer Rouge set about to take the country back to “Year Zero” (their designation for 1975, the year of their takeover), they tried to destroy every connection with the twentieth century. Inspired by the maniacal Red Guards of China’s “cultural revolution,” Pol Pot was determined to bring forth a revolutionary “pure” rural society. He wanted a society with ties to nothing more recent than the Angkor Wat Khmer empire of the tenth century.

Thus, around the city of Phnom Penh were pyramids of automobiles, pianos, refrigerators, sewing machines, generators, and scores of other things, all smashed as an act of contempt for anything that looked like the twentieth century.

The Khmer Rouge were anti everything of an institutional nature, including religion. Teachers, office workers, students, businessmen, civil servants, technicians, Buddhist monks, Christians, anyone speaking a foreign language, anyone who had worked for a foreign organization, anyone knowing a foreigner—all these and more received an immediate death sentence. In fact, simply having lived in a city was itself a virtual death sentence; it meant that one had been corrupted by the twentieth century.

Under the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin regime, the city of Phnom Penh is gradually coming back to life. An estimated 100,000 people now live in the city. Thousands more are camped around the perimeter awaiting permission to enter. Access is carefully controlled. Only people who can contribute some skill to rebuilding are desired at this time.

Most of those now in the city are not former residents. They have come from the provinces.

Practice of ancient Buddhism and Christianity was forbidden under Pol Pot. Any public expression of Christian faith would have brought a club to the head of the witness. Yet Christians did retain their faith. In Phnom Penh, I met former World Vision staff members who said with tears, “God saved me. Otherwise I would be dead.” They said they had to erase completely from their minds any knowledge of their past lest they inadvertently betray themselves.

A former university student who had worked as a translator in the Bible Society said, “I had to pretend that I knew nothing about anything. I became an ignorant peasant for all that time.” Then she added, “But I always prayed.”

As soon as I reached the city, word spread quickly through the network of Christians. Some of those people now hold positions in the new government. They were selected when word was passed through the countryside that the regime needed anyone with an education or who could speak a foreign language. Gradually, some have begun to surface.

In notes that were handed to me, Christians told their experiences under Pol Pot and indicated they still did not feel entirely secure.

Most noticeable in Phnom Penh by its absence was the huge Gothic cathedral that had dominated the capital city’s skyline. Built less than a century ago by French Roman Catholics, it was demolished by the Khmer Rouge and every stone was removed. Grass now grows on the vacant lot where it stood.

I saw no destruction of Protestant buildings, probably because these were less ostentatious and blended into the environment. Bethany Church on Monivong Street is closed, but with some allowance for more than four years of neglect, it looked much as it did when I used to preach there. The residential property on Norodom Boulevard, where the Christian and Missionary Alliance had its headquarters, looked intact, although unoccupied. The Bible school property in the suburb of Takhmau reportedly is still standing.

The World Vision pediatric hospital, which was built in 1975, is still standing and in good condition, but is presently occupied by the military. Probably all of the equipment is gone, along with the city’s automobiles and sewing machines, but World Vision has been told it can start negotiations to re-equip the hospital.

Since all the property in Phnom Penh now belongs to the socialist government of Heng Samrin, no one knows what will be the final disposition or usage allowed for these properties.

I did not find any of the church leaders I had previously known. They are presumed dead, but not confirmed to be; none can be accounted for visibly. I expect to begin inquiries regarding them on future visits. Since there was total disruption of community life and the people lived isolated from each other during Pol Pot’s rule, it is likely that many deaths will never be finally confirmed.

I was told that freedom of religion will be permitted under one of eleven articles of the constitution. But whether that is true or not, the faith of Cambodia’s believers, having survived all that Pol Pot could place upon it, is not likely to go into eclipse now.

Personalities

Cleaver: Gazing at a Different Moon

Eldridge Cleaver denies he has joined Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. But the former Black Panther leader freely admits he shocked some people by speaking recently at a Moonie gathering in Oakland, California.

Cleaver, 44, who became something of an evangelical celebrity after his about-face Christian conversion in 1976, had attended a weekly gathering of Project Volunteer, a Unification group involved in social service projects in Oakland. He told an enthusiastic audience of 150 about his conversion experience and his rejection of socialism.

In a lengthy telephone interview, Cleaver said he has been investigating the Unification Church and its doctrine out of personal curiosity for some time. “I had decided I had to find out what was going on,” he said.

This curiosity led him to attend Oakland area Unification dinners and seminars. Then, last summer, he spent six weeks at a Moonie ranch in northern California. Cleaver said he received the same indoctrination, regimented treatment, and “love-bombing” as other potential converts at the ranch.

“I knew what I was doing [by being there],” said Cleaver, explaining his decision to go to the ranch came after prayer.

Cleaver said he didn’t want to be drawn into theological arguments about the Unification Church. What is more important, he indicated, is that Moonies practice what they preach:

“I’m looking at the Moonies the same way I look at any other church or evangelical organization … I put them on a graph on my wall and check the consistency between what they preach and what they practice … I end up looking at the situation totally different than some other people do.”

Evangelicals are lacking on Cleaver’s scale—explaining in part his remark about preferring to be with the littlest Moonie than Billy Graham: “If you only knew the littlest Moonie, you’d say that, too,” Cleaver told this reporter.

Cleaver asserts that the organized church and evangelicalism are guilty of commercialized religion. He said the churches are “misusing” their resources by building superchurches and “secret bank accounts,” among other things.

Cleaver’s remarks seem less jolting to persons familiar with his background. He never was bland or lukewarm: his response to the civil rights movement was furthest from the middle. He joined the Black Panthers, becoming one of its leaders.

His involvement culminated in an April 1968 shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police. Cleaver still awaits trial on charges of assault and attempted murder in connection with that shooting. (Last May, the California State Supreme Court upheld the use of certain key evidence in the case—ending nearly two years of legal maneuvering and clearing the way for a retrial.)

Cleaver jumped bail after his 1968 arrest, and spent seven years in exile abroad. His Communist politics won him temporary homes in Cuba, China, North Korea, and Algeria. Finally in Paris in 1975, disillusioned by his wanderings and on the verge of suicide, Cleaver professed to seeing a vision of Christ in the moon, which prompted him to start reading the Bible and gave him inner peace.

He felt led to return to the United States, where he immediately was incarcerated. Then, under the influence of a prison evangelist, he formally accepted Christ. Christian businessmen raised his $100,000 bond, and within 10 months after his baptism, Cleaver had established his own evangelistic association, Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, a small operation in his Menlo Park, California, home. (Cleaver wants to open a larger headquarters near Carson City, Nevada.)

Cleaver recently has been working among the elderly in the Bay area. He said: “That’s really where we encountered the Moonies, on that same terrain of working with these elderly people in Oakland.” He said he anticipates cooperating with the Unification Church in various other projects.

Cleaver says he has plans for the first “Debtors Bank of America,” which he was to announce during a “bill-burning ceremony” in an Oakland city park last month. Cleaver wants the poor to “deposit their bills in our bank and accept our union as their bargaining agent and to send the bill collectors to our union.” The bank, he said, would be financed from government and private industry sources.

Soon after his conversion, Cleaver attended Bible studies at pastor Ray Stedman’s Peninsula Bible Church at Palo Alto, California, and started off on the evangelical speaking circuit. Stedman, a popular author and seminar speaker, said last month that Cleaver’s wife, Kathleen, and two children still are regular attenders at the church. However, he has not seen Cleaver for about six months, despite several attempts to meet with him.

Cleaver said he has been deluged by phone calls and letters since his appearance at the Unification meeting. When asked exactly what his present status is regarding the Unification Church, he replied: “I don’t know how else I can say it more plainly than I follow no man. I follow the Holy Spirit and the leading that he gives me. I listen and I reason with people and I follow the Bible as best I can.”

JOHN MAUST

North American Scene

Registrations for Urbana 79 were officially closed on October 26. All of the more than 18,300 spaces for Inter-Varsity’s twelfth Student Missions Convention were filled two months prior to the December 27–31 gathering at the University of Illinois at Urbana. The 1976 registrations for the triennial event closed in mid-December.

Evangelist Billy Graham is keeping a busy schedule. He recently held a five-day Atlantic Provinces Crusade in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Graham disclosed at a press conference in Chicago that he and his wife Ruth had since been dinner and overnight guests of President and Mrs. Carter at the White House. Graham left a Chicago meeting directly for England, where he made preparations for his January 1980 Cambridge/Oxford crusade.

Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses gathered recently for mutual encouragement and anti-Witnesses apologetic at their first national convention in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania. The meeting included lectures by ex-Witnesses and others, including Julius Mantey, Southern Baptist theologian and one of the translators of the New International Version of the Bible, who discussed “Distortions of the New Testament by Jehovah’s Witnesses.” W. I. Cetnar of Kunkletown, Pennsylvania, a Witness for 22 years, chaired the meeting, which also emphasized evangelizing persons still in the cult.

A Westminster Seminary graduate was denied a Presbyterian Church in Canada pastor’s license, presumably over the women’s ordination question. Daniel MacDougall, a member of Bridlewood Church, Toronto, had told a committee of the Presbytery of East Toronto that he could not in conscience ordain women ministers or elders. The presbytery voted to reject MacDougall’s application, and after he appealed, the synod upheld the presbytery’s decision. The denomination authorized women’s ordination in 1966 and, responding to recent allegations of discrimination against women clergy candidates, the 1979 General Assembly appointed a task force to probe and correct any such discrimination.

Religious groups are watching with interest the proposed formation of a giant coalition of charities and voluntary organizations. John Gardner, formerly of Common Cause, headed a task force that recently suggested this confederation, “Independent Sector,” as a united defense against government encroachments and regulations. The Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations and the National Council of Philanthropy, cosponsors of the effort and representing nearly 100 charities and foundations, hoped to have the confederation in operation by January.

World Scene

The Vatican’s internal budget has been in the red for almost a decade and is currently running at an annual deficit of more than $17 million. This was disclosed during the assembly of the College of Cardinals last month, the first time the full body had examined the Vatican’s secret financial operations. Up to now, the deficit has been covered from Peter’s Pence, the pope’s discretionary fund, comprised of donations from the faithful the world over on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29. The cardinals also discussed ways to increase the efficiency of the church’s central administration and its cultural departments.

Sweden has dropped hom*osexuality from its official list of diseases, according to a spokesman for the National Board of Health and Welfare. A government committee has also recommended that children be permitted to divorce their parents. This would make it possible for a child to remain with foster parents in the face of demands from the natural parent that the child be returned. Earlier the government passed with only minor dissent an antispanking law.

The Communist party youth organization in the Soviet Union is deploring the latest “craze among our young people.” Its publication, Komsomolskaya Pravda, noted that they are wearing crucifixes around their necks and sporting Jesus T-shirts. The Communist youth organ acknowledged that “church-going is spreading among the young” and urged a renewed antireligion campaign “to dissuade the young from doing so.”

The Lutheran Church of Botswana is still at odds with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa, according to Lutheran missionary sources in the German Federal Republic. The 10,000-member Botswana church broke away from ELCSA in September of last year, saying it did not want to remain under a church with administrative headquarters in white-controlled South Africa, and that it wanted to be free to join with other Botswana Lutheran groups. Since then Botswana has refused permission to ELCSA workers to enter the country.

Fulanis, the nomadic Muslim cattle herders of West Africa, are responding to the gospel in significant numbers for the first time. Sudan Interior Mission missionaries report that a recent conference in Zaria, Nigeria, for Fulani believers drew a record attendance of 103, plus 33 from other tribes. During the meetings eight professed faith in Christ.

The Menachim Begin government greatly expanded surveillance of Christian missionaries when it took over two years ago. This was disclosed in an interview carried in Hatsofeh, a National Religious Party publication, with “a former employee in the Ministry of Religious Affairs who for many years dealt with the subject of the Mission.” It increased from one to three the staff employed to “keep track and orderly record of the tens of sects and hundreds of missionaries [working in Israel] and to restrict their activity.” Sources believe the interviewee was Rabbi Simon A. Dolgin, the former director-general of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Construction has begun on the $1.8 million relocation project for India’s Union Biblical Seminary. The seminary—with 200 students it is India’s largest evangelical seminary—has been located in the remote town of Yavatmal (Yeotmal) since its founding in 1953. It took two years to clear the title legally to the new hillside property overlooking Pune (Poona), a city of 1.5 million not far from Bombay. As soon as enough buildings are erected, the seminary will move. Benefits of the relocation, according to principal Saphir Athyal, include wider service outlets for both students and faculty, more adequate research and library facilities, improved communication, quicker transportation, more interaction in both city and village ministries, and a better climate.

A selection of Christian materials for Southeast Asian refugees in their own languages is now available from a single source. The Far East Broadcasting Company, drawing heavily on the Christian and Missionary Alliance, is making up “media-paks” that contain a New Testament, a few pieces of literature, and two cassette tapes. The paks, in Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong (Meo) languages, present both the gospel and practical advice for adjusting to the American way of life. They may be obtained with a donation to cover costs—about $8—from Project SHARE, FEBC, Box 1, La Mirada, CA 90637.

The Chinese have delayed consecration of the new bishop of Peking for China’s “independent” Catholic Church until at least 1980. The delay is viewed by observers as tending to confirm speculation that secret talks with the Vatican are under way. Michael Fu was elected bishop at a diocese synod in July in a move that greatly displeased Rome. Attempts to heal the schism may snag on the Vatican’s strong ties with Taiwan.

The Cults

A Verdict on Espionage as a Religious Science

If the Watergate burglars had asked the Church of Scientology for some pointers first, they might not have bungled the job.

Between 1973 and 1976, Scientology operatives broke into government offices virtually at will and stole copies of many thousands of documents, including classified ones, according to evidence presented in federal court in Washington last month. Except for a fluke or two and the defection of a ringleader in 1977, the church’s spying operation might have continued undetected.

As it turned out, nine Scientologists—including some of the highest ranking officials of the church—were found guilty on conspiracy charges in October by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey in Washington. Penalties could be as high as five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

The guilty verdict capped more than a year of complex legal maneuvers and plea bargaining. In a rarely used procedure that enabled the defendants to bypass a plea of guilty or not guilty, they agreed to accept as factual a 282-page “stipulation of evidence” submitted by the government. They also agreed in advance to a nonappealable verdict of guilt. In return, federal prosecutors reduced the charges to one count of conspiracy each against eight of the defendants (from a 28-count grand jury indictment) and a single count of misdemeanor theft against the other.

Hours of last-minute haggling by defense attorneys threatened to undo the delicate agreement, and Richey several times angrily threatened to schedule the case for a normal trial. The Scientologists seemingly wanted to deny publicly the authenticity of the government’s evidence while at the same time privately acknowledging it. They also fought bitterly to keep documents supporting the government’s case sealed, but Richey opened them to inspection by the press and public.

The documents were among some 48,000 seized by FBI agents at the church’s headquarters in Los Angeles in July 1977 (Aug. 12, 1977, issue, p. 32). Approximately 15,000 were later returned to the church. An appeals court has ruled that the FBI raid was legal, but the Scientologists have voted to fight the ruling until every legal recourse is exhausted. If the ruling is eventually overturned, the government’s case—and the conviction—apparently would have to be thrown out.

Seven Scientologists were convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice: Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of controversial Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard), Henning Heldt, Duke Snider, Gregory Willardson, Richard Weigand, Cindy Raymond, and Gerald Bennett Wolfe. Convicted of conspiring to steal documents was Michael Hermann. Sharon Thomas was convicted of theft.

Wolfe infiltrated the Internal Revenue Service and Thomas penetrated both Coast Guard intelligence and the Justice Department. Both were employed as government secretaries. They and their Scientology supervisor, Michael Meisner (who later defected), carried out most of the actual thefts, according to the evidence. The other six were part of the chain of command within the church’s Guardian Office. The evidence indicates they issued directives calling for church spies to be planted in various government agencies and for certain documents to be obtained, and they inspected, evaluated, or commented upon the documents in writing once they were received.

Scientology teaches that humans previously existed as “thetans” in outer space. Some psychological troubles in the present life can be traced to problems from a person’s previous existence, the church teaches. These troubling experiences, called “engrams,” may be embedded in the subconscious, preventing full enjoyment of life. With the help of a guide and an electronic device known as an E-meter, a person can progress through various stages to a “clear” state, where he is freed from the curses of the past. The process is known as “auditing” and may cost from $50 to $75 an hour; seekers often spend thousands of dollars hoping to become clear. Upon reaching a certain level, an individual can become an auditor, helping to free others from their psychological shackles. (A Portland, Oregon, court recently awarded $2 million in damages to a woman who claimed the church had failed to fulfill its promise to make her a better person.)

Government and medical authorities have harassed the church for years over its practices and finances.

The main goal of the church’s undercover activities was to obtain information contained about itself in government files. Some of the church’s branches had been denied tax-exempt status by the IRS, founder Hubbard was having difficulty with audits of his personal tax returns, and there were clashes with other government agencies. Using provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, the church obtained some of the material it wanted. Ironically, the government provided Scientology with indexes of withheld material, and church operatives used these as a guide for stealing copies of the withheld documents.

The operation gave the church an early warning of government intentions, and it enabled the church to devise countermeasures accordingly.

Copies of non-Scientology documents also were taken, however. These included personal notes and logs of government officials, the bulk of the files from an office of Interpol (the International Police Liaison Organization), and material involving such organizations as Bob Jones University and the Unification Church. The latter files were taken as part of a cover to divert attention away from Scientology when potentially embarrassing material taken from government files was leaked to the press, ostensibly by a disgruntled but anonymous government employee, according to evidence. Some material was to be used against individual government officials in attempts to gain advantages for the church.

Scientology agents stole material from several important offices in the IRS, including the office of Chief Counsel and two sensitive offices in a supposedly extra-secure area. They even broke into the IRS identification room and made false credentials for themselves and other Scientology members.

Also rifled were high-level offices in the Justice Department and the office of the U.S. Attorney in the courthouse where the Scientologists were convicted last month. The Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies were infiltrated, too.

A week after announcing the guilty verdict and unsealing the reams of documents used in the government’s case, Judge Richey also unsealed many other documents seized by the FBI at Scientology headquarters. These documents indicate that Scientology spies stole secret IRS files on celebrities (Frank Sinatra, for example) and politicians (including Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley). The church apparently intended to leak some of the materials to the press to show that the IRS gathered intelligence on such persons that was not tax related. (Certain tax returns were among the files stolen by the church, however.)

The documents also show that a church operative inside the American Medical Association obtained “approximately 6–7 feet of internal AMA documents”—including its “most confidential” files. One document discusses a plan to steal minutes from a New York grand jury investigating another religious group. Another file mentions that several Scientology members are employed by the CIA. There were copies of communications from former CIA director William Colby.

In internal memos introduced as evidence, Scientology officers acknowledged the illegality of their activities and discussed the distinctions between misdemeanors and felonies.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

New England gave some glory days to American evangelicalism. The First and Second Great Awakenings started there. From D. L. Moody’s Northfield (Mass.) conferences in the nineteenth century, the Student Missionary Movement arose with the goal of “evangelizing the whole world in this generation.” From its schools have emerged some of the great Christian thinkers.

But in recent times, New England has gained a reputation for being spiritually cold. Of its 12.5 million population, an estimated 3.5 million are unchurched—40 percent of all residents over the age of 18. Its people are known for self-reliance, but also for a stubbornness about spiritual things.

A number of New England church leaders would like to see another awakening of the Spirit across their corner of America. More than 300 of them, representing 34 different denominations and all six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts), gathered last month in historic Sturbridge, Massachusetts—close to where, more than two and a half centuries earlier, parishioners had entered Jonathan Edwards’s Northampton church as sinners in the hands of an angry God and emerged burning with zeal to evangelize the New World.

At their three-day New England Pastors’ Conference, participants prayed for spiritual renewal in New England, and discussed strategy on how best to accomplish that goal. They passed a resolution setting aside the first Friday of every month for prayer and fasting for revival in New England. Then, to translate conference spirit into action, they authorized a committee to take responsibility for conference follow-up.

That so many evangelical pastors and church leaders had temporarily joined together was regarded by conference organizers as a major accomplishment in itself. There had been an attempt to “surface all the major evangelical leadership in a six-state area,” said pastor Gordon MacDonald of the large, nondenominational Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts.

While many pastors came to the conference not knowing what to expect, most expressed pleasure simply at making contacts and trading ideas with others of a like mind for evangelical ministry. Many said they felt isolated in New England as evangelical ministers.

Prayer dominated the conference. The pastors began and ended the event on their knees in private prayer, asking God to use them to bring spiritual renewal.

Church historian Richard Lovelace of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary reminded a workshop audience that Cotton Mather devoted 490 days and nights to prayer for revival in New England. Mather died in 1727—just prior to the First Great Awakening. But, Lovelace noted, “Where the prayer is, revival cannot be far behind.”

The conference itself was the result of a prayer group. The so-called Lexington 9 had met one morning each month over the course of three years in MacDonald’s study. Besides MacDonald, the group included pastor Paul Toms of Park Street Church in Boston, executive director Donald Gill of the Boston-based Evangelistic Association of New England, and six other area church leaders.

MacDonald and several in the group had opposed Campus Crusade’s “Here’s Life” evangelistic program when it came to New England in 1976. In an interview, MacDonald said they believed the program was neither timely nor relevant for New England.

But although they opposed the “Here’s Life” approach, they desired its intended result—conversions to Christ and spiritual renewal—so the prayer group members asked themselves: “If not this, what? If not now, when?”

“At the time (1976) we were asking the hard question: Can the Gospel make it in New England?” MacDonald said. “Missiologically, it’s a resistant area.”

New England presents a unique challenge to evangelical pastors, said MacDonald, 40, who moved from southern Illinois to New England eight years ago. “New England is regionally defined unlike almost any area in the United States,” he said. “Literally, it is like another country.”

In interviews, pastors at the Sturbridge conference indicated their parishioners generally were more independent, more loyal to their home towns (and New England in general), more reserved, and perhaps more selfish (“You can see that by the way they drive,” said one pastor), than persons in other parts of the country.

Outsiders often have trouble gaining full acceptance in their community, said several. Pastor Mark Morton of Rye, New Hampshire, said he moved to the region 25 years ago and has accepted the fact that he will “never be a New Englander.”

As a result, pastors have been known to leave in frustration after a short ministry. Manuel Chavier of New Bedford, Massachusetts, lamented that New England pastors are averaging from one to three years in a pastorate before jumping to a different congregation, or moving out of New England entirely. MacDonald commented that it takes that long “just to learn the New England mind,” let alone establish an effective ministry.

From those informal meetings in MacDonald’s study (the group never had a chairman), the group established the purpose of maintaining and developing spiritually “healthy” congregations across New England. Their goal was, and still is, to identify within the next 10 years at least 1,000 “healthy, active, serving, witnessing, growing” churches in the region. These would be either new churches, revitalized ones, or congregations discovered that already meet the criteria of “healthy.”

Their first strategy to meet that objective was a pastors’ conference: “We needed to create a condition in which God could speak to his leadership,” MacDonald said. The group most of all wanted to unite New England evangelical church leaders for fellowship and to lay strategy. They also planned workshops, which included case studies of various kinds of local church ministry in New England.

The Evangelistic Association of New England administered the conference, and modeled it after the Lausanne International Congress for World Evangelization. An invitation committee made sure there was an evenly distributed geographical and denominational representation. Gifts from local churches and the Day Foundation of Atlanta, Georgia, and delegates’ registration fees more than covered the $45,000 conference budget.

Despite talk about New England’s barrenness, pastors also indicated there are signs of hope. Harvey Meppelink, Assemblies of God pastor in Lexington, Massachusetts, said, “We have a greater spiritual awareness today in New England than we’ve ever had.” Several noted that the charismatic movement has brought a degree of revival to the region’s 5.5 million Roman Catholics, many of whom are unchurched or members of ethnic congregations.

Delegates noted pockets of evangelical strength, such as the nine evangelical seminaries in the region. They learned of a number of creative ministries: Boston’s Ruggles Street Baptist Church, for instance, is getting involved in a Christian restaurant and coffee house ministry near the Boston Common. A Congregational church in Collinsville, Connecticut, attributes its increased attendance to its mailing, free of charge, of a community newspaper with articles reprinted from Christian magazines and two pages of news about the church, nine times a year.

Don Gill said the Evangelistic Association recently installed a $45,000 computer, into which will be programmed extensive information about local congregations throughout New England—from the most evangelical to the most liberal. The computer will be a resource tool for local churches and the association, which has the goal, Gill said, of seeing New England “reached for the Gospel through the local churches.”

The conference had its inspiring moments: speaker Leighton Ford; Washington, D.C., pastor Richard Halverson; and church historian Timothy Smith got plenty of amens from the audience. While former Gordon-Conwell Seminary president Harold Ockenga was comparing the spirit at Sturbridge to that evidenced during a momentous Billy Graham service in Boston some 30 years earlier on New Year’s Eve, a pastor interrupted to declare, “Dr. Ockenga, I was converted to Jesus Christ that night.”

The gathering gave the responsibility for conference follow-up to the Lexington 9, renamed the “Sturbridge Committee.” A larger 28-member advisory council was mandated to assist the committee.

Toward the close of the conference, delegates attended workshops designed to pull together ideas for follow-up. These included: new effort at communication—publication of a journal for New England pastors was considered; evangelistic outreach—they learned that Billy Graham is considering a New England crusade; and formation of local and regional pastors’ fellowship groups.

But the pastors also indicated that the burden for a great awakening lay, first of all, on them.

Gill noted in a closing workshop, “Lord help us if we don’t go away from here with something.”

The Christian Church (Disciples Of Christ)

Brotherhood and Blandness

Delegates to the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Saint Louis wore identification tags with their first names leaping out in bold letters. The gesture seemed to catch the spirit of this friendly, congregationalist denomination or “brotherhood,” as many Disciples say.

The brotherhood, some felt, had been severely strained two years ago by a traumatic debate on the ordination of hom*osexuals. That topic was on the agenda again. Others wondered if another specter from the recent past—the affiliation of Jim Jones and his People’s Temple with the Disciples—might somehow cast a pall or erupt into debate over laxity in ministerial certification. But neither emerged as crises. In fact, the October 26–31 assembly held no apparent surprises, and was so placid that a few delegates complained of the dangers of “a managed denomination.”

If not as spontaneous as recent assemblies, the Saint Louis meeting was “very successful” and revealed that for Disciples “the feeling of wholeness of the body is more important than controversies of the moment,” according to Kenneth L. Teegarden, president.

The Disciples declared, in effect, that they had reached a consensus: the ordination of hom*osexuals was unacceptable, at least for now. But they reaffirmed the principle that final authority “with respect to the nurture, certification and ordination of ministers” will remain with the denomination’s 35 regional jurisdictions. The action came on a 1,809-to-1,228 vote on a report on hom*osexuality commissioned by the 1977 assembly.

Although noting diversity of opinion and the need for continued study of sexual ethics, the report concluded: “Recent studies have not convinced us nor the Church at large that the ordaining of persons who engage in hom*osexual practices is in accord with God’s will for the Church.”

As expected, the assembly easily approved a six-year covenant to intensify unity efforts with the United Church of Christ. The pact calls for interfaith study and experiments with the view to determining whether sufficient common ground exists on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the nature of ministry and mission, for the two bodies to consider merger sometime after 1985. UCC president Avery Post told the Disciples: “No two churches in America have ever started down this road in this intentional way before.”

Disciples executives made no attempt either to highlight or to hide the Jim Jones matter. Jonestown was mentioned in a multimedia presentation. And in the assembly program, among about 300 other names in the necrology, was this: “Jones, James Warren—Jonestown, Guyana—November 18, 1978.” One delegate, Douglas Moore, pastor of Crestwood Christian Church near Louisville, objected to Jones’s name being included. But even Moore said later that he did not want the Disciples to tamper with their traditional policy of congregational autonomy, which eschews hierarchial controls.

Earlier this year Teegarden, who was relected to serve a second six-year term as president of the 1.2-million-member body, had recommended to the administrative committee of the general board that the denomination take “no action that would involve passing judgment on a congregation’s minister.” The fact that Jonestown hadn’t emerged, Teegarden said at the close of the assembly, indicated that most Disciples felt the church had handled the matter “appropriately” and had put it behind them.

Delegates voted down a resolution asking that the church suspend its financial support to the World Council of Churches. The First Christian Church of Charles City, Iowa, had proposed the resolution out of disapproval for the WCC’s 1978 grant to the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe through the Council’s Program to Combat Racism.

Delegates debated scores of other issues, but the sharpest exchanges, and the most pointed criticism of the general board, came when conservatives pushed for a proposed resolution on Christian morality that contained a list of sins from the Bible, including adultery, fornication, and hom*osexuality. The board’s substitute resolution had deleted the list. “I know where this assembly stands on about everything, but not where it stands on personal morality,” complained a Virginia pastor.

JAMES E. ADAMS

Evangelists

Leroy Jenkins: Doing It Whose Way?

On his syndicated television show, faith healing evangelist Leroy Jenkins sometimes sang his own version of the popular “I Did It My Way,” substituting, “I did it Thy way.” Subsequent events raise questions about the rewording.

In May a South Carolina jury found Jenkins, 44, guilty of conspiring to burn the homes of a state highway patrolman and a local businessman and of conspiring to assault the officer and a newspaper reporter.

Since that time, Jenkins has been jailed in Manning Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina. His attorney, an associate of controversial lawyer F. Lee Bailey, sought Jenkins’s release on bail through an appeal to the Fourth U.S. District Court of Appeals. In the interim, Jenkins’s Greenwood, South Carolina, organization was being administered by business manager June Buckingham.

Most of the 67 television stations nationwide that carried his program have cancelled.

Jenkins began his preaching ministry in Delaware, Ohio, after his conversion at a Georgia revival meeting led by flamboyant faith healer A.A. Allen. At one time he had gubernatorial aspirations in Ohio; a campaign slogan reportedly went: “If you can’t trust a minister, who can you trust?”

The Anderson, South Carolina, Independent newspaper carried a seven-article investigative series earlier this year about Jenkins’s evangelistic association, after it had moved from Ohio to nearby Greenwood. State editor Randy Loftis said the investigation revealed, among other things, that Jenkins had taken out a major insurance policy on his Holy Hill Cathedral in Ohio, shortly before its mysterious bombing in 1978. Reporter Rick Ricks, who coauthored the series, said that Jenkins once sent a letter to his followers asking for contributions to cover a $300,000 debt, then two weeks later bought himself a $250,000 home. Ricks said Jenkins’s association had a $3 million income in 1977.

The newspaper articles apparently angered Jenkins. He was convicted of conspiring to assault Ricks. Jenkins also was convicted of conspiring to assault and burn the home of law officer C. R. Keasler, who had arrested Jenkins’s 21-year-old daughter for speeding and several related offenses, to which she pleaded guilty and was fined $100.

Jenkins’s supporters had planned a fund raising service in Boston last month. And the undaunted Jenkins announced he would move his organizational headquarters back to Ohio—after he is allowed to leave the maximum security prison in South Carolina.

Bondage And Release For The Church

Justification by Success: The Invisible Captivity of the Church, by J. Stanley Glen (John Knox, 128 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by L. John Van Til, associate professor of history, Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.

Thoughtful Christians, whatever their vocation, will be troubled by this book because it raises some very important questions about the nature of modern society and the Christian’s place in it. The author’s thesis is that the rapidity of social change in modern society has created a new and invisible religion whose central tenet is the exercise and adoration of power.

“The Invisible Religion” traces the origins and development of the new religion, thereafter characterizing its principal features. The religion of power, says Glen, has risen in the modern world as a parallel to the development of industrialism. Indeed, it has emerged as a result of industrialism. Power, the ability to control the lives and destinies of other people, has become an integral part of the industrial process. What began as a relatively simple matter two centuries ago as men increasingly used the contract to order their economic relationships has become very complex in our time. This complexity has been compounded by the fact that the essence of contemporary industrial contracts is characterized by the language of science, technology, and technique. This has been a crucial development because only a handful of experts in these matters can understand what transactions are being executed. The handful of experts, who understand and thus can manage the transactions, are in a position to exercise power in a way that is unprecedented. Others in society, Glen argues, must depend upon this class of experts.

This pattern of power having been established, those without power, or with less power, strive to achieve a higher degree of power. Possession of power becomes an end in itself. The author concludes that this striving after power has become the invisible religion in the modern world, especially in America.

One of the curious features of this new religion is the fact that it has all the earmarks of traditional Christianity. The religion of power worships an invisible god—power. Further, this invisible religion is monopolistic: it has but one object of worship and allegiance—power. Often the practitioners of this religion speak in the language familiar to traditional Christians. “Sacrifice,” “reward,” “punishment,” and similar terms are found in its lexicon. Finally, the new religion of power is like traditional Christianity in that a full knowledge of the ways of the deity (power) cannot finally be known by the practitioners of the religion.

In the chapter titled “The Ecumenism of Power,” the author traces the tendency for power to be consolidated in the modern world. Power tends to pull the various segments of a given field together into a regional, national, or multinational structure. Further, there is a tendency for these several fields to be drawn together into one huge collective unity, becoming an entity that must be characterized as totalitarian.

“The Conversion of the Individual” traces the process by which people are drawn into the new religion, a process that again parallels the traditional Christian understanding of conversion. Glen’s converted person is the same as the “other-directed” and “organization” man who has been written about extensively in the past few years.

In another chapter Glen discusses “Justification by Success.” Once caught up in the new religion, the convert becomes satisfied with his position, status, and the benefits that are conferred upon him. Convinced that he has done well, he achieves a sense of well-being and acceptance and has a sense of being justified by his success. Evidence of this feeling of success may be found in what Glen calls “consumer style.” The religion of power requires a dedication to the consumption of commodities as an end in itself. This is accented by the “Cult of the Present.” If some item or some habit is not in tune with the mood of the present it must be replaced by something that is in tune with the times. Success in the religion of power demands a commitment to freedom, but freedom to live an experimental life. This is a critical feature of the system, Glen observes. The experimental attitude has emerged from the laboratory and “entered the marketplace, the neighborhood, the theater, recreation centers, the church and the home, the bedroom and the private life of the individual.” The effect of this experimental attitude, when applied across the board, is to form an ethic of relativism, reinforced and sanctified by the “Cult of Quantum,” which appears to give an aura of objectivity to things that are obviously highly subjective. If 80 percent of the population engages in sodomy, for example, then sodomy is an acceptable behavior.

In the chapter titled “The Invisible Sin,” the author turns to the question of what is wrong with the new religion. He states immediately that the “real sin of advanced industrial society is invisible sin, corresponding to its invisible religion.” He lists three forms of sin—discontinuity, reductionism, and idolization. Discontinuity refers to the religion’s requirement that its followers be captured by the spirit of presentism; it results in “planned obsolescence,” “contrived scarcity,” and the “unnecessary production of waste in the name of profit.” Reductionism has resulted from a devotion to the Cult of Quantum. Everything may be ultimately defined by some form of measurement. Evidence of this sin is obvious, says Glen, when one considers the number of jobs related to measurement—those of bankers, weighers, packagers, statisticians, data processors, surveyors, draftsmen, check-out clerks, engineers, production managers, and many others. “How much?” has replaced “How well?” Quantity is more important than quality.

Idolization consists of excessive devotion to the Cult of the Aesthetic. It is evidenced in people’s infatuation with gadgets and “the latest thing” foisted on them by the consumer-oriented society. Significantly, Glen sees idolization as a form of social control and manipulation that reinforces the religion of power.

“The Sovereignty of the Invisible Religion” outlines the pervasiveness of the religion of power. Like the God of Christianity, the new god of power exercises influence over the totality of life. Further, it demands loyalty and obedience in the same magnitude.

Glen argues in this chapter one of the main points of the book, that the churches have been captured by this new religion to a large degree. This is evident in the manner in which churches have emulated the industrial society. Like it, the churches have established a bureaucracy, adopted a mood of experimentation, and have become devoted to “style,” especially in the worship service. The churches’ devotion or acquiescence to the new invisible religion is most evident in suburban middle-class churches.

Members of these churches want their church to be just like the marketplace. Typically, they measure the “success” of the church not by spiritual growth, but by the size (quantum) of the budget, the number (quantum) of members, and the entertainment level of worship (Cult of the Aesthetic) achieved by the pastor (salesman) as he tries new ways of worship (experimentation).

In a concluding chapter, “Evangelical Liberation and Renewal,” Glen argues for a return of the churches to their primary purpose—preaching the gospel. He calls for a true theology of liberation that will see people freed from the bondage of the religion of power. To Glen, the theology of Jesus Christ alone can set men free from their captivity to the materialism of the age.

It is not often a critic of church and society packs so much into such a few pages.

Preachers and Preaching in Recent Books

After being told for many years that the church was useless and preaching dead, it is heartening to see that many people are willing to take a second look. The desire to revitalize preaching is a theme that is increasingly under discussion. Leander Keck of Harvard Divinity School thinks revitalization will come with a renewal of biblical preaching in The Bible in the Pulpit (Abingdon, 1979). After a couple of interesting chapters where he takes both conservatives and liberals to task for not being biblical enough, he suggests that preaching will be truly biblical only when the Bible governs the content of the sermon and when the function of the sermon is analogous to that of the text (p. 106). The book is essentially a plea to let historical studies and biblical criticism play a constructive rather than a destructive role in sermon preparation.

Ian Pitt-Watson in Preaching: A Kind of Folly (Westminster, 1978) thinks preaching has fallen on hard times in that the preacher has an authoritarian task but no authority because he can no longer accept the verbal authority of the Bible or the doctrinal authority of the church that ordained him (pp. 2–3). To solve this crisis a person must learn to believe in preaching in order to preach (p. 21). Pitt-Watson then discusses a theology of practical preaching where the “preached word becomes the word of God within a special relationship of person to person and of persons to God …” (p. 62).

Robert D. Young also ponders the identity crisis in the pulpit in Religious Imagination (Westminster, 1979), concluding that as modern-day prophets, preachers should exercise their unique creative insight into what God is doing. This will allow them to speak for God today.

The title Preaching Law and Gospel (Fortress, 1978) reflects Herman Stuempfle’s suggestion for a dynamic sermon. The two great theological focuses of judgment and grace (law and gospel), with a call to obedience, ought to be the essence of every preached message. This will restore vitality to preaching, which is the central mode of communication for the gospel in the church.

The Roman Catholic John Burke, O.P., feels that preaching the gospel is what changes hearts, renews lives, and transforms society in Gospel Power: Toward the Revitalization of Preaching (Alba House, 1978). In this well-written and rather traditional book, different kinds of preaching are discussed with the observation that it is the power of Christ in the message rather than the message itself, or the precise way in which it is delivered, that is the power.

Another aspect of pulpiteering also under discussion is how to prepare a sermon. The Mystery of Preaching (Zondervan, 1978) by James Black is a reprint of a standard work that appeared in 1924. It consists of eight lectures (the Sprunt Lectures, U.T.S., Richmond, Va.) that cover everything from why we preach to Common Prayer. It is refreshingly readable even today and of real substance.

The successor to William Barclay at the University of Glasgow, Ernest Best, has given us From Text to Sermon (John Knox, 1978). “Its purpose is to see how we get from Scripture to God’s message today, how the Word which was once embodied in the words of Scripture may be embodied in the words of the preacher …” (p. 7.) It is an attempt to show how the meaning of the Scripture can be understood in its own situation and then translated into today’s situation without diluting the truth.

J. Winston Pearce is convinced that “the plan is the thing” in Planning Your Preaching (Broadman, 1979). He argues that preparation is of utmost importance for a preacher and suggests different plans to follow: the Christian year, through the Bible, by months, with denominational emphases, and others. It is written in a rather popular style.

Guide for the Lay Preacher (Judson, 1979) by Evan H. Boden is a step-by-step treatment of how to get the job done. It is very elementary and would be of value to someone thrust into a pulpit without any seminary training, but it might make a good review for an established preacher, as well.

Two rather specialized books deal with how to reach specific audiences. Overhearing the Gospel (Abingdon, 1978) is a primer on how to preach to people who have already heard. It is rather densely (but well) written using Sören Kierkegaard as an inspiration. Preaching to Suburban Captives (Judson, 1979) is a somewhat overdrawn attempt to use liberation theology as a model for setting free the captives of suburbia.

Finally, Raymond W. McLaughlin has plunged into the thicket with The Ethics of Persuasive Preaching (Baker, 1979). He confronts the issue of persuasion and all its problems head-on in a very helpful way. He includes a much-needed chapter on the congregation’s responsibility, as well as going over the ethical obligations that the preacher has. A good book.

Trends In American Religion

Religion in America: 1950 to the Present, by Jackson W. Carroll, Douglas W. Johnson, and Martin E. Marty (Harper & Row, 1978, 123 pp., $15.00), is reviewed by Erling Jorstad, professor of history and American studies, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

The appearance of this carefully prepared work is further evidence of the increasing quality and quantity of scholarly works on religion in America. A few years ago that subject quietly found its way into the world of academic research; now we have two to three dozen important contributions annually.

This book has dozens of graphs, tables, charts, maps, and public opinion polls, all of which are not instantly attractive reading. But, interspersed throughout, are helpful essays by the three authors, plus an afterword by George Gallup, Jr. These offer judicious, provocative interpretations of the meaning of the quantitative data and make the purchase of the book worthwhile.

The work has four major sections: I. Continuity and Change, the Shape of Religious Life in America since 1950; II. Patterns of Religious Pluralism; III. Trends and Issues Concerning the Future; and IV. Gallup’s previously published essay, “A Coming Religious Revival?” Each is based on the printed quantitative data, and while it cautiously avoids reading too much meaning into the statistics, it suggests we can find significant conclusions.

More specifically, using the annual reports of the denominations and the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, plus opinion polls, the authors present a plethora of information about membership in the mainline denominations, church attendance and finances, and trends in religious beliefs. What it adds up to is a confirmation of what many of us intuitively suspected (about why mainline denominations are losing members, for example) while drawing some unexpected conclusions about major trends.

For example, sociological factors such as income, level of education, and age clearly contribute heavily to the “shape” of denominations. Again the greatest number of church dropouts have been among youth and young adults (under 30), despite the well-known Jesus revival. Or again a growing number of Americans see religious faith in instrumental terms—what it can do for them—rather than as expressions of devotion and worship. Privatization seems to be here to stay.

Martin E. Marty gives fresh insights into “the career of American pluralism.” After rapidly surveying its historical evolution in this country, he suggests that pluralism will continue to grow for two reasons: the activist trends of the 1960s convinced many churchgoers that they must retain the opportunities for growth in freedom and individuality. Second, Marty shows we are just now beginning to see the fruits of the impact of world religions on American religious preferences. So, while the conservative churches continue to grow (as documented by Dean Kelley) so too does the idea that “all philosophic and religious views were equally true.” Marty concludes that in our time of perilous world conditions the seekers and searchers may stay well within their own tribes rather than revive the ecumenical trends of the previous decade.

Johnson maps out an exciting agenda for “Issues in the Religious Future.” His primary message is that unless churches provide meaning and purpose in their mission they will collapse. Churches must also offer support to the nuclear family, interpret for the new generation the changing values of our society towards work and leisure, utilize but not sell out to the marvels of communications technology, increase the parishioner’s sense of social responsibility, and somehow stay solvent. It is not an agenda for the faint-hearted. But none of the authors suggest that Christianity will be a tiny minority movement by the year 2000, as others have predicted. These writers have collected in one place convincing arguments to the contrary.

The book is written for both specialists and generalists. No long-range church growth group, local or national, should overlook it, nor should sociologists or historians of this subject. The literary style is aimed at the general reader, and we have here a great deal of hard data and sober reflection on which to ponder where we have just been and where we may be headed in the near future. Within 123 pages that is no small accomplishment.

President

GARRETT-EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary invites applications and nominations for the position of President of the Seminary.

The President is the chief administrative officer of the Seminary and has ultimate responsibility for the formulation and achievement of objectives which carry out the mission of the institution. The complexity of the President’s role requires that the position be filled by a man or woman of diverse interests and abilities. A candidate must be ordained in the United Methodist Church.

G-ETS is a fully-accredited graduate school of theology of the United Methodist Church, founded in 1853 and situated on the lakeshore campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in the Chicago metropolitan area. With a student body of 304 and a fulltime faculty of 28, the Seminary offers professional Master of Divinity degrees to students preparing for ordination, Master of Christian Education degrees, Doctor of Ministry degrees for practicing ministers, and, in conjunction with Northwestern University, programs leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees.

The deadline for applications and nominations is January 5, 1980.

Please address correspondence to:

Chairperson, Presidential Search Committee

Post Office Box 1031

Evanston, Illinois 60204

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer.

A Christology that meets the requirements of the mind loses the mystery and the majesty.

Two and a half years have elapsed since the publication of The Myth of God Incarnate (see Cornerstone, Nov. 4, 1977), in which seven English academics repudiated anything approaching the traditional doctrine of Jesus as God and man. The debate continues. Perhaps an assessment of the present state of play is appropriate, especially as Christmas approaches.

In February this year four contributors to The Myth came to London to meet four evangelicals and one conservative Anglo-catholic for a day-long conference. I record here some of my own impressions of that meeting.

Although I do not think the myth-makers’ armor was dented, at the same time, I was able to appreciate that they have at least three genuine concerns, namely to express a Christology which (1) safeguards a truly monotheistic faith, (2) preserves the authentic humanness of Jesus, and (3) makes sense as “gospel” to modern people. Yet to appreciate The Myth authors’ good concerns (I wish we all shared them) is not to approve the conclusions to which they have come. “Tell me,” I asked one of them over lunch, “do you ever worship Jesus?” “No,” came his immediate response, “I don’t.” This, I suggest, is a simple test which the most theologically illiterate person-in-the-pew can understand and apply. For what is ultimately at stake in this debate is not the Chalcedonian Definition (“one Person in two natures,” A.D. 451), nor semantic questions about “myth” and “metaphor,” but whether we bow the knee to Jesus, calling upon him for salvation and worshiping him as Lord. Can those who refuse to do this be called Christians? I think not.

A more important discussion took place in July 1978 in Birmingham, England, likened, somewhat irreverently, to a “seven-a-side rugby match,” for the seven Myth contributors met seven of their leading critics, including Professors C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge, Stephen Sykes of Durham, and Graham Stanton of London; the Roman Catholic scholar, Dr. Nicholas Lash; and Dr. Lesslie Newbigin, formerly bishop in Madras. The results of their colloquium have recently been published in a sizeable book entitled Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued, edited by Michael Goulder. The essays and responses are grouped around five major issues which Professor Maurice Wiles identifies in his opening survey: (1) Is the doctrine of the Incarnation logically coherent, or does it contain an “internal self-contradiction” so that it is actually nonsensical? (2) Can other Christian doctrines survive without the Incarnation, or is Dr. John Macquarrie right that “Christian doctrines are so closely interrelated that if you take away one, several others tend to collapse”? (3) Is the New Testament evidence for the Incarnation clear or ambiguous? (4) Can we credit Jesus with uniqueness and finality, or should we accept the claims of other religions? (5) Is the Incarnation simply a “culturally conditioned” notion of the early centuries, or can we moderns also accept it.

Summing up, Professor Basil Mitchell, the Oxford philosopher who chaired the colloquium, comments that much of the debate was more philosophical than theological. The basic issue was one of epistemology. He expresses the view that the “mythographers” (as he playfully designates the Myth authors) take for granted an “evolutionary world view” and see the traditional doctrine of the Incarnation as incompatible with it.

A second basic collision between the traditionalists and the radicals concerned the church’s tradition. Brian Hebblethwaite, doughty defender of historic orthodoxy, affirms that “the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity belong … to the essence of Christianity,” and that it is these doctrines, “expressed in all the creeds and confessions of the historic churches,” which “have given Christian belief its characteristic shape down the centuries.” The church must therefore maintain this faith, and both “refute” and “repudiate” the views expressed in The Myth. Not that “there is any one doctrine (i.e., formulation) of the Incarnation universally admitted to be orthodox” (Stephen Sykes), but rather that across the centuries there is a certain recognizable continuity, a “family resemblance.” This argument from history and tradition does not impress Don Cupitt, however. He is quite ready to jettison the past. As he writes in his book The Debate About Christ (1979), “modern historical-critical study of Christian origins has created a new situation” and “theology written before 1800 is now of only limited relevance.”

Now this is not a cavalier dismissal of all the past, as it may seem. If we were to ask Don Cupitt what he would substitute for the church’s tradition, he would reply “the real Jesus.” For “Christendom-Christianity does not work any more; the historical Jesus is the real Christ for today.” If we were to press him to delineate this Jesus, he would continue: “a purely human Jesus, a first-century man of God in the Jewish tradition” (Incarnation and Myth, p. 42), “a prophet who brought the tradition of prophetic monotheism to completion,” for this is “the primitive faith as preserved in the New Testament.” So in the end, although the arguments about epistemology and tradition are important, the crucial question concerns the witness of the New Testament. Does it teach the Incarnation? Or is this doctrine a later accretion?

On this topic it is a relief to turn to Emeritus Professor Charlie Moule’s characteristically cautious and lucid study, The Origin of Christology (1977). His main argument is that the right model for understanding the growth of New Testament Christology is not “evolution” (“the genesis of successive new species by mutations”) but “development” (“growth, from immaturity to maturity, of a single specimen within itself”). Thus we should explain “all the various estimates of Jesus reflected in the New Testament as, in essence, only attempts to describe what was already there from the beginning.”

Speaking now for myself, I keep coming back to three foundational arguments. First, Jesus’ own self-consciousness was disclosed at least in those two favorite Aramaic words of his which the evangelists preserved in the original: “Abba” (introducing his prayers and expressing his unique sense of intimacy with the Father) and “Amen” (introducing his affirmations “I say to you,” and expressing his unique sense of authority over men). Secondly, his enemies condemned him in the Jewish court for “blasphemy” (because he claimed divine prerogatives, such as the right to forgive and to judge) and in the Roman court for “sedition” (because he claimed a kingship which could be made to sound treasonable to Caesar). Thirdly, it was the universal faith of the primitive church (as Paul’s earliest letters attest) to ascribe to Jesus an unrivalled cosmic lordship, the name above every name.

Though we cannot penetrate the mystery, we can worship the majesty of the Lord Christ.

John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London, England.

Last year for my birthday, my husband gave me two tapes of medieval and renaissance Christmas carols. As I played and replayed these exquisite songs, they became much more than a seasonal delight.

Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols particularly enchanted me. I was awed by the pure sound of young male voices. The plaintive harp accompaniment, the archaic word forms, and the unusual phrasing of the medieval and renaissance carols usher the listener into another age.

I studied the texts of these carols and learned to appreciate the relationship of the poetry to the music. I was so intrigued that I decided to find out more about the age that inspired such carols. The Christmas carols of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are distinct in several ways from those we now sing. Erik Routley in The English Carol writes: “What you do not get in the medieval carol is what we now call the ‘Christmas card’ imagery—self-conscious references to snow and cold weather, detailed pictures of Bethlehem, and so forth. Their images are simpler, and more Biblical.”

Simplicity of detail—that was the quality I loved. Poets use natural images: the rose, the nightingale, the ship, the dance. The words reflect the many correlations our minds unconsciously make between ordinary experience and spiritual values. Today we are reluctant to acknowledge those, fearing to mix the profane and the holy. The medieval mind had no such reluctance (nor did the metaphysical poets several centuries later). This fresh imagery shocks us into Christian truth that touches us at all points.

We are so accustomed to the metaphor, “The Lord is my shepherd,” that we fail to realize how bold—even startling—it must have been for David to juxtapose the images of Jehovah and a common sheepherder. In such poetry we see the principle of the Incarnation: faith can only come to us enfleshed.

The medieval poets delighted in melding unlike terms—paradoxes that cut across the ordinary, bid us stop, and look. The images are like a tiny creche made to fit into a nutshell. For example, consider the third carol of A Ceremony of Carols:

There is no rose of such vertu

As is the rose that bare Jesu.

Alleluia.

For in this rose conteinèd was

Heaven and earth in litel space,

Res miranda [A wonderful thing].

By that rose we may well see

There be one God in persons three,

Pares forma [Of like form].

There is a sweetness in the verse, an easy, immediate acceptance of the truth behind the images. Here the Rose of Sharon is applied to Jesus’ mother. This refers to Isaiah 11:1: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” To see Christ as blossoming, through Mary, out of the stock of Jesse, was a common medieval association. The divinity and the humanity of Christ “heaven and earth in litel space” and the Trinity—Mary who in her obedience and godly life reflects as every good Christian should, that “there be one God in persons three”—are quietly stated. This carol, a jewel of “beauty within bounds,” doesn’t try to systematize doctrine—as do some hymns. The stating of them is the accepting of them. Here is the language of faith. The last verse brings to the result of faith—action:

“Leave we all this werldly mirth,

And follow we this joyful birth.

Transeamus” [Let us pass over from this world to the other].

The aspect of procession—following the joyful birth—reminds us that life is a pilgrimage to the kingdom of God. We are to follow the birth of Jesus—and his birth in us—wherever that relationship takes us.

Carols are a direct descendant of the vocally accompanied “round” dance in which a leader would carry the stanza, and the participants would respond in the “burden” or refrain. Medieval carols are a striking example of how the church transformed an essentially secular musical form into a popular Christian litany.

It was not uncommon for carol writers to borrow meter from the earliest Latin hymns, and even to quote from them (as in “Make We Joy Now in This Feast”). Although the singers probably did not know Latin, these lines of Christian admonition were familiar to them. Richard Leighton Greene points out that “The distinctive charm of many carols is just that they do belong to two worlds; they were written in days when one could be pious and merry at the same time.”

One narrative carol, bold in imagery, which combines the soft manger setting with the fight of the faithful in the world, is number six in A Ceremony of Carols, “This Little Babe,” by Robert Southwell.

This little Babe so few days old,

Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake,

Though he himself for cold do shake;

For in this weak unarmèd wise

The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,

His naked breast stands for a shield;

His battering shot are babish cries,

His arrows looks of weeping eyes,

His martial ensigns Cold and Need,

And feeble Flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitchèd in a stall.

His bulwark but a broken wall;

The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes;

Of shepherds he his muster makes;

And thus, as sure his foe to wound,

The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul with Christ join thou in fight;

Stick to the tents that he hath pight.

Within his crib is surest ward;

This little Babe will be thy guard.

If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,

Then flit not from this heavenly Boy.

The poem reminds us of the images in Psalm 91, and it evokes an earlier age in which cold and physical needs were known by nearly everyone. Southwell speaks of the cosmic battle against sin that spans earth, heaven, and hell. He also includes the following themes: man’s own status before God and his necessary response; the real cost of daily life; and God’s identification with humanity in Christ. All are important points in acknowleding Christ as the one who alone could bridge the gap between heaven and earth and win man’s salvation.

These carols show us that the toils and ills of the medieval age did not weaken the desire for God or keep them from recognizing his mercies. Perhaps the harsh realities of their day caused them to savor small joys. Theirs was a strong belief in God’s immanence; they did not experience the chasm between sacred and secular. Yet they acknowledged God’s transcendence as Lord and approached him with awe, and worshiped accordingly.

Isabel Anders Erickson is book editor for Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois.

The old question is: “If God seems farther away than he used to—guess who moved?” The presumed answer is that we have moved; the blame is on our shoulders. We must look around, or look within, or look somewhere to find a remedy for the situation.

Unfortunately, this is where the analysis usually ends. The old saying does not go on to give any real help to us. While it may aptly describe the problem, it offers no solution.

Yet what this question points us toward is real enough for most Christians. The problem is the sense of the absence of the presence of God. Or to put it positively, the presence of the absence of God in our lives. For some, this difficulty never seems to arise. Their faces are always radiant and smiling; they seem always to be on a “spiritual high.” The Christian experience of these “sky-blue” believers reminds us of the old song, “Home on the Range,” for apparently their lives are ones where “seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day”!

But for many Christians the life of faith is more realistic, their quest for faith more of a struggle. There are times when we are vitally aware of God’s presence; but there are those other times when he seems agonizingly absent. Sudden sorrow or tragedy may rob us of faith for a time. Yet even when we are not facing such adversities, the flame of faith does not always bum brightly. Contemporary life itself with its baffling scientific, moral, and spiritual perplexities is often enough to keep our faith from sailing on an even keel. So the experience of the absence of the presence of God is often a real one. No wonder we identify with biblical people who knew the same thing: Job, the psalmist, even Jesus.

How do we understand and deal with the problem of finding God “absent”? Is the old answer right? If God seems far away now, have we been the ones to move?

One theologian who set his mind to this matter was William Perkins (1558–1602). His works, though once mainstays, no longer line the shelves of ministers’ studies. An English Puritan who sought the spiritual reformation of the Elizabethan church, Perkins was the leading theologian and preacher of his day. His influence was still powerfully felt through men such as John Cotton, the Mathers, and Thomas Hooker, long after his death. He followed Calvin in his theology and also drew on other Continental Reformed theologians.

In a six-page tract entitled, “A Declaration of Certaine Spirituall Desertions” (Works, I, 415–20) Perkins wrote about that troublesome spiritual experience when God seems far away. But instead of concentrating primarily on the human causes of God’s “absence,” Perkins viewed the situation from God’s perspective. He wrote of God’s desertion of his creatures. In fact, he saw this as one of God’s most “wonderfull” works! By God’s “desertion” Perkins meant God’s withdrawal of “the grace and operation of his Spirit from his creature.” God has a perfect right to do this since he is “sovereign Lord over all his works”; yet he would never forsake his creature against that creature’s will. In these times of “desertion” we ourselves are the ones choosing to be forsaken. We refuse God’s grace; therefore, we are the ones who must be blamed.

When Perkins speaks of God’s desertion of his creatures, he speaks of it being of two sorts: eternal and temporary. Perkins was a strict predestinarian. He saw reprobates or unsaved as having been eternally forsaken by God since they do not receive his mercy or his Savior. Their separation from God is eternal, and in this life they experience particular desertions of both temporal and spiritual blessings.

But most of Perkins’s concern was with those who are God’s “elect,” those who are his children. He saw that these, too, commonly experienced God’s desertion. Though they experienced only partial and temporary desertions, these could produce painful spiritual agonies.

God used two means to “forsake his own servants.” One was “by taking away one grace, and putting another in the room,” and the second was “by hiding his grace as it were in a corner of the heart.” In the first, God accomplished his purpose in various ways. He might bereave his children of outward prosperity. He might give them crosses to bear. But through it all God would also give a good supply of patience to help in carrying those burdens. This was the experience of the Christian martyrs. They found that in the midst of violence and the persecution of tyrants they were “established by the power of the might of God.” When they were most weak, they were most strong.

Further, God may shorten the days of this life so that the full experience of life eternal might begin. Or, he may take away the feeling of his love and joy and put in its place “an earnest desire and thirsting with groans and crying unto heaven, to be in the former favor of God again.” God may also hold back his Spirit for a time—even though he is granting his servant the full range of the means of grace: preaching, prayer, sacraments.

Or finally, God may give a man a strong desire to obey his will, but not success in obeying it. Perkins likened this to a prisoner who escapes from jail and wishes to run a thousand miles every hour. But the bolts on his legs prevent this. The prisoner can move only very slowly, galling and chafing his flesh as he goes. Soon he will fall into the hands of his keeper again. The prisoner has the will to obey his desires, but no success in doing it. Through all these cases, Perkins sees God removing one grace and putting another in its place. God has seemingly deserted his people; but still his hand is at work in another manner.

God may also hide his grace in his children. Perkins likened this to trees in winter, beaten with the wind and weather, bearing no leaves or fruit, and looking as if they are rotten and dead. Yet they appear such only because “the sap doth not spread itself, but lies hid in the root.” So also, God very often works in and by one way to produce a totally contrary result. Perkins wrote: “Clay and spittle tempered together in reason should put out a man’s eyes: but Christ used it as a means to give sight to the blind. Water in reason should put out fire: but Elijah when he would show that Jehovah was the true God, pours water on his sacrifice, and fills a trench therewith to make the sacrifice burn.”

Likewise, said Perkins, God’s servants may be so “overcarried with sorrow” that they “blaspheme God, and cry out that they are damned” as did Job (6:2–4; 13:24; 16:12) and David (Psalm 6:1–4). Yet this may still be just one of God’s ways of working. Perkins reminded his readers that God’s judgments were very secret; that their agonies can lead to repentance; and that none is able to comprehend the bottomless depths of grace and mercy which are in Christ. God can bring such marvelously bright results through even the darkest and most vexing means.

But if God deserts his people, Perkins wished to distinguish the kinds of desertion. Desertion may be in punishment or in sin. The first is when God does not lessen or remove some great cross or burden which we bear. Jesus experienced this on the cross when he took punishment on himself for the sin of the world: “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

Desertion is sin in which God’s Spirit is said to be withdrawn and one falls into some actual and grievous sin. This happened with Noah’s drunkenness, David’s adultery, and Peter’s denial of Christ. The reasons for such desertions, according to Perkins, were so that believers might be healed of all inward, hidden, and spiritual pride. The desertions prevent God’s servants from desiring to be something in themselves apart from Christ. By saving them from the actual sin into which they’ve fallen, God declares his “wonderfull mercie” and also punctures pride, “that invincible monster of many heads, which would slay the soul.”

Perkins said that God used these desertions for several reasons. One was so that people might search out the sins of their past life and be “heartily sorrowfull for them.” These desertions occur so that God’s servants might know themselves in their present condition and seek pardon. For just as “the beggar is always mending and piecing his garment, where he finds a breach: so the penitent and believing heart must always be exercised in repairing itself where it finds a want.”

Or again, God may use these times to revive and bring out the hidden graces of the heart. It is the “good husband-man” who “cuts the branches of the Vine, not that he hath a purpose to destroy them, but to make them bear more fruit (John 15:2).” Finally, God may use these times of his seeming “absence” to prevent further sin. This, according to Perkins, was the purpose of Paul’s thorn in the flesh. It prevented Paul from being “exalted out of measure” (2 Cor. 12:7).

What uses are believers to find from this study of God’s desertions? Perkins, who believed all theological doctrines should have some practical applications, listed four. First, those who are presently in a time of “outward rest,” a time when the joy of the Lord is real, should “not be highminded but fear,” as the Bible warns, “lest a forsaking follow,” says Perkins (Acts 9:31; Rom. 11:20).

Second, if believers are in a time of temptation, a time when they feel themselves forsaken, then let them remember “this wonderfull work of spiritual desertions which God exerciseth upon his own children very usually.” Understanding the workings of God in these matters can restore believing spirits as nothing else can do.

Third, Perkins urges believers to press forward and use such times as opportunities to draw near once again to God. Do this, Perkins advises, even as a person who shivers from a fever is always creeping near to the fire. But how does one do this when God seems far away? Perkins replies: by the use of his Word and prayer. Very simply: “by his word he speaks to thee, and by prayer thou speakest to him.” Even in the darkest hours these resources should not be spurned. They are still a means of grace.

Finally, Perkins urged everyone to “try and search his ways, and ever be turning his feet to the ways of God’s commandments: let him endeavour to keep a good conscience before God and before all men, that so he may with David say, ‘Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine innocency: my trust hath been always in the Lord; I shall not slide: prove me, O Lord, and try me. Examine my reins and my heart’” (“my heart and my mind,” RSV;Psalm 26:1–2). Fortified with such faith in the “desertions of God,” God’s servant can stand throughout the bitterest testings of God’s “absence.”

William Perkins believed God would not ultimately or finally forsake his servants. That’s why all apparent desertions are but partial or temporary. But they do have their positive purposes to play in the Christian’s experience. So, “if God seems farther away than he used to—guess who moved?” Perhaps we have. Or perhaps God has. Who knows? But the Christian knows that God can shape and take these times of his agonizing absence and use them for his good purposes in believers’ lives.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.