Page 6424 – Christianity Today (2024)

Just one hundred years ago, God awakened America coast to coast with the most phenomenal spiritual revival of her history. Everything about that movement seemed unusual: the time and place of its beginning, the pattern of development, the leadership, the methods, and the results.

For one thing, its origin was striking. Who would have imagined that a sweeping revival might get its start and shape from a little noonday prayer meeting? And the place was unusual: in the downtown bustle of New York’s business world, on Fulton Street. There was its founder, Jeremiah Calvin Lanphier, an unknown business man who had come untrained to his new task as lay-missionary for the old North Dutch Reformed Church, and who later went unheralded for the meeting which he had begun. Most unusual was the fact that this simple prayer meeting was to become the pattern for later meetings for the great revival to follow.

Historical Development

Much like today, the main characteristic of the times was amazing material prosperity combined with great expansion and turbulent political scenes involving ever new disturbances and agitations. This was “the golden age of our history” (Bacon). Entire cities and even states were springing up. Between 1845 and 1860 seven new states and four organized territories were admitted to the Union. Frontiers were pushing westward. Gold had been discovered in California. Railroads, telegraph and steamship lines were multiplying. Harvests were plenteous, and trade was prospering. Much new land was being acquired through the conquest of the Mexican War, and people were money-conscious, even money-mad. The boom was on.

But, with the increase of all this gain, there was a decrease of godliness, and zeal for religion was becoming lukewarm. Political strife was growing, and the oncoming Civil War was casting a shadow over the land. Suddenly, on October 14, 1857, the nation suffered a tremendous financial crash. Fortunes vanished into thin air, bankruptcy, failures, and frauds were on every hand, and men’s hearts failed them for fear. God had lowered his boom.

The Eve Of The Crash

Only six people—five businessmen and one clergyman—gathered for that first noon prayer meeting, on September 23, several weeks before the crash. The decision to hold the meeting daily also preceded the crash. Only God foreknew that the bank bust would give sudden impetus to prayer, and that the praying in turn would give birth to a great revival. In a few days every room of the three-story consistory building of the church was filled for prayer. Entrances choked up with crowds. The church sanctuary had to be opened, and every wall resounded daily with prayers, songs, testimonies, and exhortations. Hundreds were turned away, and because of this a committee of young men from the YMCA gained permission to open near-by John Street Methodist Church, where both lecture room and sanctuary filled almost immediately.

The meeting became a movement. Prayer meetings sprang up in many places: stores, shops, halls, warehouses, theaters, hotels, rooming houses, police stations, fire houses, YMCAs, churches, and ships at sea. Most of these were held for one hour at noon, and followed after the Fulton Street pattern.

Preaching services began for furthering the revival. But it was the prayer meeting which continued as the characteristic feature of the movement. Burton’s Theater, for example, became the scene of great crowds who gathered nightly to give eager attention to the preaching of God’s Word by ministers like Theodore Cuyler and Henry Ward Beecher. Their sermon themes, on repentance, faith, and practical religious duties, became also topics of social conversation, and ministers of all denominations took new hope in their congregations.

What was true of New York became true, in time, of every city, large and small, throughout the land. In a few months Philadelphia reported that more than 3,000 people were daily gathering at the well-known Jayne’s Music Hall, the largest number, it was said, ever to assemble daily for prayer in this country. Prayer meetings sprang up everywhere: in Baltimore, Wilmington, Washington, D. C., Richmond, Charleston, Memphis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago (where Dwight L. Moody was beginning his work), and other cities. Henry Ward Beecher, then ministering in the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, personally conducted many of the daily prayer meetings. Little wonder that he gave a large portion of one of his Yale lectures to this very subject.

In Boston the revival took possession of every pulpit except one (that of Theodore Parker). Evangelist Charles G. Finney was at this time holding revival meetings in the historic Park Street Church. He tells of a Christian businessman who had traveled all the way from Omaha to Boston. In an open meeting this gentleman reported that he had found “a continuous prayer meeting for 2000 miles.”

Everywhere people wanted to pray. They would rather pray than hear preaching. A kind of spontaneous feeling about it prevailed: “We have had enough preaching for awhile—let us pray.” All classes, ages, and characters of men assembled. Those present day by day were young men and women, lawyers, physicians, merchants, car-men, hod-carriers, policemen, firemen, butchers, bakers, porters, skeptics, gamblers, drunkards, hoboes, rich and poor, high and low, easy and uneasy—they all prayed. Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Friends, Reformed, Congregationalists and other groups gathered to contact the greatest unused power in the world. Prayer was offered by all and for all, and it was answered in marvelous ways. Glory dwelt in our land, and righteousness exalted the nation!

Audience participation made these meetings different. Songs, thanksgivings, exhortations, and many short prayers punctuated the hour. Some interesting rules governing the Fulton Street meeting were put up on the walls: “Prayers and exhortations not to exceed five minutes, in order to give all an opportunity.… Not more than two consecutive prayers or exhortations.… No controverted points discussed.” But God had done a new thing. This sort of meeting was an innovation which set the standard and outlived all others, and still continues today, close to the spot where it began a century ago, on Fulton Street.

We shall consider some of the results—direct and indirect—that came from this prayer movement.

The immediate result was that the prayer meetings turned into a glorious revival that filled the churches. Conversions to Christ multiplied by hundreds and thousands. In less than two years 500,000 to 1,000,000 became Christians, and most of these were added to the churches. At the peak of the revival (in the spring of 1858) people were converted at the rate of 50,000 a week for a period of eight weeks. That was when our population was not much over 30,000,000. Several New England towns reported that not a single adult person could be found who was not converted. Many who received Christ as Saviour were remarkable characters, such as the famous pugilist Orville (“Awful”) Gardner. Men of violence, gamblers, and infidels melted as before a mighty volcano.

Revival became the talk of town after town. It captured the press and even the headlines, crowding out stories of crime and slavery agitation. The New York Evening Post carried accounts of it daily. The New York Daily Tribune published “Revival Extras.” It was common for New York businessmen to close their stores at noon and put up a sign, “Will reopen at the close of the prayer meeting.” Many merchants who came to New York on business went back home converted, and would usually start their own prayer meetings at once, thus spreading the revival where they were in those areas. Such was the case in Philadelphia. There a young man under 21 started the prayer meeting after having visited one in New York. Later, in May of 1858, the churches of that city purchased a large tent in which for a period of four months were reaped a harvest of souls. Older Christians who had lived through previous revivals (the early 1800s, the 1820s, and the 1840s) said they had never witnessed such a visitation from God. They began to speak of this as “the great revival.” Some called it “the American Pentecost,” and others “the revival of revivals.” Theodore Cuyler said it was “probably the most extraordinary and widespread revival ever known on this Continent.” Talbot Chambers said “it may emphatically be called the event of the century.” Bacon, a church historian, says “this Revival was the introduction to a new era of the nation’s spiritual life.” W. C. Conant says it was “the unprecedented awakening … which now casts all other wonders of the age into shade.” Roger Babson writes, “Our nation was truly reborn in 1858.”

Some Rediscoveries

This movement of God marked three great rediscoveries for the Church.

First, it rediscovered the tremendous power of the prayer meeting. With the reviving of prayer came the revival. The prayer meeting was not the product of the revival, but the revival was the product of the prayer meeting. It became an integral part of the revival, and not merely something that preceded it or was added to it. The fact that hundreds of thousands were converted in prayer meetings brought a new kind of church life into being. It meant that these converts at once became prayer-meeting Christians, and that the significance of prayer meetings dominated the churches of the entire United States for at least a generation.

Prayer was not everything, but everything was by prayer. In our day Billy Graham has explored this grand secret. One could call it the organizing principle of prayer which is the basis for all his evangelism. The greatest need of our churches today is a return to New Testament prayer meeting Christianity. We have forgotten that when Christ built the church, he built the prayer meeting.

As the other side of the same coin came the rediscovery of genuine Christian unity. This hidden treasure was also found in prayer. It came as a surprise, for it was not the original object of the noon meeting to unify Christians of different denominations. It was found that the Church was one, and no effort was made to found one Church. The Fulton Street and Jayne’s Hall prayer meetings set a new seal of grand ecumenicity on evangelistic work from that day forward.

And the entire revival points a lesson for us in our quest for ecumenism today. It would tell us that true Christian unity is experienced only when men pray together. It is a love-unity and a faith-unity. Christ interceded for this oneness in prayer (John 17), and it was in a prayer meeting in Jerusalem that unity was first experienced. “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14).

Scarcely in history had there been a revival so spiritually solid and sane. It was difficult to find fanaticism anywhere in the movement of those years. Doubtless, the secret was in the togetherness of prayer. If Methodists would meet to pray only with Methodists, their liberties might have more easily corrupted into licenses. But if they would pray with Presbyterians, and Baptists with Reformed, and Quakers with Congregationalists, etc., the law of Christian love would be fulfilled.

This revival also rediscovered the layman as the great local church evangelist. It was largely a lay-movement, and became a training school for a force of lay-evangelists, among whom D. L. Moody became the most eminent.

It was demonstrated that revival could come without great preaching, but it could not come without prayer. No oustanding leaders or great name evangelists were featured in this movement. Even pastors did little more than enter more fully and faithfully into the regular ministry of their congregations.

Indirect Results

The indirect results of the revival, for communities and nations, are not so easy to trace fully. But they were as distinct and far-reaching as leaven working on the whole lump of society. The effects touched the social circles of community life, education, government, new institutions, various reforms, cultural standards, and new organizations whose enterprises belted the globe.

As in previous revivals, this one also found outstanding ministers and evangelists giving to establish new colleges to train young converts for the Christian ministry as well as all fields of service. We know that out of revivals have come many of our strongest colleges, such as Oberlin, Amherst, Rochester, Wittenberg, Connecticut Wesleyan, Ohio Wesleyan, Lane, Yale, Andover, to mention but a few. It was believed that Christian education would transform society, and what it could not directly transform, it would indirectly reform.

But did the revival avert the financial panic? Prayer was answered and the recession was stayed. Did the revival abolish slavery, or the Civil War? The answer no may surprise some people. The revival did not remove the war, neither did the war remove the revival. Both North and South experienced further revival during the war, and both set forth regiments with prayer. Never did the churches rise to such heights in sacrificial giving as during those turbulent times. In 1861 the revival broke out with unusual power among the troops around Richmond, Virginia, beginning with the wounded in hospitals and carrying out into the camps. Prayer meetings were organized, and great numbers were converted. This work was also encouraged by army leaders like Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson. The revival brought healing to the wounds of war, and became a mighty factor in welding the nation into new unity and courage for reconstruction.

The revival also made clear the social aspects of the Gospel. Many of the revival measures, considered new and progressive in that day, went hand in hand with every humanitarian concern: good government, good education and culture, the abolition of slavery, and every kind of help for the poor, the afflicted, and the less privileged of society. Hospitals of many kinds were as strongly supported as Bible societies. Perhaps we should say, the revival made the second commandment stand out as strongly as the first: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The Power Of Prayer

Once again in history God had demonstrated the amazing capacity of prayer in pathfinding all his purposes. The prayer meeting gave us the great revival, and with it, a new Christian unity. The revival, in turn, gave us many social by-products. These, all taken together, put new leaven into our liberties and salt into the whole of our society.

After these hundred years, when living is so fluffy, praying so feeble, and much preaching so flabby, nothing is more renewing than to contemplate the wonders that God can work in all the earth through his simplest organic structure—the prayer meeting.

Armin R. Gesswein has stirred ministers of many denominations to prayer and to a new burden for the spiritual revival of believers. Trained as a Lutheran minister at Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis, he took an active part in Norway’s spiritual awakening in 1937 and 1938. He is director of the Ministers’ Revival Prayer Fellowship which reaches into many American cities, and Chairman of the Spiritual Life Commission, National Association of Evangelicals.

When the Incarnate Son of God lived on earth he did really pray. That is a fairly obvious thing to say, but it does require to be said because the chances are that we do not take sufficiently seriously the fact that Christ did pray when he was on earth.

Christ showed us how to pray by praying. It was when he was “praying in a certain place” that one of the Twelve said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The request leaped to the lips when one day the disciples, with hushed and awed hearts, actually watched the Son of God at prayer. Looking at Christ praying they suddenly realized what prayer was. If that was prayer they had not yet started to pray.

Christ’s Prayers Intensely Real

It requires to be emphasized again and again that our Lord’s prayers were real prayers; as real and intense as any ever uttered. It may be true that the majority of references to Christ’s prayer life concern intercessory prayer; but he did pray for himself, both in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:39) and in the high-priestly prayer in the fourth Gospel (John 17). And therefore we may well be justified in assuming that during those many sleepless nights, far away from the haunts of men, when he communed with the Father in prayer, the Son would recuperate his strength for the task of redeeming a fallen world, and would make his task, and his needs on his human side, the subject of prayer. We should remember that the Son of God found that the best preparation for a long hard day of demanding work was entering into fellowship with the Father in prayer, there beholding the Father’s glory with no veil between except the thin veil of his true humanity.

There are some 17 references to Christ’s active prayer life, and these may be grouped under four heads: His prayers at the great events of his life, those in the course of his ministry, those at his miracles, and his prayers for others.

Prayer Was His Life

There is a sense in which it is not accurate to speak of our Lord participating in prayer at different times and on different occasions. The fact of the matter is that when we study his life of prayer we find that prayer was not simply a part of his life; it was his life. Prayer was a habitual attitude of his mind and heart. Prayer was the atmosphere in which he lived, it was the air he breathed. So true is that that the Hebrew original of Psalm 109:4, “But I am prayer,” or, “But I am a prayer,” was literally true of our Lord. Surely, this is remarkable when one recalls how much our Lord crammed into the three brief years of his ministry.

Although it would be more accurate to say that prayer was our Lord’s life, yet he did, at particular times and on particular occasions, turn aside to engage in prayer.

Our Lord paused to pray in the midst of an almost incredibly busy life, and when subjected to a constantly high pressure of work and ministry. Preaching, teaching, casting out demons, healing individuals or large crowds of people, and always surrounded by excited, jostling, seething multitudes whose pathetic eagerness to see and to hear must ever have moved our Lord to pity—all this demanding service, all this eager self-giving, was carried on in the atmosphere of prayer.

No matter how busy he was, so steeped in prayer was his spirit that he could immediately, and without prolonged preparation of heart, turn aside for long seasons of prayer. Indeed, our Lord insisted on these extended times of prayer. For example, we read in Luke 6:12, “He went out into the mount to pray, and he continued all night in prayer to God.” Again, Mark 1:35 informs us that “in the morning, a great while before day (the morning of a day of incredible toil), he rose up, and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed.” Or turning to Luke’s gospel again, “Great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed of their infirmities, but he withdrew himself in the desert and prayed” (Luke 5:15f).

The significance of this important factor in the life of our Lord is the more easily understood when we try to discover the real meaning of Christ’s ability to calm, in an instant, the tumultuous seas and the storm-tossed hearts of the Twelve in the midst of the tempest on the lake. We have not exhausted the significance of that moment when we attribute his miraculous power over nature to his deity. Part of its significance lies in the fact that he emerged from high converse with the Father on the mountaintop to march straight into the heart of that raging sea (Matt. 14:25). A lesson indeed for all Christian workers! If we would speak the Word with power, or exercise the healing, soothing touch, there must be in the background, unseen, our own conscious communion with God. How soon our puny resources are exhausted unless constantly replenished from the reservoirs of God. How mechanical is our work, how ineffectual is our witness, how powerless is our word, unless carried on in the atmosphere of prayer. The harder Jesus’ days the longer were his prayer times, the busier he was the greater his insistence on the practice of the presence of the Father. He recognized no substitute for the daily practice of the shut door, the bent knee, the secret communion.

In Sorrow And In Joy

Our Lord turned aside to pray when, as truly man, he was subjected, as we are, to upsurges of deep emotion, especially of profound sorrow and of great joy. Alas, these emotions make us men and women of conflicting moods which inevitably affect our life of prayer; but not so our Lord. We have hints in the gospel records that the deep emotions that upsurged from his heart were inevitably turned into prayers. For example, we have a hint of this in Mark 8:11f, where, when the Pharisees asked a sign, “He sighed deeply in his spirit.” Again, when a deaf man was brought to him, “He looked up to heaven and groaned” (Mark 7:33f). Whereas similar emotions in us produce moods and mental conflicts that make us neglect prayer, the Lord took these very emotions and blended them into a glance and a prayer heavenward.

We cannot, as is so commonly done, restrict the significance of that profound word to Gethsemane and Olivet. It must be taken as a window into the total life of Jesus Christ. Through that window we can dimly see the agony of soul in the Son of Man when confronted by suffering humanity, and also in the long, still night of retirement, in the desert or on the lonely mountainside, where his anguished soul sent up unutterable sighs to the Father. We, the victims of mood, neglect prayer; when human emotions invaded the spirit of Christ they only drove him the more insistently to prayer. Yes, even in the awful agony of soul and fluctuation of spirit in Gethsemane and on the Cross, his spirit was in undisturbed communion with the Father, still anchored in that one haven of security—prayer. That is a lesson we need constantly to learn. The varying winds of moods and gusts of emotions that blow upon our spirits should not be allowed to disturb our communion with God. They should be made rather to contribute to our fellowship with God by turning them into “strong crying and tears, with prayers and supplication,” as did the Son of God in the days of his flesh.

The Lord turned aside to pray in the midst of spiritual conflict and death. Certain Greeks came seeking an audience of Christ, saying to Philip, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” On hearing of this the Lord began to say, more to himself, perhaps, than to the Twelve, that the hour of glory had arrived. The moment had come when the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, and thus bring forth fruit. He says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour!” And then this hour of spiritual conflict, which had driven him to prayer, issued in triumph: “Father, glorify thy Name!” And then the voice, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Another incident is that of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39–46). In trying to understand this event in our Lord’s life it is necessary to realize that this was not an isolated or sudden acceptance of the Father’s will. “I delight to do thy will” (Ps. 40:8) had been the ruling principle of Christ’s whole life. But this should not blind us to the fact that because Jesus Christ was truly man, as well as truly God, it was “natural” that he should desire, if it were possible, not to experience the anguish that this part of the Father’s will might involve.

But having said that, it has to be pointed out that this “natural” desire in the human side of Christ not to have to face this part of the Father’s will was not due to opposition to that will. His prayer that the cup should pass from him never for a moment conflicted with his habitual and perfect submission to the Father’s will, whatever that will might involve.

Such an incident in our Lord’s life is of profound significance for the study of his doctrine and practice of prayer because here in Gethsemane he shows, not by word but by act, what real prayer is. Real prayer is absolute self-surrender to, and absolute correspondence with, the mind, the will, the character, of God. And we require to remind ourselves that this was not a cold, unfeeling acceptance of the Father’s will. “He began to be exceeding sorrowful.” He began to tremble and faint, and therefore he took refuge in prayer. Indeed, so powerful was the pressure on his soul that an angel from heaven came to strengthen him; and to strengthen him for a still fiercer conflict, that of the Cross. “And being in an agony, he prayed the more earnestly: and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

Another extremely significant incident is that of the Cross. As our Lord’s life ebbed away, and the horror of contact and conflict with sin and death filled his soul with anguish, again he found refuge in prayer. “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” Then that dread cry of dereliction in the darkness was succeeded by another agonized prayer. Ere death sealed his lips Jesus Christ’s last words were a prayer, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” To the last, despite the horror of the past hours and of the present moment, our Lord is still in communion with the Father.

So when the sorrow and anguish of some dark spiritual conflict comes upon us, let us remember the Lord who prayed, “O Father, since this cup cannot pass away except I drink it, thy will be done.” And when at the last death draws near to us, and strength is ebbing away, and Jordan’s cold river rolls at our feet, let us remember that Jesus Christ the Son of God died praying.

Rejoicing And Thanksgiving

Prayer, for the Lord, was thanksgiving. When the Seventy returned exulting in the subjection of the demons to the Name of their Lord, Christ rejoiced in spirit saying, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Luke 10:21). Again, just as he was preparing to utter the word of power at the grave of Lazarus, Christ lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And when he had spoken thus he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:41f).

Again, before Christ fed the five thousand “He took the loaves, and gave thanks” (John 6:11). And so also when he fed the four thousand “He gave thanks” (Matt. 15:36). The most solemn prayer of thanksgiving took place, however, when Christ sat down with the Twelve to keep the last paschal feast. It must have been with profound emotion that the Son of God “took the cup and gave thanks” (Matt. 26:27). And yet again, in the evening of the Lord’s resurrection in Emmaus “He took bread and blessed it (or gave thanks) and brake and gave” (Luke 24:30).

The main point to notice in these references to our Lord’s prayers of thanksgiving is that whether he was walking in the light or in the shadow, gratitude was an integral part of his life of prayer. It was not only in life’s shining hours that thanksgiving leaped to his lips. Indeed, it would seem that it was especially in the darkest times that praise poured forth from his heart.

Prayer, for our Lord, was also the taking of solemn counsel with the Father. The choice of the Twelve was, to our Lord, a decision fraught with such grave consequences that it was only after spending the preceding night in prayer that he made the choice (Luke 6:12f).

It was through eleven of those men then selected, and later ordained and commissioned on the evening of the day of the Lord’s resurrection, that the world was to hear the gospel, and receive the faith once for all delivered to the saints. They had to be men who would be prepared to preach only what their eyes had seen, and their ears had heard. Men who would rely, not on their choice of Christ as Saviour, but on the Saviour’s choice of them as his disciples.

Christ’s Intercession

Prayer, for our Lord, was also intercession. In this connection there is one phrase in particular which should be noticed, and which will help us to understand how prayer was for Christ intercession. The phrase is, “for their sakes,” or, “for your sakes.” For example, in John 11, where our Lord announces the death of Lazarus, he remarks that he was glad for the disciples’ sake that he had not been in Bethany to heal Lazarus, that they might believe. That is to say, the Lord raised Lazarus, not only because of his love for Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary, but also in order to bring the Twelve to see that he was the Resurrection and the Life.

Now, for whom did our Lord intercede? For example, he prayed for Peter (Luke 22:31). “Simon, Simon, behold, satan hath desired to have you that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that thy faith fail not.” That Peter did not fall as Judas fell was doubtless due, in part, to a radical difference between the two men; but finally, Peter was kept from falling away by special grace granted to him in answer to the Lord’s prayers for him. That Christ’s prayers were answered is clear from the sequel of Peter’s denial. The proof is seen in the melting grief, the bitter weeping, the frank confession. What a blessed commentary is Peter’s experience on the Pauline phrase, “by grace are ye saved.” And how precious is the thought that the Lord who prayed so effectively for Peter now prays for us as our High Priest in glory.

Finally, Christ interceded for those who crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). What amazing grace! How hard it is for us to forgive. How seemingly impossible it is to forget injury. How fatally easy it is for bitterness to linger on, deep-rooted in the heart; and how ready it is ever to break out again, and this even after the lapse of years. But here our Lord, in the midst of extreme injury, intercedes on behalf of cruel, violent men.

However, prayer was, for our Lord, primarily and supremely communion. This is especially clear from Luke’s account of Christ’s Transfiguration: “And it came to pass (that) he took Peter, John and James, and went up to a mount to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And behold Moses and Elias appeared in glory but (the disciples) were heavy with sleep, and when they were awake they saw his glory” (Luke 9:28–32).

The Transfigured Life

The significant point for us in these moving words is that Christ was transfigured while he was praying. Prayer was the cause; the Transfiguration was the effect. Surely the lesson here is that the transfigured life is the result of the prayer life. Compare also Moses’ experience when he emerged from communion with God. His face reflected the glory of God with whom he had been communing as a man communes with his friend.

It is on the holy ground of Christ’s prayer life that we learn that only through prayer that is face-to-face communion with God can we receive the grace indispensable for the transfigured life. The grace for that transfigured life is indispensable because it includes identification with Christ in his sufferings.

I lay in dust, life’s glory, dead;

And from the ground there blossoms, red,

Life that shall endless be.

The Mount of Transfiguration shows that divine glory is unveiled, and the divine voice is heard, only after the preparation of prayer that is communion. Here it stands revealed that for Jesus Christ prayer was communion. Prayer that is communion is the prayer that goes to God, not for what he gives, but for what he is. And in the prayer that goes to God for himself alone, God comes forth to meet and to greet the seeking heart, “a blessed invasion of God’s Presence” takes place, and lo, an earth-born son is transfigured with heaven-born glory.

There is a path open to us along which lies the possibility of translating the truth and the reality of Christ’s prayer life into our own lives. That path is the path of prayer; a path which Jesus Christ has marked out for us by his living example, as well as by his teaching. By his own present intercession for us, and by his indwelling our hearts by the Holy Spirit, he has provided a spiritual dynamic to enable us to walk that path of prayer which we have seen him walk. The pathway of prayer becomes the pathway of power. He stands upon that very pathway now. Let us, then, respond with glad obedience to our Lord as he beckons to each of us saying, “Follow Me.”

James G. S. S. Thomson is associate professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He was formerly at New College, Edinburgh, where he taught for six years in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages. Previous to that he was missionary to Arabic-speaking Muslims in Algeria. He holds the B.A. degree from Oxford, and M.A., B.D. and Ph.D. from Edinburgh University, from which he also received the Aitken Traveling Fellowship. At Oxford he was a Casbred Prizeman. This article is an abridgment of a chapter of a book on prayer soon to be published.

“Behold the Lamb of God who is to take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

Some weeks ago, not far from the entrance door of the United Nations in New York, I found a tiny chapel for meditation, an unpretentious place in which, as you enter, all you notice are the curtains on the walls, a table with a vase of flowers on it, and the quietness and stillness of a chapel. This chapel is all that has been able to be introduced into the United Nations because of the Moslem bloc, solidly opposed to anything Christian, and the Russian section, officially atheistic and opposed to any emphasis upon the world of the spirit.

But I am not thinking of the matter particularly from a political standpoint. I found myself asking, as I stood in that silent place, “Is this chapel and what it contains enough for a man to find God? Is this a sufficient highway into the presence of our God?” And I found myself facing the questions, “Where does Jesus Christ come into the picture? There is no symbol of him here. There is no cross nor Bible. Do we really need him whom Scripture calls the Son of God? Or is religion of itself sufficient? Is silence and these emblems of nature enough to help us toward God?”

Around the world today, and especially in America, there is new interest in religion. But is it enough that people are turning religious, that they have vague ideas about a Supreme Being and occasionally perhaps feel like praying? Is there any need of Jesus Christ in the picture? This is the question I pose.

The Christian God

First of all, I suggest that Jesus Christ is absolutely essential to the picture because only through him can we come to the Christian God. But what a man believes about God is all-important. It is not sufficient anymore to answer, “I believe in God.” There are too many different conceptions of him for this statement to be meaningful. The simple statement is not enough.

This was posed to me very vividly two or three years ago when I was taken from Australia to the Middle East for what happened to be the first convocation between Moslems and Christians. There for six days we sat round tables, thirty-five representing each faith, and we tried to find the points of likeness and the points of difference between these two great world religions. It was not long before it became very apparent that the point where we differed was regarding our conception of God. I remember early in the piece a debate developed as to whether in the Republic of Lebanon, where roughly half of the people are nominally Christian and half are Moslem, it would be possible to find a prayer for the schools so that each school day could open with Moslems and Christians saying the same prayer. I remember saying naively, “Would it be possible for a Moslem child to repeat the Lord’s Prayer?” And at once an old sheik from Saudi Arabia jumped to his feet and said, “Impossible! We could not repeat ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ for God is not our father. God has no sons. He’s God!”

Later on another scholar of Islam said, “You can talk about the slaves of God if you like, but not the sons of God.” Later we discussed the difference of our ethical standards. There was heard a justification of polygamy; there was a defense put up for slavery that still operates in Saudi Arabia. But when you penetrated to the heart of it, where it all began was in our different pictures of God.

In America, we have become used to a society that is penetrated by the Christian understanding of God. And although many reject Christ, we hardly know what it is to live apart from his revelation of the Father. What would we know of God, for instance, if we stood only under a towering mountain, or in a woodland, or by a lakeside? What would we learn of him if we tried to interpret him only in history, or listened only to our own whirring minds and the voice of conscience within us? Without the special revelation of Jesus Christ we would have no clear understanding of the one true God whom we may come to know and love.

D. T. Niles, Ceylonese leader in Australia, was once asked the question, “You live in Hindu Ceylon; how do you present the necessity of Jesus in a society where everybody believes in God or gods?” This was his answer: “Oh, I just repeat to them the words of Jesus, ‘No man cometh to the Father but by Me.’” And he went on to say, “One may come to some imaginary kind of god through Hindu idols and such, but no man can know the living God apart from Christ. And I would again pose the question of the chapel with the silence, the curtained walls, and the table with roses. Could this of itself reveal who God is?

The Fact Of The Church

Secondly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential to the picture because he has given to us the community of Christians called the Church. The Church as a fact is part of the fact of Christ, part of the essential contribution Jesus Christ makes to man. It is significant that in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, Christians, before they were called by that proud title, were known as the “People of the Way,” a new community of people, who practiced the virtues of magnanimity, forgiveness and love in a world that reserved its plaudits for materialism. And so, as people watched this new community of people move through the world, they said, “Ha, People of the Way.” And it was precisely because these “People of the Way” took their historic journey through the earth that that ancient world of Greece and Rome was arrested. Presently, its decadence was halted; new life sprang out of these cells of “People of the Way.” And precisely because there was a new community of people that emerged, a new culture, the Christian culture, came into being.

Over in Australia, or in any country where your country is represented, we have a little bit of American territory. Right at the heart of Canberra, our national capital, there is the American Embassy. And there is a certain little piece of land which is really America; and if, as an American citizen, you step on that piece of soil, the laws of the Queen of England and the Commonwealth of Australia do not operate. You are under the President of the United States. There it is. A little bit of America! By normal diplomatic usage, that is America! And we, if we are obedient to Jesus Christ, are set down in a colony of heaven, down where the laws of heaven operate, and where the ways of the people of God are to be seen.

We need a “People of the Way” today to challenge the world again. And we need a “People of the Way” to remind the world again that Jesus is indeed “the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Otherwise, how is this world ever going to be deflected from some of its poverty-stricken living and its evil activities unless there are a “People of the Way”? How do you think, for example, the purity of Jesus is going to stand in our sex-saturated society unless there are people who express in their lives the purity of Jesus? How do you think this floodtide of liquor that is moving out all over our communities is going to be stopped? How is it going to be stopped in its fallacious propaganda and from gripping human society in its tyranny unless there emerge people who say, “As for me, I can’t touch it, I will not succumb to its appeals. I follow another way.” So also this can be carried into the questions of race and war. How shall this world be challenged unless there be emerging people who think differently from contemporary sub-Christian America, or contemporary sub-Christian Australia? How shall there be an elevation of our society unless there are people who begin to be truly “People of the Way”?

The Conscience Of Jesus

Thirdly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential because the conscience of Christ is the need of us all. I wonder has it ever struck you what a miracle is the conscience of Jesus? He lived two thousand years ago in primitive, out-of-the-way Palestine. And yet no one can say Jesus was ever a brake on human progress. No matter what issue arises, you will not find him away back in the past dragging humanity backward! Mohammed and Buddha do at certain points. Jesus is not away back there; he is far ahead. His conscience stands far beyond the point we have yet reached. The conscience of Jesus is one of the miracles of history.

We have reached a day when the conscience of man has rapidly to expand. Middleton Murray in one of his books says, “The time has come when man’s mind must jump forward.” And that word “jump” is well-chosen. A gulf has developed. We must gather our strength; we have to jump forward to catch up. Here we are in the atomic age. The peril of today is that we are taking into the atomic age stale old ideas that belong to the pre-atomic age. And man is lost unless he can find something that will cause him to jump forward in conscience and conviction.

The Need Of A Saviour

Lastly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential to man’s faith because every one of us needs a Saviour. It is not long since we were treating sin rather lightly, as though it were a growing pain of the human family. Throw a man a bit more education, let him become more civilized and he will grow out of sin and will leave it behind. But we are not talking this way so much anymore. We have seen too much of evil, and are now prone to talk of it as being a cancer—deadly.

What is the answer to the fundamental problem of evil? Deep down in the basem*nt of our life there is a twin issue. Most of us are grappling with both the problem of ignorance and the problem of evil. They are both there. We have imagined that education grapples with both ignorance and evil. But education grapples only with ignorance; it does not necessarily touch evil. That is why a very clever man can be a clever devil. That is why George Buttrick says, “The only thing worse than a devil is an educated devil.” Education may just sharpen the wicked wit of man. It is time we saw clearly the limitations of education. Education does not solve the problem of evil! Only God in the Lord Jesus Christ and his cross and resurrection overcomes evil. The need of man is to have education come to grips with ignorance, and religion, that is, the Saviourhead of Jesus, come to grips with evil. Every one of us needs Jesus Christ as Saviour.

A little while ago I was over in Los Angeles. I had one Friday there. It was one of the most thrilling days I ever had. I went to see Roy Rogers’ ranch. I did not see him there, but I saw Dale Evans, his wife, and talked with her. I had heard something of her story before; here was the confirmation of it. I saw those little adopted children running around the house. She feels as a Christian that she must do something to answer world need, and has therefore adopted a little Korean child, a little American orphan, a Scottish orphan, and a little American Indian. As I talked with this woman, now a mature Christian, I realized that five or seven years ago she was just another actress in Hollywood. But something had happened to this woman. Christ had come into her life, and into her home.

I was speaking a little later with a man who told me, “You know, I’m in training for the Christian ministry. How long have you been a preacher?” I told him. “Oh,” he said, “I’m older than you are, and I’m only just beginning.” Later I heard his story. He had been a criminal in Kansas City, right down in the depths, one of the wicked men of the city. Then one night, distraught, he stepped into a church, and there a minister found him and began to talk to him. Something happened. Jesus Christ, the Saviour, came into his life. He felt, though he was getting older, that he ought to do something for Christ. Then one day he read the story of Peter, and how he was over 40 years of age when Jesus finally picked him. “I suddenly took heart,” he said. “I was over 40.” And therefore, he is today in theological school, getting ready to give what is left of his life to the service of Jesus Christ.

I thought of the wonder of it. Dale Evans on the top of the entertainment industry of America; another from the depths of an underworld of a great city—each finding the same Christ, the same Saviour, the same answer to the need of their lives.

Why is Jesus necessary? He is necessary because a Saviour is necessary. Have you received him? We need not a chapel with silence, curtained walls and roses on a table, but a lonely hill with a cross at its rim, an empty tomb in a garden, and a risen Christ, Lord and Saviour. This is the need of our hearts.

This is an abridgement of a sermon preached in Riverside Church, New York City, by the Rev. Alan Walker, who served from 1954–55 in Australia as director of The Methodist Church’s “Mission to the Nation,” and in 1956–57 under the Board of Evangelism of American Methodism. A native Australian, son of the onetime president of the Methodist Church of New South Wales, he has received an honorary D.D. degree from the Bethany Biblical Seminary, Chicago.

The peril of the artist is his constant temptation to an idolatrous worship of the beautiful creature rather than the beatific Creator. This results in service of the holiness of beauty rather than the beauty of holiness. Nevertheless, art and religion are inextricably bound, and the Christian faith finds its pure expression in artistic forms just as truly as it does in intellectual works of theology or practical works of mercy.

Spirit With Spirit

Of all the art forms, painting is the most peculiarly Christian. Although the ancients and the orientals engaged in painting, it is a historical fact that Christian culture has excelled in this medium. The reason for this excellence lies in the spirituality of Christian reconciliation. While pagan art, where it has made an attempt at reconciliation at all, has sought a resolution of matter and spirit, Christianity with a surer and more reverent realism has found the need to reconcile Spirit with spirit. In Semitic and Hindu art there is no real attempt at reconciliation. The resolution of life is expressed in terms of release (Moksha for the Hindu and an apocalyptic longing for the courts of the Lord for the Semite). Thus there is no reconciliation with either matter or the course of this world—and consequently there is a glaring aesthetic indigence. In ancient Greek and Chinese art there is a serious attempt to reconcile matter and spirit in the form of moderation (sophrosune and tao), a balance between the Dionysiac and the Apollonian, between Yang and Yin. But Christian art does not reconcile matter with spirit by means of a humanized rationalization; rather reconciliation is found only through death and resurrection, death to both matter and spirit and resurrection in newness of life with the Holy Spirit.

Painting is wonderfully suited to express this reconciliation because it is more attenuated than sculpture; more suggestive with its nuances of light, shade, and color; more supple in expressing variety and individuality; more potentially spiritual in its ability, through the use of perspective, selectivity, distortion, and accent, to quell an atomistic self-assertion and to foster the grace of sacrifice. According to the Christian Gospel this world is redeemed not by balancing it properly with an idealized spirit, but by killing it with the Word and raising it anew. Painting is peculiarly fitted to express this revelation because it can show with its suggestiveness both the depravity of the things of this world and the purity of the regenerate life in the Spirit. The Spirit is invisible and believed, yet it is precisely the visible matter and stuff of this world that is redeemed in the Word become flesh.

I submit that art is that form of service to the ruling spirit of the age in which men try to express the will of that particular spirit by means of some kind of patterned arrangement of space. Art is either spiritual or demonic depending upon whether the spirit of the age is in the service of Christ or Satan. Art is never for art’s sake. Sometimes it is done for the artist’s sake or for Satan’s, but only when it is for Christ’s sake is art true and beautiful and holy.

This view clearly cuts across Plato (art is a copy of a copy) and Aristotle (art is the representation of the universal in the particular for the purpose of catharsis) and Hegel (art is the manifest unfolding of the Spirit in history through conflict) and all the modern theories which try to reduce art to the will (Nietsche, Freud) or the feeling (Santayana) or the mind (Maritain).

One example will suffice to show what I mean. When the Western church fell under the spell of the spirit of this world, she became corrupt. Her great culture lost its salutary grace and gradually became humanized. Thus the last expression of church art, seventeenth century baroque, became a debased concern for nothing but the frilleries of nature. The Puritan reaction to this was healthy in its disciplined resistance against the intoxication of the pretty, but the priggishness of Puritanism was just as devastating to Christian art as was Plato’s prudery to classic art. In each case art fell into the service of the spirit of the age and died with the demon of its choosing.

When the humanist idolization of the natural had reached the end of its moribund journey, the reaction was violent. A new spirit, the spirit of existential integrity, convulsed a new generation of artists. Some of these were called Les Fauves because like wild beasts they tore up all the rules and traditions of the past, and after shattering the fake dead world of their fathers they set out honestly to create a new world as far as they had insight to see. In place of the naturalism of Corot, Millais, and Rubens we find now the “supernaturalism” of Picasso, Bracque, and Mondrian.

Fatigue In The World Of Art

Philosophical pluralism in our age makes analysis complex, for no simple Weltanschauung can be defined such as characterized classical, oriental or medieval art. And yet it is possible to detect a dominating spirit ruling over our age with singular authority in every area of historical activity. In all governments throughout the world today, for example, there is a general weariness in the laissez faire expression of natural law. This is coupled with an anxious concern to manipulate the state according to a new social law. Likewise there is a parallel fatigue in the world of art in its repudiation of sweet romanticism. This is coupled with the frantic attempt to express the deeper realities of the soul by means of unconventional and chaotic abstractions. This new spirit has introduced a new heresy.

The old spirit has degenerated so much that it controls now only the calendar art of the unsophisticated. In Sallman’s Head of Christ we have a pretty picture of a woman with a curling beard who has just come from the beauty parlor with a Halo shampoo, but we do not have the Lord who died and rose again!

But the new spirit is similar to the Gnostic Zeitgeist in Paul’s day when he complained of “spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” Instead of holding up a mirror to nature, the artist today deliberately distorts nature in order that he may mirror the human soul. Just as the old naturalism idolized matter, the new abstractionism idolizes spirit, but neither serves the incarnate Lord who redeems matter and spirit, and redeems them not by adjustment and compromise with nature nor by revolt and release from nature but by the killing judgment of God’s wrath upon nature and by the regenerating mercy of his grace.

It is interesting to see that some of the modern painters express their Gnosticism in a legalistic way and some in an antinomian. Mondrian and Rothko, for instance, abstract all natural content in the interest of pure form. Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, on the other hand, are concerned only for matter, shattering all norms of painting in the interest of an antinomian expression. But all alike have despaired of this world, and at the expense of communicability they have run to a mystic realm of the soul, a huperouranios topos, where conversation is limited to the coterie who have the esoteric gnosis. In some cases this is a mentalistic gnosis and in others it is emotionalistic, but in every instance it is exclusive.

Others among the modern painters are not so unintelligible. Picasso’s Guernica is disgustingly unbeautiful but shockingly true because it tells those with eyes to see that this world is shattered to pieces. But while this is worth saying it leaves unsaid the profounder truth that the broken world is bound together by the bleeding wounds of Christ. And Dali’s Madonna, his two Crucifixions and his Last Supper, far from being pictures of the Incarnation, are surrealistic escapes into a mystic world of dreams. It is not accidental that the corpus on the cross had no wound prints, nor is it just for effect that the Lord of the Last Supper is so ethereal that a fishing dory floats through his midriff. With both of these artists, as with the pure abstractionists, the common denominator is Gnostic weariness with this world. Thus we have seen how with an amazing lubricity modern artists have expressed dangerously appealing half-truths which have captivated the avantgarde sophisticates of our age and put them in the service of a new ruling spirit.

Where Are The Prophets?

But where are the prophetic painters like El Greco, Grunewald, and Van Gogh who preached the Lord’s death till he come? Certainly Rouault can claim “apostolic succession,” but he is by his own admission the child of an age different from our own. Perhaps this is the requisite we seek: that the artist belong not to this age ever, but always to the coming age. In any case, painting, which is not in the service of the spirit of this age but of Christ, must convey more than the fragmentization of this world and more than the mystic dreams of another world. It must bear Christ in passionate Incarnation and triumphant Resurrection, in suffering witness in this age and confident hope in the coming age, sub crucem cum magna spe.

We Quote:

DAVID LAWRENCE

Editor, United States News and World Report

Those of us who do believe in God avow a faith in the rightness of moral teachings as derived from the Bible.… But we are dealing with men who boast of their contempt for religion—they do not believe in God.

In the Western world, theism is the basis of every constitutional right, every principle of free government.…

The world is not going to be safe for any of us as long as atheistic Communism is enthroned in Eastern Europe.… At the same time we can fervently speak what is in our hearts to the peoples behind the Iron Curtain and pray with them for deliverance. For in the millions of them who still believe in God rests the hope of mankind.—In an editorial, “They Don’t Believe in God,” United States News and World Report, Dec. 27, 1957.

Robert Paul Roth is Professor of New Testament Study at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Has America, like Rome of old, crossed its Rubicon? Some observers say yes. They have begun charting the republic’s decline and impending fall. Apart from any threat of sudden international war, they insist, America is tottering on the brink of tragedy. A decisive turn in national thought and life assertedly has placed the United States beyond redemption; the only hope that now remains is for emergency rescue and ailing survival.

The Sense Of Doom

Pronouncing judgment on America is no longer an exclusive franchise of a few weeping Jeremiahs. Nor is it peculiar to evangelists constantly reminding the nation of its spiritual decline, its neglect of a great Christian heritage, its whoring after false gods of money and ease. Many pulpiteers are indeed swift to show that despite America’s religiosity no sweeping repentance and faith, no decisive change of heart and life, places social forces in our great cities conspicuously in the service of the living God. Billy Graham readily admits this even of New York City. Religious analysts are finding America spiritually and morally second-rate.

While indisposed to talk much about the one true God, students of American culture likewise decry the idols of the masses. Determination of the right by mere majority opinion, and an infatuation with popular approval, have inseminated a cheap and artificial sense of values into modern life and thought. Broadway measures worth by length of run. On television or on radio, Neilsen and Hooper ratings and audience polls determine contract renewals. What is popular is right, not to mention “good” business. Thus the god of conformity snares individuals into group thinking, and loyalty only to society. Detachment of responsibility from the will of God has led to a vanishing sense of responsibility. American culture has accordingly become mediocre.

Scientists no less than religionists are doom-conscious. Pointing to Soviet superiority in the satellite sphere, they question America’s capacity to reverse the balances of strategy to overtake and outdistance the Soviet program. They decry our loss of scientific leadership. By late 1959, they warn, the United States will be less than 15 minutes from 75 Russian ICBMs capable of wiping out the Strategic Air Command’s existing bases.

A similar verdict of retrogression attaches to still another sphere, our traditions of government. In the disregard of inherited values that hinder controls and centralized power, and in the subtle restriction of individual freedoms, some students of political science see the nation drifting toward the whirlpool of a secret totalitarianism (while congratulating itself for having avoided the Soviet variety). In this matter of controls, former editor of The Washington Post Felix Morley is not alone in his conviction that “the Rubicon has already been crossed; nobody can any longer think escape from this trap an easy matter.” Adventure on the collectivistic toboggan slide both explains and evidences America’s demotion to a second-rate republic.

Leaders in economics report similar disturbances. Soaring costs of government, the temptation to accept inflation as a way of life, the control of credit for political purposes, national prosperity geared to the federal budget (especially to growing defense expenditures, perhaps leading ultimately to a vested interest in regard for other world powers as a military threat), the endless spiral of punitive taxation (personal income taxes estimated at $32.5 billion for 1956 alone)—to many economists these tendencies disclose America’s permanent surrender to the squeeze of socializing forces. Since it is politically unfeasible for either major party to repudiate this centralizing trend, the process may never be reversed but only modified “here” and “there.” Some warning voices like Frank Chodorov’s once mounted soapboxes as young radicals to espouse socialism. Today these same political theorists recognize the symptoms of cancerous collectivism in our national life and lament a blind economic policy. They warn us that America has already taken the decisive collectivistic turn. Not only Big Labor but Big Business also often seeks its own special privilege above the principles of freedom. Free enterprise is now so frequently pushed to secondary importance that the populace is no longer shocked nor chagrined. A controlled economy meanwhile nourishes the worship of mammon. The multitude tolerates and approves, and even demands and clamors for this household god, while the almighty state perpetuates the existence of the idol. The masses have thus enlarged socialistic concession through leaders endorsing the tawdry popular values and thereby perpetuating their personal power and office. Leaders, the masses and the “privileged groups” alike, therefore, have all sown the wind. Obscured by the resultant whirlwind is the heritage that once made America unique among the nations of the world. Both the visibility and the vision of the nation are impaired.

The Clouded Vision

The extraordinary origin of the American republic the Founding Fathers ascribed to divine providence. To them the United States represented the major political effort in human history to limit the powers of the state and to guard human freedoms under God from the encroachment of tyrants. As clearly set forth in the American Constitution, establishment of a federal government with powers restricted, divided into separate branches, balanced by states rights, dependent on the consent of the governed, envisioned the preservation of specific human rights and values.

The basic and sustaining principle of these values and freedoms—that government is limited—is directly antithetical to that by which the U.S.S.R. abolishes individual rights (viz., that all power is concentrated in the state). One constitutional provision that dramatically enforces limited government is separation of Church and State, which boldly contradicts the long European traditions of the church-state and the state church. This disjunction was both to limit political power and guard human rights, and also to protect the nation against a monopoly of political interests by one sectarian tradition. Separation of Church and State did not aim to isolate spiritual from political concerns so churches lost significance in political affairs; least of all did it aim to subordinate the spiritual to the political order. There was no desire to weaken the role of the churches in the life of the nation; rather, restricted state power was intended to support and strengthen those spiritual priorities through which a nation remains virile and noble.

In this debate between limited government and state absolutism, the position of Christian conscience is obvious. In Romans 13 Paul delineates the Judeo-Christian view: political authority derives from God and is answerable to God. Likewise, man’s obedience to the state is under God. Man bears inalienable rights by creation, the Declaration of Independence insists, and these the state is to preserve, not to destroy nor to curtail. The Bible asserts that the state must not frustrate the obedience man owes to God; it gives no quarter to the doctrine of the omnipotent state. The Old Testament prohibited even kings from seizing the private property of the people (1 Kings 21).

Skepticism over absolute values underlies the Soviet thesis that human rights are relative. Marxist evolutionary philosophy forces modern culture to choose between supernaturalism and naturalism; human dignity and human degradation; absolute truth and values and state-determined and imposed opinion and ideals. Totalitarianism compels its citizens to comply with whatever the state defines as right and good. Skepticism over changeless values creates the void into which the state rushes to propound temporary values with absolute rigor.

If all values are unfixed and ever-changing, political leaders in a democracy no less than in a totalitarian state may assert and enforce personal expediency in the name of principle. Majority opinion is not inconsistent with self-government, but self-government becomes impossible in the absence of values. If human preference alone determines policy, political theory simply vascillates with the changing tides of prevailing opinion.

The Loss Of Freedoms

In the present century Marxian Communism has whetted the world’s lust for power and state controls. During the past 25 years the cancerous philosophy of state power, civilian controls, transient values and principles, has so penetrated even America’s heritage and life that suddenly the United States appears incurably riddled with disease.

The federal government’s encroachment into many areas of American life shows up especially in affairs once considered the responsibility of the Christian churches. Education, for example, was long the concern and duty of the family and of the churches. (Few people any longer realize that much of the impetus for mass education rests ultimately on the biblical conviction that every person must be reached with a core of information vital to his temporal and eternal happiness.) But during the past century has come the rise of mass public education. Influenced in our generation by the naturalistic and relativistic philosophy of John Dewey, educational administrators have by and large nurtured socialistic tendencies, including the growing clamor for federal support of public schools. Like education, charity and welfare also were once the concern of the churches. (The effective alleviation of human suffering owes more to the biblical view of God than twentieth century humanism allows us to remember.) The state has assumed increasing direction of these responsibilities, too. On the domestic scene, social security and unemployment insurance have won their way; socialized medicine now waits in line as a hopeful government project.

More could be said to illustrate the government’s assumption of responsibilities once belonging to the churches. But equally striking is the fact that in the aforementioned areas of enlarging state power, as well as of civilian controls not directly involving Christian traditions, the churches have shown little resistance. How far the Christian conscience had lost its sense of heritage in some of these matters, e.g., education, is evident from the official statement on The Church and the Public Schools approved by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1957. This report not only throws the weight of Christian approval behind the public schools as such; it also throws the weight of Presbyterian influence against private schools. This is exactly what could have been expected from a committee dominated (as it was) by public schoolmen, but it hardly represents one’s expectations from the Presbyterian conscience. Such surrender of responsibility could hardly augur resistance against additional inroads of the state.

If America has crossed the Rubicon; if the nation’s heritage is now beyond preservation; if the drift to the power-state and to a controlled society cannot be stayed, communist penetration from the outside is not alone to blame. Equal judgment falls upon the churches for indifference and ineffectiveness in the hour of America’s greatest trial. Amid the world’s subtle conflict between political and spiritual loyalties, the churches sin by their silence. Today not Nero but the churches fiddle while Rome burns. The churches have even approved leaders who support socializing and collectivistic trends in the name of the Christian community, and have permitted them without protest to speak for Christian conscience.

When The Churches Failed

What explains this deadly lassitude of the churches? In America’s tragic transition from limited government to the power-state where is the churches’ repellent force?

1. Pre-empting the right to speak for all Protestant churches in politico-economic affairs, the National Council of Churches (formerly the Federal Council) has tended in its social pronouncements to support collectivism and controls in national life. In two respects the NCC has failed to undergird the tradition of limited government and human liberties; its social declarations, bold and specific, veered to the left, while its theological affirmations were nebulous and obscure, since NCC’s inclusive policy subdued doctrinal issues for the sake of peaceful ecclesiastical co-existence. While neglecting a Christian theology of government and freedom, the massive voice of American Protestantism approved socializing tendencies in American life. The entrenched leadership even violated the conscience of its own constituency by often pledging that conscience without its consent. Sensing its repressive force and fearing its coercive and punitive power, local member churches and ministers seldom protested such organizational commitments; ministers hesitated to contradict the official statements. The Protestant churches themselves thus became vulnerable to the fetters of ecclesiastical control.

2. Although some independent agencies publicized official resolutions of protest against the National Council’s collectivistic pronouncements, they offered little guidance in positive Christian social ethics. Inside or outside the preaching ministry, they seldom faced the matter of God and government, faith and freedom, with active concern. While NCC spokesmen abetted the pressure for controls, most evangelical pulpits lacked a careful recital of man’s rights and duties under God.

3. Though becoming increasingly amoral, the state preened itself with morality and many trappings of religion. Some politicians espoused the indispensability of religion in national life even while they voted for more socialistic controls. They shaped plaudits “appropriate to the constituencies,” which not only approved special interest but basically revealed political expedience. Certainly, to doubt unduly the sincere churchly interests of many government leaders is unwarranted. One of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S contributing editors, Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, properly insists that piety must not be suspect simply because it dwells by the Potomac. Whenever the state speaks with a sacred voice, however, it requires special scrutiny. In its beginnings even the German Nazi movement attracted many people by “spiritual qualities” that obscured its evils. In recent decades, one American president on re-election eve made political use of the Episcopal Prayer Book. Examination of public speeches discloses American politicians to be more gifted with complimentary references to Deity than with sustained expositions of the theology of politics. Labor, business and government all become more inclined to locate a religious justification for their objectives. Labor uses its Religion in Labor Movement to propagandize its legislative goals; management and labor resort to clergymen to propagandize their positions. This tendency of big government, big labor and big business to “use” religion in support of their programs is a reflex of America’s growing religiosity that calls for careful scrutiny. Rather than being flattered by it, the churches need to challenge it. Behold the terrors of Communism, tolerating only as much “freedom” for the churches as serves the tyrant’s whim!

Misguided Social Action

Leaders who endorse specific social measures in the name of the Church may think thereby to make “the Gospel relevant to our times.” Usually they only embarrass the Church. There are many reasons for this:

1. For every churchman who endorses a particular organization and its program (cf. the forthcoming CIO-AFL propaganda effort for the closed shop, as against “right to work” laws), there is another to oppose it. The public soon wonders if the Church does not know her own mind, or whether she is a propaganda agency for whatever social movement best exploits her endorsem*nt. The competing and conflicting proclamations of ecclesiastical leaders not only lessen the Church’s stature in the eyes of the outside world, but also confuse the membership within the churches themselves.

2. Such pronouncements tend to be divisive. Often “social action” declarations by ecumenical and denominational leaders agitate their constituencies. Admission is long overdue that such statements were often ill-advised and represented only the personal opinion of certain individuals and pressure groups.

3. Such proclamations frequently do not express the thinking of the local churches and therefore ought not to be issued in their name by the top echelon. An element of pressure shadows the church member’s affiliation with organizations professing to speak “for so many denominations” or for “so many millions of Protestants.” A movement that not only propagandizes the views of certain leaders, but catapults those convictions into prominence by exaggerating their known support, becomes a vehicle of misrepresentation rather than of truth. Mr. Leonard Read, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, recently criticized both clergy and laity who do not protest social action pronouncements that misrepresent their convictions. Mr. Read suggests that the minister who disagrees with ecumenical social policies but feels obliged to “stay in” and “straighten things out” should apply that logic to the Communist party. The best way to “straighten things out,” he contends, is to decline support. Mr. Read further contends that membership in organizations which repeatedly violate politico-economic views of their constituencies [theological and economic views of most American churchgoers are considered far to the right of ecumenical leadership] weakens the very personality of the members. Integrity requires an individual to represent his convictions accurately to those about him. Each unprotested misrepresentation of one’s beliefs, each unprotested identification with groups that do not express one’s convictions, weakens and finally destroys an individual’s character. Mr. Read warns that personal integrity always suffers when loyalty to a group takes precedence over loyalty to the truth.

What Can Be Done?

What is the churches’ responsibility when a nation’s decline is concealed by a proud front of military power, of scientific genius, of commercial efficiency and is undetected by the self-satisfied masses in pursuit of luxury or pleasure? The Christian community is not without biblical guidance in this matter. In apostolic times many conditions in the old Roman Empire were not far different from ours. In treating social ethics in his epistle to the Romans, Paul writes the believers: “You know what hour it is.… The night is far gone.… It is full time now for you to wake from sleep …” (13:11ff., RSV).

Christianity neither deifies nor humanizes the state. Romans 13 no more means the God-state (the state is God) than Revelation 13 means the Beast-state (the state is inherently demonic). Human government is divinely willed to preserve justice and to restrain evil in a sinful society. Government may indeed deteriorate, overwhelmed by the very injustice and wickedness it ought to restrain. The Book of Revelation warns that government most readily becomes a Beast-state when it thinks itself the God-state. It then arrogates to itself the right to control every phase of human experience and to require the worship of itself.

Romans 13 speaks not only of the powers of the state, but refers as well to Christian social responsibility. Paul declares that the state is to be supported by taxes, by honor and by good works in general. More than this, he obligates Christian conscience to social fulfillment of the Commandments in a spirit of love. “Render … to all their dues.… Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery … kill … steal … bear false witness … covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (13:7–9).

Limits Of The State

The first conclusion to be drawn is that the state, deriving its authority from God, cannot require of its citizens anything that violates the revealed commandments; since the power is ordained for the good of the people, passive obedience is not required when it ceases to be good. The second is that the Christian citizen by obedient fulfillment of these commandments in the spirit of love exhibits the highest patriotism.

The Scriptures here provide another equally important guideline. That is the directness with which the Apostle proceeds to the governing principles of revealed morality to fix Christian social responsibility. The Bible contains tenets that define love of God and love of neighbor in greater detail than the Ten Commandments. Biblical ethics asserts, for example, such specific rules as to pray for rulers, and to pay one’s taxes. But one thing characterizes biblical social ethics: it nowhere endorses specific contemporary movements and organizations in such a way as to throw the sanction of Christianity behind them. Rather, it states the great social concerns of revealed religion in terms of divinely disclosed ethical principles that must determine and motivate social responsibility and action. It does not even condemn slavery, though it states the principles that sounded the death knell of that evil.

Rule Of Christian Action

This norm for Christian social responsibility guards the Church from two errors so frequently committed by modern ecclesiastical spokesmen. First, it exhibits Christian duty as performance of the revealed will of God. This deters the churches from social action of merely humanitarian and humanistic nature. (One major turning point in recent American life was prominence of “the welfare of man” as the dominant social goal. Under the umbrella of this cliche, and detached from any of the priorities of revealed religion, the masses gave life a purely materialistic interpretation. Furthermore, many political leaders successfully proclaimed the solution of all problems (international relations, unemployment, education) to be simply the spending of more money.)

To frame Christian social action primarily in terms of revealed principles of social morality protects the church from a second error, that of indiscriminately approving or disapproving specific movements and organizations and even individuals in the name of authentic Christian action.

In this time of confused principles in national life the Church surrenders moral leadership by supporting isms and temporary movements, instead of conspicuously exhibiting the divinely-revealed principles of social ethics that define human liberty and human duty. Besides the primary duty of evangelizing a lost society, the Church is responsible for upholding the will of God in social life, expressed in biblically revealed principles and values. To endorse particular movements and specific activities in isolation from this primary social orientation cuts the Church adrift from her moorings. Although presuming to represent God and Church, her spokesmen become insensitive to those revealed verities, and even support movements and positions whose attachment to those principles is often obscure and sometimes nonexistent. Certainly the Church must be specific, must not confine social interests to platitudes. The revealed principles of right, however, are never platitudinous; nor is the absolute less absolute because it is neglected and scorned. Revealed principles may illuminate contemporary movements and actions by the pulpit’s use of illustration and example. Always, however, the revealed will of God must predominate and must be the gauge for everything else. Who then dare validate the Church’s permanent endorsem*nt of a movement? (The Church is on the side of the worker rather than of the idler, but is she therefore eternally committed to AFL-CIO? The Church is on the side of the poor and oppressed, but is she therefore committed to a program of government subsidy and a welfare state?)

In the decline of the American republic the Church will count for little in a rear guard action for national survival unless she returns to the great realities of divine revelation and unless her social message centers in personal regeneration and in fidelity to revealed morality.

Betraying A Heritage

Today influential men are selling the nation’s birthright on every hand. In an official decision in 1955 even a member of the Supreme Court endorsed the denial of absolutes. The Church did little to challenge this assertion of relativity, a theory quite in keeping with the Soviet philosophy of political expedience. In fact, the Church today harbors a theory of knowledge that engenders skepticism over the very existence of revealed truth and principles of right. Neo-orthodox theology has not reversed the modernistic trend that considers revelation as inexpressible in words and propositions.

But absolutes do not cease to be absolutes, imperatives do not cease to be imperatives, because of failure to recognize them as such. Biblical theology and ethics give little credence to the modern notion that God does not articulate permanent principles. Unless the Church accepts her biblical heritage and enunciates the great ethical principles that sustain our tradition of freedom, her own liberties may vanish together with those of the nation she fails. There may not always be a U.S.A., but there will always be a Church. As the believers in Russia can eloquently testify, however, the Church sometimes is chained and imprisoned not alone for her courage to affirm the superiority of spiritual over limited political loyalties, but as penalty also for her silent and unprotesting subjection to the power-state.

We Quote:

FELIX MORLEY

Educator and Journalist

The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States had few conveniences at their disposal. But in two respects, at least, their thinking was greatly superior to that which passes as currency today. They were at home in the field of abstract ideas upon which, much more than upon the production of material wealth, the continuation of the American way of life depends. And they were thoroughly familiar with those eternal truths that alone give a sense of conviction and significance to human existence.—In The Power in the People.

A Climax In Missions

“This is harvest time for Latin America.”

Evangelist Billy Graham, just returned from a Latin American campaign tour, says many of the decisions for Christ recorded in his team’s swing through 17 countries could be traced to the groundwork laid by missionaries.

Graham paid tribute to the missionaries in saying that they were now seeing the results of many years of hard work.

“Protestantism has some of its strongest leadership in Latin America,” he added, describing the work of the churches as “virile and dynamic.”

Graham sees a shift to Protestantism in such countries as Guatemala, Brazil, Chile and Puerto Rico. He predicts some of these nations may be predominantly Protestant within 20 years.

The evangelist and his team preached in 21 cities during the 28-day tour covering 6,000 miles. The campaign closed in Mexico City, where some 25,000 jammed Mexico Arena while another 15,000 stood outside to hear Graham’s final campaign sermon.

A total of 3,100 decisions were counted in the two-day Mexico City crusade, among them at least 200 Americans.

Graham’s Latin American sermons were directly heard by 398,950 (through Spanish interpreters in many cities). His messages were augmented by those of his associate evangelists, who spoke to another 499,630 persons with 6,494 recorded decisions for Christ. Total decisions at meetings of all team members were estimated at more than 15,000. All of Graham’s appearances drew crowds which set records for Protestant events in the respective localities.

The Graham tour through Spanish-speaking countries was co-ordinated by the Latin America Mission, under the personal leadership of General Director R. Kenneth Strachan.

Graham described some of his rallies as the most colorful he has held anywhere. Indians in full costume traveled great distances to attend. Thousands slept in yards and alleys. Many could not understand the languages, but were encouraged by the crowds and gratified to learn how many others shared their faith. Some of the Indians had never been to a city before.

While Graham was on tour rumors spread through the United States that some of his team were ill. The evangelist called the reports completely false. For this week, he scheduled talks at Vassar and Smith colleges.

People: Words And Events

Formation: For co-ordinating effort in national and international temperance issues, a new Interdenominational Committee on Alcohol Problems in Washington. The committee eventually hopes to represent 40 churches with membership both in the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches.

Appointments: As president of the Protestant Council of the City of New York, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor; as moderator of the Presbytery of Newark, New Jersey, the Rev. C. Lincoln McGee. Both are the first Negroes to serve in these capacities.

Tracts: More than 20,000,000 produced during 1957 by the American Tract Society.

Appeal: For 10,000,000 pounds of clothing by the end of the year, by Church World Service, to help alleviate needs at “a level of urgency unprecedented in the last decade.”

Survey: Planned by the Methodist Board of Temperance, to learn if “dry” communities are more moral than “wet” communities.

Booklet: On “How to Observe National Family Week” (May 4–11), newly published by National Sunday School Association.

Deaths: Dr. Frederick May Eliot, 68, president of the American Unitarian Association, in New York; Dr. William Henry Jernagin, 88, Negro Baptist leader, in Miami Beach, Florida.

Protest: By representatives of 375 Gulf Coast area Baptist churches, of Governor Price Daniel’s designation of March 23 as “Knights of Columbus Day” in Texas.

No Jurisdiction

The National Lutheran Council has voted out of order a plea by its president that plans for separate Lutheran mergers be abandoned in favor of an all-out effort to unite in a single church.

In a report to the council’s fortieth annual meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dr. F. Eppling Reinartz referred to two separate merger plans as a “two-way stretch of our loyalties.”

“Let us stop our fashioning of fresh divisions,” he asked, “at least long enough for us to examine our motives and purposes under the emancipating and uniting cross of Christ.”

The delegates by voice vote ruled the plea “constitutionally outside the competence” of the council representing eight church bodies, including 5,000,000 members or two-thirds of the Lutherans in the United States and Canada.

Seven of the bodies are engaged in discussions toward two mergers. One involves the Evangelical, American and United Evangelical Lutheran churches, a union from which the Lutheran Free Church recently withdrew. The other comprises the United, Augustana and American Evangelical Lutheran churches and the Suomi Synod.

The council meeting did take action toward examining present co-operative activities in American Lutheranism with an eye to extending joint efforts. Delegates endorsed a proposal to ask member churches to approve a meeting of its executive committee with representatives of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and other Lutheran bodies in the United States. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is the second largest Lutheran body in America and is not a member of the National Lutheran Council.

Ethics and Economics

Dr. Harold John Ockenga advises religious leaders to study economics more closely.

The pastor of Boston’s Park Street Church says many religious leaders, “mistakenly believing they were advocating the cause of Christianity, have instead advanced the cause of Marxism.”

In an address at Johnson City, Tennessee, Pastor Ockenga criticized evangelism which has an “incomplete view of ethics.”

“Evangelism cannot be separated from ethical theory,” he said, adding that “the most important division of ethics is economics, where the great battles of practical import in our day are being fought.

“Individualism and collectivism contend in this arena of economics. Yet most evangelists, preachers, and religious teachers are lacking in their knowledge of economics.”

This unawareness, Dr. Ockenga asserts, has led to a misapplication of “the New Testament teaching of neighborly love. Under the guise of Christianity, mistaken though well-intentioned religious leaders have advanced the cause of collectivism. Coercion in the name of Christian love is condoned in numerous socialistic schemes, which soften society for Marxism.”

A Condemnation

A segment of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) has gone on record against the use of church buildings for private schools.

The Presbytery of the Potomac, which includes 10 northern Virginia counties, voted to send an overture to the General Assembly meeting April 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to “record opposition to the use of any facilities owned by a congregation of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., for the establishment of schools, public or private, supported in whole or in part by state or community funds for the purpose of evading decrees of the courts of the United States relative to segregation of the races.”

Researcher’s Departure

The Tenth Anniversary Conference on Church and State was held in Atlanta, Georgia, minus the director of research of the sponsoring agency.

Stanley Lichtenstein said he has resigned his position with Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State because of policy disagreement.

Dr. Glenn L. Archer, executive secretary of POAU, said Lichtenstein was advised last fall to seek other employment because his services were no longer desired.

Lichtenstein, who is Jewish, said he disagreed with the POAU decision to issue a questionnaire for Catholic candidates for president. He said the questionnaire did violence to POAU’s own belief in separation of church and state.

Archer said Lichtenstein had made no mention of his policy disagreement until he sent out a mimeographed press release to newspapers attacking his former employers.

Representatives from more than 20 states were on hand for the Atlanta conference. Delegates entertained suggestions aimed at closer co-ordination between POAU headquarters and local affiliates. A committee was appointed to study the expanding structure of the organization.

The famous psychologist C. G. Jung once undertook a detailed investigation of the nature and the power of evil. With emphasis, he thereupon placed himself in opposition to what he called the “teaching of the church,” viz, that evil is merely a deficiency of goodness (privatio boni). He saw in this view a serious underestimation of evil because in this expression it is viewed only negatively and as a lack of something. He saw that in line with such underestimation, sooner or later Protestantism would eliminate the devil entirely, and Jung wished, as he said, to posit over against this underestimation of evil something more substantial. For in the empirical life evil is experienced in its thorough juxtaposition to good, just as in the New Testament there arises the idea of the anti-Christ as opposed to the Christ. Every idea that minimizes evil must be combatted. Evil is not just a deprivation, but it is a destructive power. Jung notes what has happened in the concentration camps of the dictator states, and certainly here no one can point to such things as “lack of perfection.” No, evil stands as a shattering, annihilating power over against the good.

It is clear to see that these views of Jung deserve some attention, but that they also fall short in some measure. He does not bring sufficiently into reckoning that the characterization of evil as a deficiency of the good was already applied by St. Augustine and many others especially as an antidote to Manichaeanism, that considered sin as a substantial entity in eternal antithesis to the good. And when later in Protestantism the expression “falling short” begins to play a considerable role, it is always with the understanding that it concerns an active deprivation (privatio actuosa) to remain in agreement with the New Testament in which sin is always characterized as rebellion and transgression, as enmity against God.

However, in dealing with Jung one cannot merely speak of misapprehension. Often men, resting in a comfortable optimism, have failed to do justice to the reality of evil in the world; and often through the means of this idea of falling short, men have characterized evil as a “missing of the mark,” a “shortage,” a “not-yet,” that eventually can be filled in or achieved. How many times has evil been designated as a temporary failure or shortage, as a phase in our development. In this way one can “explain” sin on the basis of all kinds of circ*mstances, or out of pecularities or limitations of the human spirit, without admitting or confessing that it is a matter in which ruin and terror are involved.

Suddenly mankind recognizes that this description of evil does not ring true to reality. It is not a coincidence that Jung points to the concentration camps. That is the most frequently mentioned example in modern times, the destructive power of one man over the lives of others. One feels at once that the explanations of “falling short” and “not-yet” do not do justice. But often we get the impression that men in treating of evil first of all and chiefly call attention to the human consequences, and that the idea of sin against God plays a very small role. We hear of demonism and the extremes of egocentricism, and we come under the spell of the power of “the evil,” as, for instance, Albert Camus treats of it in his book, The Fall, where such egocentricism plays a thorough-going role. We hear the lamentations over the demoniacal manifestations in human life that make one individual a menace to another.

We do not, however, in this manner touch on the depths of the power of sin that is described in the Bible as the estrangement of a life from God, enmity against him, and thus we come again along all these paths to an underestimation of evil. When the estrangement from God is not recognized and confessed, we come back always to the idea of shortcoming, which can indeed strike with surprise, with fear and dismay, but in which we do not seek the path of forgiveness. It is only by way of confession of sin, through the cry from out of the depths, that a perspective is again opened for reunion. It is certainly no coincidence that the Bible, which points to the deepest sources of evil as the forsaking of God’s ways, is filled to the brim with the calling of man to his obligations to his fellowman. It is exactly where sin is not looked upon as a dramatic and mysterious appearance, as the destruction of human relationships, that man comes again to see and to face his need and his suffering, his poverty and his misery.

The relationships between love for God and love toward man are unbreakable. “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have a need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17).

The recognition of evil has nothing to do with various forms of pessimism that air lamentations over the state of mankind and that most of all speak only of the guilt of others. These complaints are unfruitful and do not bring any blessings for human life. They may arise out of a proud heart. How many times one can see only the splinter in the eye of another, but not the beam in his own. How sharply at times is judgment passed on a person, or mankind, without any confession of guilt on the part of oneself. Underestimation of evil evidences itself most of all in the form of underestimating evil in our own lives. The genuine sense of guilt begins not with another, but with ourselves, and in this confession of sin the mercy of God is experienced as a great light shining in deep darkness.

In this world there are plenty of lamentations and also of accusations. But the contriteness that forms the entrance to the Kingdom of God is something completely different. It transcends the juxtaposition of pessimism and optimism, and more than ever before, man in our times has need of this type of sorrow. This is directly opposite to what the Gospels characterize as the “wholeness” of those who do not feel the need of a physician, and of those “righteous” who do not feel the need of conversion. This “health,” this “wholeness,” is the pressing danger of our times. There are so few really “sick ones” who are stretching forth their hands to receive the healing medicine. The Bible speaks of a God who chastises, but men today have not felt any pain. This lack of feeling, this insensitiveness, closes the heart for forgiveness, and this makes life, amidst great need, cold, and in most cases hard and merciless.

However, he who has learned to see the guilt of sin in its depths comes also through the confession of guilt to the joy of forgiveness. This forgiveness becomes in the life of the individual a power that cannot stay hidden. There is a deep-flowing correspondence between guilt and forgiveness. He who has been forgiven much, loveth much (Luke 7:47).

Gentle Conflict

Conflict With Rome, by G. C. Berkouwer, transl. by D. H. Freeman, Presbyterian & Reformed, Philadelphia, 1957. 319 pp., $5.95.

As in The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth so in this volume Berkouwer has given us penetrating analyses on an even more important question with a clarity and ease of expression that leaves little to be desired.

The Conflict With Rome never mentions persecution in Colombia and Spain, avoids all reference to tax support for parochial schools and never raises its voice above a dignified discussion of theology. The subjects are, rather, the Roman claim to all inclusive authority, grace and assurance, Mariolatry, the incarnation, and the witness of the patristic writers.

In an exceptionally interesting and generously informative way Berkouwer shows how the Romish view of sin (which minimizes depravity and speaks well of man) and infused grace depends on a theory of the incarnation detached from the specific purpose of redemption and considered as a cosmic principle of union between God and man. This union is now most complete in the prolongation of the incarnation which is the body of Christ, to wit, the Roman church. Berkouwer succeeds most admirably in making even the hasty reader understand the coherence of the Roman system.

If it be the duty of a reviewer to search out something for adverse criticism, perhaps a few points may be found:

First, in rejecting Rome’s claim that the Reformation, as a revolt against all ecclesiastical authority, was too individualistic, Berkouwer judges that the recent excessive individualism is a departure from Reformation principles. The reviewer agrees that there has been a widespread departure from Reformed principles, but he believes that it has been toward an excessive totalitarianism, and so far forth toward something akin to Romish authoritarianism.

Second, at the end of the chapter on grace, he asserts that “the primacy of the intellect was rejected” by the Reformation and that “the Reformed concept of fiducia was not in the least [italics mine] intellectually founded.” This was not the view of Charles Hodge; and J. Gresham Machen in his What is Faith vigorously defended the primacy of the intellect.

Third, although Berkouwer presents some fine exegetical material in defense of the assurance of salvation, it seems that he does not quite answer Rome’s argument for “moral certainty” as opposed to “infallible assurance.”

Fourth and last, the great majority of Berkouwer’s references to contemporary Romish authors, with the exception of Cardinal Newman, are to Dutch writers. This produces the impression, unfounded and unfortunate, that the argument may suffer from a limited viewpoint.

But these criticisms are minor. The long chapter on grace is a masterpiece.

One comes to understand why the Romanists were forced to assert the freedom of the will and why Luther and Calvin were compelled to deny it. With great skill in the handling of detail he makes perfectly evident that this is no effete, academic, trivial quarrel about words; but rather that it is at the center of one’s deepest religious attitudes. On the one hand there is human merit, the insufficiency of God’s power, and the possibility of losing one’s salvation; on the other hand is total depravity, the perseverance of the saints, and the irresistible grace of the Sovereign God.

GORDON H. CLARK

Views On Preaching

The Way to Biblical Preaching, by Donald G. Miller, Abingdon, 1957. 160 pp., $2.50.

This book by the professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, is a sequel to the author’s earlier volume, Fire In Thy Mouth.

Miller’s fundamental thesis is this: by definition all Christian preaching is worthy of that name only when it is expository. By expository, however, he does not refer to the traditional homiletical form so-called. In fact, he repudiates that form altogether, arguing that exposition sustains no relationship whatsoever to form, but only to substance.

From this perspective expository preaching-identical with biblical preaching—is the exposition of a scriptural theme which restricts itself to the immediate contextual framework on which it is based. The argument is buttressed with numerous illustrations of the abuse of Scripture by methods of approach other than this one, an abuse which the author concludes is inevitable. But the illustrations are all alike extreme and, therefore, unconvincing.

Again, Miller maintains that the sermon which is an intellectual discussion of biblical truth is unjustifiable. Here he fails to perceive that doctrinal errors and misrepresentations often necessitate such sermons and that such clarification of biblical truth is itself a vital means of nurturing, sustaining, and enlarging faith. A New Testament scholar ought to know that the pulpit of the early Church was committed to both kerygma (proclamation) and didache (teaching).

This author also makes much of keeping biblical truths in balance, a good observation. His primary example is the doctrine of election. But at this point he falls into his own trap. Failing to see this doctrine in relation to the doctrines of man, sin, and divine sovereignty, he divorces it altogether from God’s decree of salvation. In consequence, he comes up with an interpretation of election which is nothing short of nonsense and which indicates that his own Arminian background persists despite his present Reformed affiliation.

There are excellent insights in this book but they are enmeshed in a web of immature and erroneous notions. Whenever a man restricts Christian preaching to limitations which are not explicit or implicit in the biblical text, he only reveals his own prejudices. Miller’s restrictions eliminate the possibility of comprehensive doctrinal, ethical, and biographical sermons which derive their substance from the Scriptures as a whole instead of an isolated passage. His narrowness, evidenced by the presumptuous title of the book, involves him in a pharisaical denunciation of some expert biblical preaching by masters like F. B. Meyer, whom he brands “biblicists.” His argument further loses force when one encounters his neo-orthodox doctrine of the Bible. This book will be read with profit only by those who have powers of discernment and who realize that biblical preaching is best defined by the men who succeed at it week after week in their pulpits.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Lectures For Clergy

Preaching the Christian Year, edited by Howard A. Johnson. Scribner’s. $3.75.

Here is a collection of essays on the theological implications of the major seasonal emphases in the annual Christian calendar, contributed by leading Episcopalians at the behest of Dean Pike, and collected by Canon Johnson. Hughell Fosbroke, Albert Mollegen, Theodore Wedel and others offer, in turn, their thoughts on the Advent, Christmastide, Lent, etc. The book opens with a brief “office” for preachers and closes with lists of recommended reading furnished by each of the authors.

These are not sermons, but lectures, first delivered in series before the Episcopal clergy of the greater New York area. They read, for the most part, like formal treatises written in the modern manner; suggestive, generally progressive rather than traditional in theology. Thus we are reminded that the Advent “centers on the coming of the King, rather than the coming of the Kingdom,” but it also means that “He is always here with creative power and yet ever and again he comes.” In other words, God in Christ is always at work in a sort of existential Advent—today even in a Nietzche or a Bernard Shaw.

The book covers a wide field of interests. Frederick C. Grant, writing on Holy Week, discusses the chronology of the Gospels and the synoptic problem from the viewpoint of higher criticism. Then he says, “The idea of an infallible record is both impossible to maintain and entirely unnecessary from the orthodox viewpoint.” Albert T. Mollegen, writing on Christmastide and the Epiphany, goes into liturgies: “The Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, originally chosen as the Gospel for the third and last Christmas Mass, seems the perfect choice for the Christmas Gospel. It was chosen in the West for a Christmas Gospel before the Advent Season arose so that Christmas began the Church Year.”

To me, the most satisfying essay is that of J. V. Langmead Casserley on Eastertide: “The Resurrection is more profoundly interpreted not as the divine exaltation of Jesus to a status which was not previously his, but rather as a divine affirmation of that status which was always and intrinsically his.” And “(The Resurrection) demands a metaphysical interpretation, but in good metaphysics the reality which demands and receives the metaphysical interpretation is always and necessarily a physical reality.”

Amen!

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Doctrine Of Wrath

The Wrath of the Lamb, by Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, S.P.C.K., London, 1957. $4.00.

This volume provides a clear illustration of the way in which a scholar’s viewpoint toward higher criticism influences his biblical theology. The author’s purpose is to trace the doctrine of the wrath of God throughout the Scriptures. He comes to the task obviously well-equipped with a thorough knowledge of the Greek language as well as a familiarity with all pertinent literature. However, he accepts all of the radical positions of the higher critics regarding the dates and authorship of the various parts of the Bible. His analysis of the biblical position is as follows: The Old Testament contains two contradictory currents—the Deuteronomic school followed by the Chronicler sees the wrath of God as an impersonal process in history, while the earliest writers and the exilic and post-exilic prophets conceive of the wrath as God’s personal reaction against sin. In the Inter-Testamental period these two currents are continued, the Apocalyptists being heirs of the prophetic position, while that of the Chronicler is followed in Maccabees and Philo. In the New Testament, Paul, in keeping with the one stream of thought, also conceives of the wrath of God as an impersonal process in history. To the writers of the Synoptics, God’s wrath is likewise the arrangement which God has made whereby sin brings its own consequences. The Apocalypse carries Paul’s concept of an impersonal wrath to its proper climax, and connects the wrath of God to the cross where God triumphs by accepting suffering rather than by inflicting it.

Dr. Hanson certainly makes a careful study of the biblical material; but, due to his presuppositions, his position is one-sided. According to his viewpoint, the wrath of God is not an emotion or even an attitude of God toward sin. He says that while we must not think of the wrath as a human emotion, surely it is the wrath of God, and the biblical doctrine is one which depicts God as strongly antagonistic toward all that is sinful. The serious implications of the author’s position are revealed in his final chapter where he considers what modern scholars have written on the subject. Here it is that he expresses the basic opposition between his view and the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

HARRY BUIS

Scholarly Treatment

The Mormons, by Thomas F. O’Dea, University of Chicago Press, 1957. $5.00.

This volume was written by a non-Mormon who is an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University in New York. A graduate of Harvard University and holding a doctorate from there, he is able to pursue the subject in scholarly and irenic fashion.

His presentation is an able one, the facts of which were developed after exhaustive research. His control of the primary and secondary source materials is excellent, and the literary quality of the work is good. There are those who will certainly take exception to his conclusion that Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon. This reviewer still entertains the suspicion that Smith was not equipped to write this volume around which Mormonism centers. But it is interesting to observe that if Smith did write the book then the foundation stones of Mormonism crumble instantly. Smith himself claimed that he found this “revelation.” If he did not, he was a liar and to suppose that a valid system of truth could be built upon such a foundation is hard to believe.

For those who are interested in Mormonism as a cult or as an expression of a religious urge, chapter six is invaluable. In this chapter the author discusses the theological foundations of the cult, and he does so brilliantly. The basic tenets of the cult are clearly delineated. The logic and precision with which this has been done is admirable. One need only run the gamut of Morman beliefs, as they are outlined, and he will be able quickly to ascertain wherein the differences lie between his own convictions and those of the Mormon. For those who are evangelical in viewpoint, the unalterable and inescapable conclusion is that Mormonism is a cult. Mormonism denies creation, holds that spirit is matter and that God “himself once was as we are now, and is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.” God is subject to the law of progression. The doctrine of the trinity has deteriorated to a conception of three separate gods. Man was in the beginning with God and thus is eternal. He is of the same race as God and will some day become God. Imputed guilt through Adam’s sin is denied and salvation is obtained by faith plus good works.

This volume is recommended reading for those who are interested also in aspects of Mormonism other than the religious.

HAROLD LINDSELL

“Religion Faces the Atomic Age.” This was the title of a conference called Feb. 2 and 3 by the University of Chicago through its Federated Theological Faculty to “consider comprehensively how the spiritual resources of this country must be mobilized to save us.” It was further stated that though we must meet the Soviet scientific challenge, science “can only offer us a protracted and exhausting armament race. Victory and survival will only come through a deeper understanding of the laws that govern the hearts and minds of men and the practical application of these laws in our national life and our international relations.”

Facing The Right Fears

For this purpose an outstanding array of speakers was gathered from the fields of religion, education, and business. The initial topic considered was “Facing the Fears of the Atomic Age.” Dean of the Federated Theological Faculty, Jerald C. Brauer, explained that it was felt best to build what should follow in the conference upon the “personality sciences.”

Delegates were told bluntly that one of America’s greatest failings today is that she lacks a proper fear of the right things. Dr. Gardiner Murphy, Director of Research of the Menninger Foundation, stated that the first psychological problem is “why apathy, hopelessness, irresponsibility, evasion, business-as-usual, or the most pathetic and trivial toying with momentary escapes or palliatives, should dominate the thought of the Western world.” He defended certain “rational fears” in an “age of potential devastation,” such as fears of smugness, hypocrisy, self-deception, and aimlessness.

Dr. Seward Hiltner, Professor of Pastoral Theology of the Federated Theological Faculty, pronounced our situation “unprecedentedly fearsome” and indicated paralysis in the face of enormity as one reason for our not facing up to the basic fear. “We are like Mickey Mouse—who finds some magic coming to his aid in disposing of the giant.” But if we continue this, “our civilization will perish—not as a society of brave men who tried their best and lost, but as mice, as Mickey Mice whose magic powers failed to appear on schedule.”

The Conflict Of Faiths

The conference next addressed itself to the problem of Communism—“Two Faiths in Conflict.” Dr. Alexander Miller, Associate Professor of Religion at Stanford University, warned against “the oratorical commonplace that the issue hinges on Communist atheism and materialism.… The trouble with Communism is not so much that it is godless, but that it … exalts a false god into the place of God.… Marxism is one modern form of the ancient natural religion … in which the natural powers and dynamisms on which man’s life depends are deified.…” Prof. Miller also cautioned against the “deadly danger” of identifying our enemy with antichrist, “partly because no human being and no human movement achieves such majesty of evil, and partly because it implies too much virtue in ourselves.”

Also speaking on the Christianity-Communism conflict was John Nuveen, president of a Chicago investment firm and former administrator of economic aid in Greece. The uncommitted nations will ultimately “tip the scales one way or the other” in the present world struggle, he said, by way of calling for an increase in economic aid to these countries. But at the same time he warned that foreign aid to a country is “interpreted as an endorsem*nt of the government in power and helps to keep it in power. If it is a good government and bent upon the establishment of the free institutions which have been inspired by Christian principles, then our aid serves the cause of Christianity,” but if otherwise, we are building up explosive pressures that can be utilized by the Communists.

After a session on public education, Dean Brauer spoke of problems in educating ministers for the atomic age, noting that in this time of great need many men are leaving the ministry. He pleaded for a rigorous search “in the past and present resources of Christian faith for new goals, methods, and directions.”

Religion And Materialism

Next considered was religion’s role in the world of business. Edward C. Logelin, vice-president of United States Steel Corporation, spoke of ways in which religion can help the businessman, while Sears Roebuck Vice-President James C. Worthy pointed out dangers inherent in the secularization of business morality. Blame for this, said Worthy, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, is to be laid more at the feet of the preachers and theologians “who have failed to make explicit the relevance of religious faith to business practice.” One result is the concept of self-interest as the generally accepted theory of business motivation. “Communists and socialists play up the symbols of human welfare but neglect, and often violate, the reality! The American business system emphasizes the symbols of self-interest, but actually operates with substantial concern for human values.”

Rescuing Religious Values

The final session, at the Palmer House, addressed itself to the general theme of the conference, religion in the atomic age. Dean Brauer denounced the misuse of religion simply to guarantee our safety. Rather it should provide motivation for seeking out God’s will in this world. Lawrence A. Kimpton, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, confessed that “we are sore afraid, and we know not where to turn.… The purpose of the conference we are concluding this evening is to suggest that we turn to the great resources of our religion.”

Distinguished chemistry professor Harold C. Urey noted that the battle between science and religion saw the former the complete victor. This revolution of the past century is permanent, he averred, and past customs and beliefs will not return. Through science man today “possesses the most magnificent view of a marvelous universe that he has ever had. Religions have attempted to do this in the past and their success has been anything but equal to that of modern science in this field.” However, Prof. Urey confessed that science tends to lead to a purely materialistic view of life, offering little to support a belief in the dignity of man; in this field religion has always made its great contribution. Today religion is challenged to maintain the old values, i.e. “give us a sound moral life and noble aspirations.”

Giving the concluding address in stirring fashion was Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati mayor and former president of the National Council of Churches. Concerning the cold war, he urged the clergy “to utilize all the psychological insight expressed in our ideal of the democratic process to proceed in ways that may get our opponents to move.” Secondly, he continued, the same means are to be used to persuade our own people to move. Giving mankind a consciousness and belief in values will be a long struggle and we must exercise much patience. The problem, he concluded, is the application of religion in an evil world, and ministers must help through continued counsel and guidance in preaching and teaching.

Christian Ambiguity

The Federated Theological Faculty is to be commended for recognizing the danger of the hour and for seeking solution in the area of spiritual principles. Yet it would be a bold spirit who would claim that the solution or solutions had been found through this “comprehensive” consideration of “how the spiritual resources of this country must be mobilized to save us.” Indeed, it seemed that the spirit of tentativeness stalked the conference. Chancellor Kimpton declared, “We have not sought the moral and spiritual answers nor do we have them in our time of great need.” Dr. Murphy counseled an active program against the threats of today but did not suggest its content, leaving his listeners with hope in a slowly maturing psychology. But would it be too slow for this age? Courage to face the danger was Dr. Hiltner’s counsel, but others were left the task of charting a pathway of action. In the final session Prof. Urey simply presented the problem religion faces, as he sees it, and wished the delegates success in their search for a solution. Mr. Taft, who conceived the convention as being more in the nature of a tribute to the Federated Theological Faculty, counseled psychological insight and patience.

If one looked for a serving of theological issues in this conference on religion, barrenness was his main fare. Dr. Murphy seemed to be chiding Protestant liberalism when he referred to “Main Street Christianity being responsible for having blunted and shallowed the normal capacity for fear as well as righteous indignation against injustice.” He also set himself against those liberals and humanitarians who say that the control of the atom is the only problem, forgetting the more basic problem of human nature. But then we find him employing an easy grouping of Gautama, Socrates, and Jesus, all of whom in their supreme moments grasped a point of wisdom for which Dr. Murphy was contending. Dogma, he said, in answer to a question, can be useful in disarming fears and is workable in some periods for some people, but tends to become the more precarious the longer it is held. In a similar vein Prof. Urey called for a religion unencumbered with “illogical dogmas.”

Dr. Hiltner called for an inquiry into our faith, while Dean Brauer asked for a search into the Christian faith, past and present, for new goals. It is possible, he contended, for a concentration on the present to rob the student of his rich heritage and even “the very ground of faith itself.” What this ground is or what elements Dr. Brauer would take from the history of the faith, he did not say. Likewise, Mr. Taft, in calling for theology and not just ethics, offered no elaboration as to the kind of theology needed.

The old liberal optimism was, of course, by the nature of the occasion somewhat subdued. There was some disagreement as to whether this is actually the most dangerous period of our history. What pacifist element there was present seemed confined to the delegates. None of the speakers questioned appeared ready to propose massive resistance through nonviolent means, but rather seemed relieved that we still were able to manage a balance of power.

Neglect Of The Vertical

So often the thought seemed pitched upon a horizontal plane with only the occasional breakthrough to the vertical. For example, with all that was said about fear, no mention was made of the fear of God. Again, Dr. Hiltner’s proposed source for courage was in mutual understanding and acceptance, his reference to God coming almost as an afterthought.

The evolutionary hypothesis was generally accepted, Murphy and Urey assuming this, the latter, albeit, pointing out it was not proven. Dr. Urey asked for a religion “without the miraculous.” He tended to view science and religion competitively, and seemed now to be asking that religion put itself on a naturalist plane along with science.

However, Mr. Taft emphasized that man is more than a machine, and moreover, is possessed of evil and perversity. This note was struck on other occasions in the conference, but there was lacking a prophetic call for repentance and conversion. Dr. Theodore Gill, an editor of The Christian Century, spoke of the need for evangelism, but a different sort from that generally seen in this country today. Mr. Taft asked for less emphasis on personal salvation and more guidance toward the “city with foundations.” He did not deal with the imposing problem of making nations Christian apart from the individuals who compose them.

Most all of this would appear to reduce to one question: What place was given to Jesus Christ in this conference? So far as the writer observed, the cross was mentioned once, obliquely, the resurrection not at all, and the “second coming” once in a humorous vein. Of the living Word there was nothing. The divinity of Christ was not mentioned, but the divinity of man was more than once—perhaps not too surprising a turn in view of the fact that one of the Federated Schools is Unitarian.

Mr. Taft called for more conferences and the expression of all viewpoints for thought and discussion rather than a prepared pathway to a preconceived conclusion. Many viewpoints, indeed, never found voice at this conference. Dean Brauer directed his challenge to preach the faith to both churches and synagogues. Elsewhere he quoted Augustine’s exalted declaration that we are restless until we find our rest in God. Would to God the Dean had proclaimed Augustine’s entrance to this rest—through Jesus Christ the risen Lord!

This special report was prepared by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S newest staff affiliate, Editorial Associate Frank Farrell. The Rev. Mr. Farrell, a Baptist clergyman, holds the B.A. degree from Wheaton College, B.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. from New College, Edinburgh.

New Lutheran Center

A new half-million-dollar center, the largest Lutheran facility of its kind in America, has been opened in Minneapolis by the Lutheran Welfare Society of Minnesota.

The center houses the society’s staff of 51 social workers, chaplains and clerical workers and is believed to be the first office building erected by a private child welfare agency in Minnesota.

Lutheran Welfare is the official child welfare and chaplaincy agency of seven of the eight synods of the National Lutheran Council in Minnesota.

Latin America

Crusade Highlights

Highlights of Evangelist Billy Graham’s crusades in the Caribbean islands:

JAMAICA—Graham spoke at two evening rallies, climaxing two weeks of meetings led by associate evangelist Leighton Ford. Some 30,000 heard Graham the first night, another 20,000 were turned away, and thousands raised hands indicative of their desire to receive Christ as Saviour. It was the largest crowd ever assembled in Jamaican history. There were 1600 decisions the second night out of 25,000 in attendance.

PUERTO RICO—Even greater crowds turned out for the evangelist in San Juan. A Monday evening assembly of 40,000 withstood pelting rain to listen to Graham’s message. The response at the invitation was described as “overwhelming.”

BARBADOS—Attendances continued to skyrocket as 60,000, more than a fourth of the island’s population, jammed a crusade meeting held on the grounds of a race track. Decisions for Christ numbered 1180.

TRINIDAD—Crowds jammed another race track at Port of Spain to hear Graham say that mankind is engaged in suicide. He said that the H-bomb and earth satellites prove his point.

Junta Hailed

Venezuela’s five-man ruling junta received a standing ovation at their first joint public appearance in a Roman Catholic cathedral in Caracas.

They attended a solemn memorial Mass for victims of the January revolution which overthrew the government of Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.

El Pueblo, Roman Catholic daily in Buenos Aires, praised the dictator’s downfall and the restoration of Venezuela “to the community of free nations.”

Worship In The Clouds

A 17-year-old son of Plymouth Brethren missionaries from Canada was one of a trio of Argentinian mountain climbers who reached the 22,539-foot top of Ojos del Salado, second highest peak in the hemisphere. (The tallest, according to the National Geographic Society, is South America’s Mount Aconcagua, 22,834 feet.)

Said young Daniel Powell:

“We felt very small up there, and realized as never before the greatness of God. I carried my New Testament with me, and God’s Word was certainly a source of comfort and strength in the very difficult days we had to face. During the last lap, when we had to sit down and rest after every eight or ten paces, I had wonderful times of prayer and felt the Lord was very close.”

The mountain lies on the Argentina-Chile border.

—A.C.

Europe

Cinema Parson

The “Cinema Parson of London” observed his 76th birthday with some advice about reconciling religion in the science age.

Said the Rev. Thomas Tiplady, who attracted crowds at his London mission by using moving pictures as “Christ used parables”:

“The scientists are revealing God to man today, the stars, the tiny atoms. Take a speck of dust and think of the immense bustling power in everything—in the ocean and the air. But ask a scientist about religion and he will say he is concerned with pure fact. People fear atomic power, are bewildered and do not know what lies ahead. But they ought to be reconciling the spiritual with the material—all truth is one.”

Cullman, Barth, Pius Xii

Dialogue between Professor Karl Barth and Dr. O. Cullman on Cullman’s return to Basel, France, from a visit to Pope Pius XII at the pontiff’s invitation:

“What did you tell the Pope?” asked Barth.

“The Pope told me that ‘I should be very happy to be the colleague of the greatest dogmatist since St. Thomas,” answered Cullman, who is professor of New Testament at the University of Basel.

To which Barth replied, “If this is the meaning of the Holy Father, I begin to believe the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope.”

Wharf Revival

In Norway, the herring arrived late. On the shore waited 30,000 fishermen with the largest fleet of fishing vessels ever assembled there.

The Home Seamen Mission saw its opportunity and arranged evening services for the idle fishermen. Evangelical workers fanned out over the dock area and made personal contacts.

The result was reported revival on at last two vessels, Eliezer IV and Eliezer V. Fishers of men had netted eternal gain for the Kingdom of God.

—T.B.

Africa

A First For Africa

Guarantees of human rights were the immediate concerns of 200 delegates in the first meeting of African Protestant minds, the All-Africa Church Conference. The National Christian Council of Nigeria sponsored the gathering at Ibadan.

Representatives of 21 African countries adopted a resolution urging that guarantees set forth in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights be written into “any new constitutions for existing and emergent states” on the continent.

Middle East

Israeli Anniversary

A series of cultural events starting in April will mark Israel’s tenth anniversary.

Among the highlights are a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah near the Cave of Elijah in Haifa on June 28 and the Sea of Galilee Festival on October 1.

The Israel Government Tourist Office says tourist traffic to the country was up about 25 per cent for the last half of 1957 as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.

Alarm In Lebanon

A wave of anti-Christian sentiment in Egypt caused alarm in Lebanon. Authorities feared an outbreak of Christian-Moslem disturbances might result.

A debate in the Egyptian parliament described Lebanon as a “hotbed of Christian intrigue against the Arabs since the Crusades.” Deputies charged Christians in Lebanon with being “instruments of Western imperialism against Arab nationalism.”

The Lebanese government protested the criticism, labelling it an organized and officially-approved campaign backed by press and radio to provoke religious strife in Lebanon.

Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East which has a Christian majority. A little more than half of the nation’s 1,500,000 residents are Christians. The remainder are mostly Moslems and some Jews.

India

Indian Evangelicalism

Expanding vision characterizes evangelical life in India.

A concentration of evangelicals is found in Bombay State, Madhya Pradesh, and surrounding areas. The region lies geographically between the United Church of South India and the Church of North India. While groups of evangelicals exist in both these church unions, the stronger though smaller evangelistic bodies work out of the central region.

Bible schools spearhead the advance of conservative Christianity in India. Outstanding are the South India Bible Institute of World Gospel Mission at Bangarapet and the Oriental Missionary Society school at Allahabad.

Denominational missions maintain a number of other top evangelical educational institutions. Union Biblical Seminary at Yeotmal was founded 20 years ago by the Free Methodist Church. The seminary now represents a co-operative endeavor involving 16 organizations. Dr. and Mrs. Harold B. Kuhn of Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, recently completed a term there as guest professors at the seminary.

Said Dr. Kuhn, “The seminary is contributing to nearly all the evangelical bodies and agencies in India. It not only expresses the growing self-consciousness of mission which these agencies feel, but it is making an active contribution toward implementation of that vision through the training of young men and women of deep dedication to the cause of decisive evangelism.”

Evangelicals in India are well aware of the need for cooperation. The need is largely met within the Evangelical Fellowship of India, formed out of a number of active missionary groups. I. Ben Wati is executive secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship affiliate.

Last month EFI held its seventh annual conference on the campus of Voorhees College at Vellore, where the organization’s vitality evoked this reaction from the Rev. Frederick Ferris, EFI’s Overseas Secretary:

“I did not realize that you were doing such a tremendous work here in India.… I did not realize you had anything like this here. I had not expected it.”

EFI has a membership of 979 individuals from 52 missions. Registered conference delegates numbered 271, while some meetings drew record attendance of more than a thousand. Dr. Akbar A. Haqq directed evening evangelistic services that drew 200 inquirers for salvation.

“The spirit of co-operation which I have seen in Vellore has impressed me more than anything,” said a representative from the north.

“I am going back with a new vision of what it means to witness,” said another.

And still another: “I woke up to the fact that the day for the church in India has come. It is our job, and we can do it, and we will.”

Not organization, but fellowship, characterizes and shapes EFI. Not separation, but permeation, is her goal, that the first and foremost avowed purpose of her existence, spiritual revival in the church, may become a reality throughout India.

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Robert W. Ross And Sherwood E. Wirt*

“The gayest, lightest-hearted city of the Western continent.” So Will Irwin once characterized San Francisco; and so it is: a city whose magic is inescapable. Chinatown, the cable cars, Fishermen’s Wharf, the Embarcadero, the bridges, the Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, Civic Center, Union Square—where else than in San Francisco?

From the days when the first prospects sailed into her matchless harbor, San Francisco has attracted millions of visitors by her charm. To American troops stationed far across the Pacific in two World Wars, the very name “San Francisco” conjured up visions of all that seemed worth staying alive for. Joseph Henry Jackson speaks of “My San Francisco” as “a great and greatly loved city” whose “first response is always ‘Yes!’” (My San Francisco, Crowell Publishing Co., 1953).

Diamond In A Turquoise Setting

The city’s secret is mysterious. Part of her quaintness is due, of course, to the unique geographical location on the rugged tip of the peninsula. Seen from the air, she appears a glistening spiderweb, with her network of bridges and the numberless Mediterranean-type houses trimming the hills like beads on a string. Yet the true source of San Francisco’s magic lies not with her setting but with her people. Western, cosmopolitan, easy-going, pleasure-loving and hospitable, they have given her the reputation of “the city that knows how.” A never-ending procession of conventions, sports shows, stock shows and commercial exhibits has enhanced her fame as the place to go in the twentieth century. Those seeking lighter entertainment have no trouble finding it amid the nostalgic memories of the Barbary Coast.

Yes, a wonderful city, this diamond in a turquoise setting; yet there is an air about her that troubles many thoughtful people. It is not that she is friendly to the point of brashness, or aggressive to the point of co*ckiness. Any western city has these characteristics. What is distressing about San Francisco is that in her swagger she seems to have shaken off God. It is easy to sin in San Francisco, but it is not so easy to get rid of one’s sins. The fact that there is a respectable quota of churches, ecclesiastical institutions and clergymen within her limits makes no difference; they are politely ignored, for they are not in on the secret. One of the brighter stars in the church’s firmament, Francis of Assisi, gave his name to the city, and his followers built a mission on the site, but such facts are inconsiderable today.

If there is any city in the United States that is a candidate for revival, that city is San Francisco. It would be hard to find in any American metropolis such a spiritual vacuum. The evangelical Christian community is microscopic amidst the population of 800,000. More significant is the church’s sense of isolation, for the Christians of San Francisco know full well that they do not have the ear of the community. Among the Protestant clergy there has yet to emerge a single strong, prophetic voice. Nineveh had her Jonah, and Florence had her Savonarola, but San Francisco has her restaurants. The Christian people of San Francisco by themselves are an isolated pocket, struggling sometimes valiantly, sometimes in deep discouragement, against heavy odds. They draw for strength on the suburban cities fringing the bay, where the church life is more vigorous. Yet there is no city in the Bay Area which has been able to overcome the deadly fall-out from “the city that knows how,” and the Bay Area has been properly classified as “the graveyard of evangelism.”

History Tells Why

We can find some of the reasons for this perplexing situation in history. It was not the Franciscan friars who built San Francisco; it was the forty-niners. The gold-crazed men and women who fought, gambled and drank their way west made San Francisco their headquarters. The lawlessness and crime that raged unchecked through the city’s streets in the decades that followed have never been equalled in the memory of modern man in times of peace. The Kasbah of Algiers, the Shanghai waterfront, the back streets of Constantinople were as tot-lots compared to San Francisco in the days of the vigilantes.

In 1906, when earthquake and fire left the city devastated, the pulpits over the land proclaimed that a just God was now giving San Francisco the Sodom-and-Gomorrah treatment she so richly deserved. The stricken natives, not being theologically-minded to begin with, showed no humiliation whatever. There may have been ashes, but there was no sackcloth. They proceeded to build a bigger, brassier city than ever, with a bigger brassier Barbary Coast. The poet Vachel Lindsay took a look at the new city, boasting its magnificent recovery at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and shook his head in a poem entitled, “The City That Would Not Repent” (General William Booth and Other Poems, Macmillan, 1924, p. 8):

God loves this rebel city,

Loves foemen brisk and game.

Tho’, just to please the angels,

He may send down his flame.

But no flame has come as yet. Today the new city stands before the world a gleaming masterpiece of human achievement, with all the sophistication, the loveliness, the abandon, and the superstitious paganism of ancient Athens. Now a modern-day Paul of Tarsus, the evangelist Billy Graham, is proposing to come to Nob Hill as Paul once went to Mars Hill. How will he be greeted? What will the cosmopolite San Franciscan of 1958 do with the message of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection? Can San Francisco be reached? Is it possible for the Number One Alcoholic City of the United States to experience a revival?

Only in the counsels of God are such questions to be answered. A spiritual awakening in San Francisco could be electric in its effect, for as does no other city, San Francisco speaks for the West. The birthplace of the United Nations is also the cornerstone of the Pacific Coast. That is a part of the city’s secret. It is true, furthermore, that while every city has its problems, there is no city that is beyond the reach of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Where there is life there is hope, and there is much in San Francisco to give cause for hope.

If the Christian forces of the city can be welded into an instrument fit for the Master’s use, and if in the surrounding area and all along the Pacific Coast a strong band of intercessors can be rallied, the spiritual fire that America has so long awaited may touch her western shore, and the visitation of the Holy Spirit may begin in San Francisco next May. A tiny band of Christians in Jerusalem faced odds that American Christians can scarcely appreciate; yet the revival came. “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jer. 32:27).

It is time to begin praying for San Francisco.

Honored In Death

The evening of February 1, Lieutenant Commander Peter Bol cancelled commercial airline reservations for a flight from California to Washington, where he was to receive the “Naval Chaplain of the Year” award from the Reserve Officers Association.

Instead he boarded a Military Air Transport Service plane heading east. The plane collided with another military aircraft over Norwalk, California, killing 48 persons. Chaplain Bol was among the victims.

Only days before, he had told CHRISTIANITY TODAY of his 15-month tour as the first Protestant chaplain ever assigned to the Antarctic.

“When men faced known hazards or dangers,” he said, “they responded in greater numbers and with greater interest and participation. Piety was evident among all of the men when we conducted memorial services. Life was valued more than normally in typical military operations.”

The chaplain said the lowest recorded temperature he experienced in Little America was 78 degrees below zero.

“Our work was unique in some aspects,” he said, “but for the most part it was merely the extension of the church to serve even men isolated in a remote region.”

Bol was a minister of the Reformed Church in America and a native of Grand Haven, Michigan. He is survived by his wife and a young son. He entered the chaplaincy in 1945.

Theological Fund

An International Missionary Council committee of 24 members is expected to meet by summer to plan distribution of a $4,000,000 theological education fund.

The fund got its start with a grant of $2,000,000, unprecedented in the history of Christian missions, from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The amount is to be matched by gifts during the next five years from eight United States missions boards to aid theological schools in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Announcement of the fund’s beginning was made at the IMC Assembly at Ghana, where the committee of 24 was established. Some delegates voiced concern over American predominance and dominance because 12 committee members are Americans.

Dr. Charles W. Ranson of London and New York was elected executive director of the fund. Among those on the committee are Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, president of Union Theological Seminary, and Dr. John A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Both Presidents Mackay and Van Dusen denied that there was any intention to give Americans the upper hand in supervising the distribution of the money. Actual administration of the Rockefeller grant is handled by Sealantic Fund, Inc.

Was apprehension over aggressive American participation due to earlier ecumenical emphasis on national leadership in missions which seemed now to be violated, or to fear of ultimate American control of thought and action through the maneuvering of large gifts and theological education? Some took this view, but President Mackay was inclined to a third view—that it is simply a reflection of anti-American sentiment inherited from the drift of world political sentiment over wide sections of the globe.

President Van Dusen acknowledged that there was some feeling among some delegates that the Americans had “planned it that way.”

“Of course there was no such plan,” said Van Dusen. “Here you are dealing with the subtleties of human psychology.”

Some 20 theological schools will receive direct grants from the fund and another 160 will receive textbook aid.

The eight boards which are to match the $2,000,000 put up by Rockefeller are: the Division of World Missions and the Woman’s Division of Christian Service of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church; the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.; the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society; the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church; the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational); the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church; the United Christian Missionary Society (Disciples); and the Board of International Missions of the Evangelical and Reformed Church.

Film Exports Scored

Two Methodist groups meeting at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, called for more careful selection of American films sent overseas.

Certain film exports now carry “a detrimental influence on young people and family life” and give a false picture of American standards, according to resolutions adopted by the Methodist Board of Missions and the Methodist Woman’s Division of Christian Service.

Both organizations urged more pictures which would “portray better aspects of family life and higher standards of morality.”

The annual meeting of the Board of Missions commissioned 60 new missionaries. A report stated that Methodists gave a record $25,779,279 in 1957 for the denomination’s home and overseas missionary work. There are in the United States some 9,000,000 Methodists.

People: Words And Events

Marks Anniversary—Dr. Richard S. Beal completes his 40th year as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Tucson, Arizona, this month.

“Breach” Condemned—Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned artificial insemination by a donor other than the husband as a “breach of marriage.”

Undoubtedly Spirited—The Indiana University Alumni Club of Los Angeles held its first 1958 meeting in the Brown Bottle of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co.

Bishop Consecrated—The Rt. Rev. Jose Guadalupe was elevated to bishop in the first service of consecration for a Protestant Episcopal Bishop ever conducted in Mexico.

Advice to Pastors—To avoid a nervous breakdown, enlist the aid of your wife. That is what a Denver psychiatrist, Dr. Bradford Murphey, told members of the city’s ministerial alliance. “She knows more about you than you do, and she knows it sooner,” said Murphey.

Digest—Dr. Roland Q. Leavell, President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was reported recovering from a cerebral thrombosis.… Wheaton College will offer a Summer Institute of Missions for the second consecutive year, June 21-July 18.… The office of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Commission for World Evangelical Fellowship will be moved from Boston to Chicago April 1.… Theme of the 25 th Brotherhood Week February 16–23 is “The Family of Man.” … The Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, California, leased two railroad coaches for use as a Sunday School.… Baptist churches in 105 countries now have total memberships of 22,068, 058, a gain of 1,014, 165 in a year. The Churches of Christ will establish a new liberal arts college at Parkersburg, West Virginia.… The Wycliffe Bible Translators named their newest jungle base in Ecuador after the founder of The Navigators, Dawson Trotman.… Catholics and Jews tend to have most of their numbers in large cities, while Protestants still have the majority of their people in rural areas, a NCC study reveals.

Catholics Balking?

United States Roman Catholics came in for wrist-slaps from two members of their hierarchy.

Bishop John J. Wright of Worcester, Massachusetts, said there is “indifference to the Pope’s social teachings” whenever they run counter to “personal, partisan or national prejudices.”

Wright asserted that the American Catholic laity has “lagged far behind” the Holy See in recognizing the need for “international human community” and its “worldwide organization.”

In Minneapolis, Auxiliary Bishop-elect Leonard P. Cowley of St. Paul said Roman Catholic laymen are not “thinking with the Church enough.”

Catholic young men “can’t see why they can’t be best men in Protestant weddings, and people complain because certain movies are banned to them. They just aren’t thinking with the church,” he said.

“This doesn’t mean being submissive in all matters,” Crowley added, “but it does mean submission when official Church doctrine is involved.”

Editors Act

Some 86 editors attending the 10th annual Evangelical Press Association convention in Washington moved to arrest the current rash of obscene literature.

Delegates resolved to “inform” readers of their 110 member publications and to suggest “proper action” that may be taken against p*rnography at local levels.

Mel Larson, editor of the Evangelical Beacon and Evangelist, was elected president of EPA.

The association cited Moody Monthly as the outstanding evangelical periodical of the year.

As a special project for 1958, EPA voted to support missionary literature through a campaign to alert the reading public of the needs of such literature and its importance.

Building Gains

The campus of the proposed Alaska Methodist College in Anchorage will be dedicated during the week of June 29. The cost of the first church-related, four-year liberal arts college in Alaska is estimated at $5,000,000.…

The Baptist Sunday School Board plans the early construction of a $4,000,000 building, two blocks long, to house its Nashville, Tennessee, operations departments.…

The Moody Foundation granted the First Methodist Church of Galveston, Texas,$2,500,000 to erect a new building. The church eventually is to receive one-fourth of the estate of the late Mrs. Libbie Shearn Moody, wife of the late W. L. Moody, Jr., Galveston financier.…

Construction of the proposed $1,550,000 Bethel Methodist Home for the Aged began in Ossining, New York.… Work on another building for the aged, this one a $550,000 structure in Denver to be operated by the City’s Association of Christian Churches, also was to get underway this month.… The Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Florida plans a $500,000 expansion program.