Page 5690 – Christianity Today (2024)

The church in China is unknown to Westerners. Visitors on conducted tours see closed church buildings with the crosses removed. In Peking they may go to a Protestant church service, but diplomats and tourists, with only a handful of Chinese worshipers, attend. Sometimes visitors meet Bishop K. H. Ting, a leader of the government-sponsored “Three Self Movement,” which disappeared during the cultural revolution. Bishop Ting seems to speak for the government on Christian affairs. He always reminds Western visitors of the evils of missionary imperialism, and stresses that Christians are not interested in using church buildings of the past. He speaks pessimistically about the future of Christianity in China. He expects the church to decrease in numbers. Yet he says that there are groups of Christians meeting in Chekiang, and insists that there is no shortage of Bibles.

After such tours, foreign visitors often write enthusiastic reports about the new Chinese society. A Christian who had been teaching for many years in a Chinese university told me that many reports written by foreign visitors are translated from English and published in the Peking newspapers. He and many of his friends are extremely critical of those reports. They would agree with a senior China watcher who said, “There are two Chinas: the mythological China and the real.” To understand the real China and the true situation of the church there, we must turn to those who have lived in its society and who have experienced the hardships through which the Chinese church has passed during the last twenty-five years.

There are Christians in China who continue to proclaim the Gospel. Their faithful witness presents a challenge to the church throughout the world. Although the church in China has no buildings, no set time of worship, no paid ministers, and none of our ecclesiastical organizations, it possesses a spiritual vitality often lacking among Christians who have not suffered for their faith.

There are three sources of current information about the church in China. The most detailed descriptions are from people who have lived in China and have recently come to Hong Kong. A second source consists of people who visit friends and relatives on the mainland. During the 1977 Chinese New Year holiday 130,000 residents from Hong Kong crossed the border into China to visit their families. Third, there are letters from Christians in China to their friends in Hong Kong. Since the 1976 arrest of the four radical political leaders, the atmosphere in China seems more relaxed and Christians are writing more freely.

Conditions vary greatly throughout China. In some areas there are few Christians and little opportunity for fellowship with other believers. A couple from such an area told me of frequent interrogation and constant surveillance, which made it difficult to meet with other Christians. But they know of other Christians in their area and spoke highly of one brother who had witnessed boldly and suffered greatly. These Christians admit that material conditions have improved since the Revolution. But the mental sufferings since then have been great.

I know a Christian woman who along with her husband was able to fellowship with only one other Christian family. She told me of her sorrow during the cultural revolution when the authorities seized her books, including her Bible. Later many of the books were returned—but not the Bible. It was regarded as “superstition.” Too late she realized that she had memorized only the twenty-third Psalm. But in spite of great pressure she maintained her faith. When she was about to leave the mainland, officials asked if her thinking had changed. She replied, “If I said yes, then I would be untrue to myself and untrue to you.”

Yet, I have met Christians from several districts where the church seems much stronger and where small house meetings are more common.

On special occasions large numbers of Christians gather secretly to study the Scriptures and worship the risen Lord. A resident of Hong Kong with a very large family still in China went to visit his relatives, almost all of them Christians. After spending some days with them he was detained for questioning. But when he returned to Hong Kong he praised God for the working of the Holy Spirit in the district he had visited. Last year many people were baptized there and large numbers of young people were seeking Christ. Young people are warned that it is not enough just to express belief in the Christian message; they must be prepared to count the cost of discipleship and live a life of obedience and submission to the Saviour. Although the times and places of meetings are constantly shifted, from time to time leaders are arrested and sent to labor camps. Recently, a large group had been caught meeting. All of them were sent to have their thinking corrected by hard labor. On another occasion people at a large meeting strongly sensed the presence of the Spirit of God and the love of Christ. At the end of the meeting five men rose to their feet and announced that they had been sent to make arrests. But they had been so moved by the meeting that they too wanted to believe. They were told to kneel and confess their sins and receive the gift of salvation in Christ. For several hours I listened to stories of courageous witness and of answers to prayer as people were healed and delivered from attacks of evil spirits. Here, I thought, is a church much like that of the first century. I remembered how the early church after a time of persecution was built up. And to commemorate the Saviour’s death, young Christians often will get up in the middle of the night to meet secretly around the table of the Lord.

Many Christians from a particular area are in prison or labor camps. A Christian woman has a brother-in-law who has been in a labor camp for many years; his thinking had not changed. To someone who sympathized with her, she said, “Do not be sorry. How else could the people in the labor camp hear about the Lord Jesus?” I must emphasize that those who are arrested are not charged with being Christians. According to the constitution there is freedom of religion. People are free to believe or not to believe. They are free to have a personal faith and free to attack the faith of others. But in practice Christians are not free to propagate their faith, which the government regards as a superstition. Since the holding of illegal meetings is strictly forbidden, those who are caught taking part in an illegal gathering are accused of being reactionary and anti-revolutionary. Many people who come from known Christian families find themselves on a blacklist and are discriminated against in many ways. Despite the hardships and dangers of a courageous Christian witness, the church continues to grow. When a Christian woman died, about 1,000 people attended her funeral. Authorities hesitate to interfere with funeral services, so the dead woman’s faith in Jesus could be proclaimed and the risen Saviour praised.

Shortly before my wife and I left Hong Kong a young man who had formerly served as a red guard described how he had come to know Christ. He had traveled to Peking and other parts of China during the cultural revolution. Although he had come from a Christian family, only when he returned to the city after a period of work in the country did he become a Christian. His home town has more freedom than in other places, and a number of groups meet regularly. With thousands of Christians in that city, there will be a group meeting in some home almost every evening. The elderly have little difficulty when they worship in small family groups. Young people have more of a problem. Some young Christians have been arrested and shipped to labor camps for short periods. But the Christians in that city are better organized than in most areas. Young people are divided into district groups and attend leadership-training sessions. They usually do not take Bibles to such meetings, since an official interruption would endanger their copies of the Scriptures. Before the meeting, the leader will write out the passage to be studied and make carbon copies. Thus after the study of each book of the Bible every person has his own handwritten copy. What is happening in that city may be happening on a smaller scale in other places. A man from a city some distance away from that young man’s home visited him and saw his Bible. Immediately he asked if he was a Christian. Hearing that he was, the visitor confessed that he too believed and held a meeting in his home.

Faith is often spread by reports of people being healed in answer to prayer. Once when a member of a Christian family was sick a large group of Christians gathered to pray. They were interrupted by Communist officials who asked them what they were doing and who told them that it was illegal to have such a gathering. They ordered the group to disperse. One of the officials, who had arrested a number of Christians, inquired further into their activities. On being told that in time of trouble or sickness Christians prayed for each other, he asked if they would be willing to pray for him. He had cancer. The Christians agreed. The official was healed and converted. Later he was arrested.

A young Christian man from another city described how difficult it was to have regular meetings. Yet he had a broad knowledge of the Scriptures. When I asked him how he knew the Bible so well, he told me of visits to other Christian homes to study the Bible with fellow believers. Christians in that particular city love and support each other. Although there was no organized church, believers tithed their money and were always ready to help needy Christians.

When Chinese Christians visit their mainland relatives, they find it difficult to contact Christians outside their immediate circle of family and friends. Some people can visit their relatives’ homes. Others, whose family members live in areas closed to visitors, have to meet their relatives in hotels. One of our friends visited Christian relatives who had suffered much during the cultural revolution. She was warned not to speak freely in the hotel room and to avoid any sensitive matters when the children were present. Visitors must realize that when they talk to people other than their own families those persons will probably be questioned later. Christians often take with them one or two copies of the Bible and perhaps a book such as Streams in the Desert, which is in much demand. Usually customs officials will alllow people to pass with one or two Bibles, but an elderly Chinese woman had her Bible thrown to the ground and described as superstition.

Although the message of the Gospel is carried by Christian radio broadcasts, it is impossible to estimate how many people are able to listen. A Christian was encouraged to meet a girl on a train who said she had become a Christian through listening to a broadcast. Another visitor learned of a family of new Christians who were being strengthened through Christian broadcasts.

During the last few months letters from Christians to friends in Hong Kong have contained more references to their faith than in the past. A young woman wrote: “My time for studying is very limited. I hope you will pray for me and ask the Lord to give me intelligence and wisdom, also to open my heart to understand his Word. It is very precious and we should carefully study it in order to have understanding.” An old man, rejoicing in the Lord, closed his letter with these words: “Whether old or young, the most important thing is to be God’s servant and carry out his will throughout one’s life. No matter at what time or in what place, we must always be prepared to meet God.”

No one knows how many Christians there are in China today, but we have ample evidence to make us confident that scattered in many parts of that land are small groups of Christians who worship the living Lord. We can learn new lessons of faith from Christians in China and we are responsible to take part in a ministry of intercession. “Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth” (Isa. 62:6–7).

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

A Seminary That Changed History

STUDENT: I can’t outline what you say.

TEACHER: Life and thought and conversation seldom conform to an outline.

STUDENT: But that makes it hard to prepare for the exam.

TEACHER: What exam?

STUDENT: The one at the end of your course.

TEACHER: You’ll be taking my exams the rest of your life.

STUDENT: I don’t understand a lot of what you’re teaching us.

TEACHER: You won’t for three years.

STUDENT: That’s the whole course.

TEACHER: No, it’s only the beginning of the course.

STUDENT: Do you have any idea what my class standing will be?

TEACHER: You’ll fail the course, along with the rest. But then all of you will turn the world upside down. Except one.

STUDENT: When we’ve finished, will we know as much as the Pharisees?

TEACHER: No, you won’t know as much, but you’ll be changed. Do you want to be changed?

STUDENT: I think so. Is your teaching relevant?

TEACHER: Is it true?

STUDENT: You seem to throw questions back at me instead of answering them.

TEACHER: That’s because the answers are in you, not in me.

STUDENT: Will we see you in class tomorrow?

TEACHER: The class continues at supper and the campfire tonight. Did you think I only taught words?

STUDENT: Is there an assignment?

TEACHER: Yes, help me catch some fish for supper.

EUTYCHUS VIII

A Question Of Volume

I note with amused interest your issue of September 9, wherein Wesley Pippert of UPI, in his article “Viewing the Family From the Oval Office,” reports that I “boisterously” asked President Carter “if it is true that although he is monogamous, he never held anything against staff members who were promiscuous.”

I will forgive Pippert the split infinitive (!) “boisterously asked,” because by striking contrast to the misleading report of the Washington Post, he has correctly reported that it was White House “staff members attending the news conference (who) applauded” President Carter’s statement.… Actually my question was: “Mr. President, Panax Newspapers has a tape-recorded interview with Dr. Peter Bourne (a top Carter aide) that while you are monogamous, you are tolerant of the sexual promiscuity within the White House staff. Is Dr. Bourne right or wrong?”

Panax Newspapers, for whom I now edit the supplement Washington Weekly, had reported Dr. Bourne’s tape-recorded and undeniably newsworthy statement—which The New York Times tried to discredit, but which the President himself eventually verified.…

Amidst the laughter, the President, having evaded the most critical aspect of my question, sought rather obviously to move rapidly to another question—as if he were Lot and I were Sodom. So I felt obliged to exercise the reporter’s right to one followup question, which, given the laughter and the President’s evasion course, seemed to require that I shift my baritone into overdrive. I cannot objectively evaluate my own manner, which Pippert evaluates as “boisterous.” Moreover, I am reluctant to question the evaluation of one of the ablest and kindest reporters in the entire White House Press Corps. But if I was in fact “boisterous,” your readers should know the rather extenuating circumstances as to why. They should also know that both UPI and AP are guaranteed Presidential recognition at every Presidential news conference—a privilege not available to any of the rest of us.

One other thing. In all of the coverage of my controversy with the State Department and Capitol Hill correspondents (in which the Senate Rules Committee has, for the first time since 1948, voted to review an appeal) no coverage was more complete and eminently fair than that of Arthur Matthews. Hence, I rejoice in your wise decision to leave him and Ed Plowman in Washington. In past, I have on occasion needled the magazine in my column—and I don’t believe I will ever agree with a majority of your editorials. Let me, however, salute the integrity of your Washington Bureau.

(REV.) LESTER KINSOLVING

Editor, Panax’ Washington Weekly

McNaught Syndicate

Washington, D.C.

Doctrinal Documents

Your report (“Missouri Synod After-math,” Aug. 26) on the Dallas convention of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was both fair and accurate. However, the analysis on the defeat of the proposed new hymnal could be easily misunderstood. You state that “there were insinuations but no documented proof that the hymnal was doctrinally impure.”

As a member of the floor committee which considered the hymnal, I received much documented material which clearly proves there is false doctrine in the new hymnal. A few examples will suffice: substituting in the Apostles’ Creed “He descendeth to the dead” instead of “He descended into hell”; in the order for “individual confession and forgiveness” there is not a single reference to the fact that we receive God’s forgiveness only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ; the prayer of commendation has the phrase for the departed, “Receive him into the arms of your mercy,” which is in effect a prayer for the dead; there is very little … in the marriage service that embodies what Scripture says about marriage.

ANDREW SIMCAK, JR.

St. Timothy Lutheran Church

Houston, Tex.

Asking for the Messiah

I read with some surprise the article by Belden Menkus entitled, “Are Jews Still Expecting the Messiah?” (Others Say, Aug. 26). Perhaps Mr. Menkus no longer anticipates a personal Messiah, but he is not a spokesman for all Jews.

In the April 18, 1977, issue of Newsweek a different view of Jewish thought and opinion is presented. Professor David Flusser (biblical archeologist and professor of religious history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem) commented, “I do not think that many Jews would object if the Messiah—when he came—was the Jew Jesus.”

Menkus may speak for one segment of the Jewish community but he is certainly inaccurate when he declares that the idea of a personal Messiah “has not been a subject of significant concern to the adherents of Orthodox Judaism for about 1,600 years.” A myriad of books and other publications have been written on just this subject. Synagogal prayers and readings are replete with references to the coming Messiah.

I agree with him that the best presentation of our message of good news is the right answer to each individual’s question. But there is a renewed interest in Jesus and in the entire messianic concept on the part of Jews today. We must approach each person as an individual, but for many Jews the messiahship of Yeshua Ben David (Jesus Son of David) is the right answer to the question being asked.

RUTH FLEISCHER

Communications Specialist

American Board of Missions to the Jews Englewood

Cliffs, N. J.

Thank you for Belden Menkus’s views on Jewish messianic expectations. Undoubtedly he is correct in speaking for Jewish scholars. I recently heard Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum say: “Jewish biblical scholars are meeting together around the world to reappraise Israel’s messianic mission in the world.” But, I am sure that many Jews devoted to their faith are expecting a personal Messiah. My guide in Jerusalem interpreted for me prayers at the wailing wall and at a Friday night synagogue service. The prayers were fervent, in many cases, with tears. They were praying: “Messiah come! Oh, come Messiah!”

BYRON S. LAMSON

Riverside, Calif.

As a missionary to the Jews, I was very interested in the August 26th Others Say by Belden Menkus, “Are Jews Still Expecting the Messiah?” It is indeed sad that the Jewish people are so far away from a biblical perspective that they are not even looking to the hope of God in the Messiah. The one thing we have found is that with all the worldly philosophies that the Jewish people engage in and with all of the traditional formulas that they follow, there is still an emptiness and lack of substance in their lives, of which the community is becoming more aware. This awareness is seen not only in the number of Jewish people in the last several years who have turned to Christ, but also in the official resistence encountered. Though according to Menkus the Christian message is being ignored, we have found an increased response from the lay people and the leadership of the Jewish community. We in the Jews for Jesus ministry, and other mission boards in the New York area, have seen increased opposition from certain hostile Jewish groups as they attempt to stop the Gospel message. Church and mission buses have been fire-bombed, windows broken, tires slashed, threats frequently made on the lives of the workers. I would not call this apathy. If the message of the Messiah has not been a relevant issue in the Jewish community for 1,600 years, maybe it is because we have not been presenting it and reminding the Jewish people of the biblical promises in such a way that they can understand. And the Jewish community in New York is understanding the message of Jesus that we are presenting, and much of the negative reaction proves it.

That the Reform and Orthodox Jewish communities are not seeking Messiah is no reason not to preach him, for I’m sure there are many who will realize their hunger only after being presented with the meal (Rom. 11:5). Indeed, the challenge for us is to make Christ the issue in the Jewish community, the unavoidable issue. Let us, as followers of Messiah, be such salt in the Jewish community that their thirst draws them to the living waters, which Jesus gives.

SAM NADLER

Director of New York Branch

Jews for Jesus

New York, N.Y.

Tongues And the Nazarenes

In your August 12 news story of “Charismatic Unity in Kansas City” there is reference to the opposition of the Church of the Nazarene and Wesleyan “like holiness” denominations. This should not surprise those former members since the history of the Church of the Nazarene reveals that she was organized by people coming together to stress the “Charisma of holiness” (which includes honesty) and rejecting speaking in tongues, extreme excesses in divine healing, and extravagant issues of millennialism so prominent in the revival at the turn of the century.

While we do accept the personal return of our Lord Jesus Christ and the divine miracle of healing, the issue of tongues was settled in 1919 when the term “Pentecostal” was dropped from our official name to distinguish us from those who speak in tongues …

I would hope that in the future equal space is given to quotes from current members of a denomination rather than former. The Church of the Nazarene has always been a coming together of people of like faith rather than a splitting of the membership. When I joined I promised not to inveigh against the doctrines, so anyone who is honest in his charisma and “speaks in tongues” would always have to be a “former” Nazarene.

J. OTTIS SAYES

Chairman

Division of Religion and Philosophy

Olivet Nazarene College

Kankakee, Ill.

Thanksgiving season is here again. We remember our Pilgrim forebears with emphasis on the latter half of their name, “grims.” Although their situation was difficult they persevered.

Indeed we give thanks to God for all his blessings. But how can Christians give thanks for the situation in Red China? Nine hundred million people lie bound in a spiritual prison camp worse than that in other Communist lands except Cambodia and Vietnam.

Let us eat our turkeys and pumpkin pies with joy over God’s provision for us, but let us also beg the Lord of the harvest to deliver China from its bondage and bring to its people the light of the glorious Gospel to be found in the face of Jesus Christ.

I want to thank the authors of “Today’s Oppressed: True ‘Exodus’ Heirs” (Others Say, June 3) for their courteous reply to my column of last February. The perspectives of these who live closer to the heart of Latin American liberation theology differ from those that guide the North American.

I am unable to see the relevance of the Marxist analysis for any advanced nation of today, however difficult its problems may be. Specifically I find it difficult to believe that such an analysis can be applied to a modern state without the loss in such areas of human freedom as are essential to the creative life of a people. Closely related to this is my feeling that revolution in a modern state is an anachronism. As such, it will inevitably move toward reactionary excesses, unacceptable to any Christian community.

I have a different theological understanding of the Exodus motif. Israel became a chosen people not because they were oppressed in Egypt but because of the sovereign will of God, which was first revealed with the call of Abram. Although the Exodus gave them one more push toward nationhood, their oppression by the Pharaohs added nothing to their vocation. Theologically, I find the statement that the Exodus was “God’s initial revelation of himself to Israel … in the context of deliverance from oppression …” unwarranted by either history or dogma. And I don’t see how it justifies the demand for a certain socio-economic system.

I am also perplexed by the insistence that the terms “injustice” and “violence” are synonymous. Latin American theologians seem semantically confused and misleading in equating economic exploitation (and this has without doubt characterized many of the policies of nations of the Northern Hemisphere) with violence, and thus affording a justification for armed violence as a means of securing justice.

It must be recognized at this point that I have never personally known the hopelessness of grinding poverty. Coming from a Swiss immigrant family, I cannot escape from a mentality that sees hope in working within an existing system; this difference in perspective no doubt colors my response to the demands of the theology that defines salvation as deliverance from an existing order. When the term capitalism is used by liberation theologians, they really mean the current world order, not merely the order of a few favored peoples.

Latin America occupies a peculiar place among the developing nations. Since it is basically Christian, it is natural that its religious leaders are concerned about economic and social issues.

With respect to the matter of the use of the term “universal salvation” by such writers as Gustavo Gutierrez and Hugo Assman, let me say that the objection raised by the Others Say article seems to rest upon imperfect inspection of sources, particularly the one to which I referred. Although articles for the Current Religious Thought page are not usually documented in detail, I should have called more specific attention to the words found on page sixty-seven of Assman’s volume, Theology for a Nomad Church. There Assman quotes directly from the writings of Professor Gutierrez to the effect that “the unvarnished affirmation of the possibility of universal salvation has radically changed the way we look at the Church’s mission in the world …”, and almost immediately pronounces the demise of “the old dualisms of natural-supernatural, nature-grace and so on (which) no longer express opposites.”

If language means what it is usually understood to mean, this latter quotation has little or nothing to do with the rejection of extra ecclesia nulla salus. Rather, Assman immediately attaches to the claim that the purely Salvationist understanding of the Church’s mission has been superseded, a denial of that which stands at the heart of the Evangel, and which is essential to the undergirding of the Great Commission. That is to say, if the Church’s mission subsumes all, including the “supernatural,” under the “natural,” what is left of her kerygma?

Since I have never known the hopelessness of real poverty, I cannot escape from viewing liberation theology in different colors.

A further word may be said at the point of the article by the theologians from San Jose that disclaims the assertion that liberation theologians see North American capitalism as the major cause of the misery of Latin America. Does not much of the more radical literature from South America denounce as enemy number one the multinationals? Is it not the constant charge that the development that is represented by the presence of North American industrial projects has served largely to create Latin America’s dependency? A candid reading of the literature will, I think, bear out the contention that liberation is seen in terms of the breaking of this dependency from abroad.

Finally, it needs to be mentioned that Latin America occupies a peculiar place in the world of developing nations; its countries are basically Christian. This makes the processes for improvement much different from those needed in non-Christian developing lands. It is natural therefore that its religious leaders should seek to effect a synthesis between the insights of the Church since Vatican II, and the needs for large-scale social and economic change. My question is whether many of the theological interpretations of Latin American liberation theology may be reached at too stiff a price—the price of the loss of the major mandate of the Lord of the Church to disciple the nations rather than to focus the energies of the Church too narrowly upon the “salvation of history.”

Hugh Wesley Goodwin, a 54-year-old municipal court judge in Fresno, California, is under investigation for his practice of mixing God and the law.

California’s judicial watchdog commission indicates that Goodwin’s practice of giving some defendants a choice between going to church or going to jail is a violation of the Constitution’s clause on the separation of church and state. The commission also says that he allows religious classes to be held in his chambers (a reference to a Thursday noon Bible-study session for courthouse employees), and it mentions his open support of a Christian candidate for public office. So far, the commissioners have not invited the judge to meet with them.

Despite the probe and all the criticism of him in legal circles and in the press, Goodwin takes pride in the apparent success of his program in dealing with one of society’s pressing problems—rehabilitation of lawbreakers. After his appointment as a judge in February, 1976, Goodwin began giving persons guilty of minor crimes a choice of doing community-service work, paying a fine, going to jail, or attending church services twice a week (he specified that one of the services had to feature study of the Bible). Most who have appeared before him—including a number of habitual offenders—have chosen the religious “sentence.” Of these approximately 200 persons, says the judge, only five have been back in court on subsequent charges. Thus Goodwin sees himself as only a catalyst in the process of helping people to straighten out their own lives through the discovery of moral guidelines and sources of spiritual power.

Offenders are permitted to choose their own church after consultation with friends and relatives, but many ask the judge to pick out one. Goodwin works closely with a number of pastors in town; they are expected to become involved personally in efforts to help the offenders. (The judge denies suggestions that he is proselytizing. He says he would let a Jewish defendant attend a synagogue and a Muslim attend services at a mosque, but so far there apparently have been no such defendants.)

Goodwin maintains that the non-jail option not only helps the individuals involved but also results in big savings to taxpayers: children and other dependents of some offenders are kept off welfare rolls, penal-system expenses are reduced, and people in trouble are provided a place where they can receive “free” counseling and loving care. And some unemployed troublemakers have gotten jobs, thanks to sympathetic church members who contacted prospective employers, he says.

The sentence varies according to the offense. One shoplifter was given this choice: a $200 fine, or ten days in jail, or eighty hours of community work, or ten Bible-study sessions at church. Goodwin believes her case is a crucial one: her children are aware of her habit of stealing, and if she doesn’t change her ways it is likely that the children will follow her example. With God, at least, there’s hope, reasons the judge, himself the father of four. He normally prescribes six months to a year at a church. Many defendants and their relatives have come back later to thank him, he says.

Goodwin doesn’t think that what he is doing violates the Constitution, and he says this belief is shared by the ministers he knows, all of whom are church-and-state separationists. He believes it is wrong to interpret the Constitution “to mean that a man can’t serve the Lord where he is.”

He scoffs at the criticism of the lunchtime Bible-study sessions, which he organized at the suggestion of his boss when he was in the Public Defender’s office. “Girlie magazines are fine, but not the Bible,” he comments wryly.

Goodwin doesn’t see anything wrong, either, in encouraging his ministerial friends to “get behind a candidate who believes in God and get him elected to office.” Such opportunities are rare, says Goodwin, so he is not too concerned about complaints in this area.

The judge’s friends insist he is no crackpot or fanatic. He is soft-spoken and unassuming, they say, a man strongly committed to Christian principles. He holds earned degrees from Harvard and Howard universities. His services are in wide demand as a lecturer on the church and community circuits. He is an active member of Second Baptist Church in Fresno and does some teaching at First Baptist.

As Fresno’s first black attorney (he is married to the city’s first black public-school teacher), Goodwin counseled many poor and disadvantaged people. He organized Fresno-area citizens for the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March in Alabama in 1965.

There is pressure for Goodwin’s resignation or removal from office, but he isn’t budging. He predicts his case may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, says he, if his opponents try to remove him, he will use the occasion “as another opportunity to educate them.”

VERNAGENE VOGELZANG and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

No Room In the Room?

Can religious services be held in publichousing facilities without violating the Constitution’s clause on the separation of church and state?

That is a question that is vexing the board of the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA). The issue arose when a nun attached to a nearby Roman Catholic church held three informal, ecumenical worship gatherings and Bible readings at the Pinecrest housing development last year. Most of the 225 elderly residents of the facility apparently approved (half are members of the Catholic parish), but the CMHA issued a formal ban against the occasional services last April.

The nun, Sister Claire Foken, has launched a campaign to reverse the decision, and she has garnered some strong political support.

When congressman Tom Luken complained to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that the senior citizens’ First Amendment rights were being violated, the agency said it had no jurisdiction, but it did warn the CMHA that there may be constitutional problems if religious groups are the only ones denied use of the common room at Pinecrest.

Moreover, Pastor Harold Stockman of Price Hill United Methodist Church inquired at a recent CMHA meeting why Yoga, which he described as “a form of Eastern meditation,” is permitted in the common room but Christianity is not.

CMHA director Henry R. Stefanik, a church-going United Presbyterian, says he would permit worship services at Pinecrest “if we’re legally empowered to do so.” But he also suggested that Pinecrest is not a nursing home and that if residents are too infirm to get to their churches they “may belong in some other residence.”

His comment upset Sister Foken and her friends even worse. “It is not fair to say anyone who can manage a small apartment and use the Pinecrest elevator should be able to walk to church,” she asserted.

Krishna Calling

Seven affiliates of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the Hare Krishna sect) were accused in a $310,000 civil suit of illegally hooking into a private microwave communications system and making thousands of dollars of phone calls that were charged to other persons. The suit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles by MCI Telecommunications Corporation of Washington, D.C. MCI operates a system linking eighteen metropolitan areas. It is used mostly by businesses making extensive out-of-state calls. The firm alleges that the Krishna groups somehow found out the code numbers of subscribers to MCI and how to make and bill long-distance calls. Antiracketeering and fraud statutes were invoked in the suit.

Krishna attorneys had no immediate comment.

An Appeal To The Past

The teacher dismissed by a school in England for his literal interpretation of Genesis (see March 4 issue, page 54) has had his appeal dismissed by an industrial tribunal.

Following the verdict, David Watson, 57, told reporters that the state’s version of religion had now drifted so far away from Christianity as to be virtually worthless in providing any sort of anchor in life for children. “One of the best things that could happen as a result of my case,” said the former head of religious education at a Hertfordshire school, “would be to put the clock back five hundred years and start again: set up Christian schools as they used to be in the past. The schools in this country have become pagan schools and … it is time to think about pulling out.”

He objected to a syllabus which expected him to teach that stories such as those in Genesis were “of course” myth and legend. He denied that he was trying to brainwash the pupils into accepting his own interpretation.

Watson plans now to return to India where he had previously been a missionary, and will teach at a “broad-minded” Christian school.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Give and Take

Political contributions by churches are strictly forbidden by regulations of the Internal Revenue Service. The law was apparently violated by St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles, and as a result the church may lose its status as a tax-exempt organization.

Last spring, the church gave two checks for $1,000 each to fund-raisers for California attorney general Evelle J. Younger’s campaign for the Republication nomination for governor. Younger’s top finance people said they were unaware of any problem created by the donations, and St. Paul’s pastor, John L. Branham, said his church had been contributing to Younger’s campaigns “for years.” It’s “nothing new,” he stated, “and it has no bearing on our tax-exempt status.”

The money was used to purchase $250 tickets to a fund-raising dinner. Tax authorities say that if an investigation shows the church did indeed make political contributions, action—subject to appeal—will be taken to remove it from tax-exempt rolls. This would mean that church members no longer could list contributions to the church as tax deductions, and the church could lose its property tax exemptions.

Mobile Members

Where do new church members come from? And where do departing members go?

Those were answers sought by a recent survey conducted by the 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Many of those who joined a Southern Baptist congregation last year came from within: children or young people who were baptized and voted into membership. Others came from unchurched backgrounds. But 39,000 persons came from other religious groups, and the SBC lost 46,000 of its people to other denominations and faiths, according to the study.

An almost even trade occurred between the SBC and main-line Protestant denominations. The latter provided 79 per cent of those coming into SBC churches, while Catholics accounted for 14 per cent and small Christian “sects” contributed 4.2 per cent. Most SBC gains from the main-line Protestant sector came from Methodists (34 per cent) and Presbyterians (12 per cent). Lutherans and the Assemblies of God were listed at 4.2 per cent each.

The study shows that SBC churches gained four times as many members from Catholic churches as they lost to Catholicism and twelve times as many members from non-Christian faiths, but it also shows that SBC congregations lost about twice as many to small Christian groups as they received from those backgrounds.

War and Grace

Pastor Dean Lueking of the 1,800-member Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois, has been one of the national leaders of the so-called moderate faction in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod opposed to the policies of LCMS president J. A. O. Preus. Rather than continue the conflict, Grace voted 425 to 199 to break ties with the LCMS and become independent as of October. Last month the LCMS notified Grace that it intended to buy back the church property under terms of an option inserted in the sales agreement when the LCMS sold the property to the congregation in 1929. Lueking and the congregational leaders say they have a different understanding of the agreement, and they indicated they would fight to retain their property. The dispute will likely end up in civil court.

The repurchase option was apparently written into the 1929 agreement to ensure that a Missouri Synod congregation would always be on or adjacent to the LCMS’s Concordia Teachers College, whose property adjoins Grace. (Of Concordia’s 1,200 students, estimates of the number of students who attend Grace range from about a dozen to 150. The college has its own chapel.)

According to the agreement, the option to repurchase could be exercised if the parish were to “decide to affiliate, consolidate, or merge” with an organization not part of the LCMS, or if the congregation were to “fail or decide not to teach or preach the Scriptures” in accord with the LCMS constitution.

In order to avoid the option problem, the congregation—on advice of legal counsel—voted to become independent when it split from the LCMS rather than to affiliate with the American Lutheran Church or the breakaway 200-congregation Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which is composed mostly of former LCMS members. Lueking has been close to both groups.

The LCMS has offered about $750,000 for Grace’s property. This is approximately $100,000 more than its appraised value, according to an LCMS official. Parish leaders, however, said recently that replacement cost of the buildings alone would be “in the multi-million-dollar range.”

Battling The Absolutists

More than 200 religious ethicists last month issued a “call to concern” opposing “the absolutist position that it is always wrong to terminate a pregnancy at any time after conception.” Their statement called abortion a “serious and sometimes tragic procedure for dealing with fetal life,” but it also stated belief that “abortion may in some instances be the most loving act possible.” It went on to challenge “the heavy institutional involvement of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in a campaign to enact religiously based anti-abortion commitments into law.”

At a press conference in Washington,

D.C., where the statement was released, Protestant church leaders said it was not intended to be anti-Catholic or to deny anyone’s legal rights to speak out on an issue. But, said Dean J. Philip Wogaman of Wesley Seminary, “it is inappropriate for one group to seek to employ the power of the state to enforce its views.”

Religion in Transit

The U.S. Supreme Court last month let stand state tuition-grant programs for students at church-related colleges and universities in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Southern Baptist-related Wake Forest University recently received a $300,000 federal grant for buildings, equipment, and salaries for its biology department. North Carolina Baptist Convention policy, however, forbids affiliated schools to accept government funds unless they cover services rendered by the schools. A denominational committee has been investigating. Its preliminary recommendations: return the amount considered to be for capital improvements. The school wants to keep the money.

The California Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed suit in Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of a state program that lends textbooks to non-public schools (most are Catholic schools).

Evangelist Oral Roberts announced plans to build a $100 million health center that will combine medical expertise with prayer. The complex, to be called the City of Faith Medical and Research Center, will be housed in three large structures, one of them sixty stories high, on an eighty-acre site in Tulsa. Included will be a 777-bed hospital and a medical and dental school. An estimated staff of 5,000, including 300 physicians and surgeons, will be required to maintain it, estimates Roberts. He hopes to have the complex debt-free when it opens in 1981. (His evangelistic association reported income of $20.7 million in 1974, the latest figures available. More than $6 million was given to Oral Roberts University, down $2 million from the amount given in 1973.)

The multi-million-dollar, thirty-five-acre Southern Keswick Bible-conference center in St. Petersburg, Florida, has been given to the Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute. The complex includes a 60-student Christian school (kindergarten through high school) and two radio stations. C. W. “Bill” Caldwell, Southern Keswick’s president, will stay on as manager of the stations. (Prior to the transfer, Moody owned and operated seven radio stations in four states.)

A $600,000 lawsuit has been filed in Des Moines against the Meredith Corporation by six persons dismissed by the printing firm in 1975 for refusing to work on sex-oriented magazines because of their religious beliefs. The six, who are seeking damages and reinstatement with back pay, contend the publications contained “repugnant” and “pornographic” material. They insist that their beliefs could have been “reasonably accommodated” if they had been assigned to work elsewhere in the plant.

Christian Broadcasting Network has announced that it will launch a major school to be known as CBN University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Graduate schools of communications and theology are to be established first, followed by graduate schools of business and law, according to the network’s founder-president, M. G. “Pat” Robertson.

Catholic Relief Services—the aid and development arm of Roman Catholics in the United States—provided food, medicine, clothing, and other assistance valued at $240.3 million over the past fiscal year, according to a CRS report. This aid, said the report, reached some 18 million persons in eighty-five countries.

First the good news: a random sampling indicates that the amount of money received by Christian colleges from alumni and other sources was significantly higher in the past school year than in the previous year, according to Christian College News Service. This reflects a national trend. Now the bad news: in many cases, inflation has outpaced the giving and donor dollars today buy up to 25 per cent less than what they did between 1972 and 1976. Meanwhile, an unofficial survey shows that enrollment at Christian colleges is generally ahead of that a year ago, while enrollments at most secular schools have remained steady.

A New York City health department report shows that 30 per cent of the nearly 110,000 babies born in New York City in 1976 were born out of wedlock, almost three times the rate recorded twenty years ago.

Representatives of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, a pro-abortion alliance of eleven major Protestant, Jewish, and humanist organizations, issued a complaint against President Carter. They said he has met “repeatedly” with Catholic officials on the abortion issue but refuses to meet with their agency. All they want to do, they said, is to make known their various theological viewpoints on the issue and to support his opposition to a constitutional amendment that would all but ban abortions. Abortion is basically a theological issue, they said, and “it must not become a matter of civil law.”

A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge turned down Robert B. Graham’s attempt to use religion to obtain a property-tax exemption for his home. Graham, who received a mail-order ordination certificate from the Universal Life Church in Modesto, California, decribed his house as a meeting place for the Holland Universal Life Church of Love. The judge, however, said it was “merely a haven for disgruntled taxpayers.”

Prison Fellowship, a two-year-old ministry spearheaded by Charles Colson (Born Again), is functioning in thirty of the nation’s 600 state and federal prisons, according to press reports. It relies on more than 1,000 volunteer workers. A computer helps to match community volunteers with inmates seeking assistance. One experimental feature of the program provides for selected prisoners to be released for several weeks to participate in spiritual training sessions. These have been highly successful so far, says a Colson aide. Colson himself is in demand as a speaker at inmate gatherings in prisons across the country.

Personalia

John R. Dellenback, immediate past director of the Peace Corps and a four-term Republican congressman from Oregon before that, was elected president of the six-year-old Christian College Consortium, based in Washington, D.C. He was also elected president of the Christian College Coalition, an alliance that includes the fourteen evangelical colleges in the consortium and twenty-one other Christian schools. Both positions are executive posts.

Everett Graffam announced he will retire in July as the top executive officer of the World Relief Commission, the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. Jerry P. Ballard, a management consultant from Atlanta, has been named to succeed him.

Royal L. Peck, a missionary educator in Italy for twenty-two years with Greater Europe Mission, was appointed executive director of Christ’s Mission, a New Jersey-based agency that specializes in ministry to Roman Catholics. He succeeds the retiring Stuart P. Garver. Peck plans to expand the mission’s work to include church-planting projects overseas. Its publication, Christian Heritage, will be continued.

New presidents: John Dillenberger, a

United Church of Christ minister and seminary teacher, to Hartford Seminary Foundation in Connecticut; Stanley E. Letcher, Jr., a minister of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental), to Midwest Christian College in Oklahoma City; and Jesse Fletcher, pastor of the 3,900-member First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee, to Hardin-Simmons University, a Southern Baptist school in Abilene, Texas.

Herman E. Van Schuyver, an administrator in the Christian school movement, was named director of the National Association of Christian Schools, an affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Charles Templeton, a prominent Canadian evangelist in the 1950s who turned his back on the faith and took up secular pursuits, has written a novel with a religious theme and title: Act of God (McClelland and Stewart). The plot is built on an archeologist’s discovery in Israel of the bones of Jesus.

Joni (pronounced Johnny) Eareckson was 17 when her spinal cord was severed in a diving accident in Maryland in 1967. Paralyzed from the neck down, she overcame bitter depression with the help of God and friends, and she learned how to write and draw by holding a pencil in her mouth. Now her sketches are found on greeting cards and prints in bookstores across the country. They are signed “Joni-PTL” (for “Praise the Lord”). Some 150,000 copies of her biography, Joni (Zondervan), are in print. World Wide Pictures, an affiliate of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, plans to produce a movie about her for release in theaters across the country.

World Scene

Under the banner, “National Evangelization Crusade 1977,” hundreds of thousands of South Korean Christians recently gathered on Seoul’s Yoido Island for four days of singing, preaching, and prayer. All thirty-two of Korea’s Protestant denominations were represented at the event, which commemorated a spiritual revival that began in Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) seventy years ago. Leaders predicted all of Korea will someday be evangelized, resulting in reunification of the country. But they also spoke fearfully about the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops and the danger of attack by North Korean forces.

Bibles: The Cuban government told the United Bible Societies it will permit importation of 5,000 Bibles and New Testaments for distribution by local Protestant churches; the Polish Bible Society reports that by the end of this year 200,000 copies of a new translation of the Bible into Polish—the first Polish translation since 1400—will have been printed in that land; Southern Baptists are distributing 25,000 Bibles throughout the Philippines, and the American Bible Society has supplied 10,000 Bibles, 40,000 New Testaments, and other literature to the committee planning the Billy Graham crusade slated for Manila, November 23 to 27.

Operation Mobilization, an international evangelistic agency specializing in the use of short-term missionaries, has been able to carry the Gospel to many “closed” areas with its 2,300-ton shipLogos. Book exhibits for the public (often attracting thousands of people per day) and conferences for pastors and other Christian workers are scheduled while the vessel is in port, and crew member-missionaries fan out to witness and distribute Christian literature. Now the group hopes to add another ship to its ministry. Leaders were looking at a 6,800-ton Italian liner last month (fuel consumption: thirteen tons per day).

Israeli police reported that about thirty ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealots vandalized the home of seven Americans who describe themselves as “Jewish disciples of Christ.” The Americans had received publicity in an Israeli television report on the village in Galilee where they live.

A translation of the Gospel of Matthew in Gheg, a dialect of modern Albania, was published by the United Bible Societies. It contains special helps for Muslim readers. Albania has banned the Bible and outlawed all religion, so 15,000 copies of the Scripture portion have been published in Yugoslavia for distribution among the one million Albanians who live there.

Nine Latin Americans identifying themselves as “leaders” of two evangelical student groups in Central America—autonomous units of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship—have called for active support of the proposed new Panama Canal treaty in an “Open Letter to Christians in North America.” Their appeal expresses “shock” at the “opposition of so many” Americans to the turnover of the canal. “You stole it,” they asserted. A mission executive says none of the nine is a staff member of either group, making the letter an unofficial one.

The average British clergyman’s salary is only $4,250 per year, but a magazine that conducted a survey on job satisfaction concluded that British ministers as a class are the men most satisfied with their jobs. Nearly 60 per cent of the clergy among 24,000 persons polled said they were “very satisfied” in their work, and 86 per cent said they would choose the same occupation again. The most miserable workers, according to the survey, were draftsmen. Only 8 per cent said they were happy in their jobs.

These are unsettled times for the issue-tormented Episcopal Church. There are nasty confrontations and court skirmishes over parish control and property matters at the local level involving the small but noisy breakaway movement that was spawned by the denomination’s decision last year to open the priesthood to women. Many more who have not left the 2.9-million member church are nevertheless still vexed by that decision, and there is lingering resentment on the part of some toward changes in the Episcopal prayer book designed to make it more contemporary. And, increasingly, many church members are troubled by the mounting pressures to permit ordination of avowed homosexuals.

About half of the church’s 240 bishops gathered for a week at a resort at Port St. Lucie, Florida, to try to sort things out and maybe pour oil on the troubled waters. Some of the oil landed in the fire instead. When the deliberations ended last month, still more controversy had flared up.

In an opening state-of-the-church address at the House of Bishops meeting, Presiding Bishop John Maury Allin stunned his brother bishops with a confession of his own negative view toward women’s ordination, and he offered to resign.

“Can you accept the service of a presiding bishop who to date is unable to accept women in the role of priests?” he asked. “To date I remain unconvinced that women can be priests,” he stated. Then he said: “If it is determined by prayerful authority that this limitation prevents one from serving as the presiding bishop of this church, I am willing to resign the office.”

At a morning session later in the week the bishops gave Allin a unanimous vote of confidence. There were, however, expressions of concern. When pressed, Allin explained that although he would not personally ordain a woman he would arrange for someone else to do it. He also indicated that as a matter of conscience he could not receive communion from a woman priest.

Several bishops said there had been a deluge of telegrams and phone messages from people back home protesting what Allin had said. Bishops Paul Moore, Jr., of New York and Robert C. Rusack of Los Angeles told Allin he had inflicted “hurt” on many of their people by his speech. Rusack said some of his members were asking: “Cannot the presiding bishop support the faithful even as he has those who have left us?”

Allin said he in no way had suggested that what the denomination had done in voting for women’s ordination was wrong.

The resolution of confidence reaffirmed Allin’s leadership and noted his “right … to hold a personal conviction on this issue, trusting him to uphold the law of this church and the decision of [the denomination] in its official action.”

In a bid to calm opponents of women’s ordination, the bishops adopted by a near-unanimous vote a conscience clause that specifies no one should be “coerced or penalized in any manner” for not recognizing women priests. The action permits a bishop to refuse to ordain women, and it also allows him to bar women ordained elsewhere from serving in his diocese—even if a parish in his diocese wants to employ one. (So far, about sixty women have been ordained.)

The statement was adopted after Bishop Clarence R. Haden of Sacramento, California, warned that he was “willing to pay the penalty” and join the dissidents if the church did not show that it was sincere about healing the deep theological division that exists. (The bishops themselves are badly divided on the issue. Their vote was split 95 to 61 for ordination at the church’s convention last year.)

Bishop Thomas Fraser of Raleigh, North Carolina, expressed concern for long-range implications of the action: “If we are not careful … we’ll abdicate our leadership to the conscience clause.” Suffragen (assistant) bishop J. Stuart Wetmore of New York warned: “We are on the edge of lawlessness. Never again will this house be able to discipline any of its members on any question.”

That prediction was put to a test of sorts in the cases of retired bishop Albert A. Chambers of Springfield, Illinois, and Bishop Moore of New York. Chambers, 71, has been entering the dioceses of other bishops without permission to administer confirmation in parishes of the breakaway movement, which plans to organize a new denomination to be known as the Anglican Church in North America (see October 7 issue, page 60). Moore has been in hot water for ordaining a professed lesbian to the priesthood last January (see February 4 issue, page 55).

A motion to “censure” Chambers was defeated, but the house did pass a stiff resolution saying it “deplores and repudiates” his actions. The measure appealed to Chambers and “other members of this house” to refrain from performing any episcopal acts in any diocese without the clear approval of the bishop of that jurisdiction.

Chambers replied that he had not changed his mind. “There is no doubt about it—I have broken the constitution and canons of the church,” he acknowledged. He indicated he would continue his activities: “I am at your mercy. I accept your judgment. But I have my vocation to fulfill. I cannot go back on that. I am sorry.”

Chambers could face a church trial on the charges. The church, however, did not discipline three other retired bishops who persisted in breaking ecclesiastical laws by ordaining women at a time when the church had not yet opened the priesthood to women. To prosecute Chambers but not the others would seem unfair to many conservatives in the church, and it would no doubt create further controversy.

A number of bishops—including Moore—wanted the house to take firmer action against Chambers, but others counseled that he could be used as a “bridge” to meet with the dissidents, and they warned that stern action against him would only harden the revolt.

At Allin’s suggestion, the house set up a committee to seek to restore relationships with the estranged parishes. (About twenty parishes have voted to leave the church. There are dozens of other dissident congregations made up mostly of persons who have left individual churches in various dioceses. A West Palm Beach parish not far from where the bishops were meeting voted to secede. Bishop James Duncan of southern Florida tried to intercede at the last minute, but he was sent packing back to the bishops’ meeting without having been able to speak.)

At one point Allin entertained the possibility of the House of Bishops itself helping the new denomination to get started as a good-will gesture. In order for the dissident Anglican body to be formally organized, it must have a bishop, and it takes three recognized bishops to

consecrate one, according to Episcopal teachings about apostolic succession. Allin’s colleagues quickly dismissed the suggestion. Time later reported that Chambers and two unnamed bishops are now willing to perform consecrations.

In a long pastoral letter, the bishops appealed to the dissidents to return to the church. “It is not necessary for you to leave the Episcopal Church in order to live with your Christian conscience and witness,” they said. The letter points out that there have been many struggles over change throughout the history of the church. It quotes from the house’s conscience statement and says: “We do affirm that one is not a disloyal Episcopalian if he or she abstains from supporting the [women’s ordination] decision or continues to be convinced it was in error.”

On the homosexual ordination issue, the bishops adopted a report by a theology committee headed by Ohio bishop John H. Burt. The report emphasized that “biblical understanding rejects homosexual practice.” Ordaining a practicing homosexual, it said, would “require the church’s sanction of such a life-style not only as acceptable but worthy of emulation.” The paper distinguishes between “advocating and practicing” homosexuals who could not be ordained to the priesthood and persons with a “dominant homosexual orientation” who could be priests if they remained celibate.

The paper also said the church must restrict its “nuptial blessing” to heterosexual marriages, thereby forbidding priests to officiate at unions of homosexual partners. It did advocate better treatment of homosexuals by the church and society in general.

The bishops decided by a vote of 62 to 48 not to censure Moore for ordaining avowed lesbian Ellen Barrett, and they also voted 68 to 49 not to advise California bishop C. Kilmer Myers to refrain from licensing her to minister in his diocese, where she now lives.

At times, the debate surrounding the proposed censure of Moore was bitter. Moore insisted his ordination of Ms. Barrett was “a sign of hope” to the homosexual community. He and others maintained that there are many homosexuals among the Episcopal clergy, and a vote to censure him could lead to a witch hunt.

Other bishops charged that Moore’s action had touched off the worst uproar in the church’s history, and Bishop William C. Frey of Colorado told Moore: “I thought you acted with aristocratic disdain for the rest of us in the church.”

Myers indicated he would proceed to license Ms. Barrett. He said he disagreed with the report of the theology committee, on which he serves. “I strongly object to the notion that celibacy must be enforced upon homosexuals,” he said, adding that he does not think the practice of homosexuality is a sin.

Burt has had to battle with an eight-member task force in his own northern Ohio diocese over the issue. On the eve of the House of Bishops meeting, the task force released its report recommending that practicing homosexuals be ordained and married in the church. It implied that homosexual practice is not sin, saying that “not every word of Scripture can, should, or must be taken literally. Scripture must be viewed in the light in which it is offered and in the context of a culture which we cannot thoroughly understand.”

The group refused to reconsider its findings, as Burt had requested. He challenged the report’s conclusions, arguing for the concepts contained in the statement later adopted by the House of Bishops.

Reactions in the aftermath of the bishops’ meeting in Florida have been mixed. For example, Bishop Rusack of Los Angeles said that what happened there had “opened some doors” to put him in better touch with disgruntled church members who are “on the brink” of joining the breakaway movement. He also said the conscience statement was “a help” to him in dealing with priests in four parishes that have voted to secede (the cases are in civil court).

Allin’s views, however, have prompted a loud outcry from many people in the women’s ordination camp, and some are calling loudly for the presiding bishop’s resignation.

Not so loudly, a number of church members are disappointed with the bishops’ failure to censure Moore. As for Moore himself, he told a diocesan convention after he returned home that he would not ordain any “publicly avowed, practicing homosexual” until further study by a special diocesan commission. He thus cooled some tempers for now but left open the door to challenge later the stand on homosexuality taken by the bishops in Florida—a position on which he abstained from voting.

To The ‘Rescue’

An American Episcopal woman priest, Alison Palmer of Washington, D.C., stirred up a storm in the Church of England last month by administering communion in two Anglican churches without obtaining the permission of Anglican bishops. She is the first woman to administer the sacrament at a public service in Britain.

At the invitation of clergyman Alfred Willetts, rector of the Church of the Apostles in Manchester, and his wife Phoebe, a licensed deaconess, Miss Palmer celebrated communion before a congregation of seventeen men and women at the Manchester church. Later she did the same thing at St. Thomas the Martyr University Church in Newcastle on Tyne, where 100 had gathered.

In letters to several bishops, including Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan (who favors opening the priesthood to women), the Willettses took “full responsibility” for inviting Ms. Palmer to administer communion. Coggan and others were said to be unhappy over the act, and Bishop Patrick Rodger of Manchester said he was considering “what action is to be taken as I view this unlawful proceeding.”

Ms. Palmer, 46, was invited to St. Thomas by the church council, which put what it called “natural justice” ahead of obedience to authority, according to news accounts.

The official position of the Anglican Church on women’s ordination is that it has “no fundamental objection,” but the House of Bishops ruled last year that women ordained abroad in the worldwide Anglican communion—to which American Episcopalians belong—may not officiate in the mother church. The ordination issue is to be considered at next year’s Lambeth Conference, a meeting of all bishops in the Anglican communion held every ten years. Some fear Ms. Palmer’s action may add to the controversy surrounding the question.

Another fear among church officials is that the development may affect ecumenical discussions with church bodies opposed to women priests.

Some of the strongest criticism of Ms. Palmer’s action came from vicar Anthony Duncan of St. John’s Anglican Church in Newcastle. He posted his statement of protest on his church door. He declared that “not only has grave scandal and offense been caused by an act done in flagrant canonical disobedience, but also the whole integrity and certainly the unity of the fellowship of the Church of England in this city has been most wantonly compromised.”

Ms. Palmer was reported to have said she was committed “to rescue my sisters whose call to the ordained ministry is impeded by discrimination.”

Winners

God may have been rooting for both sides in the World Series.

Members of both the Dodgers and the Yankees took time out from crowded schedules and clamoring reporters to attend pre-game chapel services as they had on weekends all year. The Dodgers held their service before game-time on Saturday in Los Angeles. Pastor David Hocking of First Brethren Church in Long Beach spoke on Isaiah 41 and sources of spiritual power. The Yankees met before the game on Sunday and listened to Bill Pannell of Fuller Seminary cite the story of the Good Samaritan to drive home points on acceptance and togetherness. About twenty were at each service.

The meetings were coordinated by Baseball Chapel, an evangelical ministry that assists chapel leaders on each major-league team to line up speakers and offers spiritual-training conferences in the off-season. Cumulative chapel attendance for all the teams this year exceeded 10,000, up 30 per cent from last year, partly because of two new expansion teams, partly because of increased interest.

Chapel leaders for the Dodgers are pitcher Don Sutton and leftfielder Dusty Baker. The regulars include first baseman Steve Garvey, pitchers Tommy John, Doug Rau, and Elias Sosa, shortstop Bill Russell, coach Red Adams, and manager Tom Lasorda.

The sanguine Lasorda, a turned-on Roman Catholic, says he’s found the prime ingredient in managing baseball to be the same thing Solomon sought from the Lord: an understanding heart. After an outstanding inning in a tight game, Dodger players can often be seen in the dugout hugging each other and dancing up and down like a group of bubbling charismatics—with Lasorda in the middle of it all. The manager says he’s “never once regretted loving God.” On the eve of the series he affirmed: “The whole pattern of life is mapped out for us by Jesus Christ. If he wants us to win, he will make it possible.” Whatever, said he, the Lord has brought him to where he is in baseball, and he is forever grateful.

For the Yankees, first baseman Chris Chambliss and pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter are the chapel leaders, assisted by pitcher Don Gullett, shortstop Bucky Dent, second baseman Willie Randolph, leftfielder Lou Piniella, rightfielder Reggie Jackson, and others. When Jackson was with the Oakland A’s, the witness of then manager Alvin Dark—an outspoken Christian—made a strong impact on him as he tried to get his life together, a struggle that still is going on. Jackson sometimes says things he later regrets, but millions of series fans last month heard him put in a good word for the Lord to radio and television newspeople too.

The grudges, moods, and troubles were forgotten for the time being when Jackson socked three successive pitches out of the ballpark, etching his name in the record books and helping to sew up the series for the Yankees.

Perhaps there was cheering even in heaven.

Center Secured

The Center for World Mission, headed by evangelical missiologist Ralph Winter, raised $850,000 in its marathon appeal for funds to purchase the seventeen-acre former campus of Pasadena (Nazarene) College in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

That was enough of the $1.5-million down payment to secure the center’s option to purchase the site. Winter told reporters he expects to have the balance of the down payment on hand by the time escrow closes in April. The successful fund appeal staved off attempts by a syncretistic sect, the Church Universal and Triumphant (also known as Summit International), to purchase the property (see September 23 issue, page 47).

Winter still has a long way to go. The price-tag on the campus is $8.5 million, and he wants to raise an additional $6.5 million to upgrade the facility and to establish an endowment fund. His intention is to create an institution known as William Carey International University with graduate on-campus and extension programs to service the needs of world evangelization. Plans also call for the formation of a network of five evangelical mission centers around the world that would be linked to the university. Efforts, said Winter, would be made not only to help missions and churches around the world but also to integrate the global activities of his organization with those of governments, voluntary organizations, and philanthropies involved in economic development.

Meanwhile, leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant announced her group has purchased a 218-acre parcel in Malibu Canyon north of Hollywood for her group’s Summit Lighthouse University and church headquarters. The property was bought from a Roman Catholic order for $5.6 million. Mrs. Prophet, known to her followers as “Mother,” says the site will be called Camelot and be “a place where people can study Christ and Buddha and realize their potential.”

Both Winter’s and Mrs. Prophet’s organizations have been renting space on the Pasadena campus from the Nazarenes, who moved to San Diego.

A Campaign For Inerrancy

A ten-year effort to study and defend the doctrine of biblical inerrancy was launched in late September with the formation of The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy at a meeting of thirty prominent evangelical leaders and scholars in Chicago. According to published reports, the group intends to educate the evangelical community about the doctrine’s importance, to show that those who deny inerrancy are “out of step” with the Bible and the historic evangelical mainstream, and to effect “institutional changes within seminaries, denominations, mission agencies, and other Christian organizations.” Council members were said to fear that evangelicals could drift into neoorthodoxy by “default” in the absence of information and “clear thinking.” The authority of the Bible rests upon inerrancy, the members contend.

Pastor James M. Boice of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a noted evangelical scholar and preacher, spearheaded the drive to form the council, and he is its chairman. The Chicago meeting was held without fanfare, and no press releases were issued. Boice, however, briefed Eternity, which published a major report on the council’s emergence in its November issue.

A well-known evangelical organization contributed $10,000 to help underwrite the council’s launching, and several $1,000 gifts came from noted evangelical leaders, said Eternity.

Among the leaders involved in the council are: Jay Adams, John Alexander, Gleason Archer, Bill Bright, Edmund Clowney, W. A. Criswell, Norman Geisler, Harold Hoehner, Donald Hoke, James Kennedy, Elisabeth Leitch, Roger Nicole, J. I. Packer, Harold Ockenga, Robert Preus, Earl Rademacher, Francis Schaeffer, Ray Stedman, R. C. Sproul, and Merrill Tenney. Evangelist Billy Graham has given “unofficial” support, according to Eternity.

Printer’S Error

A Texas newspaper was embarrassed by a printer’s error in a story on the church page. The title of a book that was to be reviewed at a Unitarian women’s meeting was reported as “How to Say ‘No’ to a Baptist and Survive.” It should have been “How to Say ‘No’ to a Rapist and Survive.”

The council plans to hold a summit conference on the inerrancy issue in Chicago next October and to sponsor dialogues on seminary campuses beginning in 1979. Both inerrantists and non-inerrantists are to be included in the dialogues, which will be aimed at clarifying issues and promoting better understanding. “Our desire is to maintain loving dialogue with [the non-inerrantists] rather than to cut them off from fellowship or discussion,” the council is quoted as saying.

Jay Grimstead, the council’s executive director, said his group hopes to avoid the mistakes that some conservatives made in the past. He cited the attitudes of such separatists as Bob Jones and Carl McIntire. “We are committed to speak whatever we speak in a way that will be considered loving, wise, and scholarly,” said Grimstead.

Not everybody is pleased by the council’s existence. Theologian Clark Pinnock, once an ardent inerrancy advocate, told Eternity: “The last thing we need is a ten-year inerrancy campaign. Our concern should be with the blatant liberals who demythologize parts of the Old and New Testaments. The battle needs to be fought, not at Fuller Seminary, but at places like Chicago and Harvard divinity schools.… A campaign for inerrancy will encourage people to avoid the real issues and serve to drive young, clearheaded students away from evangelicalism and into the liberal camp.”

Fuller Seminary is one of the storm centers of the current controversy over inerrancy. In his book, The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan), editor Harold Lindsell, who took part in the Chicago meeting, alleged that some Fuller teachers were loose on Scripture. A counterattack was mounted by Fuller’s faculty. It was led by the seminary’s president, David Hubbard, and resulted in the publication this year of the non-inerrancy-oriented Biblical Authority (Word), edited by Jack Rogers of Fuller.

“We need to spend our energies not in defending a particular theory [of inspiration],” commented Rogers to Eternity, “but on what the Scriptures say themselves and on the Lord of creation, adjusting our lives accordingly.” Hubbard said he welcomed the council’s campaign because “evangelicals should support anything that contributes to a better understanding of Scripture.” But he, too, suggested that the council might miss the “real” issue. Said he: “Rather than speculating on how God inspired the text, we need to explicate what we already find in the text.” He added: “I trust the campaign will be carried out so evangelicals don’t look foolish before the rest of the church and the world.”

Creamed

Singer Anita Bryant, who has gained national attention as a crusader against homosexual rights, was speaking at a press conference in Des Moines when a young man who identified himself as a homosexual hurled a banana cream pie at her from close range. It hit her square in the face and also splattered her husband, Bob Green, who was close by.

“At least it’s a fruit pie,” quipped Miss Bryant, her face and clothing covered with the gooey pie.

Green called on those present not to stop the youth as he dashed from the room. The couple began to pray aloud, saying they forgave the act. “We’re praying for him to be delivered,” said Miss Bryant. Then she lost her composure and began to cry.

Green later came on the youth, who said he was Jim Higgins of Minneapolis, and three friends talking to reporters outside. One of the friends was holding a pie. The singer’s husband grabbed it and shoved it into the face of one of Higgins’s other friends.

Our Brethren In Communist Europe

Discretion and Valour: Religious Conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe, by Trevor Beeson (Collins+World, 1976, 348 pp., $2.95 pb), and Protestants in Russia, by J. H. Hebly (Eerdmans, 1976, 192 pp., $3.65 pb), are reviewed by Alan H. Winquist, assistant professor of history, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

The problem with studies on the state of the church in Eastern Europe is that they quickly become outdated. Yet the research presents valuable historical background, recent successes and failures, and the differing conditions under which these churches are operating. Both books are highly readable summations, but one must consult more detailed studies on many matters.

Beeson (British journalist and minister) wrote his survey based on data gathered by a team of researchers working for the British Council of Churches. The study, which includes the Christian and Jewish communities of the eight Eastern European communist-controlled nations plus the Soviet Union west of the Urals, does not go beyond events of 1973, the year before it was published in Britain. Also not included is the state of the Moslem faith, the recent growth of the Baptist and Orthodox churches in Siberia and Central Asia, and the Church in Armenia.

Several themes run through Beeson’s study. As the title states, the main church response to continually shifting government religious policies that are particularly confusing and inconsistent in the Soviet Union has been a combination of discretion and valour. In other words, this has taken the form of either responsible accommodation and accepting less than the ideal or of defying the law and the authorities that frequently lead to suffering and even death.

Another thesis is that the Eastern European churches, like those in the West, are experiencing repercussions from increased secularism stemming from the movement of population to urban areas. Beeson believes that decline in church vigor is not caused so much by repressive government policies as by the growth of urbanization, which leads to increased secularism. Beeson notes that there is a wide variety of conditions under which practicing Christians and Jews are living in the East. This is related in no small measure to historical experiences.

I find Beeson’s descriptions of the churches in the satellite countries more interesting than of those in the Soviet Union, mainly because more attention has recently been focused on the latter. Some fascinating facts include the statement that with regard to Poland “probably no country in the world is more tenaciously Catholic.” For example, attendance at Mass on Sundays in urban areas is 77 per cent and in rural areas, 87 per cent. In the German Democratic Republic, the Lutheran Church still owns about half a million acres of agricultural land, Radio GDR broadcasts a religious service every Sunday at 7:30 A.M., and it has more church musicians than in any other country in the world. Furthermore, during World War II many Christians shared prison cells and concentration camp experiences with the communists, resulting in today’s “genuine, but grudging, respect at top level between Church and State in the GDR.” Beeson acknowledges the difficulty experienced by Lutherans in working with young people and in obtaining permission to build new churches.

Filmstrips

Among recent filmstrips on Bible and theology for high schoolers and adults we mention the following. Thomas S. Klise (Box 3418, Peoria, IL, 61614) narrates his own two-part text for Understanding Genesis. It covers the first eleven chapters, with a cursory commentary on the rest. The Klise Company puts out a mixed line of productions, some good and others evangelicals are unlikely to use. This is one of the latter. Combining a light jazz background, an almost disdainful manner of speaking, and striking yet interesting modern art (a lot of stark angularity and collages), Klise is newly excited about some hoary critical theories on Genesis’ genesis. It is a curious stew of truths, half truths, and non-truths.

The line of another Catholic firm, Paulist Press (545 Island Rd., Ramsey, NJ, 07446), also has to be studied and sifted, but its new series on the four Gospels is characterized by reverence, insight, and attractive packaging. Faithful to the Scriptures, the titles are Matthew: Discipleship, Mark: Christian Kerygma, Luke: Prayer and Social Apostolate, and John: Spirituality and Sacrament.

Biblical personalities, for example David: King of the Jews are popular. Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation (425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611) produced this filmstrip. It begins with its left foot, “Fact and legend have merged in the Bible, and much of what the book says combines these two.” After that ungainly beginning the story of David is quite biblical. There is only one further misstep—the unjustified word if. “If David killed the Philistine giant Goliath, he did it about this time. No one is quite sure how he did it, or even if he did it.” Deborah, Ruth, and Esther from the Old Testament, and Mary of Magdala from the New Testament, are the focus of four filmstrips, Women of the Bible by Family Films (1422 Lahark St., Panorama City, CA, 91406).

Living God and Dead Gods (Klise) is an interesting discussion for relatively sophisticated lay persons. It takes the position that “death of God” talk refers to a cultural or anthropological question rather than a theological one and that it refers to the decay and looming demise of Western civilization. It further states that the “death of God” theologians are making observations about man rather than God. This is altogether too facile, for most “death of God” theologians mean what they say. The content will provoke spirited disagreement. The artistic standards of Klise are unfailingly high.

The ambitious “Images” series by Klise is also noteworthy for its highly charged ambiguity. Yet the artists in four sets of eight filmstrips have achieved unity in diversity.

In Images of Christ the starting point of each filmstrip is the Bible, but it quickly mutates into a sharp sense of nowness in our understanding of Christ. We don’t believe in a static Christ, but there are moments when this series comes close to indentifying him with every process from cosmos to comic strip. The secularizing spirit is unmistakable.

The author strains Images of Revelation through the sieve of human reflection. He notes that “there is but one world, redeemed yet ever redeemable; a world in which and, indeed, through which God’s last word has been spoken by the Incarnation.”

Images of Love is an extraordinary series on the meanings of love. The filmstrip on marriage uses verses from the Song of Solomon. However, many evangelical churches will not approve of it, while others will find this exciting.

Images of the Future is a series of moral tracts for the times. It has an obvious Roman Catholic point of view. It is also in step with the developing pseudo-science of futurism. However, the questions it raises are real and need to be answered. The Other Side and Sojourners people will applaud the substance of these filmstrips, but the rest of us cannot afford to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear.

In sum, this is a brilliant quartet. In one sense Klise has taken a genuine risk. Because of his relevance, will this series be useful in five years? “Images” has all the makings of a gorgeous dud.

DALE SANDERS

Portland, Oregon

The study shows the current large-scale Christian (Orthodox and Protestant) activity in Romania, and the free availability of Bibles in Hungary. Yet the author also takes note of the bleak Albanian situation.

Both Beeson and Hebly (a Dutch churchman whose book was published in the Netherlands in 1973) stress the current importance of religious life in the Soviet Union. Figures are hard to come by but Beeson’s conservative estimate is that thirty million people attend Russian Orthodox services. Hebly’s account of Russian Protestants (more correctly the Evangelical Christian and Baptist movement; he does not study other Protestants such as the Lutherans) is divided into two parts: the historic background (heavily influenced by nineteenth-century German Baptists) prior to the 1917 Revolution, and the story of Protestantism during the fifty years since that event. The Bolshevik Revolution was looked upon by Russian Protestants as a genuine liberation, and in fact the church came into its own between 1917–1929. In the 1920’s, there was even an attempt to establish a city for believers in Siberia, an idea that initially had the government’s blessings. But suddenly in 1929 religious repression came that lasted until the 1941 German invasion.

The Union of Evangelical Christians and Baptists was founded in 1944. In 1963 the Mennonites joined it. Today this organization is active but divided into two camps, the registered congregations and the non-registered (or Initsiativniki). The latter group has been increasingly protesting against government interference in religious life, and includes dissenters such as Georgi Vins, who has received much attention in the West but who is given sketchy attention by Hebly. Michael Bourdeaux’s Religious Ferment in Russia should be consulted for a better understanding of this group.

Hebly’s appendix, “Between Loyalty and Martyrdom,” includes interesting evaluations of certain individuals such as Romanian evangelist Richard Wurmbrand. Hebly thinks Wurmbrand paints a distorted picture of an organized underground church and is “no trustworthy source of information.” He concludes his short study by asking Western Christians not to pass quick judgments on the extremely difficult position faced by believers in the Soviet Union. These people, the author states, are struggling “to continue to exist as an organism—the only one in the U.S.S.R.—that has its roots in soil other than the official monopolistic ideology.”

Hebly identifies his sources, many of which were written in German, but unfortunately he does not include an index. Both authors present fascinating facts on the state of believers in the East, and their studies are recommended for those who are seeking brief, readable surveys. I hope that future studies will be more analytical rather than just overviews and updates on our Christian brethren in Eastern Europe.

God’S Grace

Free for the Taking, by Joseph R. Cooke (Revell, 1975, 190 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gerald Hawthorne, professor of Greek, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The sub-title of this fascinating volume, “The Life-Changing Power of Grace,” clarifies the meaning of its catchy title. But don’t let this explanation dissuade you from reading the book. This is not another discussion of an already overworked topic.

Joseph R. Cooke, a professor of Far Eastern Languages at the University of Washington, not only carefully defines grace from a biblical perspective, but movingly illuminates its meaning from his own personal experience. Born into a Christian home, taught in Christian schools (including a theological school), surrounded by Christian friends, himself a committed Christian, commissioned as a missionary to Thailand, Cooke found one day that he was tragically at the end of the road. He suffered a nervous breakdown and could not do any of the things for which he had prepared himself—teaching, preaching, facing even the least spiritual challenge such as reading his Bible or praying. He felt himself of no use to God, to his wife, to himself, to anyone.

Free for the Taking, however, is not the story of his long slow climb back to life and hope. Rather the book details the one thing that was most crucial in his upward progress to wholeness—a new understanding and appreciation on his part of the grace of God, and a renewed commitment, this time a joyful and an intelligent one, to the God of grace.

The book begins with a familiar definition: grace is “unmerited favor.” But it proceeds in a fresh and captivating way to make us understand the creative power of this undeserved divine favor in daily living. Grace and legalism, grace and sin, grace and guilt, grace and destructive hostile feelings, grace in the family, and the church and society are just some of the ideas he discusses. As he writes he gently probes almost every sore spot in a Christian’s life, and like a physician he gently and uniquely applies to it the poltice of God’s love and forgiveness—grace.

The book’s only weakness is the chapter on “Grace in Society.” Cooke admits that he does not have the ability to deal adequately with this subject, but tries anyway. As a consequence he writes idealistically, theoretically, and superficially on the topic. He could have strengthened his book by omitting the chapter.

In spite of that, Free for the Taking is a helpful study. It is valuable for any person who seriously struggles with the demands of the Christian life, or more correctly, with the misconceived demands of the Christian life. If its message is heeded at all it will be a catalyst for a liberating, life-changing experience.

John Bunyan Misunderstood

Puritan’s Progress, by Monica Furlong, (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975, 223 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Tom Nettles, assistant professor of church history, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

This book attempts to trace the intellectual development of John Bunyan. But don’t expect bread from Furlong’s Puritan’s Progress; you’ll only break your teeth on the stone. The lack of sustenance is only one of the disappointments. The sophomoric theological statements, the potpourri of amateurish psychoanalysis, the disastrous historiography, and the debilitating latitudinarianism intensify the frustration for the discriminating reader.

After a depressingly simplistic, though sometimes perceptive, chapter entitled “The Puritans” Furlong in two successive chapters traces the life of Bunyan. First she describes his childhood, early struggles with guilt, conversion, and the discovery of his gift of preaching. The next chapter recounts the persecution of dissenters under the Clarendon Code, Bunyan’s imprisonments, the order of his writings, and his death. The biographical section is not an end in itself but provides the context for a discussion of Bunyan’s writing.

Furlong summarizes Pilgrim’s Progress (parts I and II), Mr. Badman, and The Holy War. She has done as well as could be expected with this necessary task. The author would agree that even the noblest synopsis of Pilgrim’s Progress is a disappointing representation of the real thing. Mr. Badman and The Holy War do not suffer as much, since they do not reach the same heights of genius as Pilgrim’s Progress. Furlong makes some pertinent observations about Bunyan’s style, purpose, and possible motivation and she weaves these gracefully into her condensation of his works.

Chapters seven and eight suffer most from Furlong’s non-evangelical stance. “The Belief of Bunyan” reveals Furlong’s perplexity concerning the supposed contradiction between Bunyan’s personal warmth and the coolness of his Calvinistic theology. She cannot see that Bunyan’s acceptance of a God who is both judge and justifier might arise from devotion to Scripture rather than from a mild case of paranoid schizophrenia. In “The Mind of Bunyan” Furlong violates the canons of historiography and greatly diminishes the integrity of her research. She applies the conclusions of Erikson’s psychological study of the young Luther uncritically and unilaterally to Bunyan even though there is no evidence for such application, which she admits at one point. Just to make sure that she finds the right psychological pigeon-hole she also applies the emphasis of Sheldon’s body types: Bunyan is a mesomorph and thus manifests a temperament characterized by somatatonia. She also includes Evans’s Freudian analysis that anality played a very important part in Bunyan’s life as it did in the development of all Puritans and was doubtless instrumental in Luther’s formulation of the doctrine of justification by faith. Jung’s psychological process called “individuation” caps off Bunyan’s development. Although college freshmen taking introduction to psychology would be impressed, she would do better to ask with Menninger, “Whatever happened to sin?”

By far the strongest chapter concerns the influence of Bunyan. Furlong adroitly wends her way from Ben Johnson to e.e. cummings and notes the ebb and flow of Bunyan’s popularity. Southey, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Alcott, Shaw, and Lamb are all mentioned.

Finally, Furlong tries to summarize the strengths of Puritanism as expressed by Bunyan. To be sure, according to the author one must wade through a slough of errors to find the celestial strength, but we modems can easily enough reject the errors of Puritanism. However, Puritanism does provide the high drama, catharsis, and individual meaning we so desperately need. She says that Bunyan eventually achieved a balance in life; he “found the liberation of wholeness towards which all men blindly struggle.” Furlong would have understood Bunyan better had she realized that his pilgrimage was not the struggle of one determined by psychological stimuli, but the progress of one who “walked by faith and not by sight.”

Bible Translations: General And Particular

Good News for Everyone: How to Use the Good News Bible, by Eugene A. Nida (Word, 1977, 119 pp., $3.25 pb), is reviewed by Harry Boonstra, director of libraries, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

Nida’s book is partly a commercial. It calls attention to and explains several features of the Good News Bible, such as the introductions, notes, and line drawings. Nida, who is in charge of translations for the American Bible Society, also gives interesting information about the translation personnel (including nick names), the schedule of the translation, and the huge distribution of the New Testament portion. There are also some jibes at the King James Version (which, it seems, can absorb all the jibing in majestic imperturbability) and at the Living Bible (which continues to sell very well). Add to this the testimonials of satisfied customers, and one has all the makings of a sales pitch.

But the book is more than sales pitch and therefore one is justified in buying what otherwise comes free. It has a description of committee translation and a lucid explanation of contemporary translation theory. Although Nida has already set forth these principles in his Theory and Practice of Translation, most of these concepts are here discussed in a more succinct manner.

The fundamental notion of “dynamic equivalence” is distinguished from both literal translation and from paraphrase. Nida illustrates the concept with many examples, focusing on Psalm 23 in some detail. The chapter discussing “territories of meaning” and “semantic components” is more technical, but certainly not beyond the comprehension of perceptive and persistent readers. Nida sums up the intent of dynamic equivalence by suggesting that “in a sense, a Bible translation into English should seem as though the original account had been written in English and not in Greek or Hebrew.” The rest of the discussion considers specific translation problems and is illustrated with Good News Bible solutions. Chapters five and six explore the departures from some traditional renderings, such as “young girl” for “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 and “universe” for “heavens and earth.” Nida has a helpful treatment of what translation theorists call “pseudo concordance” (one Greek term always to be translated by the same English word), and here defends the different Good News Bible renderings for haima (“blood”). Chapter eight deals with measurements, geographic and biological designations, and other cultural aspects; chapter nine is a brief discussion of texts and textual problems.

The old precept that one need not completely agree with an author yet still benefit from him is especially true of Nida’s book. One reads and hears so much impassioned but ignorant debate about different Bible versions; here is an opportunity to learn about the purpose of contemporary Bible translations. Even if one never uses the Good News Bible (which would be a shame), one can still derive many helpful insights.

The Growing Disciple

What Every Christian Should Know About Growing, by Leroy Eims (Victor, 1976, 168 pp., $1.95 pb), and A Guidebook to Discipleship, by Doug Hartman and Doug Sutherland (Harvest House, 1976, 173 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Pamela Broughton, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Now that I have accepted Christ, what effect is this going to have on my life? In order to answer this common question, a person must know something about what the Christian life means in general, and the meaning of a Christ-centered life in particular.

LeRoy Eims, director of evangelism with the Navigators, provides a step-by-step guide for developing a closer relationship with the Lord. Eims stresses that maturity is an ongoing process dependent on the Holy Spirit’s working in a believer’s life and provides insight as to how this can work practically. I had the impression while reading this book that he is talking to a close friend who is vitally interested in my growth and understanding. The strength of this book is the blend of Scripture and experience to help the new believer gain the basic skills that are needed for a fruitful Christian walk.

The book by Hartman and Sutherland is designed to help every Christian become a more effective disciple. One of the concepts of discipleship that they stress is the distinction between relational and terminal thinking. Simply put, the former relates knowledge and activities to an ultimate goal, while the latter does not. The careful and thorough organization of this work makes it useful for churches in structuring a discipling ministry.

For Christmas Giving

Modern Concordance to the New Testament

edited by Michael Darton (Doubleday, 788 pp., $27.50) claims to be a new approach, not keyed to the words in some particular version (usually the King James) but instead keyed to the ideas represented by one or more Greek terms and by countless terms in the various English translations. As such it is similar to the numerous, competing topical indexes to the Bible. The key distinctives are: (1) the large page size, with each Scripture quotation allotted a line or two instead of being crowded one right after the other; and (2) the arrangement, under major headings, of the verses grouped together by the underlying Greek word, then subdivided by the topical idea. For example, the major heading “Love” is divided into agape and related terms, then “love of God,” etc., and then into philos and related terms, then again “love of God,” etc. This serves, therefore, as a topical concordance in which the Greek is given prominence, but not at the expense of making it too difficult to use as an index to what the New Testament has to say on a given subject. There are several indexes to help you find a word that is not where you might expect. “Forgiveness,” for example, is a subdivision under “Mercy, Pity.” It takes getting used to, but it is easy to imagine this book being of great service to the serious Bible student.

The Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity edited by Tim Dowley (Eerdmans, 656 pp., $19.95) is an excellent gift for the whole family. Pictures and charts, mostly with color, abound on every page. The book invites browsing. But the text is both readable and accurate, too. If you only have one church history book, this should be it.

The Good News Bible, also known as Today’s English Version, was a multi-million seller in its New Testament portion, Good News for Modern Man. The whole Bible was published in inexpensive editions by the American Bible Society late last year. Now a complete range of editions, from children’s to leather-bound, are available from Thomas Nelson and from Collins-World. Broadman has a much more limited selection. It is expected that other publishers will soon be adding this widely commended translation to their lines. Watch the ads and check with your local booksellers.

A revised edition of the English translation of volume two of Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, has recently been released (Eerdmans, 488 pp., $18.50). The first edition appeared in 1975 but was not sold through normal channels. The articles are on fifty-eight Hebrew word groups from “separation” to “uncover, emigrate.” This series will doubtless prove to be as important to Biblical studies as its counterpart known as “Kittel.”

Volume two, covering terms from “gall” to “present,” is available of The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology edited by Colin Brown (Zondervan, 1023 pp., $27.95). For a favorable review of the first volume see September 10, 1976, issue, page 50. One more volume is yet to come.

For someone learning Greek, or wishing to review what he’s learned, a useful aid is New Testament Greek Notebook by Benjamin Chapman (Baker, 131 pp., $9.95). It is a medium-size three-ring notebook with several sections summarizing vocabulary, grammar, inflections, and principles of exegesis and textual variations. Much space is left for inserting one’s own notes from classroom and personal study.

Another translation of the whole Bible is now available: The Holy Bible in the Language of Today by the late William F. Beck (Holman, 1447 pp., $8.95). The New Testament was released in 1963. The Old Testament was completed in 1966, the year of Beck’s death, but editing delayed it until release last year by a minor firm and this year by Holman.

Scholarly Study Of The Life Of Jesus

Jesus Through Many Eyes by Stephen Neill (Fortress, 1976, 214 pp., $5.50 pb), and Jesus in Contemporary Research by Gustaf Aulén (Fortress, 1976, 167 pp., $7.95), are reviewed by Peter H. Davids, assistant professor of biblical studies, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.

When two distinguished scholars write summaries of the state of New Testament research, one must take notice. Even more noteworthy is the fact that both scholars have done much of their work in other fields; yet they clearly demonstrate their competence in this one. Each person brings a freshness and new perspective into his New Testament scholarship.

Neill introduces New Testament theology and brings to his brief textbook both his customary lucidity and the warmth of his personal faith. He pursues his goal by surveying the teaching of each group of New Testament literature (arranged by date and church of origin) and concluding with a discussion of the teaching of Jesus.

What sets this book apart is that it arrives at its modest goal. Neill clearly presents his mainline-British, moderate, critical position with an admirable clarity (which makes the book readable) to those both to his right and left. He clearly knows the full range of scholarly thought, a fact that becomes especially apparent when one pursues his selected bibliography, which in classified groupings leads the student on to wider reading in both older and more modern works coming from the pens of evangelical (e.g., F. F. Bruce, G. E. Ladd, I. H. Marshall) and “radical” (e.g., D. E. Nineham, R. Bultmann, N. Perrin) scholars alike. Rarely has this reviewer seen such a catholicity and concentrated quality in one bibliography.

Now one cannot pretend that this book is without weaknesses. First, its brevity means that it lacks the detail and comprehensive presentation of contrasting positions that a scholar would like. Can one adequately discuss Paul’s letters in thirty-four pages under the heads of resurrection, spirit, and reconciliation? Probably not. But then the book only claims to be an introduction and there are suggestions for further reading. Second, not everyone will agree with Neill’s critical position, especially his conclusions on the historical value of the Gospels. I am sympathetic with many of his conclusions about the historical Jesus (e.g., the genuineness of the Son of Man sayings), but he wonders if Neill’s warm faith has not pushed him beyond his critical presuppositions in reaching them. Most evangelical teachers will want to read this book and use its bibliography, but when they recommend it as an introduction, it will be as an introduction to a position with which they do not entirely agree.

Aulén differs from Neill in three ways: he focuses on Jesus, not the whole New Testament; he purposes to cut the ground from under imaginative reconstructions of Jesus (due to a perceived disarray in modern scholarship); and he writes as a Scandinavian with a warm appreciation for the role of Scandinavian scholarship. These differences make his book unique.

In sorting out positions on Jesus Aulén focuses on three areas of agreement: “Jesus’ central message about the ‘kingdom of God’ which was about to come, and his own personal relation to that event; the content of Jesus’ ethical proclamation; and important traits in his behavior and relationship to the different streams within his own Jewish milieu.” As part of his basic approach to demonstrating agreement he compares the results of H. Braun to those of W. D. Davies and B. Gerhardsson. He does indeed show large areas of agreement, and he continues to do so when he adds a medley of other scholars, including C. H. Dodd, J. Jeremias, U. Wilkins, R. W. Funk, and N. Perrin. New Testament scholarship as a whole does have something positive to say about Jesus. One can only applaud this result and enjoy the way he firmly rejects the arguments of W. Schmithals in defense of a Bultmannian barrier between historical research and faith. Jesus research is not only legitimate, Aulén argues, but it is also possible.

Yet while enjoying the consensus that he produces and being stimulated by his argument, one looks for something more solid on which to take a stand, for these “assured results of critical scholarship” never overcome the dichotomy between faith and history. The nature of the resurrection is still simply the object of faith, not of historical analysis (which can only assert that the apostles did experience appearances of Christ) and the Gospel narratives are still more the report of Easter faith than a trustworthy witness to Jesus.

Both Neill and Aulén, then, have produced something of value to the evangelical. Neill will serve as a useful and moderate introduction to where New Testament scholarship is today. He could help a pastor “catch up” or a seminary class get started. Aulén is for thoughtful reading by both pastor and scholar. His Scandinavian point-of-view will be appreciated and his state-of-the-search-report will suggest useful starting points. But the evangelical will want to go beyond both in his encounter with the living Jesus so trustworthily set forth in the Gospel accounts.

New Journal

The Evangelical Review of Theology was launched by the World Evangelical Fellowship with a 174-page issue dated October, 1977. Intended for a global audience, about a dozen articles, mostly reprinted from small-circulation journals, along with a few book reviews, are in the first issue. This journal belongs not only in all theological libraries around the world but also in the libraries of any university where religion is taught. The low price facilitates personal subscriptions. It is to be published each April and October (World Evangelical Fellowship, Box 670, Colorado Springs, CO, 80901; $4/year).

I was in Latin America when The Myth of God Incarnate (edited by John Hick) was published in faraway London (see September 9 issue, page 45 and September 23 issue, page 30). But within a day or two the ripples (even shock waves?) had reached Argentina, and people were asking me if English churchmen were still Christians. (In the United States the book is published by Westminster Press.)

The book is unworthy of its highly competent contributors. Of course, every symposium is uneven, but this one contains several inner contradictions. My problem with the book concerns the questions of language, authority, and heresy.

Language

First, the debate is confused by a failure to agree on the meaning of the word “myth” and to distinguish between substance and form, or doctrine and language. Sometimes “mythical” is used quite harmlessly to mean no more than “poetic” or “symbolic.” Frances Young contrasts “myth” with “science” in the sense that religious reality is inaccessible to scientific investigation, indefinable in human language, and inconceivable to the finite mind. Her use of the word “myth” may be injudicious, but we have no quarrel with her and others’ desire to preserve the element of mystery in Christian faith and experience. Maurice Wiles makes a conscious attempt to define the term, though he admits it is “loose and elusive.” He takes four biblical doctrines (creation, fall, incarnation-atonement, and resurrection-judgment) and argues that to call any of these a “myth” implies that there is “some ontological truth” which corresponds to the central characteristic of the myth and some “appropriateness” about it. The weakness of his argument may be judged when he goes on to write of the “Incarnation myth.” Despite the variant uses of the word myth all the contributors deny that Jesus either claimed to be or was the God-man of historic Christianity. The book airily dismisses the claims of Jesus on the ground that they are Johannine not synoptic. No serious attempt is made to face the claims—often indirect rather than direct—that the Synoptic Gospels do record or explain how ho kurios, the Septuagint title for Yahweh, could be applied to Jesus so early and without controversy, as in the Pauline epistles, which indicated that the divine lordship of Jesus, demanding worship and obedience, was already the universal faith of the church.

Authority

The contributors don’t recognize the authority of the New Testament. They have no objective standard or criterion by which to test their views. The book is divided into two halves, “testing the sources” and “testing the development,” but the sources are not the New Testament documents against which the later development of doctrines is assessed. New Testament writers and patristic writers are quoted without any distinction drawn between them.

What, then, are the sources of incamational belief? Michael Goulder constructs an ingenious but largely unsupported theory that it arose from “the Galilean eschatological myth” and “the Samaritan gnostical myth” (the latter emanating from Simon Magus) in dialectic with one another. Instead of these “two roots” Frances Young prefers “a tangled mass” of divine births, claims, titles, appearances, and expectations—pagan and Jewish—all creating a “cultural atmosphere” conducive to the deification of Jesus.

Granted such an atmosphere, what sparked off belief in the Incarnation of God in Jesus? The authors reply that it was an experience of salvation through Jesus. There was no “revelation,” only an inference from their experience. The same is true today, they say. They retain some kind of commitment to Jesus because he means something special to them.

Now we evangelicals have ourselves often stressed that creed without experience is valueless. Nevertheless, to base creed upon experience is a very different and a very precarious practice.

Heresy

What should the contemporary church do with heretics? Is that a harsh word? I think not. A humble and reverent probing into the mystery of the Incarnation is the essence of true Christological scholarship. But attempted reconstructions that effectively destroy that which is supposed to be being reconstructed is Christological heresy.

Let me defend my question further. It is based on three convictions: there is such a thing as heresy, that is, a deviation from fundamental, revealed truth; heresy “troubles” the Church, while truth edifies it, and therefore if we love the truth and the Church we cannot fold our arms and do nothing.

The purity of the Church (ethical and doctrinal) is as much a proper Christian quest as its unity. Indeed we should be seeking its unity and purity simultaneously.

I do not myself think a heresy trial is the right way to approach this. Heretics are slippery creatures. They tend to use orthodox language to clothe their heterodox views. Besides, in our age of easy tolerance, the arraigned heretic becomes in the public mind first the innocent victim of bigoted persecutors, then a martyr, and then a hero or saint. But there are other ways to proceed. The New Testament authors are concerned not so much about false brethren as about false teachers, who act like wolves and scatter or destroy Christ’s flock. Although the contributors to The Myth of God Incarnate are academics, most of them are also ordained Anglican clergymen who hold a bishop’s license to preach. Is it too much to hope and pray that some bishop sometime will have the courage to withdraw his license from a presbyter who denies the Incarnation? This would not be an infringement of civil or academic liberty. A man may believe, say, and write what he pleases in the country and the university. But in the church it is reasonable and right to expect all accredited teachers to teach the faith that the church in its official formularies confesses and that (incidentally) they have themselves promised to uphold.

There is a second and more positive step to take. The apostles’ response to the rise of false teachers was partly to warn the churches not to listen to them or be led astray by them, and partly to arrange for the multiplication of true teachers. Thus, Paul told Titus to appoint presbyters in every town who were loyal to the apostolic teaching, so that they might be able both “to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it” (Tit. 1:5,9). It is in this connection that we must congratulate Michael Green on the speed and sagacity with which he assembled his team of authors to write the answering symposium The Truth of God Incarnate. Heresy cannot be finally overcome by any force except that of the truth. So there is today an urgent need for more dedicated Christian scholars who will give their lives to “the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7).

JOHN R.W. STOTT

Mommy, what’s the difference between a lima bean and a human bean?” The question brought a lift on the first frosty morning of the season. The grass shone white and beautiful. But the frost was too early. It left row after row of blackened, shriveled, despondent green and yellow beans in our Alpine vegetable garden. The day before I had looked expectantly at the thriving green leaves and sturdy plants—tiny beans that needed only a few more days of sunshine to ripen. I bought boxes to freeze the beans for Thanksgiving dinner and many winter meals. I thought of cutting the crisp beans in diagonal pieces or long french-cut bundles. I wondered how long it would take for the big orange blossoms to turn into zucchini and for the small green tomatoes to grow big and ripe.

But while we slept the frost came, leaving behind a crisp beauty that belied ruined crops. Yet the cabbage, carrots, beets, broccoli, lettuce, celery, onions, parsley, and dill survived. The resistance level to frost differs from plant to plant. The warm sunny days that follow the cold ones can cause more growth in the plants that resisted the first frost. But beans can’t make a comeback. For them the frost came too soon.

“The difference, darling?” I replied. “Well, a lima bean and a green string bean and yellow snap beans are all vegetables. We grow them, pick them, and eat them. A human bean is not a bean at all dear, but a being. A being is a person, like you and me. We can think and walk, and when we get cold we can seek shelter, a place to go out of the wind and frost, or we can put on a coat to wrap around us. To save our beans from freezing last night we should have thought for them and covered them with burlap bags.”

The dead leaves were reminders of Christians for whom the frost came too soon, and for whom no friend provided any burlap bags. Sturdier Christians must shield more frail ones.

The frost came too soon. The dead leaves reminded me of Christians for whom the frost came too soon, and for whom no friend spread burlap bags. The sturdier plants can’t protect the beans, but sturdier Christians can do something about protecting the more frail ones—and they are meant to. Not one of us is strong. We all need to ask the Lord for his strength in our weakness, moment by moment, to get on with what we are doing. We also need to help each other, especially those who are weaker than we are. Very tender plants, very young Christians, or very frail Christians need understanding and love, longsuffering and kindness, and the hospitality of other Christians. Remember that Paul spoke with great appreciation of three men: “I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus: for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours” (1 Cor. 16:17, 18). Even Paul needed the loving care of other Christians. The “be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted” of Ephesians 4:32 does not only speak of forgiving as God has forgiven us for Christ’s sake, but it tells us to express kindness and tenderheartedness toward other Christians when they need it. That means sharing time and energy, as well as material things.

A burlap bag does not take the place of sunshine, but a burlap bag can keep the frost from hurting a plant. If the garden is large and the most fragile plants numerous, the problem is having enough burlap bags to protect them. When I hear of wilting Christians I think that no one has been willing to be a burlap bag in time. Each of us should be a burlap bag for someone else. Only the Lord can be our sunshine. But there are times when the frost permeates the garden and touches certain plants more than others. A plant can only be a plant; we can be both plant and burlap bag.

Hospitality? God asks that of us all. It is to be a burlap bag for some other Christian. It means giving your time and energy as well as your money for someone else.

The command in John 13:34, 35—“That ye love one another … By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples”—needs to be coupled with First Peter 4:8, 9—“And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves.… Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” These strong commands are meant to be practical. A burlap bag can’t cover much territory at one time; only a few plants can come under its shelter. Peter’s thoughts on hospitality tell us how to be a burlap bag. What does hospitality mean to you? Having a few people come to Sunday lunch? Inviting someone for tea or coffee to talk for an hour or two? Opening your home for a person in need to stay for a few days? Stopping to talk with a neighbor about the wonder of the Bible? Visiting someone in a hospital? What really is needed is sensitivity to the frost in the air, and to cheerfully become a burlap bag.

As I was writing this, a nurse called me. She was depressed and discouraged as she faced the beginning of a two-week stretch of night duty. How can a person write about being a burlap bag and not go ahead and be one at first opportunity? Hospitality can happen on the phone. We talked and then we prayed together for each other. There we were, both plants and burlap bags.

We need to do the Word of God. As we see ourselves as plants and burlap bags we will be fruitful. In Second Peter 1:5–8 we are told to “add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity.” By doing these things we can avoid a shriveled harvest.

Ask most Christians if they steal. Should they deign to answer they’ll say, “Of course not; I know the ten commandments.” But we may have too narrow a definition of what God meant when he said, don’t steal. There are lots of ways to do it.

There is so much stealing going on. In many countries theft has long been commonplace. Iron rods permanently bar the windows; solid metal doors are rolled down at the close of the day to guard store entrances; guards are hired to keep watch all night. In other countries, such as the United States, these precautions against theft have only recently become common. Now computer thefts are increasing. And there aren’t even laws yet against all the ways to steal with and from computers. To “borrow” a library book needed for a class assignment so that others do not have access to it is an increasing crime on campuses. Embezzlement is escalating.

One hopes that Christians do not engage in such blatant stealing. But are there forms of theft to which Christians are vulnerable? If theft is understood as taking something from another so that, if replaceable at all, money and effort is required, then surely it is theft to waste another’s time. If we are careless about keeping appointments or keeping them on time, we are stealing something precious. If we waste time on the job we are taking money under false pretenses. How is that different from selling somebody something and then surreptitiously taking it back?

In the epistle of James we read of God’s wrath on people who withhold just wages from their employees. Christian employers too often let the prevailing standards of whatever society they are in determine their attitude toward just compensation rather than God’s principles of equity. Likewise Christians take advantage of the kindness of their fellow believers when they expect a Christian plumber, for example, to fix leaks for free.

We owe our government taxes, not only because of services rendered and because the law requires it, but because God has said that we are to pay them. There are legal means of reducing one’s taxable income, and Christians should make use of them as good stewards of the funds that God has entrusted to us. But when we claim deductions to which we are not entitled, we are stealing. If we claim a charitable deduction for what is really a tuition payment for our child’s schooling, we steal. If we take our spouse along at company expense on a business trip and don’t count its value as income, we steal—even with the boss’s approval. If we have a company car, but fail to separate business from private use, we steal, if not from the company, then from the government.

Photocopy abuse is widespread. Christians have been particularly guilty of stealing income due to publishers and artists by photocopying music and pirating lyrics. Organizations that solicit funds for one purpose but use them in quite unrelated ways are engaged in a form of stealing. This affects more than sleazy, fly-by-night operations. Probably many prominent denominations and seminaries have received legacies for evangelism or to advance a particular confessional stance but instead have used the money to support modernistic views. With all these possibilities, who can say he has never stolen?

Meanwhile believers cannot look upon the increase of stealing in our society with indifference. Christians concerned with helping to improve society should address this problem. They should press for the speedy arrest, trial, conviction, and punishment of those guilty of stealing in any of its forms. Too often criminals go unpunished because citizens do not cooperate. Many firms prefer to fire an employee found stealing rather than receive negative publicity. The fact that everyone is doing it is no excuse. The Holy Spirit can help us see how guilty we are. By the power he supplies, we can stop. By the grace he mediates, we can be assured of forgiveness as we acknowledge our transgressions.

The Panama Problem

A few weeks ago New Yorker magazine ran a cartoon on the Panama Canal, which went something like this: “A while ago, I didn’t know a thing about the Panama Canal. Now I can’t live without it.” Many of us are in the same situation. What exactly are the facts?

The United States has extraterritorial rights to property located inside another nation. We built the canal (after, in effect, forming the country of Panama) during the years 1904–1914. Today extraterritorial possessions by strong nations is considered imperialistic.

The Panamanian government is a left-wing dictatorship. Opponents of the treaty say that to give up control of the canal is to surrender it to Marxists. But if and when the transfer of power becomes effective, Panama could be a right-wing dictatorship or even a democracy. And the United States, too, might have changed its form of government.

Both support for and opposition to the treaty is bipartisan. Negotiations have been going on under the past four administrations, two Democrat and two Republican. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger firmly support the treaty. The crucial factor from the American point of view is not who owns the canal, but whether it is kept open so that our ships can use it at reasonable cost. Some aspects of the treaty need clarification, particularly that of our right to intervene should Panama or any other nation try to stop our ships.

Almost everyone agrees that failure to work out a satisfactory treaty would adversely affect our relations with Latin America and perhaps with other Third World nations. Opponents say, “So what?” But Christians concerned with the reception of American missionaries cannot adopt such an attitude.

To approve the treaty without clarification could be imprudent. So would refusal. Perhaps we should bring in the United Nations. Few aspects of international commerce are more global than the fate of the Panama Canal. Since the poorer and more leftist countries have considerable influence in the United Nations, Panama should not object. And the United States would have some recourse other than unilateral intervention were difficulties with Panama to arise. Whatever we decide, we should treat the Panamanians with honesty and fairness.

When Is a Form Too Simple?

Senator Mark Hatfield, a staunch evangelical, has introduced a bill in the Senate (number 1969) to reform and simplify the present personal income tax form. A forty-line calculation would replace the complexities of form 1040, and a single tax credit for adults would replace the endless array of exemptions presently available. He calls his proposal “Simpliform.” The simplification would cut back the present tax rates so that an income above $5,000 would pay 10 per cent and it would gradually increase; a $50,000 income would call for a 30 per cent tax rate.

The Senator is pursuing this draconian course because he believes that “item-by-item reform … is always doomed to failure. Beneficiaries of tax loopholes will continue to bring pressure to bear in order to protect laws that are advantageous to themselves.”

As we know, one man’s loophole is another’s legitimate tax deduction. Loopholes are not just for the rich, but include such items as the deduction for interest on loans, used widely by middle-class homeowners, or the exemptions for dependents that help those people with lots of children, or deductions for charitable giving.

Hatfield correctly asserts that the beneficiaries of loopholes will press their cases for continuing them. We think that deductions for charitable giving are legitimate. Here is the senator’s view.

“The elimination of deductions for contributors to charitable organizations should not be seen as a threat to the many worthy causes benefiting from these deductions. In some cases, such as educational institutions and health agencies, support should be provided by means of the direct and responsible route, that of appropriations. This could be done without seriously increasing the tax burden of the average person. Those organizations which should not be directly subsidized, such as religious groups, would continue to rely on the voluntary contributions of their supporters. Those who deeply believe in the goals and values of such groups will not cease their support because of the loss of the tax deduction. Moreover, the typical taxpayer would have additional funds for such purposes, because of the tax savings under Simpliform.”

Now, our view. Christian schools should not and cannot get general funding from the public purse. To assert that private educational institutions should be financed by government appropriations leaves no provision for those schools that refuse such funding because they think that government support sooner or later means complying with government regulations. One of the pillars of our free society is the availability of diverse educational institutions.

The typical taxpayer might have more to give under Simpliform, but it is the non-typical large donor who has, because of tax advantages, contributed large sums to private schools and charitable organizations. This kind of gift would probably be affected by Hatfield’s proposal. As essential as they are, small gifts could not make up for the loss of big donations. Besides, we know that what was intended to be only a small tax or expense (the original income tax, Social Security, medicare) has a way of rapidly escalating. Upper bracket taxpayers would have less disposable income under Simpliform. But we doubt that middle or lower bracket taxpayers would have more after-tax income.

The present tax system is indeed a hodgepodge. But such sweeping measures as Senator Hatfield proposes would create more problems than they solve. For all of its problems, we think that line-by-line-tax reform is the best approach. Those who feel likewise should not hesitate to let Hatfield and any other backers of Simpliform know their views.

What Seminaries Don’t Believe

One of the “fundamentals of the faith” that has been advocated from apostolic times on is that Jesus rose from the grave with the same body that was placed there. The body was transformed, but to suggest that the resurrection was merely “spiritual,” akin to saying that the spirit of Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. lives on, has struck most Christians throughout the centuries as preposterous.

How then does one account for a recent story in the Los Angeles Times by a competent religion reporter, John Dart? Under the headline “Did Jesus Rise Bodily? Most Biblical Scholars Say ‘No’,” Dart reports the results of interviews with many scholars as well as with certain pastors. He concluded that “the interviews … revealed the width of an enormous gap between contemporary New Testament studies and the assumptions of the general public, even most churchgoers.”

Among the more interesting findings was a statement to Dart by Edward Hobbs who teaches New Testament at Berkeley’s cluster of nine seminaries known as the Graduate Theological Union. He told the reporter that “he didn’t know of one school there in which a significant part of the faculty would accept statements that Jesus rose physically from the dead or that Jesus was a divine being.” One hopes that Hobbs is wrong and that more of his colleagues believe the Bible than he knows about. But even if Hobbs is mostly wrong the question needs to be asked by church leaders and members: why would anyone who did not believe crucial doctrines of the faith be permitted to teach at a Christian seminary? The stance of one school in Berkeley, Starr King, is readily understandable: it is officially Unitarian. But here are the other schools in the consortium: American Baptist Seminary of the West, Church Divinity School (Episcopal), Pacific Lutheran (LCA and ALC), San Francisco Seminary (United Presbyterian), the interdenominational Pacific School of Religion, and three Roman Catholic schools (Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit).

Lest one be so naive as to think that Hobbs must be wrong with respect to the Catholic schools, consider what John Burke, a priest who is the Washington-based executive director of the Word of God Institute, told Dart: he does not know of “any credible biblical scholar who would hold for a bodily Resurrection.” Scholars who are orthodox should introduce themselves to Burke, who will doubtless find them incredible.

We want to know why Roman Catholic bishops, who seem to be so concerned about such practices as clerical celibacy, do not show a little more concern for seeing that the teachers of their future priests believe in the resurrection and deity of the one they profess to serve.

We want to know why certain denominational leaders, pastors, and lay people tolerate the employment of men and women who so teach in their seminaries that Hobbs can say “students come here [to Graduate Theological Union] in the first year, and many of them are shocked and ask why they weren’t told. The only answer is that many of the clergy are afraid, so they keep quiet about the things they learned in seminary.”

The situation in many of the prestigious Protestant and Catholic seminaries is analogous to what it would be if the nation’s medical schools were hirine faculty who believe in the theories of Christian Science.

We believe that Christian Scientists should be allowed to practice their approaches to healing. We believe that Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other deniers of Christ’s deity should have the freedom to proclaim their doctrines. But we do not believe that it is morally right for a Catholic or Protestant seminary to teach what is contrary to the fundamental doctrines of historic orthodoxy.

Whatever the doctrinal shortcomings of the nineteenth-century Unitarians, they were ethical giants compared to the Catholics and Protestants of our time who do not have the common decency to change denominations when they no longer believe such fundamental truths as the bodily resurrection and the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Witnessing Through Answers

Countless attempts have been made to embellish the account of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (1 Kings 10:1–13). The extra-biblical tales fill many a book. Quite apart from the embellishment, the record itself is worthy of closer study. It suggests a pattern of witness.

The queen’s curiosity started it all. She had certain questions to ask this famous man whose name was linked with “the name of the Lord” (v. 1). There is no indication that the king took any initiative to invite her. She had heard that the Hebrew ruler knew God and had been blessed by him, and she wanted to know more about that. From what is probably now Yemen she took a trip that was for her day, extraordinarily long, hazardous, and expensive—all to get answers (v. 2).

Solomon gave her straightforward answers (v. 3) and allowed her to observe the operation of his official household as well as his worship of God (vv. 4–5). The visitor was overwhelmed. She finally admitted to her host that even though she had heard all the reports about his wisdom and prosperity she had not believed them. But after seeing for herself, she exclaimed, “the half was not told me” (vv. 6–7). Her final recorded comment is an acknowledgement of God and his blessings on those who obey him (vv. 8–9). She expressed her appreciation for the king’s hospitality and responses to her questions by giving him costly gifts.

Solomon’s life was open before his visitor, and she was fascinated. No doubt she asked questions about his faith. The record says he answered all that she asked.

All contemporary Christians do not have the same opportunities that the Hebrew king had, but each of us has unexpected occasions to open our lives to others who want to know “what makes them tick.” Straightforward answers are never out of place. The believer who is too timid to ask questions about another person’s spiritual interest at least must stand ready to answer questions about his own beliefs. God will bless a sincere word of testimony.