Page 5739 – Christianity Today (2024)

Redundant Redundancies

One of Francis Schaeffer’s contributions to the Church (and there are many) is the phrase “true truth.” When he wants to distinguish between what the world calls truth and the absolute truth of God, he uses that term. You cannot read a Francis Schaeffer book without coming across the term. And you cannot read an Edith Schaeffer book without seeing the phrase another dozen times.

Now I am a fan of Francis Schaeffer. I applaud his contributions. But I abhor the term “true truth.”

To me it highlights a problem among Christians: the problem of being redundant. We use so many redundant redundancies that we are in danger of eliminating or abandoning the meaning of perfectly good words.

Why can’t a Christian be a Christian? Why does he have to be a born-again Christian? Aren’t all Christians born again, according to Scripture? And why does a born-again Christian have to be an evangelical Christian? According to my Funk and Wagnalls, evangelical is an adjective “of, relating to, contained in, or in harmony with the New Testament, especially the Gospels.” That seems to me to be a definition of a Christian if I ever heard one.

And how about charismatic Christians? According to my understanding of spiritual gifts (charisma), all believers have at least one spiritual gift whether we’re evangelical, born-again, or just plain run-of-the-mill Christians. So all of us are charismatics. But now some of us can’t call ourselves charismatics even if we are because the term has been taken away from us by redundant redundanters.

If the trend continues, we’ll find ourselves describing real sin as sin-sin. (Isn’t that a breath freshener … or a federal penitentiary?) An individual person will have a born-again conversion experience, followed by a liquid water baptism at which time he will join a church fellowship and give a tithe of one-tenth.

Redundant redundancies could get so bad that books would double in size and so would CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine column columns. God Jehovah forbid deny.

EUTYCHUS VII

Issuing Excellence

Thank you for another excellent issue (January 16) of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Harold O. J. Brown has done an outstanding job saying some things about “The Passivity of American Christendom” which are right on target.… The Supreme Court’s own dissenting members have not hestitated to refer to some of its majority opinions as “tortured interpretation” of the U.S. Constitution. The school-prayer decisions (1962 and 1963), in my opinion, all fall into this category. Brown’s very fine analysis … demonstrates how far afield the Court has drifted from the original intent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

FLOYD ROBERTSON

Secretary of Public Affairs

National Association of Evangelicals

Washington, D.C.

On behalf of the Christian Action Council and indeed of all Christians who recognize what the Bible teaches about human life, I want to thank you for the January 16 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The combination of Dr. Selzer’s article describing an abortion with the lead editorial was very good.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

Christian Action Council

Washington, D.C.

Music Moves

Apparently my paper presented at the fifth annual meeting of the scholarly Society of Pentecostal Studies failed to communicate to reporter Vinson Synan what was intended. (News, “Shaking Up the Pentecostals,” Jan. 2). While stress was given, as Synan correctly suggests, on the proper evaluation of hymn and song texts, I certainly did not intend to make an appeal, as such, “to develop a greater appreciation for the great old hymns of the church.” In fact, one may find fault with the texts of “old hymns” as often as new songs.… To quote from my paper, “the point is not when the hymn was written, not who wrote it, but what was written.… Is it theologically sound? Is it biblically correct?” Synan’s suggestion that “the Pentecostals and charismatics seem to be moving in opposite directions on the matter of hymnody” strikes me.… as inaccurate both in terms of positions taken at the conference and what is in reality happening in our churches today.

JOSEPH NICHOLSON

Springfield, Mo.

Help In Honduras

Your columns have published two stories over the last few months telling of the relief services of churches and religious groups following the disastrous hurricane in Honduras which occurred in September, 1974. You mentioned the identity and described the contribution of several groups which took part in one of the best cooperative relief efforts which has occurred in recent years.

Unfortunately, some of our people have been disappointed that your coverage gave inadequate mention to the very substantial efforts of The Salvation Army in that disaster. The Salvation Army contribution was one of the largest privately funded efforts of all the relief programs in Honduras following the hurricane. The value of Salvation Army services in that disaster was in excess of $2.5 million, utilizing eighty-one professional Salvation Army people who traveled to Honduras from seven different nations. The official State Department report of the disaster told of 550 tons of canned and packaged food, 213 tons of clothing, tents, and bedding, 3 tons of medical supplies, communications equipment, and a full field hospital transported to Honduras and operated by the Salvation Army.

We understand that in a “wrap-up” story involving the work of very many it is often easy to overlook the significant contribution of some. In behalf of the dedicated volunteers, however, who worked with The Salvation Army in this instance, and who helped to support the cost of it, it will be much appreciated if your columns can make room for just this little bit more.

ERNEST A. MILLER

Major

The Salvation Army

Washington, D.C.

No Negotiation

A number of our people were quite upset about Guy Charles’s reference to hom*osexuals in the Church of the Nazarene and the inference that our denomination was negotiating with them (“Gay Liberation Confronts the Church,” Sept. 12, 1975). This, of course, has never been the case. While we have not condoned such practices we have endeavored to hold out to those who are participating in hom*osexual activities the redemptive power of the grace of God.

Our statement on hom*osexuality is found in Paragraph 704.10 on page 400 of the 1972 Manual of the Church of the Nazarene and is as follows:

We recognize the depth of the perversion that leads to hom*osexual acts, but affirm the biblical position that such acts are sinful and subject to the wrath of God. We believe the grace of God sufficient to overcome the practice of hom*osexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9–11). We urge clear preaching and teaching concerning Bible standards of sex morality. We deplore any action or statement that would seem to imply compatibility between Christian morality and the practice of hom*osexuality.

EUGENE L. STOWE

General Superintendent

Church of the Nazarene Church of the Nazarene International Headquarters

Kansas City, Mo.

On Rings

Thank you for Cheryl Forbes’s exciting, “literary” article on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (“Frodo Decides—Or Does He?,” Dec. 19). It is simply fantastic, beautiful, and wonderful.

NAOMI L. HUNT

McLean, Va.

Concluding Correctly

Thank you for the Editor’s perceptive analysis of the Nairobi General Assembly of the World Council of Churches (“Nairobi: Crisis in Credibility,” Jan. 2). While I believe that the judgment rendered on Dr. Robert McAfee Brown was too severe—and certainly one cannot question the basic Christian presuppositions out of which his analysis was made—I, nevertheless, feel that your conclusion in which you point out the seriousness of the socialism-capitalism issue is an accurate one.

WILLIAM F. KEESECKER

Moderator

The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Wichita, Kans.

ERRATUM

In the letter from David M. Stowe in the January 30 issue, his name was inadvertently misspelled “Stone.”

Sniffing Out Science Fiction

Science fiction is now making it big in the pop culture field. But there was a time when scifi fans were closet believers, carefully covering their science-fiction treasures with the dust covers of more reputable volumes.

The current popularity didn’t happen overnight. It has been growing for some time. Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain may have contributed to bringing scifi out of the closet. Crichton placed the action of the novel in the near enough future to avoid the fantastic ethos that has usually been a part of this genre.

The most visible evidence of the new popularity of science fiction is the continual replaying of the television series “Star Trek.” It has gathered a group of fanatical fans among the young.

Defining science fiction is as difficult as analyzing it. Brentano’s Washington store in a shoulder-shrugging gesture has simply put all fantasy and science fiction together. There sit H. G. Wells and Charles Williams comfortably side by side. That would probably disturb neither author as much as the fantasy devotees. A scifi fan who has graduated to fantasy freak is as intolerant of his past as a reformed alcoholic. Perhaps it will suffice to call science fiction technological fantasy.

My own on-and-off infatuation with the genre began in my teens when my father presented me with a small anthology of science fiction short stories. Among them was a gem by William Rose Benet entitled “By the Waters of Babylon.” If you can find it, read it! Written in the thirties, it describes the return of humanity to stone-age culture following an undescribed disaster and the rediscovery of an automated New York City by a stone-age youth. The city is deserted, but the lights still go on automatically each evening.

From there my scifi search went along the usual paths: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.—with side trips to the likes of Edward Bellamy and C.S. Lewis.

Before writing this I checked with my local bookstore to see what kinds of works the new scifi buffs are buying. The manager affected the role of the piano player in the bordello: he knew there was considerable activity but he wasn’t sure of its precise nature. However, he consented to look over the shelves with me for whatever helpful comments he might be able to make.

I did learn several interesting facts about the science-fiction patrons of his store. One of my discoveries may destroy a lot of theories about the reading tastes of Americans. It seems that there are devotees of scific cover art. These people buy the books just for the highly stylized, symbolic, super-realistic covers. They would no more think of reading them than a stamp collector would think of using a stamp from his collection to mail a letter.

A second fact I discovered is that the old favorites headed by Heinlein and Bradbury are still the top sellers. Some of the newer entrants like Ursula K. LeGuin and Robert Silverberg are gathering a following, but they have not yet overtaken the writers from the golden age of scifi—the thirties and forties.

All this new activity may be deeply significant or it may simply mean that the Saturday morning “Jetson” fans have grown up and are unwilling to leave science fiction behind. I leave that profound determination to someone else.

Any literature, of course, reveals something about its readers and even more about the age that produced it. Science-fiction writers usually look at their own times from a vantage point in the future. From there they can show where the follies of their day are leading.

While a number of science-fiction “predictions” have come true, the authors have done better at revealing the age from which they speak. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is highly revealing about the manners, morals, and ideals of nineteeth-century liberal socialists. However, since it predicts the demise of human selfishness, labor unions, management, money, and war, one concludes that Bellamy’s prophetic gifts left something to be desired. (It is probably the only novel that ever resulted in the formation of a political party. The Nationalist party was founded to work toward the utopia pictured by Bellamy.)

In the same way, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, with its society of hermaphrodites, tells us more about the twentieth century’s confusion and difficulties over sexual roles than about the future or meaning of sexual polarity.

Science-fiction writers operate very much within the thought patterns of their day. Someone has said that the secondary artists of any age show the age more clearly than the artists of first rank. Artists of the first rank have their own independent vision. The secondary artists reflect the views of the culture around them. And that’s just as true of science-fiction authors as any others.

As for those who sniff that science fiction is inferior simply because it’s escapist literature, let them sniff. Those of us who know the territory know that the escape to Erhenrang is essentially the same as the escape to Lilliput.

The subjects of science fiction are overwhelmingly politics, technology, and their interaction. Religion, sex, and other interesting social activities normally appear only peripherally or occasionally.

One of the more overtly religious “Star Trek” episodes experiments with a religious theme about the conflict of Christianity and the Roman Empire. The Star Ship Enterprise discovers a civilization that is a modern Roman Empire complete with televised gladiator contests. A dissident minority is interpreted by the space crew as being sun worshipers. Only after they leave do they realize that the dissidents were worshipers of the Son—Jesus.

This raises an interesting theological question: if there are other fallen civilizations, would God become incarnate for them? Or is his dealing with the human race unique?

A number of religious and theological themes run through the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. His book Cat’s Cradle has a humanistic religion, Bokononism, complete with Bible, sacraments, and a messiah. Vonnegut uses Bokononism and its conflict with the government as a vehicle for his own humanistic philosophizing.

The film Planet of the Apes featured a religion that aped fundamentalism. The remaining intelligent human beings had descended to the idolatrous worship of the last nuclear ballistic missile.

This put-down of religion is more typical of science fiction than is the sympathetic treatment a few authors give the subject.

In 1972 Revell published an interesting volume of Christian science-fiction short stories edited by Roger Elwood entitled Signs and Wonders. The stories were Christian in the sense of being written from the standpoint of orthodox Christian doctrine. In one story a visitor from another world is evangelized by an earthly Christian.

C. S. Lewis’s work, of course, falls into a special category. One of his striking devices was the assumption that the inhabitants of another planet might never have rebelled against God. Since the woods are full of Lewis thralls ready to pounce on any critic who might make a misstatement about the master, let me simply say that Lewis has produced what—at this point—is the ultimate in theological science fiction.

Even though religion itself is a minor and despised subject in scifi, one theological theme continues to appear: sin. And that theme threatens to last a long time.

JOHN VERNON LAWING, JR.

John Vernon Lawing, Jr., is feature editor of the “National Courier,” Plainfield, New Jersey.

Enroll in our Sunday school and become a college graduate.”

Preposterous. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Nontraditional ways to acquire college credits or a degree are growing in number and variety. The most familiar ones are extension, correspondence, and evening courses. Some newer developments, though, suggest the possibility of providing college-level training through Sunday school and other church organizations.

• Every year colleges grant credit or degrees to thousands of adults who make satisfactory scores on the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests. Where, when, and how recipients acquired their knowledge is not a consideration.

• Courses for credit are offered in such unusual off-campus settings as railroad commuter cars, office buildings, factories, and union halls.

• Many colleges cooperate with social institutions, business and industry, government agencies, and the armed forces in tailoring degree programs to the special needs of these groups.

Participants in nontraditional college programs are primarily adults who are unable or unwilling to attend fulltime on-campus courses because of other responsibilities. The likeliest participants are those with some previous college experience. In 1971, 12 million persons over the age of twenty-two had one to three years of college education. Each year a greater percentage of high school graduates enter college. Generally, fewer than half of those who enter graduate with their entering class. Most of those who drop out would like to finish college someday.

Another group of potential participants in nontraditional education are the 15 million college graduates over twenty-five. Many are interested in continuing their education, to earn other credentials or just for intellectual development.

Then there are countless people who have always felt deprived because they did not go to college and who long to make it up to themselves by going someday.

Not only older learners but also college-bound teenagers can use nontraditional programs. High school students can begin their college studies early.

Christians who want nontraditional college programs often must turn to secular institutions. Christian colleges and local churches could cooperate to meet their needs.

The purposes of church and college are different, it’s true. However, their purposes often overlap.

The purpose of attending Sunday school is generally agreed to be to acquire “heart” knowledge as well as “head” knowledge. Well, educators too recognize the benefit of this kind of learning, which they call “affective learning.” It is considered to be a valid component of liberal arts education.

An important purpose of general or liberal arts education is to develop the ability to think critically and communicate effectively. Certainly, Christians need that ability. They need it in order to witness effectively and to discern and counter false doctrine and false religious, social, economic, and political propaganda. Sunday school and other church educational experiences should help develop the ability to think and communicate well.

Degree requirements in general education, especially in the humanities, could be accommodated by a modified church education and training program. For example, history, art, music, biblical studies, and comparative religion would readily fit in.

College-church joint programs might lead to the common associate of arts or bachelor of arts degrees. Or a new degree (or major) might be created to reflect special preparation, as, say, a Christian lay counselor or other lay worker.

Nontraditional education does not have to conform to traditional patterns of requirements, core courses, distribution of credits, and academic disciplines to be sound. Some colleges shape their requirements in terms of an individual learning “contract.” Others recast requirements to build on specific demonstrated competencies.

Faculty in some nontraditional programs work more as resource persons, advisors, and mentors than as instructors. They help learners find their best learning styles and the best methods for reaching their learning goals. In college-church joint programs, aspects of this new “facilitator” role might be performed by a lay or paraprofessional person. Campus ministers interested in expanding the scope of their ministry might serve in this capacity also. Of course, regular college faculty too could fill this role.

In some nontraditional programs, no period of “residency” is required. In others, residential periods might be just a three-day weekend each semester, or two Saturdays a month, or a week or two during vacations. Other colleges redefine residency to mean continuous enrollment and “keeping in touch.” Contact with instructors in these various programs may be through audio cassettes, telephone, mail, radio, television, and systems that use computers.

Few Christian colleges have the resources to help churches set up complete degree programs. Many, however, are able and willing to cooperate in developing some courses. Credits obtained in these courses could help adults enrolled in degree programs elsewhere.

A consortium of colleges or a denominational board of higher education would be more likely to be able to help churches create total degree programs. Degrees might then be awarded in the name of the consortium, the board, or possibly the churches. There is some precedent for this approach. Degree-granting authority and regional accreditation has been extended to some groups that are not teaching institutions. These include the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, an Ohio-based consortium; education coordinating bodies in New York, New Jersey, and Illinois; and a Connecticut agency created for the express purpose of granting degrees and other academic awards.

Nontraditional college-level programs do not necessarily set aside educational standards. Accrediting bodies have devised new procedures for evaluating nontraditional programs. And steps are being taken to set up state regulations that would guard against certain pitfalls. Christian efforts in offering nontraditional education through church programs would need to avoid academic shoddiness, inflated promises that raise false hopes, and fiscal naivete or irresponsibility.

Christian colleges stand to gain from cooperating with churches in college-level programs. The supply of new high school graduates to recruit from is leveling off and due to decline. Many colleges need to seek new audiences and find new ways to serve them if they are to survive. Persons who become involved in a Sunday school-based college course are also likely to enroll for other courses sponsored by the college—on or off campus. Increased enrollment means increased tuition income. And participation and involvement also stimulate giving.

Meanwhile, the churches’ adult programs could be revitalized by this cooperation process. Adult Christians, capable of accelerating intellectual and spiritual growth, could be helped to “put away childish things” and move on to Christian maturity.

Headline of the future: May 1983—“Brain Transplant Successful! Scientist Lives on in Borrowed Body.”

A bizarre fantasy? A page from one of Robert Scheckley’s far-out science fiction novels? Definitely not. The date is an educated, conservative guess, and the event is a near certainty. Incredible as it may seem, most of the technical difficulties have already been solved. Evidence from organ research and animal experimentation increasingly indicates that brain transplantation can be performed now—with existing techniques. Only moral inhibition prevents one neurosurgeon from trying it today. Dr. Robert White of Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital believes that “the Japanese will be first. I will not because I haven’t resolved as yet this dilema: is it right or not?”

Regrettably, Dr. White’s question is not typically asked by scientists. Alvin Toffler sums up the prevailing attitude of the scientific community as “if something can be done, someone, somewhere will do it.” That terrifying doctrine gnaws away at the concept of a society based on appreciation of the individual. It gives short shrift to Thomas Jefferson’s idea that all men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. It appears that the 1980s will usher in an era of experimentation on human beings that asks only, “Is it possible?” and “Is it feasible?”

Toffler lays out some stunning prospects: genetically prescribed babies bred in test tubes and purchased by parents in a baby mart; astronauts biologically modified for space travel; cold-war rivalry to breed super-brains to engage in further warfare; “cloning,” physically copying a living organism from its genetic material; and finally, merging of man with machine. “If we assume that the brain is the seat of consciousness and intelligence,” says Toffler, “it may then become possible to combine the human brain with a whole set of artificial sensors, receptors and effectors, and to call that tangle of wires and plastic a human being” (Future Shock, Bantam Books, 1970, p. 209).

Whether we like it or not, we are a part of a kaleidoscopically changing world. Some of these changes appear to bode ill for our way of life, our children, our church. Now is the time for Christians to analyze their position and to prepare a strategy for the future. I have three points of strategy to suggest.

Develop a “last days” mentality. Dr. Jose Delgado of Yale University suggests that our culture move “toward a psychocivilized society.” In this new civilization some persons would be manipulated by electronic brain stimulation. Delgado has already developed the techniques on both animal and human subjects. And what about the ethical considerations? Delgado views them calmly:

The prospect of any degree of physical control of the mind provokes a variety of objections; theological objections because it affects free will; moral objections because it affects individual responsibility; ethical objections because it may block self-defense mechanisms; philosophical objections because it threatens personal identity.

These objections, however, are debatable. A prohibition of scientific advance is obviously naive and unrealistic [The Physical Control of the Mind, Harper Colophon Books, 1969, p. 214].

One suspects that in Delgado’s scheme theology and morality yield to the god of “scientific advance.” Delgado also advocates “governmental intervention in our bodies” for the purpose of “health.” But who defines health?

In the March 19, 1973, issue of Newsweek, Dr. Kenneth Clark, psychology professor at City University of New York, extolled the advantages of “psychotechnological intervention for the control of negatives … in human behavior.” He argued that opposition to this wave of the future is “immoral” on the grounds that without such controls nuclear war is inevitable.

“Human problems are increasingly seen as technological problems” writes Will Herberg, a distinguished Jewish sociologist, “to be dealt with by adjustment and manipulation.… In fact the belief seems to have merged that there is nothing beyond man’s desires, nothing beyond man’s power. His values are his to make or unmake.”

Paul’s warning to Timothy appears to fit the direction of our age: “in the last days perilous times will come.” But we have not yet come to grips with the new perils. We have assumed that the social patterns of the past couple of decades would remain stable until the end of our lives and possibly until the end of the Church’s stay on earth. We have rooted our expectation in permanent democracy and ongoing affluence. We’ve been betting heavily that the future will being us more “normalcy” and a slightly updated, more sumptuous version of the status quo.

With the definition of man greatly blurred, with values up for grabs, with science clamoring for the reins of our biological and neurological future, the next decade appears sinister and perilous indeed. Such times call for a biblical philosophy of crisis.

The Apostle Peter commands us, “Be sober, be vigilant.” We must prepare to discard all that is superfluous to our faith and ready ourselves to defend, perhaps even to suffer for, what we know is essential. We have no more years to relax. If today I am not increasing in wisdom, spiritual understanding, and knowledge of God, I may well be shell-shocked by the explosions of tomorrow. This means I should master the eternal facts and precepts of my faith right now. It means disentangling myself from purely temporary goals. It means grappling with the spiritual errors of today, diagnosing their ungodly heredity, foreseeing their disastrous consequences.

Define a 1980s Christian ethic. The range of ethical decisions confronting mankind will expand rapidly in the 1980s. New biology and ultra-modern genetics will force us to ask many hard new questions. Should we accept brain transplants to save our lives or our children’s? Should we, in unusual circ*mstances, opt for offspring conceived in the test-tube instead of in the womb? Should women accept a transplanted egg from a donor? Shall men allow their sperm to be stored for possible use in case of premature death?

Even old matters like abortion and euthanasia will become more complex as medical progress creates new life-prolonging drugs, birth-control mechanisms, and life-support systems. A well-known physician was quoted in Time magazine about his basic approach to the act of euthanasia:

There’s no single rule you can apply. For me it is always an intensely personal, highly emotional, quasireligious, largely unconscious battle.… I and most doctors I know have acted in ways which would possibly shorten certain illnesses—without ever verbalizing it to ourselves or anybody else.

This statement underscores the plight of our world. It has no substance. No specifics. No reasoned propositions. The doctor seems to be saying that he makes these life-and-death decisions in a psychological nether-world, not bound by rules or reasons.

This is to be expected from unregenerate man. But Christians who have access to God’s Word sometimes commit the same blunder by ignoring the difficult questions or condemning all change. Such gut-level Christianity will be of little use in dealing with the issues of which we have been speaking. We must define our values—articulately, rationally, dynamically. We must study the array of mind-boggling new issues before us. Which biblical principles apply to these new possibilities? How can we communicate the timeless laws of righteousness in the dialect of the eighties? Keeping good theology in the refrigerator while the world urgently needs its refreshing truth simply won’t do.

Demonstrate reality to our children. Not long ago Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, suggested a new policy that would allow parents and doctors to kill grossly malformed infants conceived in the laboratory: “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice.” As Father Richard McCormick of Loyola University of Theology warns, “Once you pass judgment that certain kinds of life are not worth living, the possible sequence is horrifying. In Nazi Germany they went from mental defectives to political enemies to whole races of people.” This may be the shape of the world the next generation will inherit.

Thirty years ago, in his novel That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis set down the following prophetic dialogue:

LORD FEVERSTONE: Man has got to take charge of man.… You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of.

MARK STUDDOCK: What sort of things do you have in mind?

FEVERSTONE: Quite simple and obvious things at first—sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of the backward races, selective breeding. Then real education.… It’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain [That Hideous Strength, Macmillan, 1946, p. 42].

The intervening years have breathed the breath of possibility into these ghastly visions. Now it’s all possible, and some of it is being preached as the message of salvation by the apostles of behaviorism and ethology.

We must teach our children who they are and what God intends them to be. They should learn how significant, how special they are—persons, not objects or machines; persons made in the image of God.

At the same time we must instill in them a sense of divine mission: “to show forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” God has apprenticed our sons and daughters to us for a few years not only to absorb our shoptalk but to learn the skills of discipleship. Our job is to show them how to become journeyman saints, skilled spiritual craftsmen.

In family devotions we teach them good doctrine: God loves, Jesus saves, the Holy Spirit empowers. They attend Sunday school and learn their memory verses or catechism. Good. But it all becomes real when they watch us walking with God. As they catch us in the acts of receiving answers to prayer, of being fruitful in every good work, of expressing Christ-like love in the home and family, they grasp abundant life. If the beauty of our holiness contradicts the folly of man’s horrible concept of himself, they will want it.

Of course, we can also turn them off all too easily. Here are a few ways to obscure reality.

1. Stress cultural norms as emphatically as biblical absolutes.

2. Integrate family life around something other—and therefore less vital—than fellowship with God.

3. Teach them not to ask questions about matters of faith and conduct. Always advise them, “Only believe.”

Eventually they are likely to give up whatever seeking of God they might have undertaken, having found so little evidence that it is worth the bother.

When the Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrandt and his wife were thrown into prison by the Communists, their nine-year-old son was hauled off to a government school to be indoctrinated in Marxism and atheism. Some years later, as part of a program of psychological torture, the boy was brought to see his mother for the purpose of denouncing Christianity to her face. As he studied the marks of suffering mixed with the evidence of joy written in his mother’s face he suddenly exclaimed, “Mother, if Christ means this much to you, I want him too.” Years of intensive brainwashing evaporated with one touch of Christlike encounter. God help us to demonstrate a living Christ as well as a correct doctrine to our precious observant apprentices.

Can a Church that has often been charged with complacency and apathy find the compelling force it needs to develop and carry out a strategy for the future? There is some hope. Observers have noted a “greening of the Church” in quiet renewals and, occasionally, spectacular revivals. We have begun to examine some of our 1950s attitudes and have found them wanting. Surely most of us are convinced that the will of God has profound implications for the culture of today and tomorrow. Now is the crucial time to face the 1980s and prepare for future shock.

FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST

We have not come to You at last from tears

Long freed; they are yet ours. We do not rise

And, rising, leave behind late pain, late fears;

We live the hours with silence in our eyes,

Not living day alone, but also night.

We reach, but there is darkness; search, but find

Not glory. Yet we come, our faces white

With weariness we cannot leave behind.

Yet we have come. Receive us, for your eyes

Hold worlds of radiance, and Your hands were torn.

We dare to ask of You long ways that rise

From pain; we see the pain that You have borne.

Morning and darkness we shall follow yet;

For having known You, we cannot forget.

MARGARET HUDELSON

Throughout human history people have known prolonged illnesses and other sufferings for which the relief of death would seem welcome. The Bible is an accurate record of humanity in general and Israel in particular, and so it is naturally full of examples of suffering and misery, including the misery of prolonged fatal illness. We need to know what if anything it says or implies about euthanasia.

Euthanasia is the practice of mercifully terminating the life of a person who is hopelessly sick or injured, so as to hasten the relief of death. Euthanasia is commonly divided into “active” and “passive” forms. What is called “passive euthanasia,” rarely objectionable to Christians, involves a refusal to use life-sustaining medical equipment to prolong a life when there is no prospect of recovery. There was no opportunity to make this decision in biblical times, since there was no life-prolonging equipment. This does not mean that Christians have no right to take a stand for or against passive euthanasia. It simply means that a purely exegetical analysis cannot dwell upon that topic.

Active euthanasia, on the other hand, involves taking purposeful action to end a person’s life. The difference between the two practices is the difference between refusing to prolong life “artificially” and “artificially” shortening that life. Throughout human history people have known how to shorten life—i.e., to cause death—and so the matter of active euthanasia is very much subject to biblical scrutiny.

Although the word euthanasia comes from Greek roots that may be translated “good death,” it more strictly means either “easy death” or mercy killing. The function of euthanasia is to make an inevitable death easier. It is often argued that there is benefit to all concerned if a person who is surely going to die can die not in prolonged agony or misery but in an easier, less painful way. For a cancer victim, for example, the reason for considering euthanasia is often just the desire to end the terrible pain often suffered in the terminal stages of the illness. Sometimes the agony is not so much that of the dying person, who may be unconscious, as that of his or her family, or perhaps of other sectors of society. Psychological agony can be as severe as physical agony, as many biblical persons could attest—Moses, Naomi, David, Elijah, and Paul among them.

But what of God’s specific revelation to us as we find it in the Bible: First, do we actually have the opportunity to examine any cases of people who were fatally ill or injured and who wanted to end their lives quickly? If so, can we learn anything from their circ*mstances?

We have precisely one such case: the death of King Saul of Israel (1 Sam. 31:1–6). Mortally injured in battle against the Philistines, Saul pleaded for his own armor-bearer to stab him to death so as to prevent either a slow death or torture or humiliation at the hands of the victorious Philistines. When the aide refused to kill him, Saul did his best to kill himself with his own sword.

We learn from Second Samuel 1:1–10 that a bystander who was observing the battle actually helped Saul to kill himself. He did so because Saul pleaded with him, “Stand beside me and slay me; for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.” This is a classic description of the reasons for euthanasia. And the response of the bystander, a neutral Amalekite, is precisely that of the practitioner of euthanasia: “So I stood beside him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen.” The Amalekite was convinced that since death was certain anyway, he might as well help shorten Saul’s life and put him out of his misery.

The response to this single clear case of euthanasia in the Scripture is one of severe disapproval. King David had the Amalekite killed (2 Sam. 1:15, 16). At this point we are faced with an interpretational difficulty. We cannot tell definitely whether David loathed the Amalekite’s act in itself or only because it was done to “the Lord’s anointed” (his king). Most likely, both reasons were involved, since David describes the act as “putting forth the hand to destroy” (2 Sam. 1:14), which does not sound like a description of mercy killing. It is clear at the very least that David considers the act as entirely unacceptable regardless of the motive, which the Amalekite has carefully explained to him. David equates the Amalekite’s act with an act of assassination.

David was not always the best example of ethical behavior. Possibly he was wrong in this instance and should have appreciated what the well-meaning Amalekite had done. But since we have no other commentary on this text here or elsewhere in Scripture, nor any prophet who appears in the story to judge David’s action, we are left to assume that David reflects the biblical stance of the sacredness of life and the importance of preserving it. At any rate, we certainly cannot purport to find any justification for euthanasia in this text.

In the Bible life is regarded as precious. The biblical people who ask God that their death, when it comes, might be a “good death,” such as Balaam (Num. 23:10) and Simeon (Luke 2:26, 29), show no desire for an early death.

Even in the personal misery described in Psalm 22, the psalmist’s immediate as well as prophetic plea is not for death but for deliverance and a continuation of the covenant life (vv. 19–21). In Psalm 88, which contains a long list of expressions for the nearness of death, death itself is neither sweet nor welcome. What is desired is deliverance and restoration to life. In fact, in the dozens of psalms that portray the speaker or writer as painfully near death, we never find expressed a desire for the end of life—but always a pleading for restoration to a full, active life.

Perhaps the only place in the Bible where we might seem to find a genuine praise of death is in Ecclesiastes (7:1, 2). But this represents such a cynical, twisted outlook (see verse three, where sorrow is said to be better than laughter) that one cannot make much of it as a biblical theme, especially since one purpose of the Book of Ecclesiastes is to preserve a variety of unorthodox views.

Euthanasia was indeed possible in biblical times. It was not difficult for a person to kill his or her neighbor, especially if the neighbor was dying already. We must ask why we have no word from God commanding its use in certain kinds of circ*mstances. Why did Job not take his wife’s suggestion that he end his misery by ending his life (Job 2:9, 10)? Why was David furious at the Amalekite’s mercy killing of Saul, equating it with assassination?

The answer to questions like these is to be found in the fact that the Bible has a different perspective on death and life from that on which the modern euthanasia debate is based. One dramatic difference is that the Bible consistently presents the hope of a life after death. From the time of the Old Testament patriarchs, who took care that their bones were properly buried with their fathers awaiting the resurrection (Gen. 50:25; Exod. 13:19; Josh. 24:32; Heb. 11:22), to the guarantee of this resurrection in the victorious eternal life expressed in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 20:6), the Scriptures testify to the surety of the world to come, with its guarantee of freedom from death for those who belong to God.

Now, when certainty of life after death enters the picture, the events of this life, whether miserable or joyful, are placed in a very different perspective. This life is seen as by definition temporary and transitory (Jas. 4:13), and its miseries are not ends in themselves but are potentially beneficial.

In fact, the Bible presents two important alternatives to euthanasia. The first is the opportunity for healing, which is available precisely and specifically in cases of terminal illness or injury where there is no other hope for recovery. It is these situations that occasion the miraculous healing stories of the Bible. These stories provide a kind of opposite of euthanasia. We even have eight cases in the Bible of temporary resurrections from death itself (the first is reported in First Kings 17:22, the last in Acts 20:10). People who had died were brought back to life, so that they would actually have to go through death again. It may well be that their second earthly death was as bad as the first, or even worse. Yet such a priority is placed on the goodness of life that even a temporary resurrection to this current miserable life is seen as a blessing of God in all eight cases.

For Christians who suffer from an incurable illness, the opportunity of healing is always an alternative to the impending death. But healing, like temporary resurrection, is not universally available. No less a saint than Paul, having sought healing three times, finally had to reconcile himself to the fact that he was not going to be divinely cured. The explanation given to Paul in connection with this very circ*mstance (2 Cor. 12:7–10) is that God has a purpose in suffering. Paul realized that God’s power and effectiveness would be demonstrated by his accomplishments through an infirm servant. So for the Apostle, suffering turned out to be a blessing from God.

Non-Christians find it a cruel suggestion that God somehow allows suffering in order to please himself. Their perspective obviously cannot take into account the ways in which God will, by means of his Judgment, make all things new, make the first last, and establish a complete healing and renewing of the universe (Rom. 8:18, 21; Rev. 21:1–4). Furthermore, they cannot understand that if God is pleased with suffering it is for a purpose. Thus Jesus can say in Matthew 5:4, “Fortunate are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Surprising as it may seem, a person who mourns in this life may well be fortunate or blessed above a person who does not! There is a benefit to suffering.

Some biblical texts extol the benefits of suffering in connection with actual persecution; for example, First Peter 4:12–17. But others, such as Hebrews 2:18, suggest that any kind of involuntary suffering is of benefit—and Hebrews is a letter written to people who are not suffering from persecution but are growing “soft,” partly from the lack of suffering. James certainly makes this clear in saying that suffering is good (5:10, 11), and that it should be endured as necessary to spiritual growth.

This does not mean that we should not pray for healing for those who suffer. James assures us that the prayer of faith can save the sick. But we know that this does not automatically or universally occur. What we do know is that James describes the benefits of general suffering in 5:10 with the same term that he uses to describe the suffering of serious illness in 5:13. Suffering does not need to be the result of persecution in order to be spiritually beneficial, according to Scripture. God himself will compensate those who have suffered and mourned, when he brings into being the new heaven and earth.

Eventually, the argument against euthanasia from the biblical point of view comes down to an argument from silence—a legitimate one. Euthanasia was plainly possible in biblical times. It could well have been included in the ample ethical standards of the Scriptures, but it does not appear. It is not condoned or encouraged even when suggested or requested. And obvious alternatives to euthanasia are found in temporary resurrections and healings and in the benefits of endured sufferings.

We certainly presume that God loved people in biblical times just as much as now. And we suppose that he took no more delight in human suffering then than now. Nevertheless, he does not seem to have provided for the “active” variety of euthanasia as a solution to physical suffering. He could have done so but did not. Even in cases of miserably infirmed people who suffered for most of their lives, people who went through every sort of trial, people whose agonies were not foreshortened though they were saints dear and precious to him, we find no biblical justification or encouragement for euthanasia. We just don’t find it.

This in itself will hardly prevent the practice of euthanasia. It should, however, give great pause to anyone who seeks support from the Bible for the practice; he or she will have to support it by means of an indirectly derived principle, such as the idea that it is more loving to cause a person in misery to die than to live. And we will still be left to contemplate why God, who is himself Love, and his servants, including his revealing son Jesus, never practiced or championed euthanasia but looked instead either to healing or to the benefits of suffering as an alternative.

Follow-up of the International Congress on World Evangelization moved into a new phase last month when the committee charged with continuation responsibilities met for the second time.

After five days of meetings in Atlanta, the panel had new officers, wide agreement on aims and functions, and an anti-persecution resolution. The 1976 gathering was described by a spokesman as one that put flesh on the 1975 decision in Mexico City to promote regional activity instead of large global programs (see February 14, 1975, issue, page 58).

The chairman for the next two years will be Leighton Ford, Canadian-born member of the Billy Graham team and chairman of the committee that planned the program of the 1974 Lausanne congress. He succeeds A. Jack Dain, Anglican bishop from Sydney, Australia, who accepted the chairmanship in Mexico City last year with the provision that he be replaced in 1976. Dain had served as executive chairman of the committee that sponsored the Lausanne event.

During the Atlanta meeting Ford was chairman of a group that worked out details of a statement on the committee’s aims and functions. The statement stresses the roles of catalyst and stimulator rather than administrator. At the world level the committee kept open for itself the options of working in the areas of communication, research and strategy, theological interpretation, and prayer.

A number of committee actions backed up the determination to encourage regional cooperation. Members were asked to take the lead in forming regional groups, and the future schedule of meetings for the world-wide committee leaves them more time to do this. Henceforth the committee as a whole will meet every second year. Some of the money saved by not meeting annually will be made available for start-up costs to Third World regions. Keeping its own staff small, the global group encouraged the appointment of regional coordinators by the committees on each continent.

Giving his first report as executive secretary, Gottfried Osei-Mensah said he is giving priority to invitations that hold the possibility of advancing regional cooperation. While following the directive given by the committee when it appointed him (to concentrate on a role of teaching and preaching to promote evangelization), Osei-Mensah said he is turning down many invitations that would not involve bringing evangelicals together across denominational or national boundaries. The committee reviewed his 1976 itinerary and encouraged him to continue the type of ministry he has followed since assuming office last September.

The executive secretary was slated to tour evangelical centers in the United States after the Atlanta meetings. Other highlights on his itinerary this year are conferences in Southern Africa, in Europe, and in Australasia. He also has major responsibilities in the Pan-African Christian Leadership Assembly scheduled in Nairobi next December.

So far, the Nairobi headquarters has only two staff members, Osei-Mensah and a secretary, although he has been authorized to hire another executive.

The anti-persecution document that the committee passed on a voice vote was seen as the extension of the Lausanne Covenant’s section on that subject. It was framed as a “call for intercession” and specifically mentioned the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China as areas “which are closed to or which severely restrict an open proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Georgi Vins, the Baptist leader imprisoned in the Soviet Union last year (see February 28, 1975, issue, page 41), was described in the resolution “as one representative of many unnamed other Christians.”

All over the globe new cooperative ventures are growing out of the Lausanne congress, and the committee decided to seek a name that will adequately describe the worldwide movement. It will be known, meanwhile, as the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (“continuation,” a part of the interim name approved in Mexico City last year was dropped).

Challenges For Coaches

Head football coach Frank Broyles, who doubles as athletic director at the University of Arkansas, is upset by the “dishonesty and hypocrisy” that have crept into the coaching profession under “the pressures of winning.” At a Fellowship of Christian Athletes breakfast during an NCAA college football coaches convention in Dallas, he posed the question: “Have we grown up spiritually?” Religion, he said, “must be like our skin. It’s got to cover all of life all the time.”

He challenged the coaches to be witnesses for Christ when rubbing shoulders with associates and players. Five of his athletes in the past five years have gone into full-time Christian vocations, he disclosed, and “all three of my quarterbacks are going to be preachers.”

But, declared Broyles, a veteran of twenty-eight years in coaching, “wouldn’t it be great if one of the coaches on our staff or one of our coaching friends would say, ‘Coach, I have taken Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I, too, want to grow in the Christian faith … I’m with you in taking a stand for Christ.’”

Africa: A Call To Arms

An international consultation on Namibia (South-West Africa) was held in Senegal last month, and after five days the 300 participants concluded that South Africa will never willingly end its “illegal occupation” of the territory. The participants in a statement declared that so long as “the international community” is doing nothing to change the situation (South Africa’s mandate officially ended in 1966), “all means, including armed struggle, are justified to liberate the country.”

The conferees included representatives of the World Council of Churches, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran World Federation, the Anglican Communion, and Quaker groups, according to a Religious News Service story. These religious participants went on to issue an additional document that in some ways was even more critical and pessimistic than the main statement.

Outlawing The Church

For years President Francisco Macias Nguema of tiny Equatorial Guinea on Africa’s west coast has been carrying out a reign of terror (see December 20, 1974, issue, page 29). The majority of the population is nominally Christian, and a number of the government’s oppressive measures have been directed against churches and church leaders. According to authoritative sources in Switzerland, Nguema has recently outlawed a number of practices directly affecting church life. Prohibited are:

• the holding of local, regional, and national church meetings;

• giving financial support to churches and pastors;

• maintaining friendly relations with pastors;

• conducting Christian funeral ceremonies;

• administering baptism without formal government approval.

Also, pastors are forbidden to travel without government permission, say the sources.

Misinformation In Church

There’s a lot of misinformation being spread around in church circles about pending bills in Congress. Perhaps the worst example is a circular warning that the federal government is plotting to take away one’s children if they are made to take out the garbage against their will. It cites two nearly identical bills, H. R. 2966 and S. 626. They are known as the Child and Family Services Act, sponsored by Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota and Representative John Brademas of Indiana, both Democrats.

Those bills are indeed pending in Congress, but the things attributed to them in the circular are false. The circular, anonymously written, bears the title “Raising Children—Government’s or Parent’s Right?” or some variation of it. It purports to describe the bill by quoting from the Congressional Record. Actually, the quotes are from bits and snatches of what opponents of the measure said during a debate on a similar bill in 1971. The circular also quotes from the Charter of Children’s Rights, developed by a British group, and gives the impression that the document is part of the current proposed legislation. It is not.

Nevertheless, thousands of church people have inundated Congress with letters objecting to these provisions that do not exist in the Mondale-Brademas bill. Sermons have been preached against it. Even newspapers and radio stations have used the erroneous information in the circular as the basis for editorials against the bill. Some have since been retracted.

Organized opponents of the Mondale-Brademas bill disavow the circular and say it hurts their cause. The bill is aimed primarily at caring for children of working mothers, especially those who live under adverse economic conditions. Participation in the child care program would be voluntary. The proposal prohibits any practice that would “infringe upon or usurp the moral and legal rights and responsibilities of parents or guardians with respect to the moral, mental, emotional, physical, or other development of their children.”

HIGH NOON

Prayer may have been banned in the nation’s public-school classrooms, thanks to professional atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, but not in the Detroit courtroom of county judge Frederick Byrd. He’s been holding noon Bible-study sessions and rosary devotions in his courtroom for twenty years, and he says he won’t stop now, despite a written warning from Mrs. O’Hair. She told the judge his noonday practices were “wholly illegal and unconstitutional, being an impermissible admixture of state and church.”

Mrs. O’Hair will have to sue, declares Byrd. “I’m calling her bluff. These services have been going on since long before I became a judge, and I see no reason to end them.”

Uncle Sam: Big Man On Campus

The ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) program at Wheaton College, mandatory for freshman males since the program’s inception at the school in 1954, will become voluntary this fall. Reasons: opposition from some faculty and many students, and the administration’s opposition to making the program mandatory for women. This would be required, says President Hudson T. Armerding, under recently enacted federal regulations forbidding sex discrimination in college programs.

The regulations to which Armerding refers were hammered out by the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in connection with the anti-discriminatory Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. To make Title IX applicable to private colleges that have steered clear of federal aid in an attempt to keep the government off campus, HEW specified that institutions enrolling students who receive federal assistance (whether grants or loans) will be considered “recipient institutions”—subject to government rules.

Some private colleges are making a stand against government encroachment on their campuses. Officials of Hillsdale College, a small liberal-arts school in Michigan, say they will refuse to comply with Title IX. They see the recipient-institution clause as the doorway for possible “federal take-over of our campus.” Brigham Young University, the Mormon school in Utah, announced that it will not comply with any rules that violate its religious freedom. The BYU leaders also said in effect that they would judge which government regulations are legally applicable.

Presumably, the government can withhold aid from students who attend non-compliance schools and can revoke the tax-exempt status of the schools. So far, authorities have not announced such steps against Hillsdale and BYU. But Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist school in South Carolina, has been involved for a long time in costly court battles with the Internal Revenue Service over race issues and loss of tax exemption.

Actually, the federal government has had a strong foothold for years on private-school campuses. As business entities, colleges are subject to many federal programs and regulations (Social Security, job safety, minimum wage, equal employment opportunity, even environmental guidelines).

The federal presence in the business office is a source of increasing concern to budget-wary administrators, says education writer Judith Cummings of the New York Times. She cites a recent landmark study showing that “federally mandated social programs have contributed substantially to the instability of costs at colleges and universities from year to year and thus increase their difficulties of financial management and budget balancing.”

Over at the admissions office, there’s a different problem. As part of its nondiscrimination policy, the IRS requires colleges to keep a file for three years on each person rejected for admission, a job, or a scholarship—complete with reasons for the rejection, or risk losing tax-exempt status. But HEW wants student files free of judgmental entries and limited to such factual items as transcripts.

As the paper work, hassles, and costs pile up in satisfying Uncle Sam’s whims and ways on campus, it will be a wonder if more schools do not join Hillsdale, BYU, and Bob Jones in elbowing the old gentleman toward the gate.

Rap 76

Separation of church and state has never meant, in either theory or practice, separation of religion and government. Hence Religion and the Presidency, 1976—RAP 76 for short—was formed with backing from a wide spectrum of religious notables as a non-confessional, non-partisan organization.

The first proposed activity was to invite the major presidential candidates to appear over a three-day span, one after another for two hours each, before a panel of religious leaders who would ask probing questions. The focus was to be upon the explicit and implicit religious and ethical views of the candidates and how these could influence their decisions on issues confronting a president. Out in the audience would be “more than five hundred other religious leaders from all over the United States,” according to the registration form.

It didn’t work out that way. The meetings were held (January 19–21, using the facilities of Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, three blocks from the White House), and true to its intention RAP 76 endorsed no candidates or positions. But there were three big problems: (1) only five candidates, plus one symbolic campaigner, bothered to appear; (2) fewer than a hundred persons, often far fewer, were in the audience to hear and question the candidates; (3) the questions from the panel and from the audience, as often as not, were the kind asked at any secular political gathering.

RAP was spawned at Washington’s Wesley Seminary (United Methodist), and former United Methodist missionary Fred Morris (who was expelled in 1974 from Brazil as a political undesirable) was named the national coordinator and only full-time staffer. Operating out of his apartment in a Washington suburb, Morris enlisted a high-powered cadre of co-sponsors from across the religious spectrum, including the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Christian Century, former heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches, present heads of the Evangelical Free Church, United Presbyterian Church, and Unitarian Universalist Association, and leaders from Roman Catholicism and Judaism.

Apparently the presidential contenders were not impressed. A dozen major ones were invited, beginning last October, but only Lloyd Bentsen, Eugene McCarthy, Milton Shapp, Sargent Shriver, and Morris Udall showed up. McCarthy is trying to be listed as an independent candidate on the ballots of as many states as possible for November’s general elections. The others number fewer than half of the active contenders for the Democratic nomination.

Also appearing, by his own initiative and as a late addition, was evangelist Arthur Blessitt, best known for dragging a cross on foot across America and subsequently trekking around Europe and Africa. He is on the Democratic primary ballot in New Hampshire and expects to be on in Florida and other states also. Blessitt unapologetically calls for a “born-again, Spirit-filled, actively witnessing Christian” in the White House and warns that God’s judgment will soon fall upon the nation unless its people repent. If elected, Blessitt would replace the inaugural ball with a week of fasting and prayer. The reactions of the panel and audience to his fervid, revivalistic oratory and to his extreme political views (e.g., guaranteed annual income, complete amnesty for all war resisters, no borrowing by the government, no tax deductions, front-line combat duty for congressmen as a means of ending U.S. war participation, reduction of the President’s salary to about $25,000) indicated that fasting and prayer might indeed prevail, but with rather different petitions from Blessitt’s own.

The other candidates, all considered to be very dark horses in the race, have considerable political experience. Generally speaking, their speeches in the RAP sessions were much the same as they make elsewhere, despite the carefully prepared RAP request that they approach such topics as moral leadership, citizen rights, welfare, the economy, foreign policy, and national security with more analysis of their underlying personal religious and ethical views than audiences are accustomed to hearing. However, some of the questions did call for, and receive, responses in line with the sponsor’s intentions.

Besides the candidates, two panels of religious leaders gave brief presentations, and Martin Marty, Carl Henry, and James Wall, editor of the Christian Century, were among them.

RAP sponsors and panelists felt that often Presidents have used religion as window-dressing. The role of religious perceptions in undergirding political decisions has been wrongly decried as inappropriate in a pluralistic state. In fact, Jewish and Christian Americans are not true to their religious traditions when they act as if decisions on abortion, health care, taxation, unemployment, armaments, education, and a thousand other items are merely technical matters that have no more relation to the revelation of God than do the mechanics of bridge building.

RAP sponsors are as divided on specific policies as they are on theology, but they share a conviction that religion does in fact matter, even if this opening convocation tended to demonstrate otherwise.

DONALD TINDER

Religion In Transit

“Rise Up, O Men of God” has been left out of a proposed inter-Lutheran hymnal. President Robert J. Marshall of the Lutheran Church in America notes why: its “sexist wording,” singability problems (“it’s too high for most men to sing”), and objectionable theology (“the church is not ‘unequal to its task,’ as the hymn says, and we people are not the ones who ‘make it great’”).

Death:The Christian Observer, at 162, the nation’s oldest religious weekly, an independent conservative journal with some 35,000 circulation serving the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. constituency; in Louisville, Kentucky, of high costs and complications (see editorial, page 37).

One of the last official acts of outgoing Central Intelligence Agency director William Colby was a church-related one. In response to a request from officers of the National Council of Churches, he declined to order a halt to the CIA’s use of American missionaries and foreign clergy in its information-gathering operations. Colby said that there are “very few such contacts” and that they are “purely voluntary.” The record has been distorted by sensational publicity, he complained. Further, said he, the CIA has helped to protect America’s free society “in which religion can flourish.”

An official bilateral dialogue group of Catholic and United Methodist scholars and theologians last month released a seventeen-page consensus statement on holiness and spirituality of the ordained ministry. It asks members of the two church bodies to recognize that holiness is required of all Christians, not just ordained ministers and priests. It also calls upon the churches to work toward “full utilization” of women in “all forms of the ministry.” Catholic-Methodist talks have been going on for ten years. This was the first joint statement.

United Methodist churches in central Connecticut are spearheading a drive to repeal legalized gambling in the state. Targets include jai alai, Las Vegas Night charity gambling, dog-track parimutuel betting, and off-track-betting parlors for horse races. Organizers concede that the state lottery is here to stay, but they are crusading against the use of “advertising gimmicks” to promote lottery sales.

The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, Americans United, and other groups are challenging as unconstitutional the state’s 1975 Non-Public School Aid act in federal court. Among other things, the Minnesota measure would provide about $4 million worth of textbooks and other instructional material for the state’s 90,000 private and parochial school pupils (most are Catholics and Lutherans).

President Robert B. Moss of the United Church of Christ says the UCC will take new legal steps to keep Ben Chavis out of jail. Chavis heads a UCC racial-justice field office in Washington, D. C. In 1972 he was convicted with nine others on arson and assault-conspiracy charges during racial violence in Wilmington, North Carolina. As the alleged ringleader of fire bombing and sniper attacks, he faces up to thirty-four years in prison. The North Carolina Supreme Court dismissed an appeal of the conviction, and the U. S. Supreme Court refused to hear it. Chavis and the others have been free on $400,000, pending appeals.

World Vision’s 1976 program budget totals more than $20 million, a 35 per cent increase over 1975. Three-fourths will be spent on child care involving nearly 100,000 children in thirty-six countries, and $4 million will be spent on relief and development projects, say agency officials.

Catholic priest John S. Duryea, 58, a chapel pastor and for fifteen years chaplain to Catholic students at Stanford University, was suspended from the priesthood after announcing from the pulpit his intention to marry a 34-year-old divorced mother of two. Duryea says his sermons and counseling have been better in the year that he has been close to Eve DeBona. Affirming that he plans to remain a Catholic, he insists that he has no less faith in Christianity than before, although “there is a lot of stuff in the church that isn’t Christianity.”

Minors may receive birth control infomation and contraceptives from Planned Parenthood if their parents do not object, a Minnesota judge ruled. But, he specified, the agency cannot give such information and devices to minors if their parents have so notified the organization.

Controversial “death with dignity” bills have been introduced in thirteen state legislatures, but none has passed. Most of the bills call for some sort of consideration of the patient’s wishes (or those of his family) in using extraordinary means to sustain life.

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board appointed 265 missionaries in 1975—a record. Current total: 2,600.

Personalia

Administrator Leo M. Thornton of Western Evangelical Seminary in Portland, Oregon, was elected president of the school, succeeding the late Paul P. Petticord. He is an ordained Free Methodist minister and a former member of Oregon’s legislature.

Robert McAfee Brown, the controversial United Presbyterian theologian who delivered the keynote address at the recent assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi, resigned from the faculty of Stanford University. He says he wants to return to seminary teaching (he formerly taught at Union Seminary in New York). He is also angry about the university’s failure to grant tenure last year to a religion professor who reportedly “had not published enough.”

World Scene

A four-year-old “spontaneous charismatic youth movement” is thriving in East Germany, according to a church historian writing in the Lutheran World, the journal of the Lutheran World Federation. Leipzig seminary professor Christoph Michael Haufe says the movement “did not originate in the churches and has little to do with them,” yet the young people “show an astonishingly broad biblical knowledge” and a “commitment to bear witness.” (Estimated church membership among the country’s 17 million population includes 4.6 million Lutherans, 3.4 million in Union [Lutheran-Reformed] churches, and 1.3 million Catholics.)

Most of Britain’s denominations are represented on the fifteen-month-old Churches’ Unity Commission. Last month the commission issued ten propositions on unity and asked the churches for comment. Among the propositions: affirm that visible unity is the will of God; join in seeking that visible unity; recognize each other’s membership and ordained ministries; conduct baptism and ordination by mutually acceptable rites; develop methods of common decision making. The responses will determine what recommendations the commission will make.

Archbishop Donald Coggan of Canterbury says he received 25,000 letters in response to his recent “Call to the Nation” for a display of moral and spiritual values in British life. Many churches are responding with prayer, study, and action.

When the 340,000-member United Evangelical Lutheran Church of South-West Africa (Namibia), a black body, asked the American Lutheran Church to send someone to teach in a seminary, the ALC chose Montana pastor John V. Gronli. However, the South African government, which controls Namibia, refused to issue the necessary visa. No reasons were given, but the Namibian church opposes South African rule and apartheid policies, and there has been growing political unrest. Gronli, born in South Africa of missionary parents, would have been the ALC’s first missionary to Namibia.

What may be the world’s first sterilization law is shaping up in Punjab state in northern India. The state government wants legislation passed making sterilization compulsory after a family has had a certain number of children, probably two or three.

Last-minute legal action by a group of Anglican laymen blocked the inauguration of the Church of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), a union of Anglican and Methodist churches. A court reportedly ruled that the merger is unconstitutional because it conflicts with the right of every citizen to go on worshiping as accustomed. Passing the merger measure in parliament would mean overriding the constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote—an unlikely prospect, according to observers.

Two dozen Islamic organizations are cooperating in plans to construct a powerful radio station in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. To be known as “The Voice of Islam,” the station will seek to counterbalance Christian broadcasting in Africa, according to a Protestant news agency in Germany.

Since 1961 more than 1.1 million Protestants and 500,000 Catholics have left the church in West Germany, according to press reports. In many cases, theorize observers, the exodus may represent not loss of faith but a desire to escape paying the church tax, which amounts to between 8 and 9 per cent of one’s income.

During the heyday of the secular theologies and radical theologians, thoughtful persons wondered when and in what form the public and societal reaction would come. The theology-of-the-month writers and speakers hailed (celebrated was their word) the advent of the technopolitan man. This widely welcomed product of urbanization was projected to be indifferent to all forms of organized religion, tolerant of each, and likely to say to his neighbor, “Stand back: I am more secular than thou.”

The proposal to eliminate the sacred in all of life was taken seriously, overtly by some and by osmosis by masses of others. But the aftermath shows quite clearly that the psyche of a people cannot tolerate total secularization without experiencing trauma. This experience of shock leads people to try varied means of relief, few of which are spiritually or psychologically wholesome.

Reactive movements within society are complex phenomena; one cannot in fairness assign them a simple cause. The escapist trends within today’s culture have multiple roots. I propose, however, that the widely popularized secular theologies must bear a significant share of responsibility for these escapist trends.

The evident personal success of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the Great Sage Who Exalts Yogi) and his cult of Transcendental Meditation is a case in point. Maharishi International University, established on the campus of what was Parsons College in Iowa, appears to be a flock of followers whose personal motivations would, two decades ago, have been thought to show an abdication of common reason.

But this assemblage bears witness to the existence of a spiritual vacuum, an emptiness that cannot be filled by the blandishments of secularism, particularly in its cultic form. In the light of history, it can be noted that today’s society contains many persons whose mental processes resemble strongly those prevalent with nineteenth-century Romanticism. At that epoch there appeared, among other elements, a strong appeal to the irrational and a magnetic pull of the East upon the mind of the West. Some romanticists yearned themselves half to death after the lands where fancy ran free and ruled by deception.

Today’s followers of TM seem strongly akin to this. They accept gladly the Maharishi’s offer “to take each person where he or she is,” without asking toward what each is to be taken. Naively accepted also is TM’s disclaimer of being “a religion,” despite its rituals: its emphasis upon numbers, its superstitious use of the personally assigned mantras, and the mumbo jumbo associated with them. (Mantras are Sanskrit words, chosen as a focus for meditation; some of them are innocuous, while others are derived from the pantheon of Hinduism.)

Similar forms of the abdication of reason include Zen, considered to be chic, even among persons whose knowledge of parent Buddhism is nil. Both Zen and TM indicate a trend toward the mindless, the unstructured, the esoteric. But they also seem to express a protest, however deeply concealed, against the cultic secularism that was in such vogue in the sixties.

There is a more impressive evidence of the uprooting of humanness by the forms of secularism and the spread of secularity. This evidence is the rising demand for experiences of fantasy and the idealization of fantasy as a state of mind. It is generally agreed that so-called consciousness-expanding drugs are in reality mind-distorting. Beyond the force of social pressures toward experimentation with drugs, especially hallucinogens, there lies the demand for what such drugs afford, namely, escape into Fantasy Park.

Prodded by the pervasive experimental attitude, large numbers of teen-agers and even subteens, it seems, express their general feeling of malaise and futility by a drug-induced flight from reality and into the realm of fantasy. This is a “land” in which time and space assume totally new meanings. The world of usual concepts seems to the spaced-out person to be ultimately and radically unreal. Reality is attributed by too many of our youth to the forms of perception that go beyond communication in terms of ordinary concepts.

The massive acceptance of rock music witnesses to this same trend. Such musical forms are, it is now widely agreed, deliberately contrived to produce in the listener sensations similar to those produced by hallucinogens. Fantasy-rock, as some of the more recent forms of pop music are termed, seems designed to distort the sensorium, so that perceptions of time and space conform to the “new reality” of the fantastic.

This is, so it is reported, a world whose orientation is totally apart from that of the conventional world. Relationships of position and temporality take on new and ineffable forms, often beyond the power of the one expressing them to communicate them to others.

What is the meaning of this retreat into fantasy? Is it simply an adult form of what children find in Disney Land or in the Grimm Brothers fairy tales? I submit that while similarities may exist between the normal fantasy life of children and the induced fantasy of hard drugs and hard rock, the two are radically different.

Children have an ability to move from reality to fantasy and back again with ease and normality. It is far from certain that adults have this same ability. Rather, it seems probable that in adults or nearadults, induced fantasy springs from the inability to take reality in stride, and may issue in the final inability to judge between reality and fantasy.

Can it be that more recent theologies have contributed significantly to this blurring of reality? Once Christian preaching centered in the proclamation of certainties. In the secularized and secularity-tinged forms, proclamation has been replaced by dialogue and by “rapping.” In place of “thus saith the Lord,” contemporary audiences too often hear their shepherds saying, “This is my perception of things.”

While (and this is repetition) the pulpit cannot be held exclusively responsible for the inability of multitudes to cope with reality, some responsibility must lie at the Church’s door. When the biblical emphasis upon sacredness is bypassed, the human heart will react by sacralizing the irrational, the bizarre, the fantastic. Secularism produces one-dimensional persons. These fall easy prey to those who raucously proclaim that the realities of an imperfect world are intolerable, and who hawk counterfeit forms of reality.

A generation that seems all too willing to accept false structures promising “the real” needs to be confronted by a sure World. Free-floating forms of secularity have had their day and have left behind a trail of destruction. Our times challenge the Church to proclaim the divine Person of Jesus Christ, in whom final Reality resides.

HAROLD B. KUHN

In the history of the Christian Church the need for an educated clergy has generally been accepted. Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Edwards—all were well educated. The question has been, and still is, what form the education of ministers should take and on what presuppositions it should be based. My longtime friend and colleague Carl F. H. Henry addresses these questions in this issue of CT, which is largely devoted to theological education.

Visitors numbering in the millions are expected in Washington during this Bicentennial year. A word to the wise 1976 traveler, no matter what your destination: take half as much luggage and twice as much money as you think you will need!

Not all the 1975 reports are in yet, but staff members at Atlanta’s Presbyterian Center are trying hard to find the good news amid the bad. It was a difficult year for the theologically torn Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), and its headquarters staff had to be happy with such small encouragements as the report that $7,000 more than expected was received toward a $7 million budget.

That budget had been cut from $9 million to $7 million last April when a deficit of $2 million in the previous year’s operations came to light. Missionaries overseas and staff members at home were reduced in number, and those remaining on the payroll took a 5 per cent cut in pay starting May 1.

When all the bills were added up in January of this year, the accountants found it would be possible to restore that 5 per cent in back pay. And it was more good news for the staffers on Ponce de Leon Avenue when they learned that their 1976 checks would include an additional 5 per cent boost.

The remaining headquarters staff is about half the size of the combined rosters of denominational agencies five years ago. All the major program agencies were merged by order of the General Assembly, and the formerly separate boards of education, women’s work, home and foreign missions, and communications were dissolved.

Assigned to supervise all the church’s principal programs now is a body known as the General Executive Board (GEB). The ability of the single “super board” to oversee all denominational work at home and abroad has been questioned since before it was created, but continuing declines in funding for it have brought new criticism.

Giving to denominational-level (as distinguished from congregational and regional) work continued to decline last year; the 1975 total, $6.5 million, was down half a million from 1974. In order to spend more than it received in contributions from the pews, the GEB dipped further into denominational reserves, sold some property, experienced better-than-expected investment returns, and received some gifts.

With little relief in view, the top administrators began 1976 under orders to continue the cost-carving. Financial controls were so stringent that some stationery orders were held up so as to put them into a later billing cycle. Calendars for some headquarters desks did not arrive until the year was a week old because of the policy.

While few Presbyterians knew about the tardiness of calendar delivery in Atlanta, many knew about the cuts in the overseas missionary force. At the beginning of 1975 the denomination had 397 missionaries under appointment. At the beginning of 1976 it had 355.

Notices went out at the end of last month, telling still more missionaries that they are being dropped. By the end of this year the total will be down to 310. Some of the reduction is coming through normal attrition, but some missionaries home on furlough are not being sent back.

The missionaries have always been among the best fund-raisers in the denomination, and their reports have stimulated giving to all denominational causes. Some of the strongest criticism of the GEB has come from churchmen who charge it is not giving a high enough priority to overseas work.

In response, Paul Edris, moderator of the last General Assembly, has tried to assure the membership that the missionary enterprise is getting as large a proportion of the budget as it did before last year’s cuts. The Florida pastor explained in a letter to the denomination that high rates of inflation overseas have simply eaten up more of the missionary dollar.

Another special offering for overseas missions is planned this month. The campaign for earmarked funds was more successful in 1975 than in 1974, and church executives will be keeping a close eye on the 1976 drive as they plan spending for the rest of the year.

While the statistics are in on money sent to General Assembly agencies, headquarters statisticians are still awaiting the reports on how much Southern Presbyterians gave for congregational and regional work last year. It will probably be May before all the figures are compiled.

Among the final figures that will be presented to the General Assembly in June will be one showing total membership. That count has been going down for several years, and in 1973 and 1974 much of the loss was blamed on the departure of members to join the new Presbyterian Church in America. While the year-end total for PCA membership has not been tabulated either, the figure is expected to be around 75,000. In 1974 the Presbyterian U. S. figure dropped below 900,000 with a loss of about 15,000.

PCA assembly agencies experienced a happier year financially in 1975 than did their Presbyterian U. S. counterparts. Collectively, the four major program committees got $1.6 million, which was 65 per cent more than in 1974. The amount of increased giving to the agencies ranged from 40 to 115 per cent.

A noteworthy happening that will not show up in the 1975 reports is the move of one prominent Presbyterian last month. C. Gregg Singer of Salisbury, North Carolina, transferred his membership from a Presbyterian U. S. to an Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) congregation. Singer had chosen to remain in the Presbyterian U. S. church when many of his fellow members of the conservative organization, Concerned Presbyterians, left to join the PCA two years ago. The history professor at Catawba College was subsequently elected president of Concerned Presbyterians.

Last year Singer was formally charged with disturbing the peace of the church, and his trial was scheduled to start last month. Sources close to the litigation said both the prosecutor (for Concord Presbytery) and the defense attorney sought to avoid a trial that would discredit the church. An agreement was supposed to have been reached under which the presbytery would drop its charges if the professor left the church. After Singer joined the local ARP congregation (there is no PCA church in Salisbury), a commission of the presbytery announced it had “tabled” charges against him. Implicit in the action was a warning that if he should rejoin the denomination he would face the prospect of trial again.

While Singer was probably the first to leave the Presbyterian U. S. church in 1976, the presbytery’s action in his case may determine what other evangelicals in the denomination will do and thus have a bearing on the 1976 membership and giving statistics.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Wanted: Solomonic Soothing

Two men seeking ministerial posts in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. ignited controversy last year when during examination they took a stand against the ordination of women. Both were subsequently approved: John Gess by the Highlands Presbytery of Virginia, and Thomas T. Ellis by the Atlanta Presbytery. Ruling on a complaint in the case of Gess, a regional judicial commission of the denomination upheld his ordination. Critics argued that the pair’s views on women contradicted church policy and that they were therefore disqualified for ministry in the PCUS.

Last month the PCUS Committee on Women’s Concerns took the matter to the Permanent Judicial Commission, a sort of denominational supreme court. The women’s committee asked for clarification of certain provisions in the Book of Church Order that may “contradict the ordaining and employing of ministers who do not support the ordination of women.” Also, claimed the women’s committee, ministers who discriminate against women fail to comply with the equal employment opportunity policy of the church.

The query amounts to a constitutional showdown in the already troubled denomination (see preceding story). Under the circ*mstances, the judicial panel can be expected to take its time in coming up with a Solomonic answer that everybody can live with.

Guilty

James A. Paynter, 34, former business manager of the Illinois Baptist Children’s Home in Carmi, pleaded guilty to a charge of interstate transportation of stolen property and was sentenced to four years in prison by a federal judge. Paynter dropped out of sight in August, 1974, during preparation for a move to assume oversight of all funds of the Illinois association of Southern Baptist churches. A subsequent audit of the children’s home records revealed $103,753 missing between January 1, 1972, and August 31, 1974 (Paynter became business manager of the home in 1967). A bonding company reimbursed $87,000.

The federal charge was lodged when it was discovered that Paynter had deposited in dummy accounts in Indiana nearly $37,000 from two bequests intended for the children’s home. He then used money from these accounts to make a large downpayment on a house in Illinois. He still faces embezzling charges in that state.

Prior to his guilty plea, Paynter and his wife reportedly were living in Monroe, Louisiana, where he was managing a pizza restaurant and attending a Presbyterian church.

The Armstrong Battle Of Britain

The summer before last, Charles F. Hunting and Richard F. Plache, the No. 1 and No. 2 men of the Armstrong Worldwide Church of God in Great Britain, began to doubt official church teachings on matters such as the Saturday Sabbath, observance of Old Testament holy days, and the Old Covenant approach to the law.

After a “crisis of conscience,” the two men, plus an aide, David Ord, began “to tell the people the truth.”

By last December, word had reached the Pasadena, California, world headquarters of the monolithic sect that Hunting and Plache were preaching contrary to church doctrine and were subverting the church. Garner Ted Armstrong and his globe-girdling father Herbert converged with a plane-load of other top WCG officials on the Bricket Wood, England, headquarters to check out what Gamer Ted called the rumored imminent “break-away” of the British churches.

There was no such thing, but Hunting, 57, Plache, 40, and Ord, 29, were intractable—even after they were flown at year’s end to Pasadena for high-level hearings before the church’s doctrinal committee. Hunting, onetime director of financial affairs and planning for the church in Europe and the Middle East, and Plache, a former executive assistant to Garner Ted, were suspended from the ministry; Ord was fired.

Ten days later, Hunting and Plache formally withdrew from the church and issued a public apology to the 3,000 or so WCG constituents in England “whose lives have been damaged by our years of service with the … church and the Plain Truth magazine.”

The resignations came two years after the first major walk-out of more than twenty-five WCG ministers, including the vice-president, over doctrinal differences, allegations of adultery involving Gamer Ted, and revulsion at what the defectors called the “Playboy” style of living by the Armstrongs and others in top positions (see March 15, 1974, issue, page 49).

To Hunting and Plache, who planned to alert as many as possible in the United Kingdom to the “errors” of Armstrongism, the major concern was whether the Bible is the main authority over Christians or whether the Armstrongs are, as practiced in the church.

“When there is a conflict between the clear teaching of the Scriptures and the statements of the Armstrongs,” said Plache, “people should follow Herbert Armstrong’s injunction, ‘Don’t believe me, but believe your Bible.’” But, concluded the dissidents, it could take years to get the Armstrongs to examine thoroughly teachings that are seriously in question, “even though lives are being adversely affected.”

Doctrines particularly galling to Hunting and Plache concern the WCG’s views on divorce and healing. Although the 1974 controversy apparently provoked reforms in both teachings (see October 25, 1974, issue, page 48), the men asserted that “hundreds of lives had been shattered” needlessly by the former rule that second marriages following divorce must be broken up because such relationships are adulterous. And, they charged, lives were lost because members didn’t realize that the church had changed its position so that they could now consult physicians and take medication.

“Even now, the bulk of the membership do not know that they can seek medical help without any biblical stigma whatever,” said Hunting. Leading ministers and wives have been receiving medical help, he added—sometimes secretly—while members have been left to believe that medical help may show a “lack of faith.”

Plache says the “double standard” of the ministry needs to be exposed: “While the little people go without sufficient meat, or their children lack clothing—particularly in Britain—many ministers live in luxury, believing themselves to be in the category of Levites and therefore entitled to a far higher standard of living than the average member.…”

A spin-off organization of the WCG, the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation (AICF), ostensibly set up to aid broadly based humanitarian and philanthropic agencies world-wide, was also attacked by the defecting ministers.

“While it has a public front of doing good works and serving humanity, many within the church are being asked to sacrifice to ‘the Work,’” said Plache. This caused him conscience problems, he said, because the WCG is “extremely exclusivist in its doctrines about what constitutes the Christian and “is the very antithesis of what the AICF claims to stand for.”

Repudiating the concept that the only true Christians are Armstrong followers, and that most outside the WCG are essentially pagan, Hunting and Plache asserted that “this kind of exclusivist teaching had had a devastating effect on the lives of thousands, deeply affecting many families.”

Ord, the fired assistant, put it succinctly: “They [the Armstrongs] are imposing Old Testament laws on New Testament Christians without New Testament authority.… We want to put a greater emphasis on the role of Christ.”

As for the Armstrongs, they feel Hunting and Plache had a fair, complete, and open-minded hearing. Garner Ted also discounted any possibility of major doctrinal changes.

RUSSELL L. CHANDLER

For ten weeks bands of parishioners gathered nightly at First Baptist Church of Maine, New York, to pray for the safe return of their pastor, Donald LaRose. The 34-year-old minister disappeared on Tuesday, November 4, under mysterious circ*mstances involving suggestions of foul play by Satan worshipers. As of late last month he was still missing. The prayer meetings, however, ended abruptly at mid-month when the official board of the 150-member church announced it had terminated the pastoral relationship.

Head deacon William Brigham, a printer, said an extensive investigation indicated that LaRose had planned his own disappearance. Yet authorities and private investigators were unable to establish any motive. LaRose was in good health, family members and close friends told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that they had noted no changes in his personality, there were no major hassles at church, and his wife Eunice said there were no family tensions (the couple have two daughters, ages 10 and 13). He had little life insurance, he was abreast of debts and taxes, he had told his family and friends he was happy in the ministry, and no amorous connections were uncovered. Neighbors described him as “the happiest man on the street.”

“We’re at our wit’s end,” said Adam LaRose, the minister’s father, a business executive in Reading, Pennsylvania.

In a statement issued to the news media, Eunice LaRose appealed for her husband to return home. Despite the problems caused by his sudden disappearance, she said, “we can work things out.”

LaRose grew up in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area, where he attended the large Calvary Independent Church with his parents and sister. After graduating from Moody Bible Institute, where he met Eunice, he returned to Lancaster to work with the Youth for Christ organization. Next he entered the Christian radio field and worked at stations in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Maryland. He then moved to Syracuse, New York, where he became an executive with WMHR-FM, a station he helped to organize. After nearly five years, he left as a result of a dispute over business strategy. In October, 1973, he accepted a call to First Baptist in Maine, a village northwest of Binghamton. The church is loosely affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptists.

Last October LaRose’s name appeared in local news stories in connection with a series of messages on the person and work of Satan. The talks were given at he mid-week services on Wednesday nights, and they were advertised in a widely distributed newsletter that the church publishes.

As the series progressed, LaRose reported to state police that he had received threatening letters and telephone calls. The letters, postmarked from Maine, were pasteups of words cut from printed sources. Investigators later determined that the cutouts came mainly from issues of Broadcasting, a secular trade magazine published in Washington, D. C., and the church’s newsletter. (LaRose was one of Broadcasting’s few subscribers in the Binghamton area.)

Said one letter: “REV. LAROSE: For blasphemy against Satan I condemn you to the wrath of Lucifer, son of the morning, ruler of this world, and victor over all opposing forces.”

Another announced that “for continual public blasphemy against Satan, the most high Lucifer requires your blood as a sacrifice so your rip-off can be stopped.”

At least one of the threatening telephone calls was answered by ten-year-old Joyce LaRose.

Pastors of two neighboring Baptist churches reported they too were getting similar notes and telephone calls. The calls, said Pastor Harvey Sumner of First Baptist Church in Vestal, sounded like tape recordings played into the telephone. In all, there were ten calls, most of them taken by his wife. The voice came through in low, gutteral tones, saying that Satan was upset by Sumner’s preaching. During an interview, Sumner, 37, was asked if the voice tones resembled what happens when a tape recorder is played on weak batteries or deliberately slowed down. “Exactly,” he replied.

After LaRose disappeared the letters stopped coming to the other two ministers. The last letter received by Pastor Derwin G. Hauser of Bethel Baptist Church in Vestal arrived the day after LaRose disappeared. It had been postmarked at 10:30 A.M. on November 4.

November 4 was election day. LaRose accompanied his wife that morning to a polling place. Something odd was happening, he commented to her. He said he had received a phone call informing him that one of his church members would be operated upon in an Endicott hospital. When he went to the hospital earlier that morning, he said, he found that no operation was scheduled for the parishioner.

After voting, Mrs. LaRose proceeded to her part-time job at a school cafeteria, and the minister said he was going to get a haircut.

At 12:20 PM. church secretary Beida Lawton looked out the office window and saw LaRose on the church parking lot. It was the last time anyone remembered seeing him that day.

When he had not returned home by 7:00 PM., Mrs. LaRose and church members began checking area hospitals and country roads. The next day police found his 1970 station wagon abandoned in an urban renewal area of Binghamton, near the bus station. Because of the sensational Satanism angle, the story of LaRose’s disappearance got national news coverage.

Hauser told reporters that there were indeed Satanist activities in the Binghamton area and that he knew of a witches’ coven there. He declined to specify where “because of the risk.” (Police said they knew of no such group.) Sumner meanwhile purchased a revolver.

State police officials early in the case cautioned the public against jumping to conclusions. They said there was no solid proof that the minister had been abducted. Some press stories left the door open to the possibility of a hoax.

The church posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the pastor’s safe return or $5,000 for the whereabouts of his body. It also spent thousands of dollars on private detectives. Private investigator Charles Reagan of the Michigan-based Finkler Detective Agency turned up some of the key evidence that led to the church’s decision to fire LaRose (and to withdraw the reward offers).

It was discovered that LaRose had purchased carry-on flight luggage at a Sears store last July. In September he got $675 in cash advances from a bank through the use of credit cards. He also cashed in $3,500 worth of stock in the Syracuse radio station. Mrs. LaRose knew nothing of these transactions. The day before he disappeared he gave her $60 of his $235 weekly paycheck for household use, as was his custom. It was also his custom to deposit the remainder in the bank, but the deposit was not made. Thus at the time he disappeared he could have been carrying at least $4,350, all legally his.

In an interview, Reagan said there were other “minor” shreds of evidence suggesting that LaRose had arranged his own disappearance, but both he and Deacon Brigham declined to divulge them.

At month’s end the authorities (including Federal Bureau of Investigation agents working quietly in the background), LaRose’s family, and his friends were still pondering the two main questions: Where is Pastor Don LaRose and why is he missing?

LaRose is nearly six feet tall, weighs 190 pounds, is a bit paunchy, may wear glasses, and he has blue-gray eyes and light brown hair, a prominent dimple on his chin, and a freckle or mole near his left eye.

A tragic sidelight in the case involved fundamentalist leader Carl Mclntire and an anti-Satan rally he and his followers held in front of the Maine church on January 3. Mrs. LaRose and First Baptist’s leaders tried to discourage McIntire from coming, and they said they would not participate if he came. But McIntire said the rally was a demonstration against Satan on behalf of all Christians, and that it would kick off his group’s Revival ’76 program.

En route to the rally, one of McIntire’s five buses overturned near Binghamton, injuring twenty persons. Ten were hospitalized with fractures and cuts; three suffered spinal fractures. Among the latter: Franklin Faucette, 75, dean of McIntire’s Faith Seminary in Philadelphia.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Right To Life

Tens of thousands of citizens from across the nation gathered in Washington, D. C., on January 22 to observe in protest the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling that permits abortion on demand during the first six months of pregnancy. The day began with a “National Prayer Breakfast for Life,” involving mostly Protestant prolife people. Church leaders at the breakfast pledged their participation in nationwide campaigning this spring “to rouse church members to action.”

Next came the “March for Life,” when thousands (mostly Catholics) marched from the White House to the Capitol. Spokesmen said the demonstrators would work at trying to persuade Congress to pass a constitutional amendment forbidding abortion. They also served notice that candidates for public office will be asked where they stand on the issue. Such pressure has already caused havoc in some candidates’ camps.

Many marchers were children. One seven-year-old sported a sign saying, “I’m glad I wasn’t aborted.”

Serving For Life

Last February cattle broker Pete Bekendam of Chino, California, got an unusual phone call from Episcopal clergyman Gerald Walcutt, prison chaplain at the nearby California Institute for Women.

“The chaplain called me and said he had a request for a baptism; it had to be by immersion, and he had no facilities,” recalled Hekendam for reporter Connie Kirby of The American Baptist. “He was wondering if I could find a water trough of some sort.”

The person requesting baptism: Susan Atkins, 27, the Manson Family cultist who is serving a life sentence for her part in the 1969 Tate murders.

Bekendam went to a farm-supply store and picked out a metal tank used for watering animals. It was about two feet deep.

The baptism took place on Sunday, February 23, under a tree on the front lawn of the prison chapel, said Bekendam. He and his wife, members of First Baptist Church in Pomona, an American Baptist congregation, were among the handful who were invited to witness it. Officiating was Methodist minister Sarge Wright, who had known Ms. Atkins in her childhood in San Jose, California. Ms. Atkins stepped into the tank and Wright asked, “Daughter, do you know what this means, that your sins are forgiven, everything you’ve ever done?”

“Yes,” said she, and then she was baptized.

Later, she and Carol Bekendam became good friends, mostly through correspondence. Ms. Atkins told how she had received Christ in September, 1974, while reading a Bible in her cell. Fearful of skepticism should it become known, she confided her conversion experience to only a few persons.

For nearly a year Mrs. Bekendam kept the secret. One day she and a group of students were discussing Helter Skelter, the recently published book about Ms. Atkins. “I know Susan now,” she told the young people, “and the Susan I know is not the Susan Atkins of Helter Skelter—she’s different now.”

Some of the students listened, some were skeptical, said Mrs. Bekendam. She recounted the conversation with the students in a letter to Ms. Atkins, who earlier had expressed her distress over the book’s release.

“I’m glad you can share my joy with others,” replied Ms. Atkins. “I know it must do something to the hearts and minds of those who hear it, even those that are cynical. The Lord is working in their hearts too, and I’m so thankful to be used of God in this way. The hours I spend in Bible study and prayer each day strengthen me to meet the glares and gazes of those who are so skeptical but who want to know what it is that has brought about a change in my life.”

Does Susan Atkins seem resigned to spend the rest of her life in prison?

“She says whatever Christ has for her is what she wants,” replied Mrs. Bekendam to reporter Kirby. “She is [occupied] with Bible study now and shares in her letters about witnessing to other women in the prison.”

Excerpts from Ms. Atkins’ letters:

“I’m learning that love is the most important soul winner. It is the most highly prized gift of the Spirit, and without it I am as nothing in God’s hands. I found, though, that not many here [in prison] want love, or a better way to put it is that they don’t know how to receive it [because] it isn’t something given away in here. It comes as a strange thing to them. But love is patient, kind, and long suffering, and I pray that God will work out a plan so he can love through me.

“There are several Christian women in here, but they are living what appears to me to be a joyless and defeated life. I know by the grace of God what causes this, but unfortunately no words are effective enough to give them the “umph” to get up and claim their victory. Only by showing them that it is possible will they ever see it.”

Do the Bekendams believe Susan Atkins is genuinely converted?

Replied Mrs. Bekendam: “I think her own words speak better than anything I can say.”

Good News (For Some)

Good News, the evangelical movement that liberals in the United Methodist Church wish would go away, is instead growing in strength and influence. At the annual meeting of its thirty-three-member governing board last month in Texas, a budget of $275,000 was adopted—$125,000 higher than last year’s. Executive secretary Charles W. Keysor of Wilmore, Kentucky, who edits the ten-year-old Good News, the journal of the movement, reported a 20 per cent increase in circulation last year and a switch to a more frequent publication schedule (the magazine will now be a bimonthly).

The Evangelical Missions Council, an offshoot of Good News organized in 1973 to press for evangelical emphases in United Methodist missionary work, by unanimous vote of both groups became the missions task force of Good News. It will hire a full-time staff person and operate on a $50,000 budget this year, as proposed by EMC chairman David Seamands, a former missionary to India who is pastor of the United Methodist Church in Wilmore (home of Asbury College and seminary).

Other personnel additions, including a full-time associate editor who will double as associate executive secretary, were authorized “in order to meet the growing requests for services performed by Good News for evangelicals across our church,” commented outgoing chairman Paul Morell, pastor of the 3,200-member Tyler Street Methodist Church in Dallas. He was succeeded by Pastor Ed Robb of the 2,120-member St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Lubbock, Texas.

A fund for theological education “will be started this year to secure a legitimate voice and influence for scriptural Christianity among United Methodist seminaries and seminarians,” stated Chairman Robb, who has been calling for “major reform” in UMC seminaries.

The directors previewed page proofs of new materials prepared by Good News for training in youth membership and confirmation. These materials are part of an alternate curriculum voted into existence by Good News after the denomination failed to go along with a request to produce curricula materials with the kind of evangelical slant Good News wanted.

Good News has a political-strategy unit that is preparing for the UMC’s quadrennial general conference this spring in Portland, Oregon. The denomination’s social-action unit has announced it will propose an in-depth study of sexuality. The proposal as it now stands, however, in effect would also delete from church policy a strong position against hom*osexual behavior. This is something the Good News people want to prevent. They hope to field a caucus of evangelical delegates for the conference. A “team of evangelical observers” will be active at Portland, too, said chief strategist Robert Sprinkle, head of United Methodist Outreach Ministries in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The board named a member of its executive committee, Mrs. Helen Rhea Coppedge of Atlanta, to head a task force “to probe issues connected with feminism and the church.” Said she: “We will be seeking a biblical understanding of women’s identity and place in the church and society.”

Only one resolution was passed by Good News. It commended the UMC’s global ministries board for its opposition to use of missionaries by the Central Intelligence Agency, and it went on record favoring the proposed Hatfield bill in Congress which would prohibit such CIA-missionary links.