Page 6243 – Christianity Today (2024)

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As the calendar turned 1963 the number of citizens clad in uniforms of the United States’ military establishment totaled 2,667,545. Of these, the Army claimed 952,571; the Navy, 662,522; the Air Force, 863,287; and the Marines, 189,165.

This means that a population virtually that of the state of Iowa or of the nation of Ireland has in the main been uprooted from normal community associations and maintains its spiritual ties at the least under great stress. This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY concentrates on the spiritual predicament of American servicemen, reflects the vital faith of some who gladly bear their testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and suggests some avenues for reaching service personnel with the Gospel.

A military chaplain usually has 850–900 men under his care. Since these men are more strenuously preoccupied and more mobile than most churchgoers, the responsibility for the religious program at the various military bases rests actually with the commanding officer, and not with the chaplain. The chaplain, of course, is accountable to the commanding officer, and formulates and implements the spiritual activities. In round numbers, there are 3,300 chaplains in the Armed Forces: 1,300 in the Army, 900 in the Navy, and 1,100 in the Air Force.

CHRIST GIVES NEW LIFE

As for all people, the greatest need of persons in military service is salvation from sin through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men. Apart from reliance on him there is no true joy or peace of mind—only ultimate futility, in this world, and God’s judgment of the sinner to follow. My own experience is that faith in Christ results in an entirely new inner life, one of joy and peace of mind, and complete assurance of an eternity as a child of God in His kingdom. In fact, I know personally the living Lord Jesus Christ.

Although chapel attendance figures give only a vague picture of the spiritual concern and depth of military men, they are of some value. The weekly religious services for all faiths are attended by 800,000 (380,000 Army, 120,000 Navy, and 300,000 Air Force). These numbers, on the one hand, include dependents and visitors; on the other hand, they do not reflect that proportion of the military who worship off base.

SUSTAINING FAITH IN CHRIST

The assurance of spiritual birth has made all the difference in my military service. For the most part my career has been a life of stimulating opportunity, but there have been times when the crevasse of disaster was bridged only by a sustaining faith in Christ our Saviour and Lord.

When I accepted a commission in our Navy some twenty years ago the privilege and responsibility of leadership became mine. Acceptance of Christ was quite like this. Then, too, I assumed leadership responsibility, but love for Him has provided the motivation. He who sealed this commission has also led me into many avenues of Christian service.

The Navy has afforded marvelous opportunity for development of talent. I am grateful I can use my talents for Him.

Some home churches have been drawn into an energetic program of spiritual watchcare as their young men and women have entered the various services and traveled throughout the free world. Other churches, however, have viewed the inductions simply as an unfortunate loss from the ranks of church youth, and have regarded the military complex of modern life with little more than a feeling of frustration. Actually much can be done by the home church both to prepare its young people for military service and to preserve spiritual encouragement during their absence.

1. The church must urge parents to steep their children from birth in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord” as the best preparation for any life, whether it be at home or away from home.

2. It must emphasize a conversion experience as basic for entrance into the kingdom of God.

3. It can encourage extensive pastoral counseling, particularly during the period before entry into the military.

4. It must emphasize the substance and rationale of Christian ethics in all church departments.

5. Pastor and people should maintain faithful contact with servicemen through letters, packages, and reading material.

6. The church should be faithful in prayer support through individual and family devotions, pastoral prayers, and prayer meetings.

7. It can establish and maintain contact with the chaplains of its service people.

8. It can encourage young people to enter the chaplaincy as an avenue of Christian service.

THE WISDOM OF CHRISTIAN DECISION

Have you seen a sunrise from a mountain top or a sunset at sea? Isn’t there a majestic beauty about it? Have you smelled, on a hot day at high noon, a city slum or a battlefield after the action has passed? Isn’t there an inexplicable revulsion to it? These are parts of the world God and man have created—beauty, revulsion—God-made, man-made. So it has been throughout history.

Christ was here some nineteen hundred years ago, lived thirty-three years and returned. In his short life span he explained for us the sights that mystify and the smells that sicken; the morality that stimulates and creates and the degradation that desecrates and destroys; the understanding, love, and devotion that make us very human and the mistrust, hate, and deceit that make us very inhuman. He explained these things very clearly. Wouldn’t we be wiser if we listened to him? Wouldn’t we bear our responsibilities more easily? Wouldn’t our decisions be more decisive? A Christian decision adds meaning to a world in crisis.

Churches located near military installations have additional opportunities, since the American military policy encourages chaplains to cooperate with religious leaders of the community. Although no official regulation requires local churches to clear their special efforts among the servicemen with military authorities, commanding officers and chaplains prefer this be done as a matter of “good taste.” Problems have sometimes arisen when persons unrelated to any of the local churches have promoted programs of one kind or another, or when chaplains of liberal persuasion have sought to impede evangelical activity. Many churches, however, through a wholesome relationship with the officers of nearby bases have entered into remarkable opportunities for spiritual ministry. Some possible areas of practical activity are the following:

1. Teams for meeting servicemen and personally inviting them to the services and activities of the church.

2. Instruction classes for church members in how to reach military men for Christ.

3. Special church functions designed primarily for servicemen.

4. Invitations into church homes and family life, even “adoption” of servicemen for the duration of their local stay.

5. Provision of Christian magazines, books, and pamphlets for servicemen personally and at base libraries.

6. Cooperation with local organizations such as YMCA, YWCA, and Christian Servicemen’s Centers.

END

AN EVER INCREASING EXPERIENCE

Seven years ago I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. Since then my life has changed from a normal military life to an ever increasing experience with Jesus as I dedicate each day to him and see his will come to pass through and around me. I have turned my life and military career over to him, knowing that he has the power to bless or terminate either at any time. As a result, my military efficiency and effectiveness have increased, for he has to a great extent freed me from the fears of this world. In order to obtain the right to be heard in the military service, one must first be an outstanding military man. Therefore, all that I do, say, or think must be to the glory of God.

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Is the heart of the serviceman harder to penetrate with the Gospel than that of the civilian? The situation on one Naval vessel might so indicate, for of its 3,000 men, reports an officer, less than 5 per cent attend Sunday church services.

There are chaplains and Christian servicemen, however, who consider the man in uniform just as open to the message of salvation as his civilian counterpart. The serviceman has basically the same needs and wants, and the Spirit who convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment is no less active among the military than among any other group.

According to a survey reported by Lieutenant Commander Floyd Robertson (USN, ret.), executive secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Commission on Chaplains, the young serviceman’s interest in spiritual matters is actually twice that of a civilian person of the same age. For this reason, believes Robertson, the military “is one of the greatest mission fields on earth.”

A serviceman is more receptive to a call to repentance at certain times, however, and certain kinds of presentation have been found more effective than others.

Said Chaplain A. D. Prickett (now with the U.S. Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida) after nineteen years of duty: “I have found more conversion experiences among those in boot camp than in any other place.” A possible reason for this situation, he suggests, is a greater receptiveness at this time to “new thoughts and ideas.” Another reason, according to a Marine Corps officer, is that “there is much passive social pressure working against a man who begins attending church after a past of non-attendance.” Major Jesse J. Johnson of the First Training Regiment, Fort Dix, New Jersey, gives a third reason: “The training is hard and new to him. He is homesick, lonesome, and in real need of a good solid friend. What better friend could he find than the Lord Jesus Christ?”

This need for a real friend, of course, may continue throughout a serviceman’s entire military stint so that he is always open in some measure to this approach. The number of opportunities for the Christian serviceman to evangelize, therefore, is equal to the number of unsaved men within his barracks or unit. According to Edward E. Gotts (Capt., USAF, ret.), unconverted servicemen are “most readily reached” by Christian servicemen with “sincere personal interest” in them.

The same factors favorable for reaching military men and women with the Gospel when they enter the service to some extent operate also when assignments change. There is sufficient break with former associates and activities to facilitate the “about face” which Jesus Christ requires of those who would follow him. Sometimes, too, a change of status brings a change of heart. An enlisted man may become an officer, a bachelor may become a husband, or a married man, a father; whatever the new responsibility, it brings new awareness of inadequacy. Naval Lieutenant (j.g.) Roger K. Gulick of the U.S.S. “Aeolus” reported that “a large percentage” of those who come to the weekly Bible study class do so “because they feel ‘religion’ is needed to help raise their children.”

An overseas assignment has both advantages and disadvantages. Absent are the restraining influences of church and society in general which prevail around a military base in this country. Present, on the other hand, are greater temptations to profligacy and godlessness. As with Augustine, however, falling into deep sin sometimes works to a man’s salvation. Yet the number of such cases is rather limited, and on the whole, “it is most difficult to get overseas personnel interested in a spiritual program” (Lieutenant Colonel Richard L. McCoy, commanding officer, Third Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry). At such times the military becomes one of the most difficult mission fields in the world.

Succumbing to gross sin and suffering its consequences and at the same time desiring a better life is an experience that can overtake a serviceman at any time. “After extended periods of this distorted way of life,” observes Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Nelson, Jr., executive officer of the U.S.S. “Darter,” “there is often an inward sense of shame. With the sudden realization of sin in the life, there is an open opportunity to present the claims of Jesus Christ, and his power to save, keep, and satisfy, even in the service.”

SHOW GOD’S OTHER FACE

The problem of the servicemen is different. People who are blind, lame, maimed, hungry, persecuted, and threatened flock to Jesus because they know they have need of something. But this approach will not work on a healthy, well-heeled professional warrior who apparently knows no need. We in the service have given this much thought. The general opinion among those Christians I know as to how to approach them is: Show God’s other face. This can be done only by a preacher unafraid, who doesn’t have itching ears or a crowd-pleasing personality. One need wake up only a few. The rest takes care of itself.—Lieutenant Colonel ROBERT G. LEMAY, Clinton Sherman Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

Any time of trouble—be it serious illness, marital difficulty, loss of a loved one, or landing in the brig (stockade)—is a time of special openness to spiritual ministration. The crisis must be of such magnitude, however, that everything else seems secondary; then, as John W. Kolb (Capt., U. S. Army, ret.) says, a person finds he “can no longer cure his ills, either physical or mental” and “in desperation … turns to God.”

What is the big obstacle to conversion at other times? Apparently it is fear of what others will think and how they will react. This fear, of course, ought not to be so formidable since military associations for the most part are cursory and temporary. And yet often they prevent the serviceman from entering the kingdom of heaven. Lieutenant Stanley B. Huss (USNR, ret.) gives this summary of the situation: the serviceman is “a conformist who is not open to the Gospel when in company with his fellows except in a time of overwhelming crisis.”

SALVATION IS GOD’S GIFT

The United States maintains military forces for the defense of our country. Anyone in the military must be prepared to give his life, if necessary, in the execution of his duties. Thus, the probability of life and death makes a greater impact on the serviceman than on the civilian.

A personal decision concerning Jesus Christ becomes very important. So many of us are working our way to heaven by being honest, moral, and ethical. I was one of those until I learned that Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). That verse taught me that my salvation is a gift from God, and that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the only answer.

FACING LIFE WITH COURAGE

Modern communications today make possible the bombardment of unsuspecting citizens with ideas of every possible shade of authenticity. What to believe and what not to believe is an ever present dilemma.

This condition is made more trying by the deliberate effort of forces that would destroy our belief in our government, our fellow men, and our God so that free people immobilized by confusion may be made vassals.

If we are to resolve these dilemmas and realize the abundance which surrounds us, we must seek God’s guidance in our daily lives. World War II and Korea found our military chapels filled on every possible occasion. Communion with God is a necessity for those who face with courage the reality with which the battlefield, and life in general, confronts them.

For many a serviceman that time of crisis does not come until he actually faces the possibility of death. “I recall,” said Samuel I. Wells, Jr. (Lt. [j.g.], USNR, ret.), “that on an LST after a hurricane I observed a number of Bibles made their appearance, thus giving me an opening to talk of things eternal.” Surrounded by the live possibilities of fatal explosions, collisions, and other accidents, the serviceman always lives on the edge of eternity; it is quite proper to remind him then to be ready for death and the life beyond.

Chaplains bear the major burden of reaching military men for Christ. In some instances they have an advantage over their civilian counterparts. But they depend for success on far more than favorable opportunities. A good chaplain, in the opinion of one Army captain, should be “an active, strong, persuasive, driving Christian”; according to another, he should be “one of the boys” in interest and sympathy. Above all, says a third, he should “be acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Besides being a certain kind of man, the chaplain must bring a certain kind of message. He must be aware of present-day living. He will not merely moralize, but evangelize. He will speak not on his own authority but on that of the Bible.

One Air Force major feels that servicemen are “most accessible … through the preaching of the Word.” The natural man resists the Word, however, and its demands. As a result many chaplains “are so anxious not to offend anybody,” notes Air Force Colonel William N. Boaz, Jr., with the 314th Air Division in Korea, “that their message is usually milked pretty dry.”

But the man in uniform may be confronted with the living Word by other means, too. Christian literature is one, especially if its format is attractive and its content interesting. Every ship should have a good supply of Bibles, Scripture portions, and well-chosen magazines and tracts because “at sea men read almost anything.”

The Bible study group is an excellent means of reaching the serviceman because the average adult wants a better knowledge of the Bible and its teachings. Testifies Major Ronald E. Black, stationed at Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts: “Although I was active in the church and had a thirst for the things of the Lord, I was a religious illiterate until a fellow officer persuaded me to come to his house for a weekly Bible Study … led by a young Air Force chaplain … who led me to a saving knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” One commanding officer reports that Bible study groups attract everyone—both enlisted men and officers, as well as their wives. In addition to affording opportunities for military personnel to be “born again,” they also deepen spiritual knowledge and provide Christian fellowship.

Some servicemen respond to another kind of approach. “I personally trusted the Lord with my life as a result of a visit by ‘sermons from Science,’” testifies Albert T. Lauer, GAM Systems Branch Supervisor at Loring Air Force Base, Maine. Elsewhere these Moody Institute of Science films have had excellent reception, also.

If evangelistically oriented, servicemen’s organizations also play a vital role. Groups like the Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship, Officers’ Christian Union, Navigators, Christian Business Men’s Committee, YMCA, and YWCA have done their share in reaching the military for Christ. So have various religious radio broadcasts and television presentations.

FOUNDATION OF OUR HERITAGE

The most important attribute of a military man, or of any other public servant, is a high moral character developed by a devout belief in the teachings of Christ and a practice of the Christian virtues which form the very foundation of our heritage. Let us never allow their importance to be diluted or the strength of our character softened by substituting conformity for conviction, philosophy for performance, or principal for principle.

The day we become the meek comrades of moral compromise marks the beginning of the decline of our effectiveness.

CONSULTING THE ‘MASTER GUNNER’

Technical and tactical competence are important considerations in battlefield success. Spiritual strength has equal if not greater importance. In critical battles, there is always a very fine line between the victor and the vanquished. In these borderline cases, almost invariably the decisive factor will be the determination and the will to win of the victor. For me, that determination grows out of an overriding belief in a Supreme Being—in Almighty God. Anyone who has heard the whine of a bullet fired in anger is aware of the presence of what I call the Master Gunner, who safeguards each of us. Learn to consult with and take counsel from your God.

Unusual opportunities of service exist for churches located near military installations. Invitations to church services, to church socials, to dinners in Christian homes offer strategic ways of ministering to service people. Church families sometimes “adopt” a serviceman for the duration of his stay in their community. Certainly there is no wisdom in commiserating with the serviceman or treating him as if he were an unfortunate prisoner of some kind.

The consensus is that servicemen are won to the Lord largely by personal contact and individual witness. But an effective witness must be winsome. Above all, if the serviceman “can see Christ living in the life,” says Captain Richard E. Fitts of Griffiss Air Force Base in New York, “then he will respond.”

This Christ-likeness means not only maintaining a high level of personal morality and piety, but also manifesting top-flight proficiency as a soldier. One cannot be a good Christian and at the same time a poor soldier. Christ-likeness also involves compassion for lost souls and a spirit of self-giving and self-sacrifice.

Rank seems to pose special problems. In general, enlisted men respond more readily to evangelistic efforts than do officers. Then, too, superiors have greater influence on others than do men of equal status on one another. Observes Chaplain Howard D. Cole of the 40th Infantry Division: “I found that most men were affected the greatest by the officers and NCOs in their units who were dedicated Christians … led by the Holy Spirit and living witnesses to the Gospel.” Efforts of an enlisted man to lead a superior, especially an officer, to Christ face special difficulties because the difference in rank hampers establishment of spiritual rapport.

For these and other reasons the witnessing serviceman needs the Spirit’s direction in approaching another. If he truly desires opportunities, they will come. Then, as one Marine Corps lieutenant suggests, he must give “a manly, hearty, down-to-earth presentation of Christ.”

Servicemen, no less—perhaps at times even more—than civilians, want answers to life’s basic questions. Why are we here? Where are we going? They have questions, too, about the Bible. The message of repentance and remission of sins need not come only from pulpits and chaplains; it often comes from a Christian serviceman in an informal setting when the opportunity is propitious.

Besides a spirit of compassion, the effective Christian witness must exercise abundant prayer. Remarked one Air Force major: “There are too few prayers offered for any one individual in the service to bring him to his Saviour.” And another officer said this: “I feel there are only two ways to have a profound impact on these men: pray and then pray more that Christ will work in their hearts.…”

In surveying the military, one is reminded of our Lord’s observation that the fields are white unto harvest but the laborers are few. The average number of men under a chaplain’s care is around 850 to 900—a far greater number than even the most dedicated chaplain can effectively minister to. And in those instances where a chaplain is not evangelical, the entire flock is officially without one who can lead them into eternal life and keep them from going astray. Pertinent, therefore, is Jesus’ remedy for this situation. To his disciples he said: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

If those who stand in proximity to service personnel are obedient to Christ’s command, chances are their experience will be that of His disciples: they will be the first to be called and to be empowered to speak in His name.

END

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The sins which American society has visited upon her youth are in many respects the very sins which American servicemen in turn tend to visit upon society.

To catalog the virtues and vices of military personnel authentically presupposes an omniscience which we surely cannot and would not claim. In a very real sense each man—including the serviceman—is the responsible guardian of his own soul and decides his moral destiny. The assessment offered here is based, rather, on hundreds of replies from personnel at military bases at home and abroad to an inquiry by CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The findings are instructive and illuminating.

The American serviceman, insists Lieutenant Commander Frank C. Collins, Jr., U.S. Navy, executive officer aboard the U.S.S. “Shields,” is not “some peculiar creature conceived for a life of immorality as portrayed in the paid killer and ravager of social decency. Rather, he is the high school football hero, the serious science student, or the kid who drops out of school in his junior year due to lack of aptitude or interest. He is a person who enlists because of a sincere patriotic desire, or in order to learn a trade, or to fulfill his bent for adventure, or perhaps to complete his military obligation and thus clear the path for further education or a career.… He struggles to maintain individualism in a sea of uniformity.”

Patriotism is ascribed more frequently than any other virtue to U.S. military personnel. This fact is highly significant; it gives wholesome perspective to the easy ascribing of sagging moral and spiritual ideals to those who regard military service as “a necessary evil” due to compulsory draft, or who enlist only to escape civilian frustration. Despite those who are merely “putting in time” to fulfill their military obligation, many serve conscientiously in a dedicated professional way with the ideal of public service. Although the serviceman seldom enunciates patriotism as the first motivation for his role in the military, he reflects love of country in numerous ways. The great majority of men are willing and proud to be in the services. The career officer, asserts Captain James W. Wold, March Air Force Base, Riverside, California, “feels he is generally last man on the totem pole in pay raises and legislation in contrast with other government employees, and realizes he will never be a rich man, but finds compensation in the nature of his duty; he is somewhat humble in the opportunity to serve his country.” Nor are those who make a career of the military the only ones “quite dedicated to the defense of their country,” although First Lieutenant John Boaz, U.S. Air Force police officer stationed at Niagara Falls, N.Y., would single out this group especially. “A patriotic youngster,” says Lieutenant (j.g.) Mike Bishop, Protestant lay leader for the staff of the Seventh Fleet and for the U.S.S. “Providence,” is a tribute that applies to the American serviceman generally. “On the surface he is skeptical about patriotism,” writes Chaplain Robert T. Deming, attached to Headquarters of the First Air Base Group at Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan, “but he will make real sacrifices if called on to do so.” Naval Reserve officer Lieutenant Commander George E. Howell of Arlington, Virginia, presently on inactive duty, declares American servicemen to be “capable, should the need arise, of defending this country or carrying its share of responsibility in standing up for the rights of the free nations in this greedy and very dangerous present world.”

Another chaplain, attached to an Air Force reconnaissance squadron but preferring anonymity, volunteered that the sense of patriotism is threatened often by the serviceman’s disposition to do “only what he has to, or can’t escape from doing.” But more serious as a diluting factor to the quality of patriotism, as we shall note later, is what Chaplain Philip N. Smith (Maj.), a Conservative Baptist pastor in Colorado Springs also serving a mobilization assignment at Ent Air Force Base, pictures as the serviceman’s ideological lack: “Well cared for by the government, he doesn’t appreciate his benefits, freedoms, and liberties; he lacks understanding of patriotism and of the principles on which our country was founded.”

Next to patriotism the trait most frequently ascribed to American service personnel is self-reliance. It is popular to caricature the military as a realm wherein buck privates suspend all personal decision until they resume civilian life. But Colonel Thomas I. Edgar, U.S. Army (ret.), of Roanoke, Virginia, inverts the picture: it is “the average civilian who has developed the ‘herd instinct’ to a high degree in recent years and lives in pretty much of a rut of conformity. I sincerely believe that the average serviceman is more inclined to think for himself and to display greater initiative and to be more self-reliant.” A Naval lieutenant who maintains an alert Christian witness on a Pacific fleet flagship of 1,100 men adds that “independence, self-reliance, and deep love for country” are qualities cherished by many servicemen today.

The spirit of self-reliance is widely threatened, however, by the many conforming pressures that characterize military life. The desire to be “accepted by his peers” leads in many directions. As Captain Arthur E. Dewey, stationed with the First Aviation Company in Korat, Thailand, comments: “The man of draft age is seldom sure of where he is going. In military life, as in most group experiences, he will follow the road the group seems to be traveling, whether it leads to a bar or to a house of worship. The group norm tempts him to do less than his best and often places individual excellence under suspicion. This man tends to take on the image of his leaders. The question of whether this image is right or wrong is subordinate to an instinctive feeling that this is the easiest way to get along.” Chaplain James H. Morrison (Capt.), U.S. Army, now on the staff of First Presbyterian Church of San Diego, California, reinforces this emphasis after three years with the parachute “jump school” of the 101st Airborne Division: “The young paratrooper is not unlike the usual high school graduate, for most of them are just that. It is my firm conviction that the large majority of them do the things they would do at home if it were not for the social restraint and mores of the society in which they grow up. Many who would not normally do these things in civilian society and yet do them in the Army are subject to tremendous pressure from their peer group to be promiscuous with women, in drinking, and in other ways. Frequently it is ‘go out on the town with the boys’ or remain behind and be bored (there is little to do, and most posts are not near large cities) and receive the disapproval of their ‘buddies.’” “Aboard our ship,” writes Ensign James D. Prout of the U.S. Coast Guard’s “Eastwind,” “‘public opinion’ has prevented many from taking part in activities at which the Gospel is heard,” despite the fact that “a very large percentage come from church backgrounds and church groups.” Even the maintenance of spiritual values is thus jeopardized by negative group pressures. Much depends, as Major John A. Foster of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, notes, on how determined the serviceman is “not to fit in with the crowd by doing something that sets him apart as being different.” If he wants more than anything else to be “one of the gang” and willingly sacrifices deeply inculcated principles to gain acceptance by his peers, he is easily headed for a break with all that he has cherished in life. This rejection is then rationalized, as a chaplain aboard the U.S.S. “St. Paul” mirrors it, in the notion that “the rapidly changing world scene along with the growing materialism and deteriorating ethical standards make it nigh impossible for his parents (the older generation) to really understand him and his needs. He longs to be understood by the older generation—believes he has tried every way possible to communicate his beliefs and feelings—but often thinks the barrier between generations is too great to penetrate.” Young non-career personnel away from home for the first time, and who seemingly have no goals and purpose in life, are the most vulnerable target for pressures to shun spiritual emphases. The basically immature and insecure youngster, who searches only for acceptance in his new environment and who has no dedication to permanent values of any kind, will do even what he knows is wrong just to become a member of the group. Conformity is part of his training—“a mill of group dynamics,” Lieutenant S. A. Fink of the Navy calls it, in which “he is disciplined to do things in concert: marching, dressing, responding to commands in unison.” Conformity will define his credo as well. He “despises discipline, detests authority, desires a military democracy (but does not understand what democracy involves)” adds Chaplain Paul P. Everett (Capt.), with the U.S. Army’s First Missile Battalion, 60th Artillery, in Gary, Indiana. “Morally he responds like a jack-in-the-box when released from the environment of home and church and becomes involved with wine, women, and song.”

THE MAGNITUDE OF MANHOOD

The serviceman’s image: pleasure-seeking, somewhat immoral and irresponsible while off duty—but ready and capable of fighting to the death to preserve his homeland and fulfill his duties. He is covertly religious normally, openly so when he seeks strength for himself and his buddies—basically a good average American boy trying to adjust to what may be a trying life away from home. Servicemen often wrongly feel that overt expression of religious beliefs conflicts with the magnitude of their manhood. In time of battle they often realize the truth—it takes a better man to be a Christian, and a Christian is a far better and greater man.—First Lieutenant DAVID A. HENRY, student officer, U.S. Army Reserve School, Spokane, Washington.

Alongside the industry, competence, initiative, and dedication that characterize American service personnel, therefore, must be ranged that whole gamut of weaknesses to which they are easily vulnerable in the face of temptation. Separation from home and family exposes our young servicemen to moral letdowns despite the fact that America is a church-going nation and many young people have some training in or at least knowledge of Christianity. The great majority of draftees for whom outwardly “anything goes” nonetheless retain “inner qualms about the things they were brought up not to do,” says David R. Reid of Williamstown, Massachusetts, First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Reserve. On the other hand, he does not “discipline himself the way he disciplines others,” comments a Marine Corps captain. There remains therefore the sense of violated conscience, alongside the shattered framework of an inherited morality and the obvious duality in any demonstration of the Christian ethic and the American Creed.

In this context of moral compromise, however, one also finds a sense of compassion in the military man who has not discarded all his Christian influences. “One may indeed be proud of the ease with which integration of the Armed Forces is being accomplished,” notes Commander William H. Hibbs, U.S. Navy (ret.), of Tucson, Arizona. The American serviceman is basically friendly and honest. One Navy chaplain describes him as “one of the most honest persons in our society.” He is thoroughgoing in what he does—“when he works, he works hard; when he plays, he plays hard.” Physically fit and virile, he enjoys athletics and respects the true athlete. He enjoys land or sea maneuvers, but seldom admits the fact. He has an uncanny way of rising to a situation when the pressure is on. On his serious side he studies hard to improve technical skills, hopes for promotion, and takes off-duty educational courses to further his career even when in doubt whether that career will be military or civilian. He looks forward to self-support, security, and a family.

It is significant, however, that these traits no longer emerge as a conscious reflex of Christian commitment; they co-exist, rather, as a diluted aspect of Christian heritage in a nebulous framework of ideals. Thought of in terms of median, suggests Commander Hibbs, the serviceman is “sincere, dedicated, and realistic, with a pragmatic orientation.” Therefore, while he is “respectful of authority,” as noted by Captain Richard B. Stuart of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, he has no sure sense of ultimate authority in life, so that even the soundest convictions he shares about the treachery of the Communist philosophy tend to float about on a sea of concern with no fixed anchor. As a result, according to Staff Sergeant Henry W. Elliott, U.S. Army, of the Headquarters Battery of the 212th Artillery Group in Hanau, Germany, the remaining regard for customs, traditions, or authority is inconstant and often wobbly, since it lacks discipline and control. While he is usually well informed on international situations, says Lieutenant (j.g.) James R. Bair, U.S. Navy, of Norfolk, Virginia, he completely accepts “the relative truth philosophy in morals and ethics; therefore, he embraces a double standard in these areas.” The “standards” that determine his life tend to become nothing more than the impulses of his group. He may be fully dedicated, as Second Lieutenant Howard Graves, a U.S. Army engineer attending Oxford University, comments, to “resisting Communism and to the preservation of our country,” and is wholly confident of our nation’s ability to cope with any crisis on a large scale. But, complains Chaplain Paul P. Everett of Gary, Indiana, this same serviceman “prefers a vague philosophy to a personal commitment to God.” “Typical of young America, he doesn’t know what he wants or where he is going,” says Captain William Armerding of Burlington, Massachusetts, now in the U.S. Army Reserve. “He lacks background,” adds Lieutenant (j.g.) William Robert Porter, Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve, of Muncie, Indiana, formerly assigned to the U.S.S. “Bexar,” “in different religious, moral, social, political, and economic concepts.… He has been spoon-fed an ill-defined concept of loyalty to God and country and a ‘worldly’ concept of what it is to be a man. The result is a lack of firmly established values for his life. God is not a relevant being to him, but someone to be considered at a later date.”

DEDICATED BUT SPIRITUALLY SHALLOW

The current serviceman is a civilian who has put on a uniform. Any recruit brings with him spiritual training his church and family life have given him. A cross-section sampling of servicemen will show a startling ignorance of spiritual things. Some can witness, as John Glenn has, to a firsthand experience with God. Too often, however, the serviceman is the product of a confused, increasingly materialistic society. He is often given unbelievable responsibilities and is often called upon to make sacrifices that would not be expected of him in civilian life. The outdated concept of the military man who “cannot face life on the outside” is now being replaced by one of technological genius fighting a cold war with digital computers and space vehicles. He is tense, overworked, yet surprisingly often a dedicated public servant.—Captain ROY N. MINOR, missile officer, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

It is this lack of ultimate spiritual commitment that in turn jeopardizes the stability and certainty of personal dedication in the life of the military, and which makes the serviceman a vulnerable defender of national ideals and an unstable bearer of traditional values. Today’s serviceman is young and impressionable, and for the most part has led a life that demanded little discipline and loyalty. In the service he becomes the target of every conceivable vagrant view of life.

The Army usually sends its more intelligent soldiers to service schools for training as technicians; the “laboring type,” on the other hand (most of whom did not finish high school), are sent to combat units. First Lieutenant J. C. Hood, combat engineer platoon leader at Tompkins Barracks, Schwetzingen, Germany, therefore describes the “typical GI” as “a two-fisted young man who has finished ten or eleven years of schooling. He thrives on excitement.… In garrison, he tends to go stale and looks for excitement in alcohol and women, especially overseas where women are easy and alcohol is part of the national diet. His money is spent three to five days after payday.”

Lack of discipline leads, in turn, to lack of restraint. Detachment from earlier ties means detachment also from moral patterns. Immature and impressionable, the young serviceman is “easily swayed by leaders within the unit or barracks,” reports Major John T. Derrick of the 35th Artillery Group Headquarters in West Germany. On the lookout for enjoyment, says Chaplain Harry W. Holland, Navy Auxiliary Air Station, Saufley Field, Pensacola, Florida, “the serviceman making his decisions without the help of whatever character-building influences and strong persons he may have depended on prior to entering the service, is easily influenced by older servicemen and civilians who seek to involve him in drinking and immoral acts.” “Away from home and lonely, he is easy to sway,” comments Major Richard E. Slater of Geiger Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, “and he will experiment with evil never attempted near his family.” Those who have never been out on their own are “easily influenced by associates,” and most “follow the crowd to avoid being an ‘outcast’ or ‘different,’” says Lieutenant (j.g.) F. E. Phillippi, Jr., gunnery officer aboard the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. “Orleck.” “They find it ‘necessary,’” remarks Chaplain C. Gordon Kyle (Capt.), attached to Headquarters of the Sixth Missile Battalion, 61st Artillery, U.S. Army, “to use the occasional oath and indulge in the questionable thing in order to get along.” The drift away from religion is abetted by those “who are afraid to stand up for their beliefs and do not attend church or chapel services,” notes Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Schmitz of the Iceland Defense Force.

Pleasure-seeking, then, becomes a ruling passion for the serviceman. He reaches for companionship in ways that “wouldn’t have entered his mind in the home environment,” comments Lieutenant Commander Philip A. Roe of the Ninth Naval District, Great Lakes, Illinois. He seeks excitement and fun through a diversity of activities usually involving girls, automobiles, and alcohol. The outward sins then multiply. Drinking becomes routine, marital vows are broken, spendthrift habits are formed. An officer aboard the U.S.S. “Sellers” thinks it no exaggeration to say that aboard his ship “about 75 per cent of the enlisted men chase women (the married men are often the worst offenders)” and that among the officers “about 30 per cent are unfaithful to their wives, about 60 per cent chase other women when away from home.” Along with a fondness for alcohol and drinking in excess goes the frequenting of houses of prostitution. Carefree and spendthrift, this type of serviceman is often financially depleted at mid-month and is looking for something to do with his free time.

TO BE ONE OF THE CROWD

Very few claim to be atheists or agnostics. Most admit they know what they should do; however, they are usually speaking from a legal or moral rather than biblical point of view. Most have not studied enough to understand Christ’s teachings. The parable of the sower and the wheat still separates each into his class. Perhaps the real trouble is that each wants pleasure, each wants to be one of the crowd, and the crowd follows the wide path. I am happy to say that those who do take a stand for Christ generally make it a firm stand out in the open. Those others who have done little studying of the Scriptures usually try to shy away from the subject. A surprising number like to argue dogmas, wresting Scripture out of context—anything to keep away from the main theme of conversion!—Lieutenant CORBIN WOODWARD, U.S. Navy, supply officer aboard the U.S.S. “Rankin.”

For the young draftee trying to be “a man of the world,” says First Lieutenant Edward M. Blight, Jr., of the U.S. Army Reserve, Tripler Army Hospital, unrestrained sexual activity, alcoholic excesses, and smutty language come to imply general lack of restraint. Hypocrisy is then almost forced upon him, notes Lieutenant James I. Wilson of the U.S. Naval Reserve: his degeneracy is outwardly concealed because the service requires him to be well dressed, well groomed, and physically fit, and the refusal of parents at home to recognize his immorality constrains him to sustain the illusion of decency. In the spirit of Kipling’s lines, he welcomes a foreign culture where the immoral seems moral:

O ship me somewhere east of Suez

Where the best is like the worst;

Where there ain’t no Ten Commandments

And a man can raise a thirst.

Cross Section Of America

The civilian finds it difficult to think of the professional military personnel as a special class. As Chaplain R. W. Odell (Lt. Comdr., USN) reminds us: “The image of the American serviceman is really the son, brother, father, or husband image of the cross section of our average civilian community—only with uniform on! And even the inclination to judge the military man as a group member rather than as an individual runs its risks.”

The valor and self-sacrifice of the American armed forces are beyond reproach; almost every frontier of World War II spoke eloquently of their magnificent heroism. And the intellectual caliber of enrollees in the military academies and officer training schools is highly gratifying. A visit to the special war colleges which ready military leaders for command posts around the world leaves no doubt about the technical competence of such personnel.

Yet World War II disclosed some glaring weaknesses in our armed forces. How can we account for them? Are they by-products of military life? Are their roots in American society? Does the American home prepare young people for life in these times? What needs to be done?

Here, for example, is the “average” Marine recruit. He is nineteen years of age (many are seventeen); he has not gone beyond the tenth grade and has a general classification test score of 105. Two-thirds of such recruits are from the city; most of them have never before fired a rifle or worn a uniform. Upon entry to the Marine Corps the luxuries of civilian life become but a memory, and the recruit soon is stripped of all individuality. His hair is shortened, his civilian clothes are sent home. Garbed in a new utility uniform, he reports to a drill instructor whose job it is to remake him into a Marine. He becomes a member of a team; he must think first no longer of himself, but of his platoon. In eleven weeks this groping and uncertain lad will have become a proud and competent Marine.

Whatever their branch of service, enlisted men actually are an “above average” group, since the recruiting process eliminates those known to be physically, mentally, and morally unfit. In this sense the American serviceman is truly “a selected civilian in uniform, away from home, and under military discipline.”

Since recruits in all branches of service are now exceedingly well trained in technical matters, they understandably desire and merit appreciation of their abilities and talents. Today’s serviceman is a technician and specialist, fully abreast of the scientific advances of the times, and considerably more skilled in many areas than his counterpart at the outbreak of World War II.

In his new and changed way of life, the serviceman becomes desperately lonely. “The temptations to moral and social experimentation in his new environment—away from close scrutiny of family and home community,” observes Chaplain G. Paul Keller (Comdr., assistant division chaplain, USNR), “are similar to those encountered by young men who leave home for the greater freedom of college and university. His resistance (or vulnerability) to such temptation, like that of his college counterpart, is largely the result of prior training (or lack of training) in the home, school, church, and home community. Even the reactions to the obedience and subordination demanded by military discipline are largely determined by prior training.”

Just as no community can screen out all its misfits, the military too harbors its complement of maladjusted personnel—in fact, sometimes inherits those shunted from community life. The small number who enlist because they lost civilian jobs or met difficulty in school or home are those who account for the highest percentage of trouble in military life. About 80 per cent of Naval and Marine brig inmates come from broken homes.

But the most significant and distressing factor about American military personnel is their lack of a sense of ultimate values and fixed standards. Although dedicated to the service of their country, they seem to have no awareness of any distinctive national purpose and of its bearing upon individual decision and commitment. This weakness, moreover, is rampant at a time when the American heritage is a special target of Communist attack and subversion. Reflecting the “civilian’s civilization,” says Chaplain Bobby G. Allen of New Orleans, the soldier has “little concept of morality, discipline, duty, goal in life, and what his country stands for.”

THE STRUGGLE OF A SOUL

The American serviceman finds maturity thrust upon him. This situation causes him at times to rebel, perhaps to succumb, but in the main to adjust. He discovers appetites long suppressed by social mores awakening and somewhat easier to satiate free of close parental and neighborhood supervision. He is susceptible to temptation but also responsive to counseling. He desperately wants to be accepted by the military community. Herein lies the importance of a solid Christian background; if he has one, social pressures seldom cause permanent damage; if he lacks this background, he may suffer damage to his moral tissue. He frequently feels overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility assigned to him. His reaction to this responsibility is generally a good index to his background. He is little different from his civilian contemporary except for his greater respect for discipline and orderliness.—Lieutenant Commander FRANK C. COLLINS, JR., U.S. Navy, executive officer, U.S.S. “Shields.”

The aftermath of World War II witnessed a general decrease in the sense of loyalty, moral responsibility, and spiritual values among enlisted personnel. This trend was evident from increased numbers of disciplinary problems, AWOLs, and court-martials. In 1958, to reemphasize and revitalize the inspirational, technical, and moral aspects of Naval leadership, the Secretary of the Navy issued General Order Number 21. According to Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Nelson, Jr., executive officer aboard the Navy’s U.S.S. “Darter,” this program has met with “considerable success”; it has yielded fuller dedication to American ideals.

Service personnel are notoriously and necessarily nomadic. Since assignments are flexible and subject to swift and frequent change, the impression is encouraged that military life accommodates no deep roots nor fixed values. When the influence of family and friends is missing, personal decisions issue only from one’s inner complex of convictions and standards. Among the persistent problems in the military, reports Base Chaplain Bruce C. Herrstrom (Capt.) of the 126th Air Refueling Wing, Illinois Air National Guard, are “teen-agers who have little or no concept of discipline and responsibility. They come into military life with no respect for authority and seem to thrive on a philosophy of relativism. For them there are no absolutes.” The young man without strong religious foundations, adds Lieutenant Winslow B. Oakes of U.S. Fleet Weather Control, USN, Suitland, Maryland, “will be found trying out foul language and dabbling in common ‘liberty’ practices—that is, drinking, and to a lesser extent, illicit sex. He is out to prove himself a man to his buddies, after having just left home where he was probably still a boy to his family and friends.” From Hanco*ck Field, Syracuse, New York, Chaplain Elliot Robinson reports that “we see very few of the very young servicemen in chapel.” First among the reasons for this situation he lists the lack of previous “basic Bible and church-centered indoctrination.” Even some single men in the National Guard—veterans of World War II or Korea among them—reports another chaplain, seem often to live “only for the immediacies of life since the future is uncertain. They want everything that life has to offer right away. And some simply want a handout from Uncle Sam when retirement comes.” But under any circ*mstances the “boys in the barracks” remain the most difficult to reach spiritually. According to another Protestant chaplain, “Evangelical services are not sought after by the unmarried serviceman.”

That married personnel are for the most part more responsible and more spiritually concerned is noted by several observers. A helpful factor is that since World War II, the American services have placed greater emphasis on the family unit. It is evident, observes Base Chaplain Raymond Pritz (Maj.) of the U.S. Air Force in Freising, Germany, that the married serviceman “more readily makes the chapel his home church, while the single man is more often on vacation from his home church and family influence.” Major Robert E. Graf, U.S. Army, The Pentagon, makes a further distinction.

A very high percentage of those who have made the military a career, rather than a temporary interlude, he notes, are married and quite mature, and reflect a pattern of responsibility, religious conviction, and activity much like that of the average adult American of thirty years of age and older.

The dearth of spiritual vitality is reflected, too, in the unfavorable ratio between chapel attendance and the total personnel stationed at military bases. For Protestant Christians—and America traditionally has been predominantly Protestant—the “assembling together of believers” is a New Testament imperative, while for Catholics, deliberate absence from mass is a mortal sin. The neglect of chapel attendance is all the more disconcerting when it is conceded that because of the selectivity of the enlistment process the general moral level of military personnel at the time of enlistment is superior to that of society as a whole.

Former Air Force chaplain in the Korean War, the Rev. Ken Hutcheson, now pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas, pleaded before the Texas Baptist Day School Association for more Baptist elementary schools by recounting the conduct of American servicemen abroad: “The number of babies fathered by American military men is simply appalling. During my active duty tour in the Korean War and also during the years I have spent as an active reserve chaplain, I have talked with many men who had been stationed in Europe and the Far East.… According to their own admission, from 95 to 98 per cent of them both married (whose wives did not go with them) and single lived in shameful adultery.… In the Korean War it became so deplorable … a leading churchman … who was touring Korea called the chaplains together in one area and lectured them, urging them to do something.…” It is probably true that the farther American servicemen travel from home, the farther many of them drift from their inherited ideals as well.

Doubtless the circ*mstances of entering the military have much to do with servicemen’s attitudes. Commander George F. Masin, electronics engineer at the U.S. Naval Ordinance Laboratory in Corona, California, affiliated also with the Naval Reserve Officers School, thinks that many who wait for a compulsory draft “consider military service as a time of ‘treading water’ until they can resume their normal civilian occupation or return to school, and do not take the military training period seriously.… For many this means a let-down of moral standards.” First Lieutenant Edward P. Lyman of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in Clarkesville, Tennessee, likewise thinks “the young high school graduate and pre-college man who is ‘just serving his time, just waiting until he is free’ is a candidate for group conformity and tends to unreliability and recklessness.”

Those who flee to the military to escape distasteful aspects of civilian life soon find their problems enlarged to include the desire to escape from military demands as well. Comments Chaplain A. D. Prickett of the U.S. Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida: “All too often he joined up to get away from some unpleasant situation at home or at school—or that he considered unpleasant—and now the service confronts him with problems also. Thus he can hardly wait to finish his tour and get out. Most of the ones I see have no clear-cut idea or plan of what they want to do beyond that.” Lieutenant Lionel F. Gardiner, instructor in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps School at Fort McClellan, Alabama, adds that under such circ*mstances enlisted men are not likely to rise above the surrounding pressures to avoid an interest in spiritual matters.

The military career man is not necessarily exempt from a somewhat similar, if more subtle, vagabond attitude toward life. “Many of those who join the armed forces intending to make the military a career, and who see no immediate return to civilian life, feel”—a Naval officer comments—“that they might as well ‘live it up’ and let the future take care of itself.” Another Naval education and training officer adds that “early retirement and security are for many the chief motivations for Naval careers.” But the older “career” men, it is widely noted, are more settled mentally and more readily accept civilian functions and responsibility in the community.

Yet one fact is sure: the character of the officers both consciously and unconsciously influences many of their subordinates. As Corbin Woodward, supply officer aboard the U.S.S. “Rankin,” puts it, “the officers and senior petty officers usually set the pace, and the new men follow.” Commander Charles H. Hoke, weapons officer at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut, states that “the happiest sailor at sea is one who knows that his commanding officer and his other officers are morally strong, competent, and dedicated—who has faith that he can do his special job capably. Under these conditions he is ingenious beyond imagination, skilled beyond all previous appearances, hardworking and loyal under extremely adverse conditions. In the absence of these conditions, he is sloppy, unskilled, and reticent.”

Chaplains are continually astonished over the spiritual apathy of draftees who regard themselves as “Protestant.” A distressing number cannot repeat the Ten Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer, nor identify Abraham, Moses, or Paul. A survey by chaplains in the U.S. Armed Services attests a wide range of spiritual illiteracy concerning the content of the Christian faith. At a time when national goals are in doubt, it is a matter of great concern that the guardians of our frontiers are unsure of our heritage.

END

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“Take strength from the grace of God which is ours in Christ Jesus.… A soldier on active service will not let himself be involved in civilian affairs; he must be wholly at his commanding officer’s disposal.… Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead …” (the Apostle Paul to Timothy, 2 Tim. 2:1 ff., NEB).

Here and there in the New Testament gospels and epistles soldiers and their commanding officers touch the life of Christ and now and again enter into the new life of the Gospel. It was soldiers who placed the crown of thorns upon his brow (John 19:2); soldiers who mocked him on the cross (Luke 23:36); soldiers who crucified Jesus, then divided his garments and tossed lots for his tunic (John 19:23). A soldier speared Jesus’ side with a lance (John 19:34); soldiers accepted the chief priests’ bribe to obscure the true facts about the empty tomb (Matt. 28:12 ff.). In the first days of the apostolic age it was sixteen soldiers who kept constant watch on the imprisoned Peter. Apprehended by King Herod (outspoken foe of the Christian movement), Peter was not only held fast by two chains, but even while he slept was secured against escape by a soldier on each side. Beyond his cell, sentries guarded the prison door and the iron gate. Peter’s angelic deliverance therefore not only was astonishing, but also excluded any fabrication that disciples had absconded with his body. The “consternation” that followed “among the soldiers” was abruptly cut off only by the embittered Herod’s execution of the military guard (Acts 12:18 f.).

On another occasion fanatical Judaists sought to take the Apostle Paul’s life just outside the temple. Together with a considerable number of troops the Roman commandant stopped the mob violence, put Paul under arrest, and escorted him to the military barracks. There, by invoking his Roman citizenship and appealing for a proper hearing, Paul frustrated the order for examination by flogging.

If soldiers appear in the Bible in the service of injustice, they appear, too, in search of grace, and since they are servants of the state their cause is ideally set in the context of justice (Rom. 13). When forty Jews vowed to starve unless they murdered the Apostle Paul, and waited in ambush for him, the commandant ordered two centurions to take Paul to the governor under an escort of two hundred infantrymen, seventy cavalrymen, and two hundred lightly armed troops (Acts 23:23). When the sailors decided to abandon the storm-tossed ship, Paul exposed their deception to the centurion and to the soldiers (Acts 27:30 ff., 42 f.). During the Acts journeys Paul was closely bound to Luke the physician; in Rome he was lodged in the custody of a soldier (Acts 28:16).

It was a centurion in Capernaum who pleaded with Jesus to heal his paralyzed son: “You need only say the word and the boy will be cured. I know, for I am myself under orders, with soldiers under me” (Matt. 8:9, NEB). Nowhere, not even in Israel, had Jesus found a comparable faith (Luke 7:9). While Pilate’s soldiers mocked Jesus, crucified him, and took a bribe to discount the empty tomb, on that same watch a centurion and his men were impelled by the awesome events to exclaim: “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54). And it was a centurion—Cornelius, of the Italian contingent—with whom God began the spiritual baptism of the Gentiles (Acts 10:1, 22). Thus it was a soldier’s confession of Christ that inaugurated the revelation of the universality of the Gospel of Christ, the recognition that membership in the Christian church was open to Gentiles who “feared God” and not only to Jews.

Endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, Paul exhorted young Timothy. From personal experience the Apostle fully appreciated the physical and mental stamina of men in the military. He recognized, too, that a soldier’s life in the service of justice is not incompatible with the Christian’s life in the stream of redemptive grace. The man who puts his ultimate trust in God has at his disposal defensive and offensive spiritual weapons. The most frequently mentioned weapon in the Bible is the sword, which in both Old and New Testaments frequently symbolizes the Word of God (Ezek. 21:28; Eph. 6:17). It is the omnipotent God who stands above all earthly powers, to whom all men and nations are answerable. Even in the heavenlies is “the host of the Lord,” that spiritual army which even now does the bidding of the holy Lord of creation. Yet to come is that great and final conflict between good and evil: then shall appear the Risen Christ to lead the “armies of heaven” (Rev. 19:14) and to defeat utterly the armies of the beast and of the kings of this earth (Rev. 19:19).

Harold B. Kuhn

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In view of the claim of modern Communists to possess an interpretation of reality and of history which makes them infallible guides to the processes of social change, and in view of Communism’s avowed purpose of supplanting all existing political and social forms, thinking persons are perplexed by the term peaceful coexistence as currently employed by the Soviet masters. The hopeful seize upon Mr. Khrushchev’s reiteration of the term as evidencing a possible alteration of the fundamental strategy of the Communist world. Can it be, some inquire, that the men of the Kremlin have “seen the light” and have turned from dogmatism to pragmatism, from their iron-clad and doctrinaire doctrine of the inevitable destruction of Western civilization by Marxist conquest to something approaching, at least, the procedures of fair competition and of international behavior based upon some form of mutually accepted rules?

Much is at stake—more than most persons in the West realize. It is therefore prudent to take a long, searching look at the term “peaceful coexistence” to see, first, what it indicates about Soviet planning for international strategy, and second, what if any implications it has for the Christian man and woman in the free world.

The term “peace” means, it goes without saying, something vastly different to the Communist verbalizer than it means to us. Stripped of its supporting verbiage, it indicates an absence of opposition to the expansionist aims of the U.S.S.R. from without, and of course the suppression of any resistance to the mandates of the regime from within the Soviet super-state.

Running through the speeches of Nikita Khrushchev is the theme that while war on a worldwide scale is now unthinkable (since it would mean, at a minimum, the incineration of his great heartland), the Soviet masters reserve the right to foment, foster, and support “wars of national liberation.” This means, in blunt terms, that any internal uprising in any land outside the Red Empire will receive not only encouragement, but every possible form of assistance from Moscow. In effect, it means that wide-scale war (certainly abhorrent to all of us!) is to be eliminated on pragmatic (as opposed to humane) grounds, so as to offer an unlimited opportunity for Soviet subversion in the part of the world which is presently free.

Seen from this angle, “peace” means the absence of forms of war which are inimical to the present, pragmatic interests of the Soviet Union. In other words, times of relative freedom from armed conflict afford, in the judgment of the masters of the Kremlin, an optimum set of factors within which war can be waged at other levels. This is the lesson which we ought to learn from the semantic juggling of the word “peace”—that to the Communist masters, no proximate peace is peace at all.

We forget all too easily that the Communist leaders of today seek to exploit every factor for their own advantage. Diplomacy is not utilized as a means to effecting compromises for the sake of achieving justice. Rather, the Soviet masters mold it into an instrument by which cheap conquests are made, and by which maps are redrawn in such a manner as to extend Communist hegemony and/or secure the imperialist and expansionist interests of the super-state. The monolithic control by the state of the raw materials, the labor potential, the means of production, and the means of distribution enables this system to lend itself to the most systematic and ruthless forms of commercial warfare. Trade becomes a weapon by which manufactured goods from within the Soviet state can be priced abroad, not with respect to their intrinsic value, but with a view to demoralizing the economies of other nations. It goes without saying that patents and copyrights are infringed with a high hand, with no thought of observation of civilized codes concerning royalties.

More could be said along these lines; but the prudent do well to realize that by “peaceful coexistence” the masters of the Kremlin do not envision any form of civilized competition with the free world upon the basis of recognized and stated ground rules. Any talk of respecting the usages of other nations, or of allowing to their systems anything more than a de facto and temporary legitimacy, means no more than Stalin’s verbal tribute to the “self-determination of peoples” at the peace tables following World War II.

It is fashionable in some quarters to suggest that any person who speaks or writes in such a fashion with respect to the Communist world is a member of “the radical right” or to regard him as a hopeless conservative. While we deplore the excesses of some forms of rightist protest, we hold that there is a proper regard for the lessons of the past; certainly a perusal of the lessons which the Communist world has handed the West yields some shocking data. And as Santayana once wrote, “He who will not learn from the past, will have to re-live it.”

In the light of the foregoing, it may be noted that the Christian man and the Christian church may well derive some lessons from the current use of the term “peaceful coexistence.” Two deserve brief mention in closing. First, it may be well to be on guard against any romantic notions of the “freedom” of the Church within the U.S.S.R. If the past has any word for the present at this point, it is that the Russian church would not be permitted to participate in the councils of world Christianity until the masters of the Kremlin felt it “safe.”

Second, it is inconceivable that any ecclesiastical delegation which speaks for “from 30 to 50 million Christians in Russia” will permit any world ecclesiastical body to be prophetic where the subversion of free nations is concerned. It should be borne steadily in our minds that the Russian church is permitted to be “prophetic” in one point only, that of “peace.” It cannot be shrugged off as irrelevant that it is precisely this point which is the cutting edge of the “velvet glove” phase of Soviet imperialism.

- More fromHarold B. Kuhn

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Barth’S Election Explains Too Much

Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth, by Robert W. Jenson (Nelson & Sons, 1963, 175 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book is deceptively simple. It’s short; its language is clear and uncluttered, and not without a touch of easy-going, straight-faced humor. Yet it exposes and evaluates the core of Barth’s theology. It demonstrates that Barth’s theology is truly systematic—ruled throughout by a single motif—so that it can be neither identified with any traditional theology, nor accepted or rejected in part. One can, however, without doing either, learn much from Barth’s thought, and I suspect that Jenson has.

The current slogan, “Christianity is a historical religion,” says Jenson, is a tired cliché; yet its very relevancy has made it a cliché. The slogan means that God has acted redemptively in history and thus disclosed that true reality which determines our lives and the meaning and goal of history. He then smokes out the central core of Barth’s theology by asking it three questions: How does God do this? In what sense does God have a history? And, What is that historical reality that God has wrought, and to which the Church bears witness?

Barth’s answer to all three questions is: Jesus Christ. With this, every traditional theology would agree. But Barth defines Jesus Christ in a quite new way. According to Barth, Jesus Christ is God’s eternal decision, the beginning and end of all God’s ways and works. Jesus Christ is the form in which God wills to exist, namely, as man, with man, and for man.

But this divine decision involves a negative aspect. It posits not only what God wills, but also a negative shadowy existence to what he does not will, i.e., what he rejects. By saying “yes” to creation, God says “no” to chaos, to the threat of nihility; yet thereby chaos has negative reality as something which God does not will. Similarly, when God says “yes” to the good, i.e., to his purpose to live with man in covenant fellowship, he rejects the possibility of the opposite, namely, sin; yet thereby sin obtains a negative reality as that which God rejects.

Yet God, according to Barth, has made provision from eternity that chaos be defeated and sin rendered an ontological impossibility, for his eternal decision to exist for and with man in Jesus Christ, means Jesus Christ as crucified. Thus, Jesus Christ exists eternally both as creator and as reconciler. Indeed, Christ is first reconciler and then creator, for God’s eternal decision is gracious; sin is always opposition to redemptive grace, even creation is an act of such grace (the eternal ground of God’s gracious covenant), and grace is the internal purpose and presupposition of creation.

Thus Jesus Christ is God’s history (Urgeschichte). What then is revelation? It is the disclosure of this transcendent divine history in our time and history in Jesus of Nazareth. And faith is the knowledge of his transcendent, divine history, a knowledge which occurs by the action of the Spirit and through the witness of the Church.

Whereas in the traditional view of Christ, God acts through Christ in our time and history, in Barth’s view, God’s redemptive and creative action occurs within Christ; it occurs not so much between Jesus Christ and mankind, but between God and Man as they eternally exist in the form of Christ.

Thus, the disclosure in history of God’s history with man in Christ constitutes the decisive reality within our history, and the determination of history’s goal.

From this it appears that Barth is a predestinarian, more specifically, a supralapsarian—but of a new variety. The weakness of traditional supralapsarian thought is its seemingly engrained notion that reprobation is the equally valid counterpart of election, and its seemingly inbuilt tendency to account for the fact of sin as something God willed, in order that.… It appears to this writer that Barth has not escaped the essential weakness of traditional supralapsarianism. Reprobation, i.e., what God rejects, is in Barth’s thought the necessary opposite side of the coin of election as it relates to Christ as both elect and reprobate, as it relates in him in this double fashion to all men, and even as it relates to chaos and sin. Each of these is a counterpart of God’s electing choice and as such has a negative, though finally defeated, reality. In Barth, as in traditional supralapsarianism, election via rejection accounts for too much.

Traditional supralapsarianism, moreover, has never been able to find a place in its scheme of sequence for a genuine historical moment of transition from wrath to grace. The same problem emerges in Barth, as Jenson clearly points out, for in Barth’s thought redemption precedes creation and sin; indeed, the very purpose of creation is to provide a finite, temporal external ground for the covenant of God’s gracious redemption. Barth, urges Jenson, has no genuine moment of “before and after” for either creation, sin, or redemption.

Similarly, it is Barth’s understanding of Jesus Christ as God’s eternal decision of election to be for and with man which accounts for the fact that this Urgeschichte, this Word of God, can never be more than a secondary, broken witness in our ordinary time and history.

Jesus Christ is God’s act of election, but the revelation of this in history is always refracted and enmeshed in that which God rejects (namely, chaos, the threat of nihility, sin, wrath) by the very fact that is revealed in history; the very purpose of history, according to Barth, is redemptive, i.e., to reveal in a progressive movement that God’s non-election—that is, what God rejects—is overcome and defeated.

Jenson has made a worthy contribution to our study of Barth. He appreciates many aspects of Barth’s contribution to Christian theology, but he finds Barth less than acceptable at the very center of his theology—and that center is Barth’s unique understanding of Jesus Christ as God’s act of election.

JAMES DAANE

Rich In Promise

The Idea of a Secular Society, by D. L. Munby (Oxford, 1963, 91 pp., $3), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This book presents the thirty-fourth series of the Riddell Lectures delivered at King’s College in the University of Durham in March, 1962. The author, an economist and a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, has attempted to set forth what he feels is the meaning and significance of a secular society for contemporary Christians. The title of these lectures is rich in promise, but the lectures themselves fail to live up to the promise. Munby frankly repudiates the concept of a Christian society as it has been propounded by T. S. Eliot in his The Idea Of A Christian Society and the earlier views of Coleridge on the proper relationship which should exist between church and state.

The author clearly feels that a secular society is highly desirable and that the Church has nothing to fear from such a situation; however, this reviewer could not escape the impression that Munby means that the Church has nothing to fear from a society which gears its economic life to the teachings of Lord Keynes. Whether he does or not is not important. He fails to prove his point, and the book suffers from a lack of any real appreciation of the Church as the Body of Christ, and of the role of the Scriptures and theology in its life and work. Its social values are seen too much in terms of the role of the clergy and what the author regards as the failure of the clergy of the Church of England to adjust to the demands of life in twentieth-century England. In short, the book is most disappointing.

C. GREGG SINGER

A Heritage Under Survey

The Work of the Holy Spirit, by Lycurgus M. Starkey, Jr. (Abingdon, 1962, 176 pp., $3), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

It is refreshing to read a work which professes to be inductive and objective, and which then proves to be true to its stated task. Professor Starkey has surveyed the literature of the Wesleyan movement as that literature touches the person and work of the Holy Spirit and has, in most points at least, both understood clearly and stated objectively what has been historically taught upon this vital subject.

Several points are made clear: the Holy Spirit is a person, and is divine, is a constituent in the triune Godhead, and is the one who “applies the work of Christ to the soul of man and initiates and administers the Christian life” (p. 37). This summary statement is followed by a breakdown of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in personal redemption, in the assurance of the believer, in the inspiration and application of the Holy Scriptures, in his application of the “means of grace,” and in his empowerment of the Christian. Least incisive is his treatment of the historical Wesleyan conception of Christian Perfection as taught by John Wesley in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

Dr. Starkey seeks, within the context of the major purpose of the work (to survey the Wesleyan literature), to relate the Wesleyan message to the total Reformation tradition. He feels that the areas of affinity between Wesley and George Fox and the Quakers were numerous and significant, and he relates the two traditions at both the doctrinal level and that of empirical righteousness. His final chapter, “Wesley and the Contemporary Theological Enterprise,” seeks to relate the work of the Holy Spirit to “the unity which we seek” in today’s Christendom and lays down a pattern which, if followed seriously, would without doubt bring a “new Reformation” into today’s Protestantism. The emphasis upon social sanctification is quite other than that “easy sanctification of society” against which Niebuhr has warned us so eloquently.

This volume spells out no social creed nor specific social program. Rather, it pleads that men make a place for the inner dynamic of the Holy Spirit within their own lives as they share in the common life of man. Avoiding the modalism which so frequently vitiates such studies, this work has a great deal to say to those segments of the Church that would reconsider their heritage.

HAROLD B. KUHN

The Roots Are Deep

Roman Hellenism and the New Testament, by Frederick C. Grant (Scribner’s, 1962, 216 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Glenn W. Barker, Professor of New Testament, Gordon Divinity School, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.

The publication of this very fine little book on Hellenistic backgrounds of the New Testament has once more placed the serious student of New Testament exegesis in the debt of Dr. Grant. Again, with the style which has marked his more than thirty volumes, the author has succeeded in sorting through a voluminous accumulation of technical data and ordering it in such a way that it becomes readily available to the seminary student and minister of the Gospel. The readability of the material and the application of certain facets of the investigation to twentieth-century conditions are doubtless due to the fact that the book’s contents served as substance for extensive lectures given at numerous institutions both here and abroad.

In the first three chapters the book surveys the Hellenistic heritage of the first century, particularly in terms of religion, education, and philosophy. Chapter IV gives a vivid picture of Hellenism as the first Christians found it in the Early Roman Empire. The next chapter presents the unique and all-important function of the Septuagint in the emergence and spread of Christian doctrine. Chapter VI deals briefly with the documents of the New Testament, which Dr. Grant holds must be understood primarily as the “sacred writings of a religion read in its liturgy.” Chapter VII has to do with the Apostle Paul, who, he asserts, “was a Pharisee—always.” The last chapter is largely a presentation of the author’s own philosophy of the origin and validity of Christian truth. The book concludes with a note on Religio Licita, a helpful chronology of the Hellenistic world with more than 200 entries, and twenty-one pages of valuable bibliography carefully subdivided according to subject matter.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

* The Last judgment, by James P. Martin (Eerdmans, $4). A historical study to discover whether respect for biblical authority—or something else—determined the understanding of the Last Judgment in Christian thought.

* Faith Victorious, by Lennart Pinomaa, translated by Walter J. Kukkonen (Fortress, $4.75). An assessment of Luther’s view of major theological themes supplemented by resumes of other recent leading studies.

* The Church’s Use of the Bible, edited by D. E. Nine ham (S.P.C.K., 21s.). Eight English scholars investigate the way the Bible has been viewed and handled at various periods in the history of the Church.

The publication of this book is timely on two counts. First, since the advent of the Dead Sea Scrolls Jewish studies have dominated New Testament research. This book will be a useful reminder for students that a serious interpretation of the New Testament should take into account also its deep roots in Hellenism. Secondly, the book is dedicated to the late Arthur Darby Nock. It is fitting that Harvard’s great Hellenistic scholar should have been so honored prior to his sudden death.

GLENN W. BARKER

New Framework?

The Theology of the Older Testament, by J. Barton Payne (Zondervan, 1962, 554 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by David W. Kerr, Professor of Old Testament Interpretation, Gordon Divinity School, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.

Originality is often refreshing. It is particularly so in the work of a conservative biblical scholar, since much of the effort of conservatives has been spent on defending old positions rather than defining new ones.

Dr. J. Barton Payne, associate professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School of Theology, has presented many older views within a new framework. He not only advocates using the term “testament” in the place of the theologically time-honored “covenant,” but he also uses the later Greek or western concept of a last will or testament to provide the structure for his work. The word “covenant” is reserved for the relationship between God and man prior to the fall into sin, which was, according to the author, more synergistic than the later dispositions of divine grace. The reviewer feels that in modern usage “testament” is subject to just as much misunderstanding as “covenant” and that the use of the Greek term diathēkē in Hebrews 9:15–17 to mean a will or testament does not justify its wholesale application to the divine dealings with men.

Chief among the other original features of this work is the devotion of a final chapter to the “testament of Peace,” a period to follow the second coming of Christ which most Christians would call the millennium. The biblical reference for the use of this distinctive term is Ezekiel 34 and 37. A study of Ezekiel seems to show that the covenant of peace and the everlasting covenant described by the prophet refer to the same situation and that both of them point to the period of the new covenant or testament foretold in Jeremiah 31:31 ff. The Epistle to the Hebrews describes the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ as the blood of the new covenant and also of the everlasting covenant. A premillennial eschatology may be defended from a more solid bastion than Ezekiel.

The very detailed presentation of certain topics may at times leave the lay reader with a sense of bewilderment. The initiated, however, will discover in this book a fine breadth of acquaintance with all the important writings on Old Testament theology and a keen discernment of the issues involved between orthodoxy and views which are less biblical. The author supports his own positions ably and is anxious that these positions agree with the revealed Word of God.

The book closes with a series of appendices, most of which are polemical in character, and a complete bibliography in which each title listed is evaluated on the basis of its theological viewpoint. The Theology of the Older Testament is the only work of its kind to be produced by an American conservative scholar in two generations.

DAVID W. KERR

Useful And Usable

The Family in Christian Perspective, by C. W. Scudder (Broadman, 1962, 167 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Glenn W. Samuelson, Associate Professor of Sociology, Eastern Baptist College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

As the title indicates, this book on the family is written from a theological frame of reference. The nature of man and the purposes of God are the two main concerns throughout the study.

The author, professor of Christian ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, utilizes the information and insights from the fast-growing disciplines of sociology, psychology, and anthropology which are in harmony with the Christian ethic.

A Philosopher’S Lament

The Spirit of American Philosophy, by John E. Smith (Oxford, 1963, 219 pp., $5), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Yale University laments the predicament of American philosophy since pragmatism fell from its dominant position. In the aftermath philosophy has been widely viewed as simply a matter of technical analysis using a technical vocabulary for problems far removed from life, and American thinkers have become overly dependent on the British (particularly in respect to analytical thinking) at the expense of originality and independence.

Dr. Smith makes no prediction about the future of American philosophy, which has traveled far afield since the theism of Jonathan Edwards. He finds signs of hope in a revival of interest in the perennial problems, in widening student interest in philosophy, ethics, and religion, and in the relating of philosophy to practical concerns. But he thinks American professional philosophers will recapture their independence only if they insist that (1) experience comprehensively defined is a genuine and trustworthy disclosure of reality, and (2) reason is an actual power in the world, with its own constitution, and is irreducible to a mere conjunction of facts. These emphases on broad definition of experience, and on the role of reason, are welcome; what would be equally welcome would be more of Jonathan Edwards’ comprehension of the larger context which makes both human reason and human experience intelligible.

CARL F. H. HENRY

The Place Counts

The Architectural Setting of Baptism, by J. G. Davies (Barrie & Rockliff, 1962, 192 pp., 42s.), is reviewed by Henry R. Sefton, Minister at Newbattle, Midlothian, Scotland.

There is a close connection between the architectural setting of Baptism and the place of the sacrament in the life and thinking of the Church. This is the conviction of the author of this profusely illustrated and richly informative book.

The greater part of the work is given to a survey of the different settings in which Baptism has been administered through the centuries. During the apostolic age, Baptism was performed in natural surroundings, but in the third century baptisteries made their appearance. Professor Davies shows how the doctrine and practice of Baptism in the early Church can be inferred from the archaeological remains of baptisteries, fonts, and inscriptions. The survey is continued down to the present time and includes the main Reformed traditions in both Europe and America. The author outlines the way in which differing ceremonial needs and doctrinal emphases have been reflected in the accommodation provided for Baptism in sanctuaries of the various communions.

Professor Davies rejects the assumption that a church should be built primarily for the celebration of Holy Communion with only incidental provision for the administration of Baptism. He puts forward three principles to be borne in mind when planning a church: (1) Provision should be made for congregational part-participation in the ministration of Baptism. (2) The setting of Baptism should be given a visual importance that accords with the celebration of the first Gospel sacrament. (3) The setting should have a shape and décor symbolizing the meaning of the rite.

This is a closely argued and stimulating book.

HENRY R. SEFTON

BOOK BRIEFS

Meditations on the Psalms, by Bernard C. Mischke, O.S.C. (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 298 pp., $4.95). Warm, spiritual meditations by a Roman Catholic father, based on the Psalms which are addressed to God.

The Idea of the Church, by B. C. Butler (Helicon, 1962, 236 pp., $4.95). The author traces the history of the Church’s idea of herself from New Testament times to establish the thesis that the Church is not an invisible, but a visible single community, and gently suggests that on the basis of history there can be no doubt that history points to the Roman Catholic Church as the one. Good reading.

Beyond Tomorrow, by Raymond F. Cottrell (Southern Publishing Association, 1963, 380 pp., $1). Seventh-day Adventism’s missionary book of the year, though not identified as such.

The Pastoral Epistles, by C. K. Barrett (Oxford, 1963, 151 pp., $2.50). A volume of the New Clarendon Bible series—a commentary concise and broadly evangelical on the pastoral epistles in the New English Bible. An introduction challenges the Pauline authorship.

Thirteen for Christ, edited by Melville Harcourt (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 271 pp., $5). Interesting verbal portraits of men for Christ—some so designated rather for their lives than for their theology. Peter Kirk does the sketch of T. S. Eliot, J. S. Bonnell that of Billy Graham, J. H. Griffin that of Martin Luther King, and Alan Paton that of Trevor Huddleston. Good reading about interesting people.

Guidelines to Courageous Living, by Arnold H. Lowe (T. S. Denison, 1963, 178 pp., $3). Homespun Christian observations about life and its problems by a Christian minister who speaks to his reader with an over-a-cup-of-coffee directness.

Difficult Sayings of Jesus, by Gordon Powell (Revell, 1962, 119 pp., $3). Simple but provocative and perceptive explanations of some of the difficult, paradoxical statements of Jesus. Good reading.

Reflections, by Harold E. Kohn (Eerdmans, 1963, 190 pp., $3.95). A Christian muses on the world of men and nature; pleasant reading for that hour with no demands. With restful drawings.

Encounter with Spurgeon, by Helmut Thielicke (Fortress, 1963, 283 pp., $4.75). The enthusiasm of Thielicke (German university professor and Lutheran theologian) for Spurgeon brings selections from the latter’s homiletical lectures, and two of his sermons, back into the stream of our homiletical thinking. With a fine 45-page introduction by the author.

Love and the Facts of Life, by Evelyn Millis Duvall (Association, 1963, 352 pp., $4.95). A detailed discussion of the whole gamut of teen-age sex, with no religious orientation, and a sometimes too-relaxed morality.

Master Sermons Through the Ages, edited by William Alan Sadler, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1963, 228 pp., $3.95). Sermons by 30 of Christianity’s famous Protestant preachers, including Calvin, Spurgeon, Wesley, Jowett, F. W. Robertson, MacLaren, and H. S. Coffin.

Power for Witnessing, by A. F. Ballenger (Bethany Fellowship, 1963, 256 pp., $3). More an exhortation to do than an exposition for intellectual comprehension. First published more than 60 years ago.

Family Living in the Bible, by Edith Deen (Harper & Row, 1963, 274 pp., $4.95). A kind of catalog of whatever the Bible says directly or indirectly about family life. With little theological interpretation—which is good, because much of what little there is, is bad.

Wounded Spirits, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (Abingdon, 1963, 173 pp., $3). Actual case histories of people spiritually and physically ill; related by an author who believes God’s will for his children is health of body, mind, and spirit, and who becomes “angry as well as sad when some poor soul is told that illness is the will of God.”

The Idea of Prehistory, by Glyn Daniel (World, 1962, 220 pp., $4.50). The jacket claims the book is the first real history of prehistory; the book claims that no authoritative history of prehistory has yet been published. Some discussion and philosophizing about origins on the basis of archaeology, fossils, and the like.

Meet the Bible, The New Testament, by John J. Castelot, S.S. (Helicon, 1963, 240 pp., $4.95). The third and final volume of Father Castelot’s popular introduction to the Bible. A highly readable, scholarly, yet uncluttered treatment of the composition of the books of the New Testament.

Despotism: A Pictorial History of Tyranny, by Dagobert D. Runes (Philosophical Library, 1963, 269 pp., $12.50). An angry exposé of persecution and cruelty by any and all, including the Church, with almost total silence about that inflicted upon Christ, the apostles, and the early Christian martyrs. The book reveals the bias out of which persecution comes.

Jesus As They Saw Him, by William Barclay (Harper & Row, 1963, 429 pp., $5). A sustained study of the names and terms (Lord, God, Door, the Lamb, and many others) applied to Jesus in the New Testament. The “as they saw him” of the title is significant in view of the author’s insistence that in only one biblical text is Jesus said to be God; for the rest the New Testament, he contends, saw Jesus’ unity with God not in metaphysical terms but only in terms of personal love. Barclay contends that we may say Jesus is God in devotional language but not in precise theological language.

Paperbacks

What We Can Do About Communism, by Russell V. DeLong (Avon Book Division, 1963, 94 pp., $.50). Lightweight, pocket-size version of the history, goals, and techniques of Communism, and some suggestions on how to arrest it.

The Heidelberg Catechism with Commentary, by Allen O. Miller, M. Eugene Osterhaven, and André Péry (United Church Press, 1963, 224 pp., $3). 400th anniversary; a new translation, plus a commentary for laymen.

Sex in Childhood and Youth, by Alfred Schmieding (Concordia, 1963, 149 pp., $1.50). A guide for parents, teachers, and counselors. First published in 1953.

Christianity and Sex, by Stuart Barton Babbage (Inter-Varsity, 1963, 59 pp.,

$1.25). Competent, readable discussion that is far better than most. Recommended, especially for college students.

Church and State in the New Testament, by J. Marcellus Kik (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 46 pp., $.75). An exposition of church-state separation deploring ecclesiastical concern with civic, social, and economic matters.

Our Mission Today, by Tracey K. Jones, Jr. (World Outlook Press, 1963, 158 pp., $1, cloth $3.50). A simple yet scholarly little book which concentrates on the problems facing the mission of the Church in a day of world revolution.

Principle and Practice, by Henry Stob (Calvin Theological Seminary, 1962, 30 pp., $.50). A discriminating, lucid essay which seeks to relate principle and practice properly and avoid both practice without principle, and an abstract application of principle without concern for the actualities of life.

Reprints

Education for Christian Living, by Randolph Crump Miller (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 462 pp., $10.60). An author dissatisfied with a Christian education which serves up morsels of moralism, tidbits of theology, and hors d’oeuvres of biblical texts, contends that Christian education should train the young “to be the Church.” This is a provocative book for professional educators (they will need a dash of theological sensitivity). First published in 1956.

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ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT—Four armed men opened fire on Armenian Archbishop Shavarsah Kouyoumjian in Damascus, Syria, last month. He was taken to a hospital in serious condition. Syrian Minister of Interior Amin al-Hafez said the attack stemmed from the archbishop’s refusal to recognize the Catholicate of Antelias, Lebanon, or to have any part in the election of a new catholicos for this branch of the church, which he claims to be a schismatic body. The Armenian church has been split into two catholicates since the fifteenth century. The would-be assassins apparently were fanatical supporters of the Antelias catholicate.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—Despite record graduate crop, more than 40 requests for full-time church workers submitted by congregations and agencies of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will go unfilled. Biggest deficit is among teachers.

Methodist Council of Bishops launched a program to build up the ministry and called for a series of one-day convocations in each conference area during next year. Methodist seminaries, it was reported, are not graduating enough ministers to meet replacement needs.

Some 100 Protestant ministers, all specialists in pastoral counseling, met in New York last month to establish a permanent organization which will set standards for training and accreditation of pastoral counselors. The two-day meeting was sponsored by the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry. The new organization, which will hold a formal convention in 1964, will be known as the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.

A 12-acre portion of an estate in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, was donated to the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. for use as a study center.

A church-state study paper now being aired at district conventions of The American Lutheran Church says free textbooks and bus transportation for parochial school pupils may be right and proper. Church properties, the paper adds, ought to be tax-exempt only in the degree that they are used directly for “worship, educational, and eleemosynary purposes.”

MISCELLANY—Anti-segregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, included a series of attempts by Negroes to worship in all-white churches. Several of the churches welcomed the demonstrators, while others turned them away. Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Ralph D. Abernathy, Negro officials of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, were arrested for leading a march on downtown stores to protest segregation of lunch counters.

Mercer University (Southern Baptist) trustees voted 13 to 5—with 3 abstentions—to enroll Negroes on the Macon, Georgia, campus.

Reports were rife that Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty would soon be allowed to leave the American Legation in Budapest. Mindszenty was visited last month by Franz Cardinal Koenig of Vienna, but the outcome of their four-hour discussion was not immediately disclosed.

Catholic Interracial Council in Chicago charged last month that there were strong anti-Negro motivations behind Illinois’ free birth-control program for women on relief. The program criticized by the council in an open letter to the Illinois House of Representatives provides for birth control assistance to unmarried mothers as well as to married women.

Komsomol Pravda, official organ of the Young Communist League, suggested two methods to accelerate the results of its atheistic campaigns in Lithuania: provide hostel facilities for children whose parents insist on Christian training, and sensationalize cases involving atheism and religion.

A book described as blasphemous by a Roman Catholic priest became the focal point of a public furor in Ashland, Wisconsin, last month. Father Conrad Schneider insisted that the book, The Last Temptation of Christ, be removed from the shelves of the community library. He reportedly vowed to “see that it’s burned.”

U. S. Surgeon General Luther L. Terry reported a sharp increase in the rate of infectious syphilis and other venereal diseases. A total of 21,143 new cases of primary or secondary syphilis were diagnosed and reported to public health authorities in 1962, the largest number since 1950, Terry said.

An atheist’s move to contest the will of a San Francisco man who left some $200,000 to Roman Catholic charities was thrown out of court last month. Lawyer Vincent Hallinan wants the court to direct the Archbishop of San Francisco to answer 38 questions about church doctrines which are “indeed relevant” to the case.

Delegates to the 72nd Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution voiced support of non-sectarian prayers to open daily classes in public schools.

Twenty-seven Jehovah’s Witnesses were ordered to leave Liberia last month because of their refusal to salute the flag. Another 50 Liberian Witnesses arrested last February for a similar refusal were ordered to face trial. No decision has been reported.

Plans for a Jewish pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair have been abandoned, according to the Synagogue Council of America. Council President Julius Mark said the decision was based mainly on the inability of major Jewish groups to raise $1,000,00 needed for the project.

PERSONALIA—Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke elected president-designate of the Methodist Council of Bishops. Installed as council president for 1963–64 was Bishop Paul N. Garber, who was elected last year.

Dr. Ralph W. Sockman will serve as Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York, for 1963–64.

Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg appointed Preacher in Residence at Crozier Theological Seminary.

The Rt. Rev. Oliver J. Hart resigned as Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania.

Jerry Beavan, former public relations chief for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, joined DeMoss Associates insurance firm in an executive and administrative capacity.

Roger M. Blough, board chairman of U. S. Steel Corporation, named to receive the National Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Stephen E. Slocum named executive secretary of the American Tract Society to succeed Dr. Henry G. Perry, who will continue as general secretary. G. Raymond Christensen was named president.

WORTH QUOTING—“Those of us who belong to the more civilized and polite society have been and continue to be more responsible for the perpetuation of racial discrimination than the out-and-out racists. And the damnable thing is that we do not know it nor do we want to know it.”—The Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa, executive secretary of the Domestic Mission of the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in an address to the U. S. Conference for the World Council of Churches.

“The initial reaction to shared time in Catholic circles has been favorable.… If this attitude toward shared time becomes widely accepted in Catholic educational circles and meets with a charitable response from the rest of the public as well, the conflict that has characterized religion and education for more than a century might disappear.”—George R. LaNoue, in a “resource document” commissioned by the National Council of Churches’ Department of Religious Liberty.

Deaths

DR. ROY L. SMITH, 75, noted Methodist minister and former editor of The Christian Advocate; in San Bernardino, California.

THE RIGHT REV. C. ALFRED COLE, 54, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina; in Columbia, South Carolina.

DR. GORDON HARRINGTON BAKER, 85, one of the founders of Eastern Baptist College and Theological Seminary; in New York.

DR. WILLIAM T. MCELROY, 74, for twenty years editor of The Christian Observer; in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Carl A. Mortenson grew up on a farm in Illinois. At 28, he is again working in the Illinois farm country, but not as one who, having put his hand to the plow, looks backward. For Mortenson’s life now revolves around one of the most forward-looking Christian enterprises of modern times: development of a compact aircraft specifically designed to meet the rigors of missionary use.

Electric toothbrushes and powered golf carts illustrate the vast range of man’s appropriation of technology for sheer human convenience. By contrast, there are invariably long delays in employing scientific advances for the furtherance of Christ’s Gospel. Some churchmen see this lag as one of the gravest indictments of contemporary Christianity. A key example is audio-visual equipment: only a smattering of the wide assortment now on the market has been adapted for use in Christian education.

Here and there, however, a devoted Christian catches the vision. In Quito, Ecuador, it is a group of technicians at missionary station HCJB who have been building and distributing pre-tuned radio receivers and have established the world’s first missionary television station. In Philadelphia, it was the late Percy Crawford, who pioneered Christian television. In Palo Alto, California, it has been Wil Rose, who runs a technical problem clinic for missionaries.

The late “Jungle Pilot” Nate Saint saw the need for a specially designed missionary aircraft a number of years ago: “There is no market in the U. S. for the type plane we need and consequently it isn’t built … so, we just bite our lips and go ahead with what is available.”

Mortenson, a short, brown-haired graduate of Moody Bible Institute’s missionary aviation course, picked up Saint’s challenge while serving in the jungles of Peru as a pilot-mechanic with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Almost all missionary aviators must now use light, single-engine planes, which provide little hope of survival if the power plant fails over jungle or water. But the risk involves not only missionary lives and a costly airplane: if skilled Bible translators are killed, years of research and experience are lost. A tribal generation could live and die before another trained team could achieve a similar experience level.

Mortenson might never have taken on the task of building a high-wing, twin-engine prototype had not an attack of bulbar polio threatened to end his missionary career. He used his convalescence to begin the work. His enthusiasm, moreover, caught fire with a handful of fellow Christians who set up Evangel-Air, Inc., an organization dedicated to seeing the prototype fly successfully. Dr. Paul M. Wright, head of the chemistry department at Wheaton College, is chairman of the board of directors.

The present phase of the project—development of the prototype—is the most costly. Once the bugs are worked out of this original plane, Mortenson expects little difficulty in getting an aircraft company to produce others like it. He expects that to build the plane and have it certified by the Federal Aviation Agency will cost $54,000. (By comparison, the Defense Department’s TFX will cost an estimated $6,000,000,000.) All of those dollars will come from donations; gifts thus far have ranged from $1 to $2,000.

So far, Mortenson has already given more than 5,000 hours of his own time to the project. The plane is taking shape in a 40- by 50-foot frame shop along a remote private air strip at Hampshire, Illinois. Mortenson, his wife, and their three children live in Wheaton. He drives 70 miles each day to and from the Hampshire shop, which he and former Boeing mechanic Fred Culpepper rent for $100 a month. Culpepper, a 25-year-old bachelor, works for $50 a month and is depleting his savings account to see the plane to completion.

If funds become available, the plane—to be known as the “Evangel 4500”—should be in the sky before the end of the summer. It will climb fully loaded to 30,000 feet, higher than any mountain in the world, and will be able to maintain 15,000 feet on one engine if turbo-superchargers are employed. Yet it is intended to take off normally in just 200 yards. Although its wing span is only 36 feet, the plane will carry six or eight persons or convert quickly to accommodate bulky cargo. The design blends power, ruggedness, compactness, and simplicity, with easy maintenance (e.g., a fixed landing gear). It will feature a high wing to clear obstructions on rough air strips.

Mortenson knows that missionary aviation has had an admirable safety record. “This is the Lord. By the law of averages we should have had losses.”

Mortenson did not say it, but the safety record may itself contribute to apathy even among missionary-minded Christians concerning the need for better equipment. Missionary pilots cannot always expect to escape tragedy if they continue to make single-engine airplanes do twin-engine duty. In the United States, where flying conditions are ideal, large corporations insist that their executives fly in multi-engine aircraft.

Protestant ‘Trilemma’

As Buffalo’s icy blasts melted into timid thunderstorms, the National Association of Evangelicals’ fast-moving 21st annual convention swept in a whirlwind of meetings through the Statler Hilton Hotel and sounded a trumpet of evangelical concern over contemporary trends. About 1,000 delegates attended, and capacity crowds greeted public sessions.

Its ecclesiastical continuance now taken for granted, the movement is reaching for developing maturity as an interdenominational force; it anticipates fewer financial pressures in the years ahead and aims to become, in President Robert A. Cook’s words, “a vigorous voice for practical evangelical activity and dynamic Christian unity.” Its leaders seem determined to arrive on fewer battlefields “after the issue is settled.”

Leaving no doubt of discontent over the National Council of Churches’ “intensified efforts to advance the ecumenical revolution at the grass roots level,” Dr. George L. Ford, executive director, characterized American Protestantism in terms of “trilemma” rather than “dilemma” and insisted that NAE would take a middle road between NCC’s “path of accommodation” and the American Council of Christian Churches’ “path of reaction.” Its national staff now settled in a functional headquarters building in Wheaton, Illinois, NAE sets “the full freedom of the Gospel as we preach it” over against “the forces of Communism, Catholicism, ecumenicity, and secularism.” Ecclesiastical optimism over the present ecumenical development was depicted as replaying liberalism’s past enchantment with inevitable world progress.

Hosting NAE for the second time, the Queen City of the Great Lakes showed its traditional welcome for Gospel causes. A generation before Billy Graham, Charles Finney and Billy Sunday had held successful crusades in Buffalo. Local evangelical clergy sponsor a vigorous Christian youth center, pioneer an influential pre-marital clinic, and in October will host the National Sunday School Association convention. Thus the evangelical community is able to wield an impact despite a large Roman Catholic population.

In expounding evangelical spiritual unity NAE spokesmen stress that “evangelicals are pioneers in Christian unity.” But the organization is self-conscious about its own organizational apparatus, particularly the danger that evangelical interest may thrive in many related commissions at the parent organization’s expense. Said one regional director, reflecting this need at the top for a strengthened image, “NSSA I know, NRB I know, EWA I know … but what is NAE?” The movement opposes centralized ecclesiastical controls over affiliated constituencies. But it is seeking to overcome excessive decentralization of staff.

Seeking “holy unity in amazing love,” NAE is sometimes pictured as a gelatinous group largely lacking a program of specific future objectives, but waiting for a divinely initiated breakthrough charting directional imperatives. Its thesis is that modernism is bankrupt, neoorthodoxy is groping, and evangelicals have the solution: not strategy, but power. Yet the movement seems to be asking: “Where and who is our prophet?”

The convention adopted strong resolutions on biblical authority, Communism, adult and juvenile delinquency, and race discrimination. Dr. Rufus Jones, second vice-president, called on evangelicals to practice the parable of the Good Samaritan in respect to race relations and declared that “if evangelicals had been preaching ‘the whole Bible’ it would not have been necessary to send troops into the Southland.”

The “Evangelical Layman of the Year” award was presented to Herbert J. Taylor of Chicago, former president of Rotary International. Resignation of Donald H. Gill as assistant secretary of public affairs was announced; he leaves to join International Christian Leadership.

The temper of representatives of evangelical liberal arts colleges toward federal aid was mainly softer than that of the convention generally. The Commission on Higher Education steered away from the issue, but was drawn into discussion by the Commission on Social Action. Educators did little to draw a consistent line between acceptable and unacceptable aid. They spoke rather of the atheistic consequences of complete church-state separation, of campus tax exemption as already an indirect form of federal aid, of the propriety of federal (scholarship) grants for educational purposes without a religious test in the choice of a school, and of the requirement that federal aid not interfere with the institutions’ independent judgment. There was stiffer opposition to federal aid for church-related schools at primary and secondary levels, where evangelicals have a lesser stake than Roman Catholics. The Resolutions Committee, which had referred the issue to the Education Commission, offered no resolution on federal aid to colleges, despite the association’s long history of opposition.

C. F. H. H.

A Code For Holiness

Some 435 spiritual descendants of John Wesley and Jacobus Arminius met in Chicago for three days in mid-April. Much of what happened at this year’s National Holiness Association convention had a traditional flavor. Amens and shouts of praise punctuated prayers and speeches. Speakers often used large voices and gestures to match. Seminars discussed camp meetings, the focus of the Holiness movement when it organized 95 years ago. And sermons amidst the plush rococo environs of the Morrison Hotel advocated the sober life and denial of worldly pleasures.

But the convention theme—“Charged to Communicate”—was an effort to relate this old-time religion to the space age. It was also a chance for introspection among Holiness groups, which do not always communicate to the outside world despite their vitality and superb records in giving and missions.

Chief communication remedies were perfection of Christian love toward unbelievers and an increased yielding to the Holy Spirit. While changes in technique were generally avoided, there was some feeling that traditional mass evangelism should give way to increased witnessing by individual laymen.

There was a ground swell toward more communication with groups outside the Holiness world. The spirit was not ecumenical, perhaps, but at least conciliatory. Dr. Kenneth Geiger, general superintendent of the United Missionary Church who is now entering his fourth year as NHA president, stated, “In defense of doctrine and our insistence on terminology and standards we have at times forgotten the higher law of love.” The Rev. G. B. Williamson, a leader in the Church of the Nazarene, found the interdenominational approach essential in the face of a population explosion which makes world evangelism more overwhelming every day.

A bishop of the Brethren in Christ, the Rev. Henry A. Ginder, noted a healthy trend toward more Bible teaching—a typical Calvinist emphasis—as opposed to mere Christian experience. And Dr. Leo Cox of Marion College, in summarizing a seminar, said, “Our people want to reach out, to find a place in the broader Christian movement, without surrendering their own message.”

This message is the necessity of a personal Pentecost subsequent to conversion, a crisis experience of the Holy Spirit’s power. Otherwise, NHA holds to fundamentalist theology, personal assurance of salvation, and missionary zeal. NHA represents 14 denominations (the largest: Salvation Army), individual members from other groups (including Methodists and Nazarenes), as well as 65 colleges.

NHA is interested in reviewing the content, as well as the method, of its communication. The Holiness movement is no longer mostly rural, and there is a growing awareness that concepts and terms which may have outlived their usefulness must be viewed objectively, perhaps modified or eliminated. “After two centuries, we still quote Wesley most of the time. We owe something to this generation,” said Dr. Paul Kindschi, NHA vice-president and a Wesleyan Methodist executive.

Thus, the most important decision at this year’s meeting was to schedule another meeting, in November of 1964. At this special study conference, selected scholars will review and codify common doctrines of Holiness groups for the first time. Observers from other theological camps—Calvinist, Pentecostal, and Keswick—will probably be invited. The study conference is being preceded by a series of NHA-sponsored campus seminars on doctrine. And this year’s convention saw the most auspicious group of Holiness leaders and scholars yet assembled.

Geiger emphasized that the 1964 conference is not a defense mechanism, nor did he think it would change basic Holiness doctrine. More likely, it will try to tighten up popular understanding on such topics as “sinless perfection,” which Geiger says was never a part of Wesleyan-Arminian teaching. Rather, the correct concept is “Christian perfection,” a recognition that believers can and should increasingly improve their lives. But only motives can be perfected, not performance. As Wesley said, “A man may be filled with pure love, and still be liable to mistakes.”

In official resolutions the convention found signs of decreasing American morality in “the massive volume of deceptive advertising,” “suppression or manipulation of news,” a breakdown in the decency of literature, and “cheapened and sad*stic forms of entertainment,” as on TV. It supported efforts toward racial understanding, while implying disfavor of pressure tactics. In a seminar on Christian ethics, Dr. Richard Taylor of Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City (Mo.) added professional prize-fighting to the list of targets.

Convention seminars on doctrine took a temperate view toward divine healing and speaking in tongues, current phenomena elsewhere in Protestantism which have sometimes been stressed by Holiness groups.

Spiritually, the most stirring event was not a sermon or prayer, but a concert. Just as they left to sing for the convention, the Orpheus Choir of Olivet Nazarene College saw a tornado rip into the college’s Kankakee (Ill.) campus, causing an estimated $1,000,000 damage and injuring 47 students and faculty members. Yet the students still found the resources to sing boldly of their continuing trust in God and his deliverance of them in this life and the next.

Watergate Towne

Not the least of current controversies in Washington is one involving a proposed $66,000,000 complex of apartment and office buildings along the Potomac River. One argument is that the complex, called Watergate Towne, would dwarf important points of interest such as the proposed new National Cultural Center. A corollary argument is that in the projected location, an area adjacent to the Potomac River called Foggy Bottom, it would be obtrusive (the Washington waterfront is still free of tall buildings). The controversy took on religious significance, moreover, when it was disclosed that the developer of the project, Societe General Immobilaire of Rome, is partly owned by the Vatican. That disclosure gave rise to charges in some quarters that Pope John XXIII was behind a scheme to construct a Holy Roman Empire State Building in Washington.

The height of the complex is the focal point of the controversy. Watergate Towne sponsors want an easem*nt of zoning restrictions from the 90-foot limit of “residential areas” to the 130 feet permitted for commercial areas.

Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State spoke up early. They suggested that favored treatment was being sought because the development firm was “Vatican controlled.” A letter-writing campaign inspired by POAU drew some 10,000 protests from all over the country.

Subsequently the project came under scrutiny of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, a cooperative Washington agency sponsored by several large Baptist denominations, which came up with different conclusions. Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the Baptist committee (and a member of POAU’s governing board), said his study could find no favoritism.

Carlson said the committee study was made solely for the purpose of being able to answer letters of inquiry. It nonetheless served to dispute the anxieties expressed by POAU.

This month’s issue of Church and State, official POAU periodical, does not refer to Carlson’s assertions specifically, but some observers see one article therein as an attempted rebuttal.

“Has there been preferred treatment for the Vatican in the Watergate Towne project?” the periodical asks. “Sources inside the officialdom responsible for zoning enforcement and easem*nt have advised POAU of pressures being exerted there and of the need for publicity.”

The POAU publication declares “there is solid documentation for the claim that the Vatican has a controlling interest in Immobilaire.”

The Baptist committee study said its investigation showed that the Vatican owns only about 20 per cent of the stock in the Italian real estate firm. A spokesman for the committee explained that this figure came from a report on the firm that appeared in Time magazine.

Carlson listed a number of Washington buildings much nearer the Capitol that have been given special exemptions beyond the 130-foot limit. He added that in view of the $25 per square foot cost of the Watergate Towne land, high-rise apartments are financially necessary.

POAU countered that the government is not obligated to change zoning regulations in order to insure a profitable investment for a private group.

The Watergate Towne land is located about six-tenths of a mile from the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial.

Carlson concluded that churches in Washington are frequently involved in exceptions to the zoning laws, as evidenced by the 301-foot tower now being erected by the Washington Cathedral (Episcopal) and the 329-foot bell tower of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholic).

Tallahassee Test

The U. S. Supreme Court will review the conviction of ten white and Negro clergymen for unlawful assembly in the course of an anti-segregation demonstration in Tallahassee, Florida.

The group had come to Florida on a Freedom Ride sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality.

The litigation dates back to June, 1961, when 18 northern clergymen arrived in Tallahassee by bus and proceeded to the air terminal. They found the terminal restaurant, which has separate facilities for whites and Negroes, closed. Eight of the group left on an afternoon plane, but the other ten stayed in the terminal waiting room until late evening.

Next morning they returned to the air terminal to find the restaurant still closed. They again canceled plane reservations minutes before take-off and remained in the waiting room. After they had canceled plane reservations a third time, police asked them to disperse or be charged with unlawful assembly. Upon refusal, the ten¹Rabbi Martin Freedman of Congregation B’nai Jeshrun, Paterson, N. J.; Rabbi Israel S. Dressner of Temple Sharey Shalom, Springfield, N. J.; Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, professor of religion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.; the Rev. W. P. Collier, Jr., of Israel Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, N. J.; the Rev. Ralph R. Roy of Grace Methodist Church, New York City; the Rev. Arthur L. Hardge of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, New Britain, Conn.; the Rev. A. McRaven Warner, a Disciples of Christ minister and a church council official in New York City; the Rev. Robert Stone of Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church, New York City; the Rev. Wayne Hartmire of the Church of the Resurrection, New York City; and the Rev. P. D. McKinney of Garden Memorial Design Church, Springfield, Mass.—two Jewish rabbis and eight Protestant ministers—were arrested and convicted.

A Florida appellate court upheld the convictions, granting that any citizen has a right to “freely express his views and to seek to cultivate converts to them with a view of bringing moral or political pressures” but asserting that the clergymen had carried their cause to “unreasonable lengths imposing unreasonable burdens on others.” (The net effect of the last-minute cancellations was to deny seats to would-be travelers and to deprive the airline of ticket revenue.)

In appealing their conviction, the ten argue that their arrest and conviction violate the due process clause and the equal protection of laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the privilege and immunities clause of Article IV and the interstate commerce clause of Article I of the Constitution, and the Federal Aviation Act.

The Outsiders

Bikini-clad coeds twisting on the beach at Fort Lauderdale last month might remind some of Salome’s dance. But a score of modern John-the-Baptists have no fear of losing their heads for taking issue with antics that have made the annual collegiate migration to Florida infamous as “Where the Boys Are.”

Most of the estimated 25,000 sun-seeking students who made the spring vacation trip this year couldn’t care less, one way or the other.

Twist and limbo contests don’t seem to excite them. Neither did the efforts of 20 students, members of an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship team, to stage debates and discussion groups.

But the Inter-Varsity team found that the vacationing students will listen if buttonholed individually. Moreover, it proved to be a wholesome spiritual exercise for those on the team. All seemed to agree that their own faith had been strengthened.

Fort Lauderdale breathed a sigh of relief when the vacationing students left. They had behaved themselves well. Only a few arrests for minor disturbances were reported, a sharp contrast to riotous activity of previous years.

Some 250 miles north at Daytona Beach, where 30,000 additional students stretched out on the sand, a Christian group of 18 professional athletes and musicians also sought to bring a witness. The group, operating under auspices of the Methodist Board of Evangelism, was headed by Ed Beck, All-America captain of Kentucky’s 1958 basketball team, which won the national championship.

Each afternoon, the group drove up and down the beach in two trucks, stopping periodically to offer entertainment and talk to the students.

“Many students made definite commitments to Christ in individual conversations with group members,” said Beck.

Beck’s party included Chicago Bears quarterback Bill Wade, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Vernon Law, pop singer Tony Fontane, and the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal chaplain at Wayne State University, Detroit.

The group presented two evening programs, one of which drew about 7,000 students.

The experiments have given rise to several theories:

—College students are not as wild as they have been pictured. They are lonely and are looking for something, but they are not sure what.

—They want authority they can respect. (They are anxious to believe in the Bible, for example, if they can be convinced it is historically reliable.)

—They listen to somebody with a name.

—They turn up their noses at second-rate performers. They walk off even from hootenannies or twist contests if performance is inferior.

—They are impressed to find anyone giving a Christian witness who is not paid to do it.

Among a number of those who led the witness, a stronger feeling developed that Christians must reach outsiders where they are.

A.T.

A Tornado Strikes

A devastating tornado swept across the 100-acre campus of Olivet Nazarene College last month. Forty-seven students and faculty members were injured. Damage was estimated at $1,000,000.

Four buildings on the campus at Kankakee, Illinois, were declared a total loss. In addition, 57 house trailers occupied by students and their families were wrecked. The college administration building was badly damaged and rendered unusable until major repairs can be made.

College President Harold W. Reed, who was attending a pastors’ conference in Iowa when the tornado struck, said quick action by his administrative council enabled schedule readjustments with virtually no interruption in class meetings.

Reed voiced confidence that there was adequate insurance coverage to compensate for the loss. He said he was not yet able to give an official estimate of loss. Other reports said the damage easily totaled $1,000,000.

All but five of the injured were released from hospitals the following day. The tornado claimed the life of a young woman several blocks from the campus. A number of homes in the town of Kankakee were destroyed.

Reed said a class in the heavily damaged administration building had been dismissed just five minutes before the tornado struck. Had it hit 15 minutes later, he added, scores of students would have been in the dining hall.

The college, which has about 1,000 students, is affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene. It moved to its present campus in 1940. Previously the campus had been the site of a Roman Catholic college.

A Reconciliation?

Richard Cardinal Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, called for “serious efforts” by Roman Catholics for unity with the Eastern Orthodox.

In an address before the Boston College Theological Colloquium marking the Jesuit university’s 100th anniversary, Cushing asked forgiveness for Catholicism’s role in the events which led to the schism between East and West.

Subsequently in New York, Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, confirmed that he expects to enter “intimate discussions” on church unity with Cushing. He said in a television interview that he expected to receive permission to conduct the talks soon from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul, supreme head of the Eastern Orthodox.

New Ground For Christ

Evangelist Billy Graham broke ground last month for a $400,000 pavilion to serve the spiritual needs of visitors to the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. He expressed hope that it will “make some small contribution in helping the world choose God and peace.”

The octagonal pavilion, designed by Edward Durell Stone, will include a theater with 500 seats for the showing of evangelistic films. Trained counselors will be on hand to talk with visitors.

There will also be a chapel to seat 150, plus counseling rooms, a lounge, and offices.

“Mr. Stone has spared no effort to make the pavilion an architectural jewel,” Graham observed. “In its presentation of biblical truth it will use every modern technique that science can provide.”

The pavilion is located on a 50,000-square-foot plot donated by fair sponsors. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will supply funds for construction and operation. Official estimate of building construction is $400,000, but a spokesman said the cost including operation may go as high as $1,000,000.

Canadian Polity

A constitution and bylaws formally establishing the Canada Section of the new Lutheran Church in America were approved last month by delegates from six Canadian provinces at an organizational meeting in Toronto.

The section comprises 125,000 communicants in 360 congregations.

Dr. Hugh Whitteker, pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, was elected president.

Observers saw the establishment of the section as a step which could lead to formation of a separate and autonomous Lutheran Church in Canada.

Global Beams

Construction of a $2,000,000 missionary radio center is under way on the Caribbean island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles. A complex of modern buildings will house transmitters, studios, and a chapel for a new radio station to be operated by Trans World Radio of Chatham, New Jersey.

Spokesmen say their 520,000-watt short wave transmitter, now being built, will be the most powerful in the world. They will also employ a 500,000-watt AM standard broadcast transmitter, which is expected to overshadow everything in the Western Hemisphere. Both are to be on the air before the end of the year.

Gospel programs will be beamed to target areas in Europe, Africa, Russia, the Americas, and the Near East, according to Trans World Radio spokesmen.

A More Excellent Way?

“Thanks to Williams, thanks to Vidler,” writes Monica Furlong in The Guardian of London, “thanks to the splendid litter of co*ckatrices they seem to be hatching so energetically in Cambridge and elsewhere, being a Christian is now intellectually more exhausting than it has been for years.” An organization which has never shrunk from intellectual discussion about the faith is the Student Christian Movement, serving those who “desire to understand the Christian faith and live the Christian life.” Even this mild yoke is lifted as a result of the decision by the movement to encourage non-Christians to become members.

Said Dr. Ambrose Reeves, SCM general secretary and former bishop of Johannesburg who fell foul of South African Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd: “What I want to see are Christion students sitting down with other students, grappling with problems that concern us all, and bringing Christian insights to bear upon them.” SCM denies any intention to drop the word “Christian” from its title.

J.D.D.

In Praise Of Folly

An ultimatum from the Vatican to dismiss his housekeeper was being resisted last month by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen, the Rt. Rev. Francis Walsh. In a statement to the Scottish press he said: “A man’s last court of appeal is his own conscience. That is Catholic doctrine. Whether I resign or not, I hope God will give me the grace to do what is right.” His housekeeper (who became a Roman Catholic eight years ago) is the divorced wife of a Church of Scotland minister.

The Catholic Herald denounced in the strongest terms “jealous, irresponsible and scandalous tongues within the Catholic community” and added: “At a time when Pope John is going out of his way to be ‘foolish’ in his attitudes to the Communists, one may be entitled to ask whether the folly of Bishop Walsh is perhaps after all, a holy folly. The saints and those who get things done in the Church are, almost invariably, the eccentrics in one way or another.” The bishop intends to appeal to the Pope.

J.D.D.

Praising The Pope

What kind of global authority did Pope John XXIII have in mind when he penned the encyclical Pacem in Terris?

The pontiff was not specific when he suggested a worldwide “public authority” to guard the peace. Some observers, therefore, speculated that he wanted the Vatican to seek direct participation in United Nations activities.

But Vatican sources, replying to such a suggestion by a columnist of Paris-Jour, issued a denial. They said he was not thinking of strengthening the U. N. or giving it more or greater powers. Pope John, these sources added, actually meant creation of a totally new organization in some ways parallel to the U. N., but separate.

A number of Protestant and Jewish leaders commended the encyclical. Among them were President J. Irwin Miller of the National Council of Churches, Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger of the Protestant Episcopal Church, President Ben M. Herbster of the United Church of Christ, and Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord.

Miller said Protestants “welcome the historic encyclical” and are “gratified at the growing areas of agreement among leaders and people of the Judeo-Christian heritage and of other religious faiths on basic matters affecting the peace of the world and the well-being of God’s whole human family.”

“We find remarkable similarities in this statement between Roman Catholic thought and that in our own constituency,” he added. “The encyclical parallels in many of its thrusts the policies developed through the years by the National Council from the perspective of Christian faith and ethics.”

Rabbi Julius Mark, president of the Synagogue Council of America, said the encyclical’s reference to religious liberty was “exceedingly refreshing.”

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted that it “brings together the natural law of Catholic theology with the natural rights theories of modern liberalism.”

Said President Kennedy of the encyclical: “As a Catholic I am proud of it … as an American I have learned from it.”

In Rabat, Morocco, an official of the Secretariat of State for Information was fired after writing that his government should take the lead in implementing the pope’s advice.

Father John Courtney Murray, noted Jesuit theologian, says that in his encyclical Pope John has taken a stand against the deterministic view of history which dictates that men are shaped by events.

In the April 27 issue of America, Murray wrote that he thinks the pope “deeply understands the disastrous extent to which men today are gripped by the myth of history which the Marxists have so diligently inculcated.”

Two instances of the pope’s “full acceptance of modern progress,” Murray noted, were his affirmation of the quality of women and his “strong insistence on racial equality.”

“In the past, papal pronouncements on political and social order have always suspended … from three great words—truth, justice, and charity,” he added. In Pacem in Terris, he declared, a fourth word has been added—freedom.

Continental Crusades

Fernando Vangioni, one of Latin America’s leading evangelists, began a preaching tour May 1 in the Galicia region of northwest Spain. He will also conduct meetings for six days in Madrid and ten days in Barcelona.

Because of a legal ban on the use of public buildings and advertising, knowledge of the meetings must be spread by word of mouth. Both cities have evangelical churches seating 1,200 to 1,500.

Vangioni, of Buenos Aires, is now an associate evangelist on the Billy Graham team. Meanwhile, Graham and his party will devote their evangelistic efforts this month to key cities in France.

On May 12 the Paris Crusade opens and will continue for eight days in a large tent at Porte Maillot, a site just a few minutes’ walk from the central attractions of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées.

During this period a week-long series of meetings will begin in other cities under the leadership of Graham’s assistants: in Toulouse, the Rev. Eugene Boyer, well-known French-speaking American evangelist; in Nancy, associate evangelist T. W. Wilson; in Mulhouse, associate evangelist Grady Wilson; in Douai, heart of the coal-mining region north of Paris, associate evangelist Roy Gustafson; in Lyon, at the new Sports Palace, associate evangelist Leighton Ford. Graham will make one-night speaking appearances at some of these meetings.

Welcoming Pilgrims

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced last month that the United States is granting asylum to about 250 men, women and children, members of the Old Believers, a Russian Orthodox sect, now living in the Lake Manyas area of Turkey.

The group is believed to comprise the last descendants of a band of some 5,000 Old Believers who split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century over a religious dispute and migrated to Turkey.

Transportation for the Old Believers was arranged by the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration.

Members have been under constant pressure from Russia to return to the U.S.S.R. since 1959, Kennedy pointed out. An estimated 1,000 Old Believers returned to Russia last September, while some have gone to Brazil.

Kennedy said the “Soviet pressures on those remaining to join the first group intensified and the morale of this small group is declining. Immediate action is required to prevent its complete demoralization.”

He said he was extremely pleased that “this study group of pilgrims will come to our shores.”

Farmers and fishermen, the group will come to America under auspices of Tolstoy Foundation of New York, headed by Countess Alexandra L. Tolstoy, daughter of the famous Russian author.

Article 29

An amendment to the Somali Republic’s constitution which makes it illegal “to spread or propagandize any religions other than the true religion of Islam” was scheduled to go into effect this month with its ratification by the National Assembly.

In New York, Dr. Ahmed Darman, consul at the Somali Mission to the United Nations, said Article 29, dealing with freedom of religion, was amended to underscore Islam as the state religion and not to impinge on the internal activities of other religions.

He said followers of other faiths may carry on their activities “in their own communities,” but may not proselytize among Moslems. He also noted that only the Islam religion is taught in state schools.

The amended Article 29 reads: “Every person shall have the right to freedom of conscience and to profess freely his own religion and to practice its rites, subject to any limitations prescribed by law for the purpose of safeguarding morality, health and public security.

“However, it shall not be permissible to spread or propagandize any religions other than the true religion of Islam.”

The religious freedom issue was highlighted in the Somali Republic last year when Merlin Grove, 33, a Mennonite missionary from Canada, was slain by a Moslem fanatic as he was engaged in reopening a mission school. His wife, Mary, also was stabbed but survived.

Police said the assailant felt that the mission presented a threat to his religion.

Proponents of the amendment said the article’s previous wording concerning the state religion “appeared to be obscure” and called for “a more lucid and accurate restatement of that article lest it lend itself to misinterpretation and misapplication.” They said they considered that “Islam is the supreme Constitution God has created for the whole world.”

The amendment had been approved by the National Assembly last January by acclamation, and was to be ratified following a three-month waiting period.

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“THE TROUBLE with you,” a certain minister told me, “is that you think dogmatically.” Perhaps I should have replied: “And you—your trouble is that you can’t or won’t think dogmatically!”

Many people regard the dogmatic mind with misgiving. This apprehension may stem from the fact that across the years the term “dogmatic” has become weighted with connotations totally unrelated to theology. The dogmatic person, in the popular mind, is not merely opinionated and obstinate, always thinking himself in the right, but is likely to be overbearing and arrogant as well, with more than a dash of egotism and a remarkable deficiency of kindness. Even where the concept is not encumbered with all sorts of adventitious meanings as in theology, a certain malodorousness seems to have attached itself to dogmatical thinking and speaking.

Actually the dogmatician or systematician is just now in a state of partial eclipse. Apart from the ecumenical issues, theological interest has centered for some time on the historical origins of Bible and Church, on textual and literary criticism, on recently discovered or devised problems of hermeneutics. As a result, even dogmaticians who theoretically uphold the divine inspiration and the inviolability of the sacred Scriptures often hesitate to make direct, positive doctrinal affirmations lest they hear the shattering remark that these affirmations are invalidated by the theological advance in other areas of study. This explains also the dubious attitude of many toward the ancient creeds. That theologians may feel at home with the Scriptures but decidedly not so with the creeds, even where these are drawn from the Scriptures sentence by sentence, may seem strange. The explanation for this is simple. Men often extol the Scriptures and even call them the Word of God but then proceed to demythologize, spiritualize, symbolize, “interpret” them to their hearts’ content. The confessional statements of the creeds do not lend themselves so easily to this treatment and are therefore often reduced to a kind of inoperative, though decorative, window-dressing. The Church of South India, for example, accepts or acknowledges the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. When the church was organized, however, assurance was given that each individual was free to interpret the creedal clauses to his own satisfaction. On this basis a leader in the CSI could declare at Melbourne a few years ago that of course each church-body regarded certain teachings as fundamental; the difficulty, however, lay in formulating these fundamentals, and it was even doubtful whether this should be attempted.

We sometimes hear it said that dogmatics must be secondary to exegesis. Certainly exegesis is basic, for what is not true exegetically cannot be true dogmatically. But genuine theology cannot be compartmentalized. The dogmatician must be a good exegete who knows and uses the Scriptures aright. And the true exegete, whose business it is to set forth the intended sense of Holy Writ, cannot and will not avoid making direct doctrinal or dogmatical affirmations.

In the early years of the Faith and Order movement, when many mission workers convened to discuss these matters, the older men in particular were shocked to realize that most of those present would not commit themselves to the Apostles’ Creed, especially to those clauses referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. After much circuitous talk someone suggested this approach: Men are by nature or predilection either poets or mathematicians. While the former are greatly concerned about truth and beauty, they do not, like the latter do, insist upon precise terminology, careful distinctions, dogmatical correctness. It makes little difference in the end, so let each follow his own bent! Significantly enough, most of those present at the meeting were content to take their stand with the poets.

This pretty little analogy is quite useless and even harmful, of course. The important question is not whether poetic feeling and mathematical ability can coexist in the same person. Considerations of time and place and circ*mstance, of need and of proper function make a difference. The man quietly at rest in some placid, sheltered bay can safely let the poet in him take control as he watches “the long light shake across the lake” or engages in original versification. Why should the captain on the bridge of a great liner not be open to the beauty of ever-changing sea and sky? Why should he not burst forth in Byronic verse or quote from Tennyson as daylight fades? The steamship company, the ship’s crew and passengers, however, rightly expect and demand of him a proper knowledge of navigation, or applied mathematics. He must be able to read marine charts and handle nautical instruments expertly. He must be aware of dangerous shoals and treacherous currents. Even in fog and darkness he must be able to make a safe landfall instead of piling his vessel against some rocky shore.

If the theologian, meaning now the preacher in particular, can infuse his message with poetic beauty—after all, much of the Bible is sublime poetry—and send his hearers away with their aesthetic feelings enriched and satisfied, well and good. But if that be all, alas for both preacher and hearers! The distressed soul that asks: Why am I here? Who is God? What must I do to be saved? What is Christian faith? and so on, gains no help from soporific talk about truth and beauty, sweetness and light. If Christian faith, principles, and conduct are to withstand the exigencies of life in a world overrun with other “goods” and goals, more is needed than simply evoking pleasurable emotions and an atmosphere of wonder. We need complete, definite, and accurate presentation of spiritual, biblical truths. These truths (to lapse into dogmatical language) must be stated thetically and, in the interest of comprehension, often antithetically as well.

Despite the multiplicity of tasks thrust upon him today, the Christian minister is primarily a teacher of spiritual truth. He must be “apt to teach” and able “by sound doctrine both to exhort, and to convince the gainsayers.” “By taking heed unto the doctrine” he is able to save himself and his hearers. Every theologian knows how often the words didaskalia and didache occur in the Pastoral Epistles. Whether or not the Greek word dogma is a cognate of the Latin docere, his very office constrains the minister both to think and to speak dogmatically. The teaching-learning process requires clear-cut concepts and sound, definite judgments expressed in appropriate language. Vagueness in teaching makes for vagueness in hearing and learning.

Thinking and speaking dogmatically should not be stigmatized as intellectualism. Such a charge, though, however false, must often be anticipated and accepted with grace and with awareness of man’s frequent unwillingness to “endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:3). The unalterable and elementary fact remains that cognition takes place primarily through the intellect, and must therefore be of the right kind. When teaching and preaching become simply an exercise in religious information; when undue emphasis is given to formal correctness of doctrine; when basic Christian faith is equated with orthodoxy—then we may speak of intellectualism. This danger exists. But one does not for that reason completely discard the whole matter of dogmatic thinking. The true dogmatician guards against intellectualism by remembering that genuine faith in Christ is not merely a given amount of cognition; it is, rather, knowledge or a fiducia cordis that grasps Christ and his salvation. Engendered by the Holy Spirit, genuine faith means the new birth of a new creature in Christ—a metamorphosis, as St. Paul says in Romans 12:2.

To think and speak dogmatically may, of course, encourage an endless multiplication of dogmas and doctrines unless one confines thinking and speaking within the limits set by the Divine Word. The true dogmatician will insist that only what is clearly laid down in Scripture as a rule of faith or life is rightly dogma or doctrine. Moreover, as long as “dogmatism” has warrant in the Word, the dogmatician is in no sense encroaching upon God’s prerogative. Perfect and complete apprehension of truth is not ours this side of eternity. God nevertheless invites and expects his followers to practice proper dogmatical thinking for the edification of souls and for the glory of his holy name.—Dr. HENRY HAMANN, Former President, Concordia Seminary, Adelaide, Australia.