Page 5614 – Christianity Today (2024)

Koreans Criticize Park For Proselytizing

We reprint without comment an editorial from a nonexistent newspaper, East Asian Daily Times:

Dismay and indignation were registered in the capital today when it was learned that on his recent visit to Washington, D.C., President Park explained the roots of his religious convictions to Jimmy Carter.

Kuo Hsi, a monk in Seoul’s Monastery of the Golden Lotus, told reporters, “If he were a priest, he could say anything he wants. But he’s a president, and what is he doing trying to convert somebody? It’s none of his business what Jimmy Carter thinks.”

Chua Hwi, religion editor for one of our country’s more outspoken papers, agrees: “It has been rumored that our President would enjoy being a Buddhist missionary. But for now surely he would be well-advised to stay within the boundaries of his present job description. It is hardly appropriate for him to mix personal piety with public policy. However well-intentioned, the President’s act was bad diplomacy, bad politics, and bad religion.”

We at the Daily Times feel the conversation should never have taken place at all. Granted the bomb-dropping Americans could use the tranquility of Eastern religion. Still, might it not seem to those on whose aid we depend so heavily that we regard their religion as morally inferior?

Let our presidents confine their more casual conversations to the latest joke making the rounds at the U.N. Or their estimate of top contenders for the world soccer championship. Or even the bedroom peccadilloes of various political figures.

At any rate, it is surely the best policy to keep religion out of national and international affairs, especially when the world’s trouble spots bear names like Teheran, Riyadh, and Jerusalem.

One would hope we could all set our religion aside, and seek a lasting peace by getting down to fundamentals.

But Can A Christian Be Silent?

“Invasion of privacy” has become a complex issue in these electronic days. In fact, fears along this line have brought together thinkers otherwise widely separated in liberal and conservative camps.

A particularly knotty area concerns public figures. Has an elected official, for instance, by virtue of running for office and winning, forfeited his right to privacy?

Can a governor hold private views on capital punishment that run counter to the action he must take in carrying out the laws of his state? Should the press permit a congressman privacy in illicit affairs (because “no affair of state is involved”)?

In conversation, may a president be permitted the right of man-to-man discussion on private convictions about, say, honesty in government? Or may he discuss the doctrine of God with the head of another state without compromising the doctrine of separation of church and state, or appearing to pressure his partner in conversation?

It appears to us that published opinions on these questions depend on whose ox is gored.

Yes, one can hold and discuss private views on capital punishment, we are told. Yes, one can count on privacy in sexual matters (so long as he avoids public fiascos). Yes, one can discuss the subject of honesty.

But when it comes to religion, the signs of openmindedness disappear. No, we are told, in this area he cannot speak, because he is a public official.

We must ask, “Why the shift?”

Could it be that a secular mind-set takes over on this issue? Is that hallmark of the true liberal, openhandedness, unable to ennoble opinion on a religious subject? Must we doom religious thought to the confines of some ghetto mentality?

Surely there are circ*mstances under which an American president might discuss religious beliefs with his opposite number from a friendly state.

We find ourselves wondering not why he spoke, but why he then whispered it in the ear of the world through a Sunday school class obviously wired for sound. Mr. Carter may kiss; must he also tell?

Yet, aside from that reservation, we find ourselves pleased that a president holds religious beliefs worth talking about, and that, in private, he finds time to voice them.

This time they have gone too far. You mark my words: they will pay for it.

I didn’t complain when they cut back on the school milk program. I wrote only two mild letters when they attacked Bible reading and prayer in the public schools. But this time, I am really worked up.

The courts have forced The Lone Ranger to take off his mask!

Those of us who remember when the West was young simply will not tolerate this judicial mayhem. The next thing you know, they’ll force Orphan Annie to get pupils in her eyes and Superman to stay out of telephone booths.

I was unable to get to the Masked Man for an interview, but I did spend a few minutes with the Great Horse Silver. He was prancing around in great excitement and seemed to be pleased with the action of the court.

“You seem to be feeling your oats today,” I remarked. “Are you really happy over the court decision?”

“Of course I am!” he replied. “It’s about time they made him take off his mask.

“But, why? Without his mask, he isn’t The Lone Ranger.”

“And that’s good! Now maybe the crowds will start paying attention to me. He can get along without a mask, but where would he be without a horse?”

“So you feel he’s been taking all the glory all these years?”

“Absolutely! And just think of what I’ve had to go through. How would you like to hear ‘Hi ho. Silver!’ shouted in your ears day after day? I always had to run faster than the other horses, and that so-called fast draw of his was only a trick. They’d stop the cameras for him.”

“I see. You think that without his mask, he’ll have to develop some real skills to hold his own.”

“That’s right. He needs to quit horsing around (if you’ll excuse the term) and come to grips with reality. In a couple of more years, he won’t even need a mask. The bags under his eyes will do the job.”

“In other words, you think there’s too much masquerading in show business.”

“Far too much. Why, Lassie is a male! And Peter Pan was played by a lady who happened to be a grandmother. Let the masks come off! Just don’t remove the feedbags.”

Come to think of it, there is coming a day when all masks will come off, and we will be revealed as we really are. Maybe Silver has some horse sense after all.

EUTYCHUS X

Splashy Churches?

The articles by Ron Sider and Tom Howard (“Cautions Against Ecclesiastical Elegance” and “Expensive Churches: Extravagance for God’s Sake,” Aug. 17) make some powerful points. To wit: in building a church one may not forget other continuing obligations; in the worship of God one just does not count or compare certain costs.

LOUIE HELMSTETTER

Denver, Colo.

Since the congregation of which I am a lay pastor decided to sell its church building and move to an interracial house church model, I see Sider’s article as more biblically authentic.

The American evangelical church might humbly learn some lessons from the social movement, Alcoholics Anonymous. AA took steps to forbid institutionalization and professionalization. It owns no buildings, keeps no membership statistics, and has no professionals running the organization. Lay persons run the movement. Almost all time and energy is spent on their message and mission.

The church through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit ought to be able to do as well or better than AA. May the church in America be willing to “diet” (drop off its commitment to the unholy trinity of racism, materialism, and individualism) so that it might once again become lean and mobile as it devotes itself to the message and mission of Jesus Christ.

LOWELL NOBLE

Associate professor of sociology

Spring Arbor College

Spring Arbor, Mich.

I have often remarked that Thomas Howard is the American C.S. Lewis. After reading his article, I think I may have to revise my opinion. I doubt whether C.S. Lewis could have written that well on the topic!

C. PETER WAGNER

Fuller Theological Seminary

School of World Mission

Pasadena, Calif.

Big is not always bad. Neither is it always the most expensive. Large buildings often cost less per person accommodated than smaller church buildings.

Instead of discussion about elegant church buildings versus Third World economic inequities, why not a study of how church leaders can assure that the church building and its location are not hindering the program and growth of the church? Real estate and financial assets need to be put to optimum use in spreading the gospel of Christ. Comprehensive planning today can save greatly on unnecessary expenditures tomorrow.

ROBERT S. ZAWOYSKY

Director of Corporate Services

Church Growth Services

South Bend, Ind.

Jewish-Evangelical Dialogue

Congratulations to Morris Inch for an excellent, timely article (“Jews and Evangelicals: A Breech Born in Heaven?” Aug. 17).

Might I add: the average Jew finds it almost impossible to differentiate between Gentile and Christian. He cannot be swayed from the belief that many of the church-attending Nazis who participated in the torture and killing of six million Jews during the Holocaust must have been Christians.

I personally know of at least two Christians who attempted to participate in “dialogue” in an absolutely sincere manner with rabbis in Israel, and they ended up with complete nervous breakdowns. You just cannot be faithful to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and at the same time equate Judaism with Christianity.

Dr. Inch’s article should be posted on the door of every church.

DAVID BRONSTEIN

The International Hebrew Christian

Alliance

Palm Harbor, Fla.

Thanks from CBA

I read with great appreciation your editorial concerning the CBA convention (“CBA Gets Beyond the Flaky Fringe,” Aug. 17). I believe you are the first Christian consumer magazine which has taken the time to research and grasp the federal regulations under which our convention, as an international trade show, must operate.

The federal government views CBA as a trade association, not as a religious organization. We are under obligation to receive exhibitors based on their right of access to the religious bookselling industry, not on the preference of their product. The nonbook Christian product has been with us since the very first convention 30 years ago. These items have a way of appearing and disappearing according to customer demand.

Nevertheless, we are very thankful for the high spiritual plane of the 1979 convention.

BILL ANDERSON

Convention Manager

Christian Booksellers Association

Sunday schools, we hear, have had their day. Attendance is falling off and their influence on church and community is less and less with each passing year. But don’t sell the Sunday school short! It still reaches far more children with solid moral and biblical instruction than all other agencies of the church combined. Taken as a whole, Sunday schools of today are infinitely better than those of 50 years ago. They are more efficiently organized, physical plants are more functional, teaching aids are more plentiful, teachers are better qualified and better prepared, and curricula are better balanced—more biblical, better written, and more attractively packaged. In short, Sunday schools are a lot better. Marlene Lefever provides us with a careful, critical, but also encouraging analysis and evaluation of the quality of current Sunday school curricula and other lesson materials.

With this issue we sadly bid farewell to Donald Tinder, who leaves us to join the faculty of New College, Berkeley, California. For the past decade, Dr. Tinder has faithfully served CHRISTIANITY TODAY as book editor. Libraries especially will miss his insightful commentary on religious literature. To replace Dr. Tinder, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been fortunate in securing as book editor Dr. Walter Elwell, formerly chairman of the religion department at Belhaven College in Mississippi, presently professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and general editor of the Tyndale Family Encyclopedia, and as deputy editor Professor Paul Fromer, former editor of HIS magazine (Inter-Varsity) and now associate professor of English, Wheaton College, and free-lance writer.

The strong have never been noted for their concern for the rights or the plights of the weak. Throughout the complex and varied history of the human race there is an impressive consensus among those who are able to dominate others that the interests of the rulers come first.

I am not denying that now and then there have been splendid examples of altruism. Every race has its stories of great men and women who selflessly served others, even at the expense of their own interests. I almost wrote “legends” instead of “stories.” For all too often this is not so much what happens as what we like to think happens. So we create our legends and try to persuade ourselves that they are fact.

It is therefore interesting that the United Nations has accepted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is a document that sets forth some rights that even our cynical generation believes belong to every man. Of course, setting out these rights in a document and making them a reality in lands where oppression is rife are two quite different things. But at least the Declaration exists. It points to what we all like to think is being done throughout the world. And it is a document to which reformers can always appeal.

But in the years since 1949 we have all come to realize that signing a declaration and making its contents effective are not the same thing. Most nations are painfully aware that other nations are not doing what they should about human rights (though they manage to turn blind eyes to their own shortcomings).

The fact is that in the most egalitarian and idealistic of societies some people are more equal than others. And those who are by nature or position at the top of the heap all too often tend to pursue their own interests and neglect those of some others. We have come to be thankful for a state of affairs in which the powerful pursue their own ends only moderately. That they will pursue them we do not doubt, but we hope that they will not be so set on their own prosperity that they grind the rest of us into some form of bondage.

The Christian does not like all this—but he is not surprised. He accepts the doctrine of original sin; he is well aware that the flaw in human nature will always find an outlet. He thinks, perhaps, of the declaration of the rights of man adopted at the French Revolution when, we are told, only 4.3 million out of a population of some 27 million qualified for “the rights of citizens.” It was a magnificent document; but it was strictly limited by the way men interpreted it. Cannot men of every other nation think uncomfortably of the way those in power in their land have successfully eroded the “rights” of minorities, especially very weak minorities?

Christians must be deeply concerned about all this, for theirs is a faith that is the very antithesis of the fundamental selfishness that characterizes so much of modern society. They are people for whom another has died, a fact that is brought before them with emphasis in the New Testament they read, in the hymns they sing, and in the holy communion they share with other believers. To have been “crucified with Christ” means to have entered a life where selfishness, however refined, cannot be the rule. To take up one’s cross (Luke 9:23) means self-sacrifice, not self-promotion.

The bible does not have much use for grandiose expressions about human rights. It is much more concerned with actions. Thus Jeremiah can ask, “Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar?” He goes on, “Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well” (Jer. 22:15–16). There are always “poor and needy” who lack the means of claiming their rights, and there it is the task of the servant of God to do what he can for them.

It is sobering to reflect that in this supposedly enlightened age there are so many injustices. Christians are not surprised to find them in atheistic states or in countries led by fanatics. But in democracies where they might well expect something different there are still problems. In any complex state there is a bureaucracy, and bureaucrats often abuse their petty powers. Countries that profess all men to be equal before the law have been known to make a mockery of this by the expense of legal proceedings that can put the pursuit of just claims out of reach of all but the wealthy.

All this means that there is still a good deal of room for the Christian to find himself busy supporting the cause of “the poor and needy.” There is that in fallen human nature which will always oppress. And there is that in the servant of the Lord which will always support the weak.

But this is not easy. In addition to the opposition of oppressors there is the point to which Margaret Dewey directs attention: “The human rights movement is endangered by excesses not only of method but of claims. The word ‘rights’ is ‘applied to virtually any demand that one group makes on another’” (the last words she quotes from U.S. News & World Report). People easily come to imagine that they have a “right” to any good that they fancy. The Christian must not be credulous, easily taken in by any confident claim. He is to exercise discrimination in accordance with the question posed by his Lord: “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:57).

He is also to remember that the Bible says much more about exercising responsibility than claiming rights. I have been arguing that there are times, especially in this modern world, when the Christian must support those who are claiming rights. But he must also remember he is a responsible person and that he has many opportunities to exercise responsibility.

It is interesting that neither the prophets, nor Jesus, nor the Apostles, call on oppressed peoples to revolt. But they do often call on those in positions of power to repent and do right. It is easy in the modern world to think we have discharged our Christian duty when we have self-righteously condemned someone else’s disregard for human rights. It is harder to show respect for the rights of others in our own lives day by day.

Western Christians are usually in positions of privilege in comparison with the general situation of men today. They enjoy material comfort, stimulating fellowship with other Christians, freedom of worship, and much more. There is danger here. Christians must see their privileges not as rights to be claimed at all costs, but as opportunities for serving others. Of those to whom much has been given will much be required (Luke 12:48). Twentieth-century Western Christians have accordingly a heavy responsibility.

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

Information about Israeli government involvement with the antimissionary organization Yad Le’achim, reported in the August 17 issue, page 47, was not derived from Alhamishmar as indicated, but from Zerokor, another Jerusalem newspaper.

The late J. Barton Payne’s son Philip was incorrectly identified as a TEAM missionary in the August 17 issue, page 51. He serves in Japan with the Evangelical Free Church.

Joseph Bayly has been appointed general director of the Christian Medical Society. Bayly, who will continue as vice-president of David C. Cook Publishing Company, replaces Haddon Robinson, who resigned to become president of Conservative Baptist Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ International, was honored recently by the Christian Booksellers Association in connection with the authorship of the evangelism booklet, “The Four Spiritual Laws.” The pervasive witnessing tool was first published in 1965 and since has been translated into 82 languages with an estimated 500 million copies printed.

Daniel E. Weiss, president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, has been elected board chairman of the Christian College Coalition. The three-year-old Coalition monitors legislation and issues affecting Christian colleges and involves about 40 accredited liberal arts colleges with a total student population of 46,000.

R. Keith Parks was elected executive director of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board last month. Parks, a missionary in Indonesia for 14 years before being named area secretary for Southeast Asia, succeeds Baker James Cauthen, who will retire on January 1 after 26 years at the post.

Carl Mischke is the newly-elected president of the 400,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church. Previously the denomination’s first vice-president, he had been acting president since the June 19 death of president Oscar J. Naumann.

NEWTON GINGRICH, 53, chairman since 1978 of the Mennonite Central Committee—Pennsylvania-based association serving most major Mennonite denominations in the United States and Canada—and a former moderator (1973–75) of the 96,000-member Mennonite Church; August 1 in Drumbo, Ontario, of a heart attack.

JOHN WRIGHT, 70, Roman Catholic Cardinal who, as the chief administrator for the world’s 500,000 priests, was the highest ranking American in the Vatican; he was controversial for his liberal, as well as conservative, causes—including support of the civil rights movement and opposition to ordination of women priests; August 10, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a long illness.

The kidnaping of Gudina Tumsa in Addis Ababa on July 28, just five weeks after his release from a second imprisonment, underscored the confused nature of an intensifying campaign against Protestant Christians in Ethiopia. Tumsa, 49, general secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical (Lutheran) Mekane Yesus Church and chairman of the Council for Cooperation of Churches in Ethiopia, was leaving his denominational headquarters with his wife when both were abducted by a group of unidentified armed men in civilian clothing. His wife subsequently was released, but Tumsa’s whereabouts remained unknown.

Ethiopian authorities have hardened their attitudes toward Protestant Christians in recent months, according to a report from London published in the Austrian Evangelical Press Service (epd ö) in Vienna. The military junta has set up an internal committee to deal with church affairs, and seems most concerned about groups that have stated their opposition to excesses in the implementation of the socialist program.

Tumsa’s June imprisonment, for instance, stemmed from accusations that he was responsible for documents produced by his denomination that discussed Christianity and socialism.

Persecution, the press service reported, seems to be directed especially at the Pentecostal movement; but all Protestant churches and groupings are classed as Pentecostals and contemptuously called “Penties” in the current campaign. Ethiopia’s Protestant churches obviously have not been recognized by the authorities and revolutionary agitators as “traditional religions.” According to the reports, only Islam and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose leadership is conformist, qualify. The more independent Protestant churches and congregations, which appeal especially to Ethiopian youth and express their convictions openly, apparently will no longer be tolerated. The state attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church is not yet clear.

Although freedom of religion is the officially stated line, says the report, it is known that Christians still are being imprisoned in many provinces, that churches have been closed, and that in many places Christians have been threatened with reprisals if they continue to attend religious services.

Some representative specific items:

• Le Messager Evangélique, a French Protestant paper, reports that political activists often force their way into private houses to break up “Penty” prayer meetings and groups studying the Bible. In Addis Ababa and Debre Zeit, youth gatherings recently were broken up and participants arrested.

(The same paper reports that all churches in the Kebre Mengist District of Sidamo Province have been closed. Protestants have been forbidden under threat of torture and execution to hold any kind of religious gathering. Here and elsewhere Christians are forced to make a written declaration that they will no longer attend church services.)

• The newspaper Addis sem*n described a talk by the governor of Wollega Province, Negussie Fanta, to 121 young Christians, who had been denounced by the revolutionary youth organization, arrested by the local militia, and brought to Nekemte for a 12-day political reeducation course. The youths were warned to stop participating in meetings of their churches, which were branded as “conspiracies of a false and pestilential culture” hiding under the cloak of religion. Fanta told the interned Ethiopians that if they refused to support the revolution, or did so only unwillingly, they could not expect to be treated gently.

• The Lutheran World Federation quotes from a situation report it received last month: “In the provincial capital of Nekemte 88 people are still in prison. Others have been released after being more or less successfully ‘re-educated.’ One girl, who is known by name, was tortured so badly in prison that she died soon after being released. There is very strong pressure on young people who continue to declare themselves Christians. Up until now 33 churches and 31 preaching centers in and near Nekemte have been closed.”

The report continues, “In Illubabor also six churches are closed and their congregations under pressure. The toughest measures against non-Orthodox Christians are reported from Kaffa, where a young man was shot and two others wounded. Pastors and other members of congregations are in prison. Torturing is also reported.”

• More of the same kind of persecution is reported from other provinces, such as Gemu Goffa and Shoa.

Uganda

Taking Vigorous Exception

Uganda’s Christian and Muslim leaders issued a joint appeal in July for the restoration of law, democracy, and security in their troubled nation. The call was sent to President Godfrey L. Binaisa, who abruptly replaced Yusufu K. Lule in June, less than 10 weeks after the overthrow of Idi Amin.

The appeal was signed by Anglican Archbishop Silvanus G. Wani, Roman Catholic Cardinal Emmanuel K. Nsubuga of Kampala, Orthodox Bishop Theodorus Nankyama, and Muslim Chief Khadi K. Mulumba. They expressed disillusionment over “the huge gap between promise and fulfillment” by the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), the coalition of exile leaders that assumed power in April.

The four men cited complaints, voiced to them by the public, including:

• No published text of the “Moshi Resolutions,” which were drafted at the formative conference of the UNLF in Moshi, Tanzania, and on which the UNLF says it bases Ugandan policy.

• A “premature and too abrupt change in government.” The turbulence in Lule’s brief administration has been traced to clashes between conservative, pro-Western members of the Front leadership, most of whom belong to the Baganda tribe, and the more socialist-oriented ministers who are believed to favor a political role for Milton Obote, under whom Bagandans had suffered. Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971.

• Internal insecurity, with the “liberation army acting in no better way than the soldiers of the former regime.”

• A ban on freedom of expression and peaceful demonstrations.

• Efforts to place soldiers in “administrative posts” throughout the country, which “smells [of] the return of a military government.”

• The seeming introduction of “a one-party system.”

The religious leaders called for publication of the Moshi Resolutions and clarification between them and the present constitution, and a more “democratic” and “representative” Consultative Council. They also urged a crackdown on rampaging soldiers, together with an upgrading of the quality of the armed forces, and a better trained police force “to combat rampant crime.”

South Africa

Being Somebody Alienates Almost Everybody

Jesse Jackson, the Chicago-based, black activist preacher, completed his two-week tour of South Africa early last month amid protests from both the religious and political left and right wings.

It was initially thought that Jackson’s outspoken criticism of the South African government’s policy of apartheid—he termed it “ungodly”—would bring objections only from the right. But his successful effort to bring together three black South African leaders who have long been at loggerheads sparked a strong attack from an influential staff member of the South African Council of Churches (SACC).

Just before leaving South Africa, Jackson arranged a five-hour meeting between Gatsha Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu “homeland”; Desmond Tutu, Anglican bishop and SACC general secretary; and Nthato Motlana, chairman of the Committee of Ten, which represents the radical left in Soweto, the huge township on the outskirts of Johannesburg where racial unrest began in 1976.

Bishop Tutu, regarded as the most influential black churchman in South Africa, and Motlana have refused any involvement in the government’s attempts to create separate political and social structures for blacks. But Chief Buthelezi, an outspoken critic of apartheid, has opted for limited cooperation with the government. He has said it is his Christian duty to maintain dialogue with his opponents.

Jackson obtained the black leaders’ commitment to seek “operational unity” and to refrain from attacking each other publicly. His efforts, however, prompted a rebuke from Thomas Manthata, who works for the Justice and Reconciliation Division of the SACC.

Manthata, also a member of the Committee of Ten, has twice been detained without trial by the South African government. He called Jackson “a diabolical western agent who has his eye on election to the United States Congress.”

Jackson left South Africa with the declared goal of obtaining cancellation of the world heavyweight boxing championship fight between South Africa’s Gerrie Coetzee and America’s John Tate, due to be held October 20 in Pretoria. (Because of racial separation in sports, South Africa has been barred from international competition in many fields. Jackson seeks to convince Tate that going ahead with the match would be “a betrayal of his own people.”)

During his visit, Jackson met with top leaders in the political, religious, economic, and commercial fields. This included an interview with Piet Koornhof, department minister responsible for black affairs who has advocated gradual liberalization of the race laws. Jackson was impressed with Koornhof, saying he was “like a breath of fresh air in the National [governing] Party.” He pleaded that Koornhof not be left to stand alone.

THEO COGGIN

Northern Ireland

The Great Papal Nonevent

Did Pope John Paul II intend to visit Northern Ireland during his trip to Ireland this month? After a spate of rumors, the Vatican announced that such a visit “was never foreseen.” But Irish Roman Catholic bishops had gone so far as to map out a Northern Ireland itinerary for John Paul, the first reigning Pope to visit Ireland. Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Irish Catholicism, lies north of the border and was an obvious destination.

The announcement of the Pope’s proposed visit, to occur while enroute to the United States, produced the inevitable reaction. The Roman Catholic population at large expressed great delight; the ecumenical wing of the Protestant churches gave loud acclaim; and Ian Paisley, clergy leader of the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, protested loudly and even threatened huge demonstrations and a possible confrontation with security forces if the Pope crossed the border from the Irish Republic. The Irish Council of Churches said it would welcome a visit.

William Craig, the strongly evangelical moderator of the Irish Presbyterian church, took a firm but courteous stand. He recognized the right of Northern Irish Roman Catholics to welcome the Pope, but said he himself would not be prepared to meet him. Craig stressed, however, that his reasons were theological rather than personal, in view of the major issues that still divide Rome from the churches of the Reformation.

A letter to the press from Herbert Carson, endorsed by 11 other Baptist ministers, took a similar line. It rejected the intolerance of those who opposed the Pope’s visit to the North, denying Catholics their civil and religious liberty. This was an unbiblical position, the pastors argued; it was also inconsistent, they said, since those protesting were themselves ready to claim the liberty to cross the border and preach in the Catholic South. At the same time the Baptists distanced themselves from the ecumenical euphoria; they said the visit was strongly oriented toward the cult of Mary, thus detracting from the unique glory of Christ.

Observers noted the irony of a situation in which the same pontiff who was able to go behind the Iron Curtain appeared to be blocked from Northern Ireland by the threat of Paisleyite demonstrations.

Burma

Opening the Door Just a Crack

The visit last month to the United States by Lalthanliana, Burma field director of Bibles for the World, was another indication that the revolutionary government of Burma is cautiously relaxing its isolationist posture.

The regime of General Ne Win, who came to power in 1962, moved to restrict foreign influence in 1966. It evicted all Protestant and most Roman Catholic foreign missionaries, and nationalized all private hospitals and schools (except theological schools). At the same time, until late last year travel abroad for religious conferences was virtually impossible. Visitors’ visas to Burma were valid for only 48 hours.

It is now possible for churchmen, who are officially invited, to leave Burma for a religious purpose, and visitors’ visas have been extended to one week.

Burma’s great horseshoe of mountains, ringing the Irrawaddy River plains to the west, north, and east, historically have insulated the Burmese from the Indian and Chinese populations on either side. But Chinese insurgency in the north of Burma and China’s recent attack on Vietnam are thought to have shaken the authorities’ assumption that the Burmese brand of socialism would stave off Communist infiltration.

Lalthanliana, informally known as Thana, believes his government is now unleashing religious forces, hoping these will serve as a deterrent to Marxist ideology.

This strategy may be effective among the tribal people of the mountains. Adoniram Judson and most missionaries since have found the plains Burmese solidly Buddhist and resistant to Christianity. But the mountain tribesmen, animistic in background, have been more responsive. The Karen of eastern Burma—some 7 percent of the Burmese population—are 20 percent Christian (largely Baptist).

Last year the less numerous Kachin of northern Burma—less than 2 percent of the population—celebrated the centennial of missions work among them. The Kachin are 50 percent Christian, and their churches celebrated by baptizing 6,000 in one day, and by commissioning 300 young men to evangelistic work in Kachin State where Communist infiltration is a threat.

Leader of the Kachin revivalist thrust is U Khun Naung, a retired army colonel. General Ne Win recently asked Khun to serve in his cabinet, and Khun accepted with the understanding that he would still be allowed to preach.

Thana belongs to the Lushai tribe, which straddles the Indo-Burmese border on the west (known as the Mizo tribe in India, where secessionist guerrillas are battling the government). Born in India, Thana’s father R. Dala was an interpreter for Watkin Roberts, an early Welsh missionary, and among his earliest converts. (Bibles for the World president Rochunga Pudaite is the son of a convert of Dala.)

Thana moved as a missionary from the Mizo to the Lushai side of his tribal territory. Then, as the expulsion of foreign missionaries approached in 1965, Thana applied for and obtained Burmese citizenship.

Within months, Thana says, he was victim of a frame-up: an ammunition cache was planted in his pigpen, he says, and authorities were anonymously tipped off. He was arrested and imprisoned without trial for four years. Thana had written 20 books of Bible exposition for the Lushai church by the time of his 1970 release.

Thana estimates there were 3,000 Lushai believers when he went to prison in 1966. Thana’s Evangelical Free Church in Burma (no relation to the North American denomination) now fields 80 Lushai evangelists, and the church is 14,000 strong.

Thana administers this thriving mountain ministry from the capital, Rangoon. There he also pastors a congregation of mountain tribal people who have been transferred to the plains city. He represents his people before officials in halting Burmese.

Thana does report some response, however, among the majority Burmese. Six Buddhist priests, he says, were converted in a recent Campus Crusade for Christ campaign. They continue to itinerate in their saffron robes; but now, to the consternation of their former coreligionists, they are proclaiming the gospel.

World Scene

The South African Council of Churches cautiously edged toward endorsing civil disobedience at its July conference. Some apartheid laws, the delegates declared, are “morally so objectionable that we cannot obey them with a clear conscience.” Their resolution went on to offer “moral encouragement” to individuals and groups “who commit themselves to acts of conscious affirmation of interracial fellowship” that may be illegal.

More details have surfaced on church repression in Mozambique. The All Africa Conference of Churches reports that since January the Marxist state Frelimo Party has nationalized and closed 15 Roman Catholic churches, including a cathedral; a number of Anglican churches, including the country’s only Anglican cathedral; three Presbyterian churches; and one Nazarene church. The only Catholic seminary in Mozambique closed after all 20 students were inducted into the armed forces.

More than 30,000 persons canceled their memberships in the Church of Sweden during 1978. The official information center of the church (the largest in Lutheranism) reported this was its largest single-year membership decline ever recorded.

The three American youths imprisoned by Czech authorities in July were released last month (Aug. 17, 1979, issue, p. 47). They had been held incommunicado in separate cells in Brno for most of their 34-day detention. Told they were being held on charges of smuggling or attempting to smuggle Bibles, the three were questioned but not formally interrogated. They were not brought to trial, but were released at the same Austrian border crossing at which they had been arrested.

A unique church growth strategy in suburban Lima, Peru, is a rousing success. Beginning with a 120-member house church in Lince in 1973, the Christian and Missionary Alliance built a modern 1,000-person capacity church building (to appeal to the burgeoning middle class) and imported an Argentinian pastor. The Alliance also launched a nearly continuous evangelism effort in Lince, with two-week campaigns every month. The Lince church recently went to two Sunday morning services, and 200 persons have enrolled in its twice-weekly Bible academy for new converts. In 1975, the CMA repeated the process by building a 2,000-capacity church for the Pueblo Libre congregation.

Indonesian authorities appear to have adopted a policy of phasing out the work of Christian missionaries. Missionaries whose annual visas require renewal and who have been in the country for five years or more are being notified that they will be granted only six-month visas. Southern Baptist sources say the action immediately affects about 100 missionaries.

President Jimmy Carter disclosed that he witnessed to Korean president Park Chung Hee during his visit to Seoul last June. While teaching his adult Bible class last month at the First Baptist Church of Washington, Carter touched on the Christian’s duty to win new followers, and cited his own experience. In a meeting with about 20 Korean Catholic and Protestant religious leaders, Billy Kim, a leading Presbyterian minister, had urged him to make the attempt. A short time later, Carter said, he and Park, a Buddhist, were traveling together in a car, with only an interpreter and a security guard. “I told him about our faith,” Carter told the class. “He was very interested.” Pressed for time, Carter recommended that Park pursue the subject with clergyman Kim.

Cuba

Bible Smuggling Comes Home to Roost

A single-engine Piper aircraft took off from Nassau, Bahamas, on Saturday, May 26. Its cargo was 750 pounds of Spanish-language proreligious/anti-Communist leaflets sealed in plastic. On the covers were illustrations of Marx and Lenin. The light craft’s flight plan was cleared for overflight of Cuba, enroute to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Late that night, the plane made radio contact with air traffic controllers at Kingston, Jamaica. The pilot reported a possible distress situation: he was low on fuel. Still over Cuba, he said he could see the night lights of Montego Bay across the 150-mile stretch of the Caribbean. The plane crash-landed on the south coast of Cuba at about 11:46 P.M. Not long afterward, Cuban officials reported on the radio network that the two occupants of the downed craft were uninjured.

A U.S. State Department source reported the Cuban charge that the plane had been dropping leaflets along the Cuban shoreline. The two Americans aboard were placed in a Havana prison for political offenders. It was not until six weeks later, on August 3, that U.S. consular officials were first allowed to visit them.

The plane’s passenger was Tom White, 31, a former schoolteacher who has been on the payroll of Jesus to the Communist World since April 1976. (White’s wife, Ofelia, continues to receive support from JTTCW.)

Michael Wurmbrand, general director of the Glendale, California-based mission organization, maintains that the flight was in no way instigated or approved by him, but was plotted alone by White for the long Memorial Day weekend. If JTTCW were going to engage in such an operation, Wurmbrand says, it would use one of its own two planes.

Instead, says Wurmbrand, White apparently decided to draw on a $30,000 to 40,000 legacy from his father’s death to provide “a gift to the Cuban people.” The plane’s cargo of literature, although identical to a JTTCW leaflet, was printed by White, he says, in a Glendale print shop.

The pilot was Melvin Bailey, 32, a Newport News, Virginia, computer programmer with 10 years of military flight experience and a commercial license, who had rented the $30,000 plane. A “for deposit only” check from JTTCW for rental of the plane was received and banked on May 22. (White had assured Bailey that he would insure the flight, but no evidence that he did has surfaced.)

Bailey’s wife Mary says that until the day before the overflight, he had never met White. Bailey had written to JTTCW perhaps as early as February of 1978, offering his services as needed, and mentioning that he was a pilot. White, who processed such correspondence, recruited Bailey through handwritten correspondence on JTTCW letterhead dated April 27 and 30 of this year.

Mary Bailey says that her husband was aware that the material was to be dropped over Cuba, but that he believed the material was to be Scripture portions. The correspondence, she says, indicated that JTTCW had knowledge gleaned from previous overflights. Bailey intended to donate his time. The two men rendezvoused in Florida, loaded the plane, and proceeded together to Nassau.

White’s mother, Dorothy Shields, of Dallas, Texas, says her son called very early on the morning of Friday, May 25, to let her know he was beginning his adventure. She recalls that he mentioned he had discussed the project with Michael Wurmbrand during the preceding day or two.

Mrs. Bailey, who held a part-time position as a shorthand and speedwriting instructor, says she has been forced to take a second job to provide for herself and two small children. She says that although she contacted JTTCW, no help was forthcoming until August (after CHRISTIANITY TODAY inquiries).

A U.S. State Department source said Cuba has charged the pair with illegal entry and dissemination of anti-state propaganda, but did not know when they would stand trial. There is little basis for U.S. government intervention, the source said.

Regardless of the outcome, the incident brought closer to home the controversial activities of Bible-smuggling organizations targeted at Communist nations.

HARRY GENET

Moody Bible Institute

A Male Casualty of the Feminist Issue

In 1976 Stanley Gundry wrote a book called Love Them In—an analysis of the theology of Moody Bible Institute founder D. L. Moody. Three years later, the author may be feeling more left out than loved in.

Gundry, a professor of theology for 11 years at Moody, submitted his resignation from the faculty last month—but only under pressure from the Institute hierarchy. Gundry speculated that had he not resigned, “I gather that I would have been terminated with no severance benefits.”

Moody’s displeasure with its respected faculty member (Gundry is immediate past president of the Evangelical Theological Society and a prolific writer) was primarily due to the feminist views espoused by Gundry’s free-lance writer wife, Patricia.

Patricia Gundry wrote Woman, Be Free in 1977. “The basic idea of the book,” her husband explained, “is that there should be no bars to women in places of Christian leadership. She does this while adhering to the authority—even the inerrancy—of Scripture. This is something other books in this area don’t do.”

Gundry agrees with his wife’s views, and says his own position has been known for some time. The subject seldom came up in the classroom, he said, but when it did, “I was careful to state both positions and assign reading on both sides of the issue.”

So why the sudden action against Gundry—nearly two years after publication of his wife’s book? Moody reportedly has received many letters criticizing Mrs. Gundry’s book, and particularly her expressed views on the feminist issue during recent speaking engagements. Constituency and, perhaps more important to the administration, its conservative donors, objected to her advocacy of women’s ordination, said a school official who asked to remain anonymous. (While the book itself doesn’t endorse women’s ordination, said the husband, “that’s an obvious implication.”)

Zondervan Publishers, which only last spring released its paperback version of the book, expressed surprise at the events at Moody. “We’ve received no hate letters about this book,” said Carol Holquist, of the author relations department. “Actually, Woman, Be Free is a Gundry very gentle book.”

The Institute has no official statement on feminist issues or women’s ordination. Public relations director Eric Fellman said, “We have a position that a woman should not be ordained, but I don’t know that it’s stated anywhere. Dr. [George] Sweeting [MBI president] has mentioned that position in his radio messages and so forth.”

Institute officials, according to Gundry, said his position on the feminist issue violated the Institute’s “historic position.” He added, “They considered this particular question to be a matter of such obvious interpretation of Scripture that I was in serious doctrinal error.”

Alfred Martin, Institute vice-president and dean of education, reportedly was most closely involved in the resignation proceedings. However, school officials say the trustees board itself took action on the matter. Martin left for vacation soon after Gundry’s August 1 resignation and could not be reached for comment. However, the Institute released an official statement through its legal office:

“The position of Dr. Gundry and his wife regarding the feminist movement, and therefore the role of women in the church, is objectionable to the administration and trustees of Moody Bible Institute and is the basis of his resignation.… Because this is a personal matter, we have no further comment.”

Gundry objected more to the handling of his departure, than to the basis for it. “At no time was I allowed to state my position to those who were deciding my future at the Institute, and at no time was I allowed to make a defense or appeal.”

The action against Gundry came when most colleges already have firmed up their staffs for the fall term. Gundry, 42, the father of four, was job-hunting from his Wheaton, Illinois, home.

He planned no legal action against the Institute because “there has been a fair financial settlement.” (Moody faculty have verbal, not written contracts, said Institute personnel director Lloyd Dodson. These are reached, he said, during annual spring meetings between the administration and faculty members.)

But Gundry, who says he has many friends at the Institute and has “run the whole gamut of emotions” since his departure, hopes at least to prevent future situations like his own.

“If there is any way that I can be influential in setting up proper grievance and appeal procedures at Moody, I would do that for the benefit of the Institute and the faculty that remain there.”

JOHN MAUST

United Methodists

United or Untied?

The theme of the recent Good News Convocation at Ashland (Ohio) College was “Growing Together as Christian Families.” And the 1,600 participants at the three-day meeting seemed to indicate their opinion that the family with the most growing problems is the 9.8-million-member United Methodist Church.

Paul Mickey, Duke University theologian and chairman of the Good News board of directors, said in an address that “we are in trouble as a church.” While noting that the United Methodist Church “can be renewed” with the help of the Holy Spirit, he noted five crisis points in the denomination. Among these was a theological pluralism that “has been stretched and pulled into a big-top and has collapsed, wet, soggy, and suffocating on the church.”

Mickey’s other concerns, expressed frequently in the past by officials of the 11-year-old unofficial evangelical caucus group, included misplaced denominational funding priorities, a church bureaucracy that had reduced the authority of the annual conferences and local congregations, and church leadership structures that had become more organizational than spiritual.

The Ashland meeting was the final Good News Convocation before the 1980 General Conference, and participants talked political strategy for influencing the 1,000 clergy and lay conference delegates. At two previous General Conferences, which are held only once every four years, Good News sympathizers made their presence known, but this spring they intend to be more systematic and thorough in their lobbying efforts.

Good News won’t be the only special interest group at the General Conference. The liberal Coalition for the Whole Gospel was formed out of a meeting last March of 45 persons in Madison, Wisconsin, for the purpose of influencing the 1980 Conference. One stated goal: to “address directly the intimidating effect of the New Right’s political and theological agenda in the life of the United Methodist Church.”

The Good News Movement hasn’t been exactly popular with at least two other United Methodist groups. The Methodist Federation for Social Action, which, according to executive director George McClain, operates from “a liberation theology perspective,” frequently has criticized Good News. The Evangelical Missions Council of Good News called last year for the resignation of the entire staff of the United Methodist Women’s Division, charging that some of its members had “Marxist views.” Then, in a letter last spring, four former presidents and 60 former members of the division defended the agency against the “libelous attacks” by Good News and against “innuendoes without proof.”

These inner tensions, in addition to a variety of potentially divisive issues—such as ordination of hom*osexuals, various moral issues, and the evangelical emphasis in missions—indicate that the General Conference next April in Indianapolis will be anything but casual.

One issue certain to attract long and perhaps heated discussion at the General Conference involves the present method of church funding. Local United Methodist Churches now pay an apportionment—based upon annual budget and church membership, among other things—to a common fund, the World Service Fund, which finances the various church program agencies.

Good News and certain other Methodists are advocating a policy of “designated giving,” however. In other words, they want to give Methodists the privilege of deciding the agency to which they give their money, and how much.

Charles Keysor, top staff executive of Good News, said that designated giving is a way for church members to “vote with their dollars.” Many United Methodists would not have given money to the Board of Global Ministries, for example, Keysor said in a telephone interview, had they known the agency would give $4,000 for operation costs of a New York office of Robert Mugabe (the guerrilla leader).

Arguing against designated giving has been the General Council of Ministries—an agency that helps determine funding for the various program agencies from the World Service Fund. It went on record last March as saying that selective giving would “destroy the very fabric of our connection and [would] be a theological denial of our concept of Christian community.”

GCM general secretary Norman Dewire in a telephone interview opposed designated giving as a “boycott tactic.” Proponents of designated giving counter that United Methodist officials for years have advocated use of economic sanctions as a means of expressing disapproval of corporate or public policies. Liberal groups then argue that designated giving would lead to an abandonment of funding for social action programs.

The Good News board of directors meeting in Ashland, for the first time announced a policy that would allow United Methodists to support and advocate non-United Methodist mission agencies and missions.

Good News officials said the policy was not a rejection of the denomination’s mission program. Instead, they explained, the policy was meant as a way to give church members more latitude in their giving if they found they could not in good conscience support certain programs or practices of the Board of Global Ministries.

When asked by the Texas Methodist how United Methodist officials would react to the policy, Keysor said: “The general church is proud that it works ecumenically through such groups as the World Council of Churches. What’s disloyal about us doing the same thing through groups we trust?”

… The Unseen Chairman at Every Meeting …

Genevieve Koepke died last March, leaving the Concrete Pipe Company of Menasha, Wisconsin, without a chairman for its board of directors. Her son, the company president, held an election to replace her. In the small board room of the company, he held up the picture of “a face that’s familiar to us all” and nominated Jesus Christ.

The other two board members were enthusiastic, and the three unanimously elected Christ as head of the 45-year-old company, which reported a sales volume last year of $2 million for its concrete pipe for sewers. “Certainly there probably will be some people who will say, ‘Don must have hit his head on the windshield a little too hard that last time,’” Koepke told an Appleton Post-Crescent reporter.

Koepke, 41, has been recuperating for most of the past two years from two bad traffic accidents, which he said have brought him “a lot closer” to Christ.

“He [Christ] runs the place anyway, so it’s time he got the credit for it,” said Koepke.

As required by Wisconsin state law. Concrete Pipe filed the board’s election report with the secretary of state. The state office had not responded yet, although Koepke said that the public’s and company employees’ support of the election has been “fantastic.”

Christ’s director’s fees will be paid to local churches, said Koepke. And should the state ever request an address for the new director, “We’ll say ‘wherever two or more are gathered in his name,’” speculated Koepke.

As far as he is concerned, Christ’s election is permanent: “Who’s going to fire him?”

North American Scene

Most Southern Baptist ties with Wake Forest University would be cut, according to terms of an agreement reached by the university and the North Carolina Baptist State Convention. The agreement, which must be approved by university trustees and at the convention’s annual meeting in November, came after a year of negotiations and two years of tension between the two groups. Points of disagreement have included the university’s desire to obtain federal grants—something the state convention said violates separation of church and state principles. The agreement would end most convention restrictions on the school and regular convention financing of it.

Plans continue for a transdenominational American Festival of Evangelism. The festival will be held in July 1981 in Kansas City as an outgrowth of the work of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Thomas F. Zimmerman, planning committee chairman and general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, says the estimated 25,000 participants will consider ways to evangelize the nation’s unchurched.

The Greek Orthodox Church U.S. was irate over Southern Baptist appointment of two Greek-speaking misionaries to the Boston area. Archdeacon Methodios G. Tournas sent identical letters to Southern Baptist Convention president Adrian Rogers, and to William G. Tanner of the appointing agency, the SBC Home Mission Board, in which he called the appointments “blatantly unchristian, nothing short of proselytism.” Surprised by this reaction, Baptist officials said their intent was to evangelize the unchurched, not to make Baptist proselytes. Tanner said his agency had only responded to requests from Greek-Americans for missions assistance in the Boston area.

The Church of Scientology will pay more than $2 million in damages to a 22-year-old Portland, Oregon, woman. A Portland jury last month ruled in favor of Julie C. Titchbourne, who had filed suit against the church, claiming that it defrauded her by failing to fulfill its promises to improve her life. Mrs. Titchbourne testified that she paid large sums of money for Scientology courses, which, she said, promised, but never gave her, greater self-knowledge, creativity, and higher IQ test scores, among other things. She said she suffered emotional stress as a result. Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard established Scientology in 1954. His church claims a world membership of four million and calls itself an applied religious science.

A Missionary Aviation fellowship pilot died in a July 23 crash in an isolated area of Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Jim Lynne, 39, a New Hampshire, Ohio, native and navy veteran of 150 Vietnam combat missions, was alone with a load of cargo in a 14-passenger, twin-engine aircraft of Australian make. The crash was probably due to mechanical failure, said an MAF spokesman. This follows by one week an accident suffered by Australian MAF in Papua, New Guinea, in which nine persons—one missionary family and two Papuans—were killed. Only recently, MAF, which reports an injury accident rate of only once every 50,000 flight missions, and Wycliffe’s Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, began a safety program that they believe has the potential for 300 to 500 percent improvement in crash survival probability for most aircraft types in mission field use.

The Pope has ordered disclosure of Vatican finances, for centuries one of the world’s best-kept secrets. The Italian magazine L’Espresso reported last month that John Paul II pushed through an order for publication of the Vatican’s budget before the end of this year. He has the support, it claims, of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state. Publishing details of church finances “is so revolutionary,” said L’Espresso, “that only a foreign pope would have the courage to bring it off.”

Church-And-State Issues

Roloff’s Child Care Homes: Religious Rights or License?

“Fight for six years and then give up? Nonsense,” thundered the evangelist. “I will be open again at school time. Jesus never taught anybody to quit.” So said evangelist Lester Roloff, who, in spite of six years of court defeats, a few imprisonments, and the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case, is still fighting to operate three child care homes in south Texas without state licensing.

Roloff operates some seven child care homes in the south but, on religious grounds, has persistently defied orders by the Texas Department of Human Resources to license his three child care homes located in Texas. State District Judge Charles Mathews ruled in June that Roloff’s nonprofit corporation, Roloff Evangelistic Enterprises, Inc., violated his 1976 injunction against operating the children’s homes without license as required by law. He ordered the corporation to pay $23,000 in penalties for violating his order.

The three homes, which housed more than 300 residents, have been shut down on the orders of the judge. The affected homes are the Rebecca Home for Girls and the Lighthouse Home for Boys in Corpus Christi, and the Anchor Home for Boys in Zapata County. Roloff has vowed to continue his fight for what he sees as his religious and constitutional right to keep the homes open without state interference.

Christine Wisian, the DHR agency and institutional licensing representative in Corpus Christi, explained that Texas law requires that anyone operating a child care home for children not related to the employees by blood or marriage must obtain a state license. Roloff, however, insists that his religious conviction prevents him from accepting the authority of the state to license the homes.

Residents of the Roloff homes are mostly troubled teen-agers who have backgrounds of violence, emotional problems, and insecure family relationships. Most of the teen-agers are assigned to him by parents who feel they can no longer cope with these children. “They are mostly the kind of kids other child care homes won’t accept,” Roloff said.

The Roloff homes came to public attention in 1973 when beatings and other questionable forms of punishment were reported. There were allegations that staff members were heavy handed with the children and employed paddles, leather straps, and sometimes withheld meals in disciplining the children. Such methods violate state standards for corporal punishment which, however, allow spanking with open hands.

Roloff and his supporters justify the strict disciplinary methods by pointing out that many of the children at the Roloff homes are hardheaded delinquents.

Last year the Rebecca Home for Girls was the scene of an unreported murder attempt that involved five female residents who tried to stab a sixth girl. Asked why the murder attempt wasn’t reported, Roloff said he did not report the incident because “I knew the state would come and take them over and make them worse than they were. I kept them and had them all saved.” He claims a 90–95 percent conversion rate among the children.

Roloff said that his facilities are maintained on the basis of Bible precepts and that licensing the homes would destroy the religious and moral foundation responsible for the success of his venture.

He said he has refused to be licensed because the state’s child-care laws are “humanistic to the core.” “They [the lawmakers] believe in abortion, and I don’t. They recognize hom*osexuals and lesbians, and that’s sin.”

He explained that licensing the homes would mean he can’t make the children go to Sunday school or church. “You can’t make them memorize the Bible or go to Bible studies,” he said. “You make it a state home. I don’t run a state home because I don’t take money from the state. No one can license my faith.” Roloff claimed that he saves the U.S. taxpayers $10 million a year by taking in drug addicts and delinquents who would otherwise be housed in state institutions.

Attorney General Mark White and Texas Governor Bill Clements expressed satisfaction with the operation when they visited one of the homes. Nevertheless, the attorney general said, the law regarding licensing must be enforced.

Roloff, who describes himself as a fundamentalist, independent, Baptist preacher, said that licensing is “Russian and Communistic.” “We don’t need to be accredited by a failing humanistic system that has no Christ, no Bible, no God, and no standard,” he said. He also intimated that about 200 churchmen who run state accredited child-care centers plan to join him in the violation and have turned in their licenses. However, when contacted, the DHR director of agency and institutional licensing in Austin said that throughout the state only one person, Rev. Earl Little, pastor of Miller Road Baptist Church in Garland, had returned his license in protest.

Texas Attorney General Mark White offered to let Roloff relocate the children if Roloff would obey the court order and close. Some of the girls were moved to Bethesda Home for Girls in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where a state license is not required. Others were placed in the homes of Roloff supporters.

County Attorney Mike Westergreen saw such an agreement as a “scandal” and spearheaded a battle to have Roloff indicted by a Neuces County grand jury. He complained that Roloff “intimidates everybody from the governor’s office down and gets away with it.”

Clements said he had done everything he could to help Roloff, and that the only recourse at this point is for the state legislature to pass laws exempting church-related homes like Roloff’s from state regulations. Such attempts failed during the regular session of the legislature. The governor indicated he might resurrect the “Roloff bills” in a special session of the legislature, and he encouraged Roloff’s supporters to use their persuasive powers on legislators so the bills might be passed.

However, with People’s Temple still in mind, some state legislators were wary of having unaccountable to the government the more than 2,000 private, church-related child-care homes housing about 98,000 youngsters.

Nevertheless, even some Roloff critics admit he is doing a good job with the children. “If only he would get a license,” a DHR worker said wistfully.

Lamenting one of the now empty homes that once housed more than 150 girls, Roloff said in a telephone interview, “Look at the fabulous sparkling facilities, the wall-to-wall carpeting, the million-dollar building, empty—not one girl in it right now. Pray for us.”

FELIX AJOKU

Milwaukeeans responded with gusto last month to the simple gospel message preached by evangelist Billy Graham. During a five-day crusade in the nation’s beer capital, more than 10,000 “inquirers” filed onto the outfield grass in 50,000-seat County Stadium. This number represented 6.8 percent of the 150,000 aggregate attendance total—almost double the average response to Graham altar calls at other U.S. crusades.

Local pastors and Graham team members were excited—but admittedly a little surprised by the receptivity. Historically, Milwaukee has had a reputation as a “deathbed for evangelism,” said local Nazarene pastor and crusade follow-up chairman Walter Ballard.

First traversed in the late seventeenth century by French missionaries and visited after 1848 by a heavy influx of German immigrants, the Milwaukee area became largely conservative Roman Catholic and Lutheran. This characteristic, plus its ethnically mixed population, perhaps made the city a “closed community” in terms of evangelistic outreach, said Ballard. That may be one reason, he speculated, why the Graham team earlier was “reluctant” to hold a Milwaukee crusade. Except for a final night appearance at the successful 1973 Leighton Ford Reachout Crusade, which many credited as giving the spiritual impetus to the Graham meetings, Graham had never held a major evangelistic meeting in Milwaukee.

Interestingly, Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches among the metropolitan area’s 1.4 million population gave Graham some of his most loyal support. Local crusade chairman Arthur Riemer, board chairman of the Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company, is an active Lutheran layman. Roman Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland sent a letter last year to priests throughout his 10-county Milwaukee archdiocese (with an estimated 700,000 parishioners) telling them they could support the meetings.

Some priests were skeptical about the Graham crusade because they saw Graham’s conversion call as giving “one moment of excitement and not a lasting commitment,” said Sister Maureen Hopkins of the archdiocesean ecumenical office. “My argument to them was that it’s not up to Graham, but to the local church, to make conversion a lasting commitment.”

Some of the priests became less critical, she said, when they learned that the Graham team emphasizes local church involvement for new converts and would not challenge their own ministries. A Graham team member conducted a seminar last November for area priests and lay leaders, in which he explained the Graham operation. Many Roman Catholics and Lutherans were among the inquirers during the meetings, said crusade officials. (Graham explained that he uses the word “inquirer,” rather than convert, to describe altar call respondents to “get away from the idea that we [the Graham team] ever convert anybody”; many persons, not just one, have a part in bringing someone to Christ, he said.)

Sterling Huston, team member in charge of Graham’s North American crusades, offered an explanation for the large number of inquirers, saying, “many people came from liturgical backgrounds and had never made a decisive or public decision. They just that felt this was something they wanted to do.”

Graham had these Catholic and Lutheran churchgoers in mind during his sermons, which presented a salvation message simple enough, he said, that either “a child or an adult could understand.”

At each meeting he repeated a recent statement attributed to Pope John Paul I: “The priority of the church ought to be to evangelize those who have already been baptized.” He followed this statement at the concluding service on Sunday with, “Perhaps many people need to come and reconfirm their confirmation.” And at that meeting, which began with Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and concluded as had the four previous services with “Just As I Am,” more than 2,300 persons responded. Even then, said crusade chairman Riemer, some of the inquirer figures may have been low since many went back into the stands before counselors could reach them.

Adeline Smith, a Roman Catholic and one of 1,500 counselors who attended each meeting (more than 2,300 counselors were trained), said most of the persons she counseled were already affiliated with a church and were from out of town.

The latter may be explained by Graham’s continuing drawing power. A Minneapolis man, carrying an overnight duffel bag, had ridden a bus into Milwaukee Saturday morning and would leave the same night; he tries to attend at least one crusade per year, regardless of its location, he said.

But some of the attenders may have been in town for the Wisconsin State Fair, which concluded the same day as the crusade. The fair dates were set after the crusade was announced, said Graham’s director of media and public relations, Donald Bailey. But what at first was an irritation to the Graham team, later was seen as a “plus,” said Bailey.

Graham made appearances at the fairgrounds each of the three days before the crusade. His brother-in-law and associate evangelist, Leighton Ford, held a Sunday morning service in the amphitheater at the fairgrounds, and Graham team vocalists entertained the fairgoers with gospel music during the week.

Graham appeared on three local television stations during the week. Due partly to curiosity aroused by recent Graham biographies, Graham attracted a running sermon-by-sermon commentary by the local newspapers. The extent and the tone of news media coverage in Milwaukee pleased Graham, and he told the County Stadium audience on Sunday, “I think you ought to write to the editors and thank them for the wonderful media coverage.”

Several columnists questioned the lasting effect of the crusade—in terms of church attendance and changed lives. As usual, the Graham team, in conjunction with the local committee, planned a number of follow-up activities: “The most that have ever been done,” said follow-up chairman Ballard, whose lengthy itinerary for follow-up of Milwaukee inquirers began with an on-the-field referral to a local church. The inquirer would be contacted within 24 hours by his field counselor, and would be directed into a Bible study and nurture group. A personal enrichment seminar for inquirers would be held later, said Ballard. All inquirers were asked to listen regularly to a local radio program of Christian nurture content.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee arranged a special eucharistic celebration for Roman Catholic inquirers. The celebration, held a week after the crusade, would indicate that the sacraments are “still an important part of the church,” said Sister Hopkins, and that Roman Catholic doctrine and Graham’s message need not be contradictory.

The seemingly tireless Graham, 60, planned his next crusade for Halifax, Nova Scotia, in late October. During the past 12 months he has held crusades in Norway, Sweden, Poland, Australia, Singapore, and the U.S. cities of Tampa and Nashville. After an Honor America Day rally in Washington, D.C., July 4, he left for Europe on a working vacation and a visit in Switzerland with his daughter Gigi and her husband. While there, said media director Bailey, Graham spent about six hours a day writing a new book—his tenth, scheduled for 1980 publication, on the subject of why God allows suffering

Public education, originally intended to be under parental control, is now controlled by the state.

Public education ought to be of concern to pastors. By far the largest proportion of school children in our churches attend the public schools operated by local government. The education of the children in his parish or congregation is a subject in which a pastor has a vested interest. The public school certainly must be reckoned with as it concerns the education of Christian children.

There are at least three benefits of public education. First of all, students can acquire and develop certain basic life skills, including communications (reading, writing, verbal expression), computation (useful in balancing a checkbook), and a sense of cosmic awareness or of participation in a larger world.

Second, public education is a guardian of much that is of traditional value to American culture. Despite recent inroads by nihilism, socialism, and other less-than-desirable world views, public education today remains a reserve of our basic traditional, historical, literary, and political heritage.

Third, public education provides a wealth of specialized training in all vocations. Whether mechanic or lawyer, forest ranger or physician, the public sector offers programs of preparation, whatever a student’s career aspiration may be. For Christians who believe that every legitimate calling is sacred and a potential means of serving God, this is an inestimable service.

At the same time, however, while we are willing to acknowledge the benefits of public education, we must not fail to note its problems. It is because these problems are so large that the pastor should be concerned about the education of the children in his parish. The gravest problem in public education is that there is no satisfactory philosophical/moral basis for “doing” education. In its totally secularized environment, educational philosophies motivated by behaviorism, existentialism, and evolutionism, oiled by a prevailing air of pragmatism, plant antitheistic thinking in the minds of children who have been taught that there is no difference between themselves and a pool of slime. This “humanistic” approach to pedagogy is actually the most dehumanizing aspect of public education. Gone or going are such traditional values as human dignity, human uniqueness, and human compassion, while increasingly present are ideas of mechanization, manipulation, and “self-actualization.” Such ideas are derived from relative life perspectives: they are of limited value to children, who need to know how to get along in the world. When the new interest in socialist education is added to this, one perceives that the dominance of the state over all of human life is not far behind.

A second problem is that there is virtually no local control over the schools. The decisions that must be made in order to carry out the work of education in a school district are not made by parents or by local school boards. They are made by appointed rather than elected public officials and federal judges. At issue is money, and local school districts that refuse to adhere to the standards, criteria, and judgments imposed from higher levels are in danger of having their funds cut back, withheld, or totally withdrawn.

A third major problem is that schools lack a sufficient authority base. As home and family relationships have declined in recent years, so has the doctrine of in loco parentis. With the authority to command attention and to discipline difficult students severely restricted, teachers have been put on the defensive and are asked to teach in often impossible situations. The threat of bodily assault, the ubiquity of drugs, and a general indifference to learning, make a devoted teacher’s work a struggle against frustration and despair.

What can a local pastor do for the children of his congregation who attend public schools? I would like to suggest six possible areas for ministry.

1. Be thankful for the good in public education and let those public educators who treat their work as more than just a job know that you appreciate what they are doing. Cultivate good relationships with administrators and teachers, and let them know that as a community leader you support the good they can do. Pray for them—and let them know that you do.

2. Be informed about the problems of public education. While this will happen naturally because of your new relationships, you can also learn about them in other ways. Read about public education; journals such as the Kappan or Educational Leadership are helpful. Ask parents and students to describe the problems as they see them. Attend PTA meetings when possible. Think the problems through and try to formulate some opinion about them.

3. Establish a relationship with the school-age children in your parish. Invite them for lunch; teach them in a Bible class; do all you can to get to know them and to let them get to know you. Be a model for them who thinks, feels, prays, and lets his Christianity affect everything—even his views on public education.

4. Develop a ministry to families. Seek to strengthen the home and to help open channels of communication between parents and children and the Lord. Show families how they can create an atmosphere of mutual appreciation, concern, growth, and awareness of problems. When you minister to this basic building block of society, you make use of the most natural and influential method God has provided to protect his people against the incursion of evil.

5. Develop educational supplements or alternatives for families and especially for children—and take the ministry of your church’s Sunday school program seriously. The sooner we eliminate the Mickey Mouse in church education, the sooner we will experience God’s blessings. Work with your teachers to help them become better at their jobs. Make excellence your standard and strive to reach realistic educational goals in your church.

You might prepare a reading list for parents on the subject of general education, and encourage them to become more informed about its problems and possibilities. Explore the possibility of starting a noon hour Bible study in a home near a local school. Start a class in catechesis. Find other ways to have a direct hand in the education of the children in your parish.

6. Finally, pray for your children, and pray for those who, through the public school, exert the second strongest influence upon their lives—an influence that is often stronger than that of the church.

As pastors, we cannot afford to neglect this area of concern. In today’s atmosphere of increasing unrest, let us demonstrate that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings stability, purpose, and hope, not only to education, but to all of human life.—T. M. MOORE, minister of education, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Mike Blanchard’s music confirms the common Christian experience.

Michael Kelly Blanchard has confirmed his special niche in Christian folk music with his second album, Quail. Intertwining the many varied elements of human experience, Blanchard writes and performs songs that are emotionally honest. Absent are the stock Christian phrases and curt religious comfort. Instead, we have fresh glimpses of that many-faceted jewel—a Christian faith.

Quail features Michael’s classical guitar played in a folk style, and his rich baritone voice, backed by the delicate contralto voice of his wife, Greta. Blanchard’s innovative guitar work, his occasionally gruff voice, and Greta’s soothing tones are fine musical forms for his poetic insight. Thanks to the assistance of Noel (Paul) Stookey, the album is technically immaculate, but never slick. It is perfect for the spectrum of humanity that Blanchard portrays.

Side one is the everyman side. Four of the six songs explore the glory, shame, and ambiguity of love. “Opposite’s Game” humorously celebrates the mystery of how a couple’s differences pull them together. In “Nicole,” a simple man laments the loss of his lady, and warns her of the false promises of the city and the “flashing, fancy minds.” “Personals” juxtaposes, then blends, two lonely, middle-aged pleas for companionship. The subtle suggestion that the two find each other makes the otherwise sad song gleam. Spanning the extremes of love is “Home to Stay.” It is set after a love has died, but it expresses a thanksgiving for that love, and a quiet conviction that: “Down the road there is a day, as simple as it seems/When love will bring you home to stay/And give you back your dreams/And give you back your dreams.” Amidst the perplexing tangle of human relationships, Blanchard sees the tender hand of providence.

The second side of Quail creatively reworks scriptural incidences. In one selection, Blanchard walks us on the Emmaus road, where our questions are answered by a unique man we don’t readily recognize. In another song, a man cannot understand his cousin Willie’s attraction, and subsequent martyrdom, for a once popular preacher and his “paupers’ creed.” Both songs are rich in spiritual drama. “Quail,” the title cut, recalls the wilderness provisions of God described in Exodus (not Numbers), and applies the description to our situation today:

Here we are, alone on a desert,

fed dawn to dusk, dark to day.

Every morning we wake up,

to find just the measure,

of food that we need for the way.

Once we would ask if we could have more,

to see that our future survived,

But we know now at last,

that nothing is sure, except that

at evening the quail will arrive.

This song embraces the Christian experience so beautifully that Noel Stookey, a fine writer himself, has added it to his repertoire.

The meat of Michael Kelly Blanchard’s work is the serious song. Spicing his music is his facetious rendition of the second chapter of Daniel, and the mock epic battle with insomnia contained in “Stupid Sheep.” Rolled together, Michael Blanchard’s music confirms common experience, and lights new places for faith to explore.

Scott W. Curtis teaches English and social studies at the Oxford Academy in Westbrook, Conn.

General Most books are readily classifiable by time or place or topic but here are some that range beyond such boundaries, in addition to Christianity in European History. Libraries should have The Church in a Secularized Society by Roger Aubert et al. (Paulist), which treats Catholicism in the last couple of centuries and completes a series of five massive volumes called The Christian Centuries. The First Six Hundred Years (1964) and The Middle Ages (1969) were reissued last year, but volumes three and four are being revised before publication in English. By contrast, Howard Clark Kee uses only 100 pages to survey Christianity (Argus).

Faith’s Heroes by Sherwood Wirt (Cornerstone) is a delightful look at 10 great Christians from Polycarp to Amy Carmichael by the retired editor of Decision. A similar approach, but sticking to Catholics for six post-Reformation choices, is Saints Alive! by Anne Fremantle (Doubleday). A different approach to great leaders is provided by Herbert Mayer in Pastoral Care: Its Roots and Renewal (John Knox). He looks at a dozen men, such as Ambrose, Luther, and Asbury, to see how they shepherded in their time and what we can learn from them for today.

A Concise History of the Christian World Mission by J. Herbert Kane (Baker) is full of names and dates. By contrast, In Search of Christianity by Ninian Smart (Harper & Row) is a skilled observer’s impressions of a vast diversity of places and ways of being Christian, past and present. Geoffrey Bromiley surveys the development of doctrine in Historical Theology (Eerdmans) but with no attempt to be comprehensive for the complex period since the Reformation. The Parables of Jesus by Warren Kissinger (Scarecrow) is a history of the interpretation of the parables together with a thorough bibliography. As such it sheds much light on how different ages have understood this distinctive of our Lord’s ministry. Faith and Belief by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (Princeton) surveys the development of confusion between these two key concepts in Christian thought against the backdrop of these concepts in other religions.

The history of Christianity needs to be compared and contrasted with the history of other religions. Mircea Eliade launched a proposed three-volume magnum opus, A History of Religious Ideas (University of Chicago). The first volume covers from the stone age to the Eleusinian mysteries. Wanderings is a well-illustrated and skillfully written history of the Jews, especially stressing their relationships with others, by Chaim Potok (Knopf).

WORSHIP AND SYMBOLISM Besides The Westminster Dictionary of Worship and The Study of Liturgy, five books in this area combine well-written text with skillfully chosen illustrations: from Protestantism, The Morning Stars Sang: The Bible in Popular and Folk Art by Anita Schorsch and Martin Grief (Universe); from Orthodoxy, The Icon: Holy Images, Sixth to Fourteenth Century by Kurt Weitzmann (Braziller); and from Catholicism, The Mass by George Every (Our Sunday Visitor), Heraldry in the Catholic Church by Bruno Bernard Heim (Humanities Press), and Rose Windows by Painton Cowen (Chronicle Books [870 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102]). The last named describes the most impressive of Gothic cathedral windows. Teachers and students should be alert to the value of such visual aids in understanding the faith of earlier ages.

The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam edited by Joseph Gutmann (Scholars) and Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture by Victor Turner and Edith Turner (Columbia) are scholarly essays on the roles of art and of sacred journeys.

From Sabbath to Sunday by Samuele Bacchiocchi (Gregorian University/available from the author at 230 Lisa Lane, Berrien Springs, MI 49103) and This Is the Day: The Biblical Doctrine of the Christian Sunday in Its Jewish and Early Church Setting by Roger Beckwith and Wilfrid Stott (Attic) examine the historical evidence to build cases for, respectively, Saturday and Sunday observances.

HYMNODY The diversity and antiquity of the Christian heritage is probably better reflected in our hymnbooks than in any other single source. Erik Routley, a Britisher now teaching at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, illustrates the ecumenicity of hymns by the publishers of three of his latest books. Hope, an evangelical music publisher, has issued under its Agape imprint Church Music and the Christian Faith, a survey with particular reference to the organ. Routley, a Congregationalist, also offers two major books through Liturgical Press, imprint of the Benedictines. A Panorama of Christian Hymnody is a historical survey, including the texts of 590 hymns, that ranges the English-speaking world and looks at spirituals and songs for children as well as more traditional hymns. An English-Speaking Hymnal Guide provides information about 888 of the most popular hymns. (The same publisher offers a far more specialized work. Papal Legislation on Sacred Music: 95 A.D. to 1977 A.D. by Robert Hayburn.)

Two reference works from Concordia have a German Lutheran leaning that will compensate for Routley’s English bent. A Handbook of Church Music, edited by Carl Halter and Carl Schalk, and Key Words in Church Music, edited by Carl Schalk, both devote considerable space to historical dimensions. Singing With Understanding by Kenneth Osbeck (Kregel) presents words, music, and background information for 101 favorite hymns. Poets of the Church by Edwin Hatfield was originally released in 1884 and is now reprinted by Gale. Sketches of some 300 British and American hymnwriters of the previous two centuries are presented.

Of related interest is A Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence by Jane Stuart Smith and Betty Carlson (Good News), who are associated with L’Abri. Also note The Odes of Solomon (Scholars), edited and translated from Syriac by James Charlesworth, who believes the odes to be the earliest Christian hymnbook.

SPIRITUALITY A standard reference work for libraries is The Oxford Dictionary of Saints by David Hugh Farmer (Oxford), with entries on a thousand saints associated with the British Isles. Christian Prayer Through the Centuries by Joseph Jungmann (Paulist) is a popular survey. Western Mysticism: A Guide to Basic Works, compiled by Mary Ann Bowman (American Library Association), is a helpful bibliography.

A Great Treasury of Christian Spirituality, compiled by Edward Alcott (Carillon), contains not only the usual selections (Bernard, Teresa), but some unexpected ones (Watchman Nee, Paul Tillich). The Classics of Western Spirituality series from Paulist continues with such recent Christian additions as Origen and Richard of St. Victor and two Protestant greats, Johann Arndt and William Law.

The global resurgence of religions, both traditional and innovative, has stimulated renewed academic interest. A leading evangelical sociologist, David Moberg, has edited a score of papers presented at two international sociological conferences under the title Spiritual Well-Being (University Press of America).

WOMEN In addition to the previously mentioned Women of Spirit, there are other titles to note in this burgeoning area of study and restudy. Women and World Religions by Denise Lardner Carmody (Abingdon) surveys the historical role of women in each major religion. Beyond Androcentrism, edited by Rita Gross (Scholars), explores the same ground with more detailed essays. Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present by Sheila Rothman (Basic) looks at society as a whole, although religion looms large. Our Struggle to Serve: The Stories of 15 Evangelical Women, edited by Virginia Hearn (Word), can help promote understanding by those of more traditional views. Women in Baptist Life by Leon McBeth (Broadman) is a well-documented survey, while Full Circle: Stories of Mennonite Women, edited by Mary Lou Cummings (Faith and Life), includes 19 brief biographies from the past two centuries.

SOCIETY Several brief works range throughout Christian history, reflecting on various aspects of the church in society: Good News to the Poor: The Challenge of the Poor in the History of the Church by Julio de Santa Ana (Orbis), The Idea of Justice in Christian Perspective by Jan Dengerink (Wedge), Christianity and Political Philosophy by Frederick Wilhelmsen (University of Georgia), and Religious Thought and Economic Society by Jacob Viner (Duke).

Studies of the interrelatedness of Christianity and society in modern times are increasingly important as even secularists begin to wonder whether human rights and freedoms and a decent standard of living can long continue alongside the undermining of the Christian roots. Bernard-Henri Lévy in Barbarism with a Human Face (Harper & Row), a European bestseller, contends: “Apply Marxism in any country you want, you will always find Gulag in the end.” But many professing Christians don’t see it that way. See Varieties of Christian-Marxist Dialogue, edited by Paul Mojzes (Ecumenical Press, at Temple University).

John Senior, a classics professor, writes on The Death of Christian Culture (Arlington) and accuses Western intellectuals of preparing the way for a new Dark Age. In the previous one, it was the frontier monasteries that kept classical learning alive; will Bible colleges perform that function this time around?

Mordechai Rotenberg in Damnation and Deviance: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Failure (Free Press) uses historical illustrations to blame Calvinism for much of our modern malaise. He says that Hasidic Judaism represents a better approach. It is thoughtful, but his data can be interpreted differently.

The important relationship of Christianity to the development of science, which in turn has so affected the modern world, is again sketched by one of the ablest historians of science, Stanley Jaki, in The Origin of Science and the Science of Its Origin (Regnery/Gateway).

Three notable collections of colloquium papers very definitely reflect a global perspective: Church and State: Opening a New Ecumenical Discussion (World Council of Churches), Church and Nationhood (World Evangelical Fellowship), and The Ministry of Development in Evangelical Perspective: A Symposium on the Social and Spiritual Mandate, edited by Robert Lincoln Hanco*ck (Carey).

The question of war and Christian participation in it has been a perennial concern for the church, with Christian militarism generally having the upper hand. The larger context is surveyed by John Ferguson in War and Peace in the World’s Religions (Oxford). A major compilation of documents from the past four decades, mainly reflecting the views of traditional pacifists such as Mennonites and Quakers, in dialogue with other views, has been edited by Donald Durnbaugh. On Earth Peace (Brethren Press). It is a necessary source for serious study of this subject. A Jesuit’s personal narrative of visits to pacifist activists around the world is Peace Eyes, published by the Center for Peace Studies at Georgetown University.

HISTORICAL METHOD AND REFLECTION The methods that historians use and the search for overall meanings in events both past and projected are of considerable relevance to Christians and to theology. Two evangelical historians offer useful introductions to the complex of issues raised by historical study: History in the Making: An Introduction to the Study of the Past by Roy Swanstrom (InterVarsity), and God and Man in Time: A Christian Approach to Historiography by Earle Cairns (Baker). One of the most renowned elder statesmen among church historians, Roland Bainton, offers his reflections on the importance of studying the past and how it relates to Christian faith in Yesterday, Today, and What Next? (Augsburg).

One of the ablest historians in our time who is a Christian is Herbert Butterfield. Seventeen of his essays, including nine previously unpublished, have been issued as Writings on Christianity and History, having been selected and skillfully introduced by C. T. McIntire (Oxford). A new edition of Arnold Toynbee’s Gifford Lectures, An Historian’s Approach to Religion, was also released by Oxford with the addition of the famed thinker’s previously unpublished last essay that expressed his life-long agnosticism. It is appropriately entitled “Gropings in the Dark.” Toynbee increasingly appreciated the importance of the religious dimension in human affairs but he made no claims to be Christian.

Of more specialized interest: Knowledge and Explanation in History by R. F. Atkinson (Cornell). Pasts and Futures, Or What Is History For? by Jean Chesneaux (Thames and Hudson), Has History Any Meaning? A Critique of Popper’s Philosophy of History by Burleigh Taylor Wilkins (Cornell), and Max Weber’s Vision of History by Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter (University of California).

EARLY CHURCH Probably the most popular nonbiblical saint is Nicholas (alias Santa Claus). A detailed scholarly study not only of what can be known about the man, supposedly a fourth century bishop in Asia Minor, but also of his impact ever since is provided by Charles Jones in Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan (University of Chicago).

A first-century Jew with considerable influence on early Christian exegetical and theological scholarship is helpfully introduced in Philo of Alexandria by Samuel Sandmel (Oxford). A different region is the focus in Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era by Wayne Meeks and Robert Wilken (Scholars). Two detailed works are from Oxford: Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian by Philip Rousseau, and Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt by Colin Roberts.

Kudos to Baker for their active reprinting program. Noteworthy here: The Beginnings of Christianity: Part One, edited by F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, is actually a monumental five-volume commentary on Acts (the projected part two never having appeared); The Early Christians, edited by Eberhard Arnold, consists of excerpts organized by topics; and A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine, edited by Roy Battenhouse, is a thorough introduction to the great bishop and theologian.

MIDDLE AGES Besides Pelikan’s The Growth of Medieval Theology, the other offerings in this field were more restricted in scope. But the following titles should be of interest to some nonspecialists: Light from the West: The Irish Mission and the Emergence of Modern Europe by William Marnell (Seabury), Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe by Lester Little (Cornell), The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution by John Martin Klassen of Trinity Western College (Columbia), Richard the Lionheart by John Gillingham (Times Books), The Trial of the Templars by Malcolm Barber (Cambridge), Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites by Ewert Cousins (Franciscan Herald), and an important collection of Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, edited by Anne Hudson (Cambridge).

THE REFORMATION Probably the most important study in this area is Luther’s House of learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation by Gerald Strauss (Johns Hopkins). Luther and his associates were not just concerned about theology and church practice, but with upgrading the spiritual and moral tone of the whole of society. Compulsory schooling was the chosen method. But the author’s examination of the evidence leads to the conclusion that at least for Germany, “a century of Protestantism brought little or no change in the common religious conscience and in the ways in which ordinary men and women conducted their lives.”

Biographical studies included two lavishly illustrated books from Collins: Thomas More: The King’s Good Servant by Gordon Rupp, and Ignatius of Loyola by Karl Rahner and Paul Imhof. Also published: a study of the theology of Robert Barnes and William Tyndale, Luther’s English Connection by James Edward McGoldrick (Northwestern Publishing House); a definitive biography of Lazarus Spengler, leader of the Lutheran Reformation of Nuremberg, by Harold Grimm (Ohio State University); and Faithful Unto Death by Myron Augsburger (Word), popular accounts of 15 Anabaptist youths who were tortured and executed for their faith by fellow professing Christians.

Reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Hussite movements are presented by Jan Lochman, a Czech, in Living Roots of Reformation (Augsburg).

Also note a new edition of Luther’s highly influential small and large catechisms, entitled What Does This Mean? edited by Philip Pederson (Augsburg), and the translation of part twoof early Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz’s Examination of the Council of Trent (Concordia).

WORLD EVANGELISM The most widely known evangelist of all time has been in the news even more frequently than usual the past couple of years and three major recent books reflect the diversity of accounts. Considerable publicity has been given to Marshall Frady’s Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (Little, Brown). Frady claims to be basically sympathetic but understandably many secular reviewers and supporters of Graham feel otherwise. In any case, the book in key respects is also about Americans in general and evangelicals in particular; it is not simply about one evangelist who found himself in some peculiarly demanding roles. The other two major books are clearly favorable and, besides their normal audience, should be read especially by those who are exposed to Frady’s interpretation. Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World by John Pollock (Harper & Row) updates the same biographer’s earlier book by describing Graham s worldwide ministry in the seventies. Billy Graham: Saint or Sinner by Curtis Mitchell (Revell) examines and refutes the allegations of irregularities over the past couple of years. A warm appreciation for Graham as a father is given by daughter Gigi Tchividjian in Thank You, Lord, for My Home (Ideals).

Another famous global evangelist is the subject of a very favorable biography by Richard Quebedeaux, previously known for spotting or charging trends in evangelicalism. His latest book is I Found It! The Story of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade (Harper & Row). Two less spectacular organizations assisting in world evangelism are reported in Count It All Joy! The Story of Joy Ridderhof and Gospel Recordings, Inc. by Phyllis Thompson (Harold Shaw), and The Word that Kindles by George Cowan (Christian Herald) and God’s Free-Lancers by James Hefley (Tyndale), both on aspects of Wycliffe Bible Translators. A different communications medium, broadcasting, which aims to help believers as well as to evangelize the lost, is enthusiastically portrayed and defended by Ben Armstrong in The Electric Church (Nelson).

An enthusiastic overall survey of contemporary evangelism is by Ted Engstrom of World Vision. What In the World Is God Doing? The New Face of Missions (Word). But for a sobering awareness of how much still needs to be done (which could provoke questions about whether many evangelistic dollars are wisely spent) see Operation World, a brief country-by-country survey of evangelical strength and weakness, by P. J. Johnstone, available from Send the Light (P. O. Box 148, Midland Park. NJ 07432), and especially see Unreached Peoples ’79 edited by C. Peter Wagner and Edward Dayton (David C. Cook). The latter book, growing out of a project of the Lausanne Committee and World Vision, is a major contribution to the developing concept of evangelizing by peoples rather than by country (a unit which normally includes numerous peoples with widely varying responses to the gospel). This approach also needs to be employed in historical studies rather than focusing on artificial national or denominational boundaries.

ECUMENISM The World Council of Churches comes in for criticism in Amsterdam to Nairobi by Ernest Lefever (Ethics and Public Policy Center at Georgetown University) with respect to its activities regarding the Third World, in The World Council of Churches and the Demise of Evangelism by Harvey Hoekstra (Tyndale), and in The Russians and the World Council of Churches by J. A. Hebly (Christian Journals [760 W. Somerset, Ottawa, Ontario]).

The ecumenical community Taize is celebrated by Rex Brico (Collins). The ecumenicity of the Pentecostal-charismatic movements is the subject of Locusts and Wild Honey by Rex Davis (World Council of Churches) and Three Sisters by Michael Harper (Tyndale), a charismatic Anglican who compares evangelicals and Protestant and Catholic charismatics.

CATHOLICISM Major theological and academic libraries have the 15-volume New Catholic Encyclopedia issued in 1967 by McGraw-Hill. A supplemental vol. 16 appeared in 1974, and now vol. 17 has been released with some 800 articles from A to Z concentrating on “change in the church,” of which there has been plenty. Many of the entries are of relevance to Protestants, from “abortion” to “women.” (It is available also from copublisher Publishers Guild, Box 754, Palatine, IL 60067.)

Not the least of the changes has been in the papacy. The Inner Elite by Gary MacEoin (Andrews and McMeel) provided information about each of the cardinals in anticipation of an approaching conclave to select a successor to the ailing Paul VI. Journalists were very glad for its existence when they had to refer to it twice to find out about previously little-known, newly elected popes. Two journalistic accounts are noteworthy: The Year of the Three Popes by Peter Hebblethwaite (Collins) is the more academic in tone; The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican by Andrew Greeley (Andrews and McMeel) tells more than can be known but in the author’s customary engaging (often infuriating) style.

Looking back a little, Between Two Wars by Robin Anderson (Franciscan Herald) tells about Pius XI, who served from 1922 to 1939. The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958–1974 by John Coleman (University of California) is an excellent study of how one of the most conservative branches of Catholicism swiftly became one of the most progressive. Catholicism and History by Owen Chadwick (Cambridge) gives fascinating insights into the process by which the Vatican finally allowed scholars to use its archives and some of what was discovered therein.

The roles of monks and nuns have been important for a very long time. Reflections on changes in the past as well as prospects for the future are in Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life by Lawrence Cada, et al. (Seabury), New Pressures, New Responses in Religious Life by John Dondero and Thomas Frery (Alba), In Habit: A Study of Working Nuns by Suzanne Campbell-Jones (Pantheon), and Forty Years Behind the Wall by M. Raymond, a Trappist (Our Sunday Visitor).

PROTESTANTISM No new major surveys of any of the worldwide denominations appeared last year that I know of. Stephen Neill’s Anglicanism (Oxford) is back in print in a fourth edition while The Church in History by John Booty (Seabury) is on the same subject but with American Episcopalians chiefly in mind. Also in a fourth edition is Presbyterians: Their History and Beliefs by Walter Lingle and John Kuykendall (John Knox), a brief account that does not reflect Calvinistic orthodoxy. Pentecostals Around the World is an informal, personal account by Karl Roebling (Exposition). The Mennonite World Handbook, edited by Paul Kraybill (Mennonite World Conference [528 E. Madison, Lombard, IL 60148]), is an essential guide to the vast array of Mennonite (and related) denominations.

Official accounts of their overseas work by American-based bodies include: Founded on the Word, Focused on the World: The Story of the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society (P. O. Box 5, Wheaton, IL 60187), A People of Mission: A History of General Conference Mennonite Overseas Missions by James Juhnke (Faith and Life), and The Expanding Church by Spencer Palmer (Deseret) on the rapidly growing, non-Protestant Mormons.

AFRICA Several important books appeared during the past year that sum up present knowledge while pointing the way to future studies. Christianity in Independent Africa, edited by Edward Fasholé-Luke, Richard Gray, Adrian Hastings, and Godwin Tasie (Indiana University), includes two score essays on specific topics or case studies, mostly from people who are or were based in Africa and half by Africans. A different style of scholarship, of even more interest to the nonspecialist, though not possible without the foundation of detailed labors by others, is represented by two historical surveys. Peter Falk includes even the earliest centuries in North Africa in a comprehensive survey of Christianity in every corner of the continent in The Growth of the Church in Africa (Zondervan). The 550-page book is crammed full of names, dates, and places. More readable, and much more limited in its time frame is A History of African Christianity, 1950–1975 by Adrian Hastings (Cambridge). Both books are well documented and indexed and include lengthy bibliographies.

Toward the end of 1976, a major Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly was held in Nairobi, bringing evangelical leaders from around the continent face to face. Together in One Place is the story of PACLA by Michael Cassidy and Gottfried Osei-Mensah while Facing the New Challenges is a compilation of some 100 speeches delivered there. Both volumes are published by Evangel in Kenya and available together for $12.50 from African Enterprise, P. O. Box 988, Pasadena, CA 91102. Four months later a smaller gathering at Milligan College featured four African speakers with responses by others that were published as The Church in Africa, 1977, edited by Charles Taber (Carey). A different theological perspective is represented in the papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians held in Ghana at the end of 1977 and published as African Theology En Route, edited by Kofi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres (Orbis).

Thoughtful works by single individuals include The End of an Era: Africa and the Missionary by Elliott Kendall (London: SPCK), The Missions on Trial by Walbert Buhlmann (Orbis), An Urban Strategy for Africa by Timothy Monsma (Carey), and Toward an African Theology by John Pobee (Abingdon). The first is an interpretive historical survey, basically sympathetic to the missionaries. The second is a Franciscan leader’s report of an imaginary courtroom trial with witnesses for and against missions. The last two look to the future evangelistically and theologically. Meanwhile, don’t neglect the pre-Christian past. The Religion, Spirituality, and Thought of Traditional Africa is by Dominique Zahan (University of Chicago), an expert in the field.

Turning from the continent as a whole to specific sections of it, The Church Struggle in South Africa by John de Gruchy (Eerdmans) ably gives historical background to the racial conflicts. The Boy Child Is Dying by Judy Boppell Peace (InterVarsity) shares experiences in the life of an American who lived in South Africa for eight years, which can help all readers to understand a little better something of the suffering there. One of the best known South Africans was the prolific nineteenth-century devotional writer and churchman who is the subject of a biography by Leona Choy, Andrew Murray: Apostle of Abiding Love (Christian Literature Crusade). A twentieth-century figure, with a different style of spirituality than Murray’s, is C. F. Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner who was a successful pastor, moderator of a major regional synod in one of the Reformed churches, and who was willing to forfeit his standing in the white church and society when he became convinced that his church’s support for apartheid was contrary to biblical principles. Read his story in Naudé: Prophet to South Africa by G. McLeod Bryan (John Knox).

The autobiography of the recently elected prime minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, Rise Up and Walk by Abel Muzorewa (Abingdon), tells of the Methodist bishop who entered civil politics and, after the book was published, became the first black leader of his nation.

Moving up to central Africa, Zaire: Midday in Missions by Donald McGavran and Norman Riddle (Judson) first tells of the past work that has seen such a flourishing Christian community planted and then looks to the future. Caught in the Crossfire by Levi Keidel (Herald) is fiction, based very closely on fact with respect to civil war in Zaire in the sixties, and varying Christian responses to it.

The first black missionary from America went to west Africa, and his biography, as well as the story of the missionary society of black Baptists that bears his name, is told in Lott Carey by Leroy Fitts (Judson).

Two detailed scholarly studies that advance the understanding of evangelism in Africa are Worldview and the Communication of the Gospel: A Nigerian Case Study by Marguerite Kraft (Carey) and The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya, 1875–1935 by Robert Strayer (State University of New York).

ASIA Comparatively little on Christianity in Asia came to my attention last year. Perhaps the most significant is Nepal and the Gospel of God by Jonathan Lindell, telling of the Christian presence in that predominantly Hindu mountain kingdom. The focus is on the 25-year-old United Mission to Nepal, publishers of the book. (North Americans may obtain the book for $5.95 prepaid from Mrs. Char Valvik, 5744 23rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55417.)

Especially focusing on the decade from 1964 to 1974 is Protestantism in Changing Taiwan by Dorothy Raber (Carey).

There is sure to be a rash of books on China. Three short ones to note: Love China Today edited by David Aikman (Tyndale) and China: A New Day by W. Stanley Mooneyham (Logos), both from an evangelical viewpoint, and China: Search for Community by Raymond Whitehead and Rhea Whitehead (Friendship) from a nonevangelical stance, quite sympathetic to the mainland government.

EUROPE Besides the books on specific portions of Europe or on the worldwide dimensions of European-based denominations, there were two surveys of recent European Christianity from American evangelical perspectives: The Changing Church in Europe is a well-documented overview by mission executive Wayne Detzler (Zondervan), and Europe at the Crossroads, a briefer, more personal account by journalist Wallace Henley (Good News).

BRITISH ISLES One of the most influential Christian writers of all time was John Bunyan. His numerous works are widely available, but the sort of critical editions (comparing the variations in editions in the author’s lifetime) that are widely available for other writers are outdated. So we welcome volume eight (one of the first to appear of a projected 13-volume series) of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan (Oxford). The four best known works are not in this series. For brief excerpts from the more than 60 books by Bunyan, see Upon a Penny Loaf compiled by Roger Palms (Bethany Fellowship).

Bunyan was a dissenter from the state church, and suffered imprisonment for his views. An interesting overview of the diverse and globally influential tradition of dissent in England from 1700 to 1930 is provided in A Gathered Church by Donald Davie (Oxford).

More specialized studies with wider than usual interest are, in roughly chronological order, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England by Arnold Pritchard (University of North Carolina), Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism by Andrew Weiner (University of Minnesota), Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age by Peter Milward (University of Nebraska), John Wesley and His World by John Pudney (Scribners), Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1790s to the 1840s by W. H. Oliver (Oxford), The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800–70 by Desmond Bowen (McGill-Queen’s University), and The Man in the Manse, on nineteenth-century Scottish ministers, by Ronald Blakey (Columbia).

WESTERN EUROPE Dale Brown’s Understanding Pietism (Eerdmans) is a much-needed introduction to one of the more misrepresented Christian traditions, with special emphasis on theology. Hans Nielsen Hauge: His Life and Message by Andreas Aarflot (Augsburg) is a disertation rewritten for wider readership on one of the key shapers of Norwegian Christianity. A rather different in:uence, first in Western Europe, then elsewhere, was provided by Friedrich Schleiermacher, subject of an introductory study by C. W. Christian (Word).

More specialized studies include Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569 by Phyllis Mack Crew (Cambridge), Aufklärung Catholicism, 1780–1850 by Leonard Swidler (Scholars), Grotius Universe: Divine Law and a Quest for Harmony by William Vasilio Sotirovich (Vantage) on the Dutch jurist and theologian, Hugo Grotius, and Hans Rookmaaker by Linette Martin (InterVarsity), a biography of the Dutch evangelical art historian.

The German Churches Under Hitler, by Ernst Christian Helmreich (Wayne State University), is a 600-page, thoroughly documented summation of what is known and an indication of what still needs studying in the greatest tragedy for Jew, Gentile, and church of modern times. Would the Middle East crisis be what it is, would Communism have spread beyond the Soviet Union, if only the Christians in the land of Luther and the Pietists had done more to oppose the cult of Germanism? Literature on the Holocaust is growing rapidly and I mention only one title as an example of those who did stand up to the Nazis: The Assisi Underground by Alexander Ramati (Stein and Day) is about Francis’s hometown and its citizens, led by a priest, who successfully protected 300 Jews throughout the war.

EASTERN EUROPE Severe conflict between church and state is hardly new for this region. St Filipp, Metropolitan of Moscow by George Fedotov (Nordland) translates a Russian account of a sixteenth-century leader who was executed by Ivan the Terrible. Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, edited by Robert Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou (University of Minnesota), contains essays on the two centuries before the Revolution.

For the Communist period, Christel Lane provides a very helpful sociological overview of the various denominations in Christian Religion in the Soviet Union (State University of New York). Alexander de Chalandeau supplies a much needed dissertation on The Theology of the Evangelical Christian-Baptists in the USSR, with some helpful historical background to the various denominations commonly lumped as Baptists. It is available from Baptist Mid-Missions (4205 Chester Ave., Cleveland, OH 44103). Another persecuted minority is studied in The Catholic Church: Dissent and Nationality in Soviet Lithuania by V. Stanley Vardys (Columbia).

A nineteenth-century Russian Mennonite leader, Johann Claassen, is the subject of a popular biography, Trailblazer for the Brethren by Elizabeth Suderman Klassen (Herald) while the sufferings of Mennonites during the Revolution are reported by Dietrich Neufeld, now in English, in A Russian Dance of Death (Herald).

A 500-page, passionate, documented report of religious persecution throughout Eastern Europe is Silent Churches by Peter Babris (Research Publishers [Box 633, Arlington Hts., IL 60005]). For challenge and encouragement, read Here They Stand: Biblical Sermons from Eastern Europe compiled by Lewis Drummond (Judson).

LATIN AMERICA The changes in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America in the past two decades have been greater than anywhere else. Two surveys of those developments: Mission to Latin America by Gerald Costello (Orbis), and Thè Revolution of the Latin American Church by Hugo Latorre Cabal (University of Oklahoma). For a good compilation of selections of 13 theologians (two of them Protestants) advocating change, usually under the name liberation theology, see Frontiers of Theology in Latin America edited by Rosino Gibellini (Orbis). Dom Helder Camara: The Conversions of a Bishop, an interview with José de Broucker (Collins), is virtually a testament by one of the key figures in the changes.

Protestant activity is reported in The Growth of Japanese Churches in Brazil by John Mizuki (Carey) and Paid in Full: The Story of Harold Ryckman, Missionary Pioneer to Paraguay and Brazil (Light and Life).

MIDDLE EAST Especially in view of the attention given to this predominantly Muslim region, it is good to have a first-class historical survey, country by country, of Christians in the Arab East by Robert Brenton Betts (John Knox). Besides Christians, another minority presence is surveyed, but with a full 900-page coverage: A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard Sachar (Knopf). A welcome attempt to explain on a popular level the historical background and present experiences that cause Middle Eastern rivalries to fester is provided in Arabs, Christians, Jews by James and Marti Hefley (Logos). Seven Canadians contribute essays to Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Christian Perspective (Friendship).

Two major contributions from MARC, both edited by Don McCurry, are World Christianity: Middle East, which surveys Christian activity in 16 countries where there is comparatively little, and The Gospel and Islam, a lengthy compilation of papers from a major conference in 1978 on evangelizing Muslims. This volume ranges beyond the Middle East to the entire Muslim world and is essential for all who are concerned with the subject.

NORTH AMERICA In addition to The Gospel in America and the encyclopedic works of Melton and Piepkorn mentioned at the beginning of this survey, a few other titles should be mentioned that treat North America (or the United States) generally before looking at certain major topics and periods. A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada by Robert Handy (Oxford) is now available in paperback. It would lead to a better understanding of religious developments and how they relate to society generally if more books kept both these neighboring countries in their purview. Protestantism, edited by Hugh Kerr (Barron’s Educational Series), is a useful collection of writings by prominent religious leaders and thinkers that provides an overview of the development and diversity of Protestantism in America. Evangelicals are better represented than is customary in such works.

For those who think that Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and the Hare Krishnas represent something new on the scene, be sure to read Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America by Robert Ellwood, Jr. (University of Chicago).

The appearance of so many books on death (and coming back from the dead) in recent years, from both religious and very secular perspectives, has made death a growth industry. A good collection of essays surveying how previous generations of Americans viewed death ever since colonial times is Passing: The Vision of Death in America, edited by Charles Jackson (Greenwood). As a source directing one to sources for the study of religious attitudes by ordinary people over the decades, students should be familiar with Handbook of American Popular Culture, edited by M. Thomas Inge (Greenwood). Too much historical writing that purports to tell about people generally instead reflects the views of intellectuals who write and of the bureaucrats who shape what goes into archives. The growing study of popular culture can facilitate the study of religion at the level where religion has always mattered most, indeed among the kind of people with whom God Incarnate was pleased to dwell.

AMERICAN INDIANS The often heroic, often tragic and depressing attempts to communicate the love of Christ to the first Americans have been the subject of many books on particular episodes, but so far as I know there is no comprehensive treatment. Two indispensable helps to the study of this subject were issued last year. Indian Missions: A Critical Bibliography by James Ronda and James Axtell (Indiana University) is carefully selected and annotated. The Native American Christian Community: A Directory of Indian, Aleut, and Eskimo Churches, edited by R. Pierce Beaver (MARC), attempts to report on all presently existing churches, schools, missions, and other agencies. Naturally some were missed but every user will find that there is much more than he thought existed; the history of how most of these various groups came into being remains to be written.

That the European settlers of America found themselves doing battle with the Indians has been a continuing ethical problem for committed Christians. See The First Frontier: The Indian Wars and America’s Origins, 1607–1776 by David Horowitz (Simon and Schuster). For a contemporary Indian’s testimony of what conversion to Christ has meant in her life, see My Searching Heart by Crying Wind (Moody).

BLACK AMERICANS Besides the comprehensive Black Religions in the New World mentioned at the beginning of this survey, there were several notable specialized studies of Black Christianity. Black Preaching by Henry Mitchell (Harper & Row) is a new edition of a historical survey of what has always been one of the most important aspects of the black religious experience.

Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South by Albert Raboteau (Oxford) and Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith by Mechal Sobel (Greenwood) are excellent scholarly studies of the development of Christianity among a people who might have been expected to reject something so closely identified with their oppressors. Indeed, Raboteau’s book won first place in a national competition for the best scholarly book in religion. Both authors had to uncover sources that other historians thought nonexistent. One of the crucial questions is how white Christians could possibly justify to themselves the enslavement of their black brethren. It was not without difficulty that they did so. Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South by Thomas Virgil Peterson (Scarecrow) is a scholarly presentation of the rationale.

The Children Is Crying by A. Knighton Stanley (Pilgrim) reports the work of northern Congregationalists among southern blacks from the Civil War to the 1920s.

A new publisher, Lambeth Press (Box 21, Essex Sta., Boston, MA 02112), has issued two scholarly books on important leaders. Defender of the Race by David Dean is on James Theodore Holly (1829–1911), first black Episcopal bishop and founder of the Orthodox Apostolic Church in Haiti. God Comes to America by Kenneth Burnham is on Father Divine (1880?–1965) whose religion, which accepts him as God, is still flourishing years after his change from being an “embodied God to an ethereal one.”

Two studies on black movements that blend religion and politics are Garveyism as a Religious Movement by Randall Burkett (Scarecrow) and Black Leaders in Conflict: Joseph H. Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. by Peter Paris (Pilgrim).

REVIVALISM Although the term is not necessarily apt, at least the subject matter is receiving serious attention. Many Americans are not aware of the extent to which widespread, prolonged revivals have influenced the religious history of this country in a way unmatched among other major nations. Reflections on Revival by Charles Finney (Bethany Fellowship) and Lectures on Revivals by William Sprague (Banner of Truth) represent nineteenth-century Arminian and Calvinistic stances, respectively, from prominent American ministers. (In Finney’s case they represent his 1845–46 writings on the subject, a decade later than his better known Lectures on Revivals.) William McLoughlin surveys five awakenings from colonial times to the present and their relationships to social change in Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (University of Chicago). Two more specialized studies: Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865 by Richard Carwardine (Greenwood) and Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism by Sandra Sizer (Temple University). More popularly oriented reflections on the past and the future are offered by Lewis Drummond in The Awakening that Must Come (Broadman).

COLONIAL PERIOD As a welcome change, Puritan studies did not dominate the output last year. Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testimony of Obadiah Holmes, introduced and edited by Edwin Gaustad (Eerdmans), gives us a view of life in the seventeenth century by one whose convictions clashed with those of the New England establishment. The seventh volume of Essays and Reports of the Lutheran Historical Conference available from Concordia Historical Institute featured several papers on colonial Lutheranism while The Dutch Reformed Church in the American Colonies by Gerald De Jong (Eerdmans) tells of another denomination. At the close of the period, independence produced a crisis for American Anglicans in a way that it did not for other denominations. The solution is very ably presented in Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution by Frederick Mills, Sr. (Oxford).

Of course, Puritan studies were not neglected. Very helpful additions to the literature include: Thomas Hooker, 1586–1647 by Frank Shuffelton (Princeton), A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts by William Stoever (Wesleyan University), Cotton Mather: The Young Life of the Lord’s Remembrancer, 1663–1703 by David Levin (Harvard), God’s Altar: The World and the Flesh in Puritan Poetry by Robert Daly (University of California), and So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676–1677, edited by Richard Slotkin and James Folsom (Wesleyan University).

MIDDLE PERIOD Revivalism has been portrayed at times as if it were the only religious expression in the South. A very helpful corrective is The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795–1860 by E. Brooks Holifield (Duke).

Among the most remarkable families in American history was that of Lyman and Roxana Beecher and their eleven children. Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family by Marie Caskey (Yale) is a fascinating theological biography of the family, while Henry Ward Beecher: Spokesman for a Middle-Class America by Clifford Clark, Jr. (University of Illinois) is a study of the most influential of the sons.

The Beechers were prominently represented in the efforts leading to Civil War, not least through daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe. How northerners reacted to the war is conveyed in American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869 by James Moorhead (Yale).

Meanwhile, two of the most famous converts to Catholicism were writing back and forth. The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence, from 1841 through 1872, has been edited by Joseph Gower and Richard Leliaert (Notre Dame).

Since the Civil War, scholarly interest has been much greater on the more prestigious liberal branch of Protestantism. But increasingly there are responsible studies of the oft-caricatured conservatives. The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880–1920 by Valentine Rabe (Harvard) looks at missions when it was still of concern to both liberal and conservative Protestants.

The origins of two major innovative movements within conservative evangelicalism are the subjects of two excellent books from Oxford: Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism by Robert Mapes Anderson and Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 by Timothy Weber. Also now in paperback is Ernest Sandeen’s ten-year-old The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Baker).

ORGANIZATIONS Two comprehensive histories that appeared last year testify to the diversity of religion in America. The Mormon Experience by Leonard Arrington and David Bitton (Knopf) is the quasi-official story of the largest branch of Mormonism, based in Utah. In interesting ways, with the notable exception of theology, the Mormons are a kind of succession to the early Puritan settlements. Theologically, it is fair to say that in view of such doctrines as polytheism and preexistence of souls, Mormonism is more removed from historic Christianity than Islam is. The other major treatment is of a small denomination, the Brethren in Christ, a German-American body that blends strands from Anabaptism, Pietism, and later Wesleyanism into a group that is now part of the evangelical mainstream: Quest for Piety and Obedience by Carlton Wittlinger (Evangel Press).

The Believers’ Church in Canada contains papers from a conference largely representing Baptists and Mennonites, edited by Jarold Zeman and Walter Klaassen, available from the Baptist Federation (P.O. Box 1298, Brantford, Ontario).

The Last Trump by Ingemar Lindén is a thorough scholarly investigation by a Swedish Adventist of some turning points in Seventh-day Adventist history, published by Verlag Peter Lang (Münzgraben 2, Bern, Switzerland.) Aspects of other Protestant bodies are treated in The Advance of Baptist Associations Across America by Elliott Smith (Broadman), Heirs of Promise: A Chronicle of California Southern Baptists, 1940–1978 by Elmer Gray (from P. O. Box 5168, Fresno, CA 93755), Where the Saints Have Trod: A Social History of the Church of God (based in Anderson, Indiana) by Val Clear (Midwest Publications, P. O. Box 122, Chesterfield, IN 46017), Growth and Decline in the Episcopal Church by Wayne Williamson (Carey), and The Power of Their Glory: America’s Ruling Class, the Episcopalians by Kit and Frederica Konolige (Wyden). The last named is a gossipy potpourri about rich people who say they’re Episcopal. It is only marginally about religion.

Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah’s Witnesses by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (Simon and Schuster) is both an autobiography of one who was a very active teen-age Witness (who eventually became a Catholic) and an informal but helpful history of the movement. Trade publisher interest in sects is also shown in two other popularly written studies: Patriarchs and Politics: The Plight of the Mormon Woman by Marilyn Warenski (McGraw-Hill) and Rocky Mountain Empire: The Latter-Day Saints Today by Samuel Taylor (Macmillan).

Turning to specialized religious agencies: Wings for the Word by Robert Taylor (Logos) is a short account of the 163-year-old American Bible Society; The Growth of a Work of God by C. Stacey Woods (InterVarsity) is a founder’s comparatively candid reminiscence of the 40-year-old Inter-Varsity movement among American collegians; A Christian Union in Labour’s Wasteland, edited by Edward Vanderkloet (Wedge), tells of a little known kind of evangelical organization, the Christian Labour Association of Canada; and Pioneer’s Progress: Illinois College, 1829–1979 by Charles Frank (Southern Illinois University) chronicles a representative older Protestant (Presbyterian and Congregational) college.

MODERN PERIOD Religion in America:1950 to the Present by Jackson Carroll, Douglas Johnson, and Martin Marty (Harper & Row) is an extremely useful adjunct to the books and articles that seek to discern and predict trends in the kaleidoscope that is American religion. The main feature is 13 national maps showing the distribution of as many denominational families. There are also numerous charts showing trends in belief as well as interpretive essays.

Three other ways of looking at large portions of the modern religious scene were provided. Atlas of Religious Change in America by Peter Halvorson and William Newman (Glenmary Research Center) gives four national maps for each of 35 denominations based on two surveys (in 1952 and 1971) of membership by county. Christian Occasions by Alan Whitman (Doubleday) is a collection of photographs that the cover says show “unusual styles of religion,” but one finds instead the very usual revivalistic and charismatic forms depicted. The Born-Again Christian Catalog by William Proctor (M. Evans or Revell) is a curious combination of pop articles for new Christians and lists of all kinds of evangelical enterprises from camps to cassette producers, from TV stations to travel attractions.

A major trend in the past couple of decades has been the growth of liberalism within Catholicism and its decline within Protestantism. The Battle for the American Church by George Kelly (Doubleday) is a hard-hitting, documented case charging (and lamenting) the decline of Catholicism because of unchecked liberalism. Pilgrim Press, publishing arm of the United Church of Christ, has issued two works of major importance, the former for professionals and the latter, based on it, for everyone who is interested. Understanding Church Growth and Decline, 1950–1978 is edited by Dean Hoge and David Roozen. Martin Marty wisely says of it, “Do not open your mouth about trends and patterns in church membership and participation unless you have read this book.” Where Have All Our People Gone? New Choices for Old Churches by Carl Dudley is aimed at mainline congregations who want to win back something of their former constituencies. In this same vein, a pastor-turned-sociologist, Wade Clark Roof, studies Community and Commitment: Religious Plausibility in a Liberal Protestant Church (Elsevier). Based on detailed research among North Carolina Episcopalians, as well as mature reflections on the religious scene generally, he finds the prospects for liberal religious vitality gloomy. Meanwhile, from the staunchly conservative side, Ernest Pickering presents a thoughtful defense, based on theological and historical considerations, of Biblical Separation: The Struggle for a Pure Church (Regular Baptist Press).

The discussion of American Civil Religion continues unabated. Twilight of the Saints: Biblical Christianity and Civil Religion in America by Robert Linder and Richard Pierard (InterVarsity) is an excellent evangelical contribution. No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste by John Murray Cuddihy (Seabury) is a thoughtful and provocative defense of civil religion, asking how the country could have survived without something like it. God and America’s Future, by Frederick Sontag and John Roth (Consortium), deserves mention as does A Public Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Bishirjian (Arlington). The latter includes a score of politically conservative, thoughtful essays from a dozen writers since 1955. They constitute a good demonstration of a kind of theology of civil religion.

Among serious biographies and autobiographies of recent religious figures, we mention: Streets by Margaret Budenz (Our Sunday Visitor), a Communist convert to Catholicism; Soul on Fire by Eldridge Cleaver (Word), Black Panther convert to evangelicalism; The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Andrew Greeley and American Catholicism, 1950–1975 by John Kotre, on the priest-journalist-sociologist who entertainingly offends all comers; The Man from Ida Grove by Harold Hughes (Chosen), former U.S. Senator; John F. Kennedy: Catholic and Humanist by Albert Menendez (Prometheus); An Approach to Christian Ethics: The Life, Contribution, and Thought of T. B. Maston edited by William Pinson, Jr. (Broadman), on a Baptist teacher of ethics; Least of All Saints: The Story of Aimee Semple McPherson by Robert Bahr (Prentice-Hall), on one of the leading evangelists of a few decades ago; Take a Bishop Like Me by Paul Moore, Jr. (Harper & Row), Episcopal bishop of New York; The Breeze of the Spirit: Sam Shoemaker and the Story of Faith at Work by Irving Harris (Seabury); Growing a Soul: The Story of A. Frank Smith by Norman Spellman (Southern Methodist University), on a leading Methodist bishop; and Van Til: Defender of the Faith by William White, Jr. (Nelson), on one of the foremost Reformed thinkers of our time.

Popular testimonies are intended for inspiration, not serious study. Nevertheless they can reveal a lot, positively and negatively, about what religion means on the everyday level. Here are some especially interesting collections of testimonies. The Overcomers by Russell Chandler (Revell) tells how several famous evangelicals (such as Carl Henry, Bill and Gloria Gaither) have faced crises. The Daniel Dilemma by Peggy Stanton (Word) is on prominent men (such as Gerald Ford, Mark Hatfield) trying to live ethically in public life. The Dollars and Sense of Honesty by George Armerding (Harper & Row) gives stories on applying Christian principles in the world of business. Meshumed! by Zola Levitt (Moody) presents the testimonies of nine Jewish converts to Christ. Conversion is not always in an orthodox or cultic direction. The stories of nine who did not go that way are told in Re-Creating: The Experience of Life Change and Religion by Virginia McDowell (Beacon).

The modern charismatic movement is one of the hot trends of the times and most of the literature coming from it is still of the very enthusiastic genre. Future historians need to know about it and libraries need to collect it for it does represent primary source material even for those who are not inspired by it. Like A Mighty River by David Manuel (Rock Harbor [P. O. Box 1206, Hyannis, MA 02601]) is an account of the giant ecumenical conference in Kansas City in 1977 while Prophecy in Action by Jim Ferry and Dan Malachuk (Logos) tells of the rally in Giants’ Stadium on Pentecost Sunday 1978. The personal stories of three charismatic leaders are told in I Gotta Be Me by Tammy Bakker, wife of the PTL host (New Leaf), The Exploding Church by Tommy Reid (Logos), and That They May Be One by Thomas Donn Twitchell (Logos).

The Jonestown tragedy and the continued prosperity of nontraditional religions will make for a continuing rash of books on the subject. All Gods Children: The Cult Experience, Salvation or Slavery? by Carroll Stoner and Jo Anne Parke is now available in paperback from Revell or Penguin. It has been well received as a journalistic attempt to be fair yet firm. Joel MacCollam writes from the perspective of an Episcopal minister in Carnival of Souls: Religious Cults and Young People (Seabury). Both books not only present information about active groups, but examine motives for joining them and what parents and others can do to help win adherents away. Living Together Alone: The New American Monasticism by Charles Fracchia (Harper & Row) is a detached description of monastic innovations within a wide variety of religious traditions. One who claims to be an excultist and who has been making quite an impact on many conservative Protestants is exposed in The Todd Phenomenon by Darryl Hicks and David Lewis (New Leaf). Crazy for God: The Nightmare of Cult Life by Christopher Edwards (Prentice-Hall) is the story of an ex-member of Moon’s Unification Church.

Several books were rushed into print following Jonestown. Evangelical accounts of the group were presented in People’s Temple, People’s Tomb by Phil Kerns (Logos) and Deceived by Mel White (Revell). The testimony of a missionary kid who was won to Jones during the Brazil years and only slowly found her way back to Christ is told in The Broken God by Bonnie Thielmann (David C. Cook). A lengthy account is also provided in Six Years with God: Life Inside Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple by Jeannie Mills (A & W).