Page 6379 – Christianity Today (2024)

The racial crisis in South Africa spilled over onto the ecclesiastical front this month.

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town demanded a curtailment of ecumenical ties with South Africa’s Dutch Reformed communion unless it repudiates apartheid (racial segregation). Also:

—Two Anglican missionaries were jailed after police broke up a mass demonstration in Johannesburg.

—The Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg fled the country to avoid arrest for his active opposition to the government’s apartheid policy.

Chief targets of criticism from antiapartheid clergy leaders were the Dutch Reformed churches, in the membership of which are many government officials including Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd.

Dr. Joost de Blank, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, charged that many Africans are turning against the Christian church on the grounds it is associated with white oppression.

De Blank singled out the Dutch Reformed churches as chief offenders and called on them to “repudiate the policy of apartheid and its tragic outworkings in the disturbances of March and April.” Otherwise, he said, “it is essential that other churches should no longer be associated with them in any council or federation.”

The archbishop has long been critical of the Dutch Reformed race policies. During a trip to the United States in 1958, he ruffled tempers when, in the course of denouncing the segregationist stand of the Dutch Reformed church in South Africa, he attributed to it “a warped and inaccurate Calvinistic outlook.”

De Blank was to have paid a return visit to the United States this month, but cancelled plans when disorders broke out.

Instead, he sent Archdeacon Cecil T. Wood on a tour of several countries. Wood’s first stop was the World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva. There, in behalf of South African Anglicans, he asked WCC officials to reaffirm a stand against racial discrimination and to dispatch fact-finders to Africa.

World Council leaders were at first cool toward any direct intervention in the Anglican-Reformed dispute. Their counter-suggestion was that WCC member churches in South Africa set up a panel among themselves to iron out differences. Later, WCC General Secretary W. A. Visser ’t Hooft announced that a high-ranking council official would be sent to South Africa to consult with the panel.

The Religions Of South Africa

The Dutch Reformed church has been the backbone of Christian witness in South Africa ever since whites first settled at Cape Town more than 300 years ago.

When the British arrived in 1795, the Dutch Reformed church composed the only Christian element in South Africa, save for a few Lutherans, Moravians, and French Huguenots.

By the early nineteenth century, Anglican chaplains were ministering to the British garrison. Methodism also came with the British garrison, and Scotch settlers introduced Presbyterianism. Baptists and Congregationalists likewise trace South African origins back to the nineteenth century, as do Salvationists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Roman Catholics.

Most widely known of South African ministers was Andrew Murray (1828–1917), Scotch Presbyterian who preached in Dutch Reformed churches.

Sixty-five per cent of South Africa’s 15,000,000 inhabitants are now said to be Christians of one sort or another. The Dutch Reformed church claims some 15 per cent of the population, the Methodists 11 per cent, the Anglicans 10 per cent, and Roman Catholics five per cent.

Virtually all of the remainder of the population is either Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist or Pagan.

De Blank’s accusations prompted a statement from one Dutch Reformed synod which said that cooperation with the Anglican archbishop had “become impossible.”

The synod declared: “At a time when cooperation between churches is more necessary than ever before and when there is a need for mutual trust, we are compelled—no matter how much against our will—to reply to the challenge of Archbishop de Blank.”

An agreement had been signed last year, the statement recalled, under which the Anglican and Dutch Reformed communions undertook to enlighten each other on policy and action and to make every possible effort “to obviate unfounded conclusions which may be injurious to the interest of the churches.”

This agreement “was broken on various occasions” by the Anglicans, the synod charged.

Dutch Reformed spokesmen also reportedly countered with a charge that Anglicans, while ostensibly decrying apartheid, were themselves practicing segregation in church schools.

The race violence in Johannesburg and other cities, along with the church rift, spelled the gravest crisis in the history of the Union of South Africa, which is observing its 50th Golden Jubilee Year.

Meanwhile, Dr. Richard Ambrose Reeves, Anglican Archbishop of Johannesburg, was reported staying in Rhodesia. An aide predicted Reeves would return upon assurance that he would not be arrested.

Among missionaries arrested by Johannesburg police seeking to quell an uprising were Miss Hannah Stanton, an official of the Tumelong Anglican mission near Pretoria, and the Rev. Mark Nye, head of the Pretoria Anglican mission.

In churches throughout South Africa, many prayers were offered for the recovery of Prime Minister Verwoerd, victim of an assassination attempt.

“It was noticeable that no Anglican spokesman expressed concern over the shooting of Dr. Verwoerd,” said a Religious News Service dispatch from Cape Town.

Verwoerd is a regular Sunday worshipper at the Dutch Reformed church in Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town.

There are nine major Dutch Reformed church groups in South Africa. Three of them are members of the WCC, along with several South African Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian communions.

Consistent support of the government’s apartheid policy is not the first firm politico-social stand by the Dutch Reformed church of South Africa. Its clergymen were ardent supporters of the Boer cause in the South African war of 1899–1902.

“Boer nationalism,” observes missionary historian K. S. Latourette, “led to an added devotion to that church.”

Degree Mills

The U. S. government began exposing so-called “degree mills” this month. Many of those initially cited operate with a religious front.

The Health-Education-Welfare Department in Washington made public a list of some 30 institutions which “award degrees without requiring its students to meet educational standards for such degrees established and traditionally followed by reputable national institutions.” The list will be kept current, according to HEW Secretary Arthur S. Flemming, as a warning to gullible persons. Here is the first compilation:

Institute of Metaphysics, Birmingham, Alabama; Church of Light, Los Angeles, California; Burton College and Seminary, Manitou Springs, Colorado; Divine Science Church and College, Denver, Colorado; American Bible School, Chicago, Illinois, and American Divinity School, Pineland, Florida (same school, incorporated as tax exempt in Florida and Illinois); College of Universal Truth, Chicago, Illinois; Kondora Theosophical Seminary, Chicago, Illinois; McKinley-Roosevelt Incorporated, Chicago, Illinois; Pioneer Theological Seminary, Rockford, Illinois; University Extension Conservatory, Chicago, Illinois; Washington National University, Chicago, Illinois; Central School of Religion, Indianapolis, Indiana; College of Divine Metaphysics, Indianapolis, Indiana; Trinity College, Indianapolis, Indiana; Mid-Western University, Incorporated, Arcadia, Missouri; Neotarian Fellowship, Kansas City, Missouri; Four States Cooperative University, Jefferson, Texas; Texas Theological University, Chicago, Illinois; Belin Memorial University, Manassas, Virginia.

Listed as chartered in the United States but active abroad were American International Academy, New York, New York; Chartered University of Huron; Chartered University of Delaware; International University of Delaware; National University of Colorado; International Corporation of Engineers, Delaware; Milton University, Baltimore, Maryland; National University and National Research Institute; and Western University, San Diego, California.

Listed as inactive were Cramwell Institute and Cramwell Research Institute, Adams, Massachusetts; Golden State University, Hollywood, California and Denver, Colorado; Metropolitan University, Glendale, California; and Webster University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Flemming says he will ask the help of religious leaders, in a proposed meeting, to help combat degree mills.

Protestant Panorama

• Protestant ministers in Southern California are raising a storm of protest over plans for a $ 15 million “Bible Storyland” amusement park in Cucamonga. An Episcopal group charged that the prospectus “seriously distorts the sacred history of both Christians and Jews.”

• Southern Baptist Sunday School enrollment has increased nearly 50 per cent in the past six years, according to a report released at the denomination’s first nationwide Sunday School convention, held last month in Fort Worth, Texas, with more than 20,000 delegates on hand.

• The Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is dispatching an emergency appropriation of $10,000 to provide food and financial help for 30,000 refugees of tribal warfare in the Belgian Congo.

• The Vanderbilt University Divinity School dedicated last month a $1,300,000 edifice which houses a chapel, classrooms, and offices.

• Dr. Philip E. Howard, Jr., 62, long-time editor of The Sunday School Times underwent surgery for a brain tumor March 30. Relatives reported his condition “very good.”

• A statue of John Amos Comenius was dedicated on the campus of Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, March 28, the 368th anniversary of the birth of Comenius, a Moravian bishop and noted educator.

• Salvationists in Paris laid the cornerstone last month for a home to care for unmarried mothers and their children. The site was donated by the Paris municipality.

• A group of students at Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, have formed a “jazz combo,” calling themselves the “Holy Cats.”

• Jewish evangelist Hyman Appelman says meetings he conducted during 1959 netted 47 converts from Judaism to Christianity. Profession of faith and transfers of membership totalled 5,483, he reported.

• A major new translation of the Holy Scriptures, now being prepared in England, will be known as The New English Bible. Virtually every major Protestant denomination in England is represented on the translation committee. Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press will publish the new Bible jointly next spring.

• A luncheon in New York City March 28 honored two Presbyterian moderators, Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., and Dr. Arthur L. Miller of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. United Presbyterians sponsored the luncheon.

• Harry Saulnier marks his 20th year as superintendent of the world-renowned Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago this month. An anniversary service was held in his honor.

• Complete Bibles are now available in 219 languages, entire New Testaments in 271 others and at least one book of the Bible in an additional 661 tongues, according to the American Bible Society.

• Methodist church membership in Costa Rica and Panama is expected to increase about 50 per cent as a result of an evangelistic mission conducted in the two countries, says mission director Leslie J. Ross.

• Ninety-one per cent of Unitarian churches and 79 per cent of Universalist societies have approved merger plans in a plebiscite which ended March 31, according to Dr. William B. Rice, chairman of the Joint Merger Commission.

• Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam says he and his wife will make their home in Scarsdale, New York, following his retirement June 19. The Oxnams have been living in the Methodist Building in Washington, across the street from the U. S. Capitol.

• April 19 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of German reformer Philip Melanchthon, closest co-worker of Martin Luther and a professor at Wittenberg University.

New Seminary

A new, interdenominational seminary will open in Philadelphia this fall.

It will be known as the Conwell School of Theology after the late Dr. Russell H. Conwell, noted Baptist pastor and lecturer and founder of Temple University, but will be incorporated independently of the university.

The new seminary will replace one operated by Temple and closed down last June. At its closing the old seminary had dropped from a peak enrollment of 200 to about 30 as the result of losing accreditation in the American Association of Theological Schools.

Like the former school, the Conwell School of Theology will be for commuters. Centrally located, the seminary will provide diverse opportunities for part-time work in the religious field.

Officials indicated they will seek accreditation standards immediately.

A 30-member board of trustees includes eight Temple University officials. Board officials include Dr. Alexander Mackie, president of the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund, chairman; Dr. Daniel A. Poling, editor of the Christian Herald, vice chairman; the Rev. Robert W. Bringhurst, Presbyterian minister, secretary; and the Rev. John Craig Roak, an Episcopalian rector, treasurer.

The Religious Issue

“The religious issue” emerged this month as a major factor in the 1960 presidential election campaign.

Examining closely the results of the Wisconsin primary, those who sought to keep religion out of the debate might well ask: Had they preached to the wrong crowd?

Press reports shaped a growing impression that the religious issue had been injected by overwhelming Catholic support for the Catholic candidate more pointedly than by Protestant opposition to him.

As a result, some observers felt, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was as close to White House occupancy as any Roman Catholic has ever been since the nomination of Alfred E. Smith in 1928.

In reviewing the role of the candidates’ religion in the Wisconsin primary, The New York Times said: “Evidently it did figure in the voting. Kennedy made his best showing in the three most strongly Catholic districts.”

The Milwaukee Journal’s observations pointed up the religious issue even more conclusively: “Kennedy rolled up almost all of his margin over Humphrey in three congressional districts which are heavily Catholic, two of which are also strongly Republican.”

Both newspapers also stressed that Humphrey carried some strongly Protestant areas. But Kennedy supporters, seeking to minimize the influence of their candidate’s religion, pointed to his vote-pulling power among non-Catholics.

“In Sheboygan,” said an Associated Press dispatch, “where Catholic voters constitute 22 per cent of the total, he had 55.5 per cent of the vote. He took 44.3 per cent in Madison which has 22 per cent Catholics, and 48.3 per cent of the vote in LaCrosse where the Catholic vote is 23 per cent.” It was obvious that many Protestant were voting for Kennedy.

There was no comparable Catholic enthusisam for Humphrey. On the contrary, the Romanist vote appeared in some areas as a bloc in support of Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator carried every one of 17 Wisconsin counties which voted in 1946 to permit public school buses to carry parochial students.

Whereas some prominent Roman Catholic spokesmen freely applied the term “bigotry” to Protestants who had reservations about a Catholic candidate and supported a Protestant, a spokesman for National Catholic Welfare Conference confirmed that no official statement was issued at the hierarchical level urging Catholic voters not to vote along religious lines.

The candidates’ eyes are now fixed on predominantly Protestant West Virginia, where a primary is scheduled May 10. If Senator Kennedy sweeps that state, observers think, his prospects of nomination will be multiplied. Says Washington correspondent Richard L. Strout of The Christian Science Monitor: “Observers suppose that if Mr. Kennedy has an important victory here he will be very difficult to stop in Los Angeles” (site of the Democratic National Convention in July).

What’s Fair in Politics?

A candidate’s religion is relevant to a voter’s decision insofar as it bears on political issues, according to principles laid down this month by a committee of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders.

The Fair Campaign Practices Committee issued a 271-word statement following a two-day consultation held in Washington.

“Intelligent, honest, and temperate public discussion of the relation of religious faith to the public issues will, as it has already done, raise the whole level of the campaign,” the statement said.

“No candidate for public office should be opposed or supported because of his particular religious affiliations,” it added, noting, however, that “a candidate may be properly questioned about issues relevant to the office he seeks and about the bearing of his religious faith and conscience on them. A candidate’s religion is relevant to a voter’s decision, but only so far as it bears on such relevant political issues.

“Stirring up, fostering, or tolerating religious animosity, or injecting elements of a candidate’s faith not relevant to the duties of the office he seeks are unfair campaign practices.”

The committee, set up in 1954 at the suggestion of Congress, is headed by Charles P. Taft, former president of the Federal Council of Churches. Participants in this year’s consultation included Msgr. George Higgins of the National Catholic Welfare Conference; Rabbi Bernard Bamberger, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which co-sponsored the consultations; Dr. C. Arild Olsen, Executive Secretary of the Department of Christian Life and Work, National Council of Churches; Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs; Rabbi Uri Miller, vice president of the Synagogue Council of America; Msgr. Francis J. Lally, editor of The Pilot, official weekly of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston; and the Rev. Gustave Weigel, S. J., professor at Woodstock (Maryland) College.

West Virginia: The Big Test?

The results of the West Virginia primary May 10 will indicate strongly, say political observers, the extent to which the religious issue has permeated the 1960 election campaign.

Here are significant facts about the state’s make-up:

Population: 2,000,000.

Voter registration: Latest available figures show 664,000 registered Democrats and 413,000 registered Republicans.

Key cities’ population: Huntington, 86,000; Charleston, 74,000; Wheeling, 59,000; Clarksburg, 32,000; and Parkersburg, 30,000.

Number of counties: 55.

Number of U. S. Congressional districts: Six.

Religious affiliations: More than 94 per cent of West Virginians are nominally Protestants; about half of these are members of churches. Some five per cent of the population is Roman Catholic. Less than one per cent is Jewish.

Two ballots will be issued in the primary. On one the voter lists his preference among presidential candidates, the choice not binding on party convention delegates. The second ballot is for selection of the delegates, who go to the convention free to nominate whomever they wish.

Nixon at the Roosevelt

A visit from Vice President Nixon highlighted a Washington convention this month of 110 leading Protestant editors whose publications are linked to Associated Church Press.

Their traditional call at the White House cancelled in deference to visiting President Lleras of Colombia, the editors were treated instead to an impromptu, hour-long press conference with Nixon at the Roosevelt Hotel.

The Vice President’s appearance was convincing (“Almost thou persuadest me to be a Republican,” quipped one editor privately) and productive of a page-one story in The New York Times:

NIXON WOULD AID NATIONS

ASKING BIRTH-CONTROL DATA

ACP, which meets annually, is a fellowship of some 163 Protestant and Orthodox publications in North America ranging from The Woman’s Pulpit (circulation: 500) to The Upper Room (circulation: 3,235,000). Their current trend is toward less frequent publication and classier format, exemplified by Presbyterian Life, which under Managing Editor Henry L. McCorkle became in 1958 the first Protestant magazine to top 1,000,000 circulation. A close second is the Methodists’ Together, edited by Leland D. Case and noted for lavish use of color.

McCorkle, a life-long Episcopalian, recently came back to his own fold to begin a new family monthly which made its debut this month: The Episcopalian.

Projected for publication next January is a new magazine representative of The American Lutheran Church constituted in a three-way merger April 22–24 and edited by Edward W. Schramm. It will perpetuate the name Lutheran Standard, which dates back to 1842.

President Ben Browne presided over the ACP conclave with assists from Dr. William B. Lipphard, retiring executive secretary of ACP and editor emeritus of the Baptist magazine Missions.

Christian Honors

At special ceremonies in Philadelphia this month, Dr. Harry G. Bristow, president of the National Evangelical Film Foundation, presented awards for outstanding film and record production during 1959. The list of awards:

Best film of the year: “The Power of the Resurrection,” Family Films, Inc.

Best missionary film of the year: “Something to Die For,” Gospel Films, Inc.

Best youth film of the year: “Teen Age Witness,” Family Films, Inc.

Christian faith and life film of the year: “The George Muller Story,” Religious Films, Ltd.

Best children’s film of the year: “The Fish Story,” Moody Institute of Science.

Best sermon film of the year: “Teleo,” Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

Best documentary of the year: “Journey to Understanding,” Iversen Ford Associates.

Best set of filmstrips for the year: “How We Got Our Bible,” Society for Visual Education.

Best single filmstrip of the year: “Geography of the Holy Land,” Family Films, Inc.

Best actor of the year: Richard Kiley in “The Power of the Resurrection.”

Best actress of the year: Cheryl Lee Oppenhuizen in “Teen Age Rock.”

Best director of the year: Harold Schuster for “The Power of the Resurrection.”

Best male vocalist of the year: Dick Goodwin in “I Heard God Today,” Cornerstone Records, Inc.

Best female vocalist of the year: Beth Farnam for Sacred Records, Inc.

Best choral record of the year: Ralph Carmichael Singers in “Garden of My Heart,” Sacred Records, Inc.

Best instrumental record of the year: Paul Mickelson’s “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah,” Word Records, Inc.

Unusual record of the year: “Yesterday’s Voices,” by Paul Harvey, Word Records, Inc.

Best quartet record of the year: “Old Fashioned Revival Hour Quartet,” Christian Faith, Inc.

Best single record of the year: George Beverly Shea’s “How Long Has It Been,” RCA Victor.

‘Church of Tomorrow’

The death of a noted Oklahoma City minister will bring his congregation $400,000 closer to an ultra-modern youth center he had envisioned for his “Church of Tomorrow.”

The Rev. William H. Alexander, 45, was killed in the crash of a light plane near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this month. Alexander’s wife and the pilot of the plane also died.

He had been insured by his congregation, the First Christian Church of Oklahoma City, for $400,000, with the proceeds dedicated to help erect a million-dollar youth center. Construction on the building had already been slated to begin this summer.

The Disciples of Christ minister came to Oklahoma City in 1942.

Under his leadership the First Christian Church doubled in size to 3,500 persons. In 1946 he dedicated a futuristic house of worship which he called the “Church of Tomorrow.”

The handsome, red-haired minister served as chaplain of the Republican National Committee in 1952 when General Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president. Two years before that, he was Republican candidate for U. S. Senator from Oklahoma, running against the Democratic incumbent, A. S. “Mike” Monroney. Alexander was defeated, although he did capture Monroney’s own precinct and ward and secured a majority in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas.

During World War II, Alexander for a time was a correspondent for the Daily Oklahoman in Europe.

Pasadena Resignation

Dr. Russell V. DeLong, president of Pasadena (California) College, resigned last month.

DeLong said he had been advised by physicians to relieve himself from pressures incumbent upon his work.

Pasadena College is operated by the Church of the Nazarene.

From March 27 to April 2 the nation’s capital was engulfed by spring weather and 7,000 people deeply concerned for the welfare of American youth. President Eisenhower, following a precedent set by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, had convened the sixth, “Golden Anniversary,” White House Conference on Children and Youth. In a welcoming address, the President said the conference aim was to prepare young people to become tomorrow’s leaders.

Participants in the White House conference included social workers, educators, physicians, religious leaders, members of labor unions, civic officials, as well as typical parents and teen-agers. They discussed a myriad of themes relevant to America’s youth problem.

Most conferees manifested a sincere desire to give U.S. youth better opportunities to realize their full potential for a creative life in freedom and dignity. Higher sensibilities of the citizenry were markedly demonstrated.

The 1960 conference’s focus on religion was in sharp contrast to the 1950 conclave. A decade ago many church representatives were so seriously concerned about the “lack of acceptance of God” that they actually dissociated themselves from the conference report. But this year about one-fourth of the discussions were related to religion. Seven of the ten speakers at the five opening theme sessions on Monday were religious leaders. Of 18 scheduled forums, one of the first to draw a capacity crowd featured a discussion on “religious, spiritual and secular beliefs and codes of conduct which affect the development of the young.” Religion and morality were themes injected in almost all discussions, usually by non-professionals cognizant of their basic relevance to the youth problem. Several state delegations indicated that parents and young people are eager at the “grass roots” to explore religious and moral questions frankly, and seek ways and means of applying religion to life.

“Change” was the big word of the parley. Delegates were asked to appraise ideals and values in a changing world, to assess changing economic, social and cultural factors, and to adapt everything and everybody to the changes and innovations of modern society. If the conference leadership favored anything as old as yesterday they said little or nothing about it.

Well-organized chaos might describe the conference. Its lavish structure and broad themes were staggering. Employing the techniques of modern “group dynamics,” delegates met in five simultaneous forums and 210 simultaneous work groups in 80-odd buildings in the Washington area. Many never saw the White House. When findings of work groups were correlated into a general report, confusion was confounded. Leaders finally announced that findings would be mailed.

One had a feeling that the group-dynamic technique which has so often been employed to disseminate propaganda, was serving that purpose in the White House conference. A Kansas juvenile court judge charged that professional social workers were dominating work groups. A religion education specialist from Illinois noted a preponderance of humanist idealism.

Roman Catholic and Jewish influences were strong. Some of the most convincing observations on abiding religious and moral values came from Catholic leaders. The Very Rev. Msgr. Raymond J. Gallagher coordinated Catholic participation. He prepared a rather controversial handbook for guidance of Catholic delegates advising them to “be appropriately aggressive within your work groups so that a fair number of our people will be elected by their group as their recorder and representative in the forum delegations” (where voting on the findings took place). The handbook also contained the Catholic view of the issues confronting delegates. Jewish delegates received a booklet, “Safeguarding Religious Liberty,” which stated a consensus of Jewish opinion on controversial matters.

Protestant contributions to the religious colloquy were notably weak though Protestantism furnished a majority of the leadership personnel. “A Supplemental Resource,” 30-page booklet compiled by a humanist-minded Methodist clergyman, the Rev. Dean M. Kelley, was made available to Protestants “at the request and with the advice of members of the staff of the National Council of Churches.” The NCC played a large part in conference planning. The Rev. Dr. William J. Villaume, executive director of the NCC Department of Social Welfare, was a member not only of the President’s National Committee for the conference but of the Executive Committee, the important Steering Committee, and the Committee on Program. He also directed the Committee on Organization and Arrangements.

Conservative or evangelical Protestantism was virtually ignored in the choice of conference leadership at all levels. Non-NCC agencies were approached about financing the conference as sponsors and scores of them were acknowledged in the official program, but their leaders and specialists were absent on the platforms and at the heads of workshop tables. Many capable persons solicitous for the success of the White House conference, and faithful in attendance and participation, felt that the views of nearly 30,000,000 American Protestant conservatives were disowned at the leadership level.

A wealth of timely notes were sounded in addresses. A mother representing the United Church Women of Minneapolis, Mrs. Wright W. Brooks, said, “It is curious that the need of discipline is accepted in every other field, save that of morals.… If we as parents believe standards are necessary then discipline is certainly needed to attain them.” Rabbi Julius Mark of New York City stressed that “only the secure family, firmly founded on basic spiritual loyalties can rear children who place their confidence in the power of faith and the values of proper ethical conduct.” Dr. Milton J. E. Senn of Yale’s Child Study Center warned that “the nature of religious revival in America seems to be social rather than spiritual” … “people are becoming church members in an effort to gain status and security rather than salvation.” The Very Rev. Laurence J. McGinley, president of Fordham University, said a new national consciousness of values must derive from persons who have “a vital inner stability” gained “not from contemporary mores but from transcendent values personally understood.” He cited these values as “man’s origin, his destiny, God’s providence, His love and His sanctification of this world by His presence in it!” Such views were not representative of the conference as a whole, however.

Loud applause greeted an address by Dr. T. V. Smith, noted humanist philosopher. Dr. Smith asserted that the idea of God is good, but that since there are many ideas of God, little consensus can be reached on the subject. He recognized the values of the current “Judeo-Christian-Greek-Humanist” code of morality in America, but declared that because we are moving into a universal society, we must be prepared to accept values of other cultures and religions which may well be better for the new space age. He also stated that, under certain circumstances, immorality rather than morality might serve good ends. In beautiful, poetically-phrased diction basic Christian beliefs were denied.

For the most part, workshops were disappointing. One concerned with religious values spent the entire allotted time seeking to define “faith.” Said a New Mexico girl, “We young people came here hoping to get some solutions for our problems, but it seems our leaders cannot agree among themselves on principles to say nothing of courses of action. Can’t we get down to something practical?”

Toward the week end forums began to recommend such things as:

—A nation-wide program to stop school drop-outs.

—Representation of childhood and youth experts on the Federal Communications Commission, allocation of additional high-frequency channels for educational television.

—More federal aid to public schools, higher teacher salaries.

—Federal and state action to integrate public schools.

—More liberal public assistance grants, including counselling services.

—Better housing, education and working standards for migrant laborers.

—Stronger community programs, creative work for youth.

—That the home and family be made a central force in democracy.

—Greater youth participation in public affairs through voluntary organizations and political activity.

—Active support of the United Nations and participation in positive material policies for the attainment of peace with justice.

—Religion essential for the strengthening of standards and value systems.

Some 1,600 recommendations came up from the forum level. Many delegates claimed that proposals were “railroaded through.” Others claimed that drafting committees often ignored actions of the forum in their reports. In general, delegates agreed that real efforts had been made by forum leaders, under difficult circumstances, to observe fair practices. Yet there was wide feeling that when the final report of the conference is drafted it will probably reflect the views of its framers more than the general consensus of the conferees.

A strong move is afoot to reconstruct the conference into a permanent government bureau.

Opponents of the idea see it as a move toward a top-heavy bureaucracy and central government interference with concerns which are primarily state and community matters.

“One-worlders” are especially anxious that the committee initiate a world conference on children and youth to translate the “essence of democracy” to other countries.

Recently one of the great networks proposed a television play about an adulterous Protestant minister. Prompt protest from Dr. George A. Heimrich of NCC’s Broadcasting and Film Commission upset the plans, but no one doubts that the hydra-head will soon reappear. Since the call for a sex drama involving a Roman Catholic priest or a Jewish rabbi never seems to come, the question forces itself: what has happened to the image of the minister in the twentieth century?

Recent revivals of Maugham’s Rain and Lewis’ Elmer Gantry are only one phase of the issue. Gabriel Marcel, the French Roman Catholic existentialist, wrote a play not long ago about a (Protestant) minister who lost all personal faith in God, but kept up a pretense for the sake of his parishioners. Peter de Vries, an alumnus of Calvin College, hit the best-seller lists with a devastating caricature of a liberal minister, The Mackeral Plaza. In the current New York play, J.B., which poet Archibald MacLeish built on the book of Job, the most fatuous of the three modern “comforters” is a (Protestant) clergyman, the other two being a psychologist and a Marxist.

On and on run the examples. The minister is presented to the American people as a hypocrite, as a cad, as a heel, as a deadbeat, as a charlatan, as an extortioner, as an incompetent. Or if by some mixup he turns out to be a “David Crane” hero, then he is impaled on the altar of truth and integrity by his sniveling “flock”, and the onus passes from pastor to congregation. Drug addicts, homosexuals, rapists, pimps, and vagabonds are on their way to being canonized by our society, while the pastor—thanks to the mass media—seems to be sinking to the class of those who are not so much tolerated as pitied: somewhere between the traumatized mental case and the beloved alcoholic.

But why? Is it because humanity has dropped its scale of values? Is it because the role of the minister is an impossible one for mere flesh and blood? Or are we witnessing here an effort by the powers of darkness to destroy the Church by discrediting its leadership?

Sociologists and historians generally agree that in the late nineteenth century the minister still occupied a position of influence in the community. Most college and university presidents were ministers, among them Harper at the University of Chicago and Durant at the University of California. It was a minister who advised John D. Rockefeller, Sr., how to give away his money—a task now performed by the Rockefeller Foundation. The early editions of Who’s Who were crowded with ministers. In the typical American town the minister ranked with the mayor, the judge, and the banker as a community force. He was not free from attack any more than they, but he supplied much of the dynamism as well as conscience of the expanding nation for nearly three centuries.

In the early nineteen hundreds, however, the torch of influence seems to have passed to the schoolmaster. Following upon the work of such men as Elbert Hubbard and Horace Mann, the philosopher John Dewey developed an educational methodology which, he felt, accommodated itself to the growing interest in practical science. The transmission of tradition and culture (symbolized by McGuffey’s readers) was held to be questionable since it dumped “the errors and mistakes of the past” on the present generation. The proper path of education was to be development through experimentation. Education, said Dewey, is the continuous purposeful reconstruction of experience. Since the religionist was by such definition an “unscientific traditionalist,” he was no longer considered useful to society. Thus the minister and his church were relegated by the influential “Chicago School” to the periphery of life.

Two bloody wars and unbelievable suffering jettisoned Dewey’s upward-spiraling philosophy in the years that followed. Post-war America outgrew the leadership of progressive education and sought a new dynamism, not in education nor in Christianity but, as William H. Whyte has suggested, in the “organization.” This characteristic unit of mid-twentieth-century society proved its ability to capitalize on the prosperity of our times—whether it be an industrial, mercantile or suburban empire, or a giant labor union.

How insignificant seems the voice of the individual minister when the power blocs and mass pressures are deciding the great issues of life! He comes in to pronounce the benediction, while for his own protection he joins a ministerial association. Actually the minister is now two steps removed from the center of the community life he once helped to mold, and lacks any great organization (such as the Roman church) to keep his prestige from shrinking further. It is not that he escapes organizational living; his denomination—no matter how small—is picking up staff and demanding that he implement its expanding program in his church.

The bureaucratization of the denominations is one of the chief causes of the clergy’s declining prestige, since it tends to brand him as one of the herd rather than as God’s spokesman. He is linked with pronouncements from headquarters on social issues which may have been the work of a vocal minority whose interests are not those of biblical ethics nor the body politic. If he gives silent assent to them, he is a kept man; if he speaks out, he is regarded by his colleagues as a “maverick.” Meanwhile, the Bible-reading layman is puzzled as to what all the denominational and inter-denominational furor has to do with the preaching of the grace of God to a race of lost men.

The minister still has a Sunday morning message to deliver, and since his people normally arrive fairly frazzled after a week of “organizational” living, he feels that he must somehow bring the “be not anxious” theme into his preaching. But as he studies the mirror before stepping from his study to the pulpit, what does he see? Not the staunch pillar of society that his grave minister-grandfather was. Squinting back at him he is more apt to see a triple image: (1) the mouthpiece of a national religious establishment that is getting more “big-brotherish” every year; (2) the overworked operator of a church that has become a sociable option of suburban living; and (3) the beatific son of encouragement, who dispenses psychologized Bible stories to people whose mothers believed in going to church.

How has the ministry reacted to this vision? In different ways. Some have swung to the extreme as indicated in the proverb, “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.” Thus the minister may even become the reactionary critic of church and clergy, and scorn his nondrinking, nonswearing brother. Instead of restoring the prestige of the ministry in this way, however, he simply pegs it one notch lower; the public is not impressed by ministers who try to ape the world and its ways. Others have gone to the other extreme, have withdrawn into their churches and confined their community activities to denunciation. They have roped and harnessed eschatology to compensate for slipping prestige in this life. The world is unimpressed here too; it likes neither the man nor his halo.

The question remains: how can the distorted features of the public image of the Protestant minister be redrawn? The issue is not simply one of status-seeking or regaining prestige. A great injustice is being done to consecrated men who not only preach but love the Lord Jesus Christ. In between the extremists, the average Protestant minister is seeking simply and honorably not only to discharge the Great Commission but to win the rightful respect of his fellow men. He asks no “benefit of clergy,” but he does ask to be judged as a man rather than as an exploited image.

COMPULSORY UNIONISM DRIVES FOR ECCLESIASTICAL SUPPORT

When Methodists gather in Denver for their quadrennial General Conference, April 27 to May 7, Protestant laymen will be alert for a possible bid to commit the Methodist Church in support of compulsory unionism and against “right to work” laws, a position which has divided churchmen and laity since the Board of Social and Economic Relations adopted it in June 1958.

Relying upon an element of surprise and confusion, some ecclesiastical leaders last year got through the 171st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church a resolution so neatly worded that not a few delegates thought they were supporting a “right to work” position, only to discover later that they had voted on the other side. Some participants, besides protesting “deceptive and confusing” tactics in presentation of the “right to work” principle, have contended that the Assembly’s deference to compulsory unionism actually forsook Presbyterianism’s historic support of the freedom of the individual.

The original resolution on collective bargaining, presented to the Presbyterian Assembly by the Social Education and Action Committee, included a number of direct attacks on voluntary unionism, and mentioned the “right to work” principle by name. After floor debate, proponents of this resolution “backed down” by deleting the direct attacks on “right to work.” Many Assembly delegates held the impression that all opposition to “right to work” was being deleted, whereas two innocuous-appearing statements, left intact, in effect put the United Presbyterian Church on record against “right to work” laws.

Similar ambiguity appeared in the resolution voted by the General Board of the National Council of Churches claiming to represent 38 Protestant and Orthodox denominations. By 73 to 16, with 12 abstentions, the General Board last year approved a policy statement declaring that “union membership as a basis of continuing employment should be neither required nor forbidden by law.” The issue of the union shop, the General Board declared, “should be left to agreement by management and labor through the processes of collective bargaining.” This, of course, squarely endorses compulsory unionism since the purpose of “right to work” laws is to prohibit employers or union officials from bargaining away a worker’s right to refrain from joining a union. The AFL-CIO News (Dec. 12, 1959) publicized the real meaning of NCC’s action: “The general board of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.—executive body of the 40 million member federation—has taken a firm stand opposing so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws.”

The rise of industry in the United States, which shaped the remarkable prosperity of the twentieth century, also posed new problems endangering the liberty of the worker. Many employers were requiring “yellow dog” contracts, stipulating that the worker must not belong to the newly-organized unions if he wished to get and keep a job. This infringed on the worker’s freedom of association, and his right to organize in the interest of proper working conditions. Many states, and ultimately Congress, rightfully outlawed these “yellow dog” contracts.

Due to legislative protection, as by the Railway Labor Act and the Wagner Act, unions grew rapidly during the 1920s and ’30s. The CIO, formed in 1938, and the AFL, organized in 1886, merged in 1955. As with the rise of Big Business, this was no unmixed blessing. For one thing, union professionals began the same infringement of the individual worker’s rights as had the employers previously. Whereas the employers had demanded nonmembership in unions, union officials now demanded union membership as a condition of employment. Such agreements requiring union membership as the condition of work are called “union shop” or “closed shop” contracts.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by Congress in 1947, recognized the right of states to pass and enforce right to work laws to protect the freedom of the worker to decide whether the services of a particular union are worthwhile and desirable. Such laws are now in effect in 19 states, most of them explicitly outlawing both “yellow dog” and “union shop” contracts. They thus deter both the employer and the union professional who want to deprive the worker of his right to decide whether he should join a union, and they serve to safeguard Christian conscience.

Clergymen and laity, who so quickly sensed the injustice of “yellow dog” contracts, fail to realize that today union compulsion often endangers the worker’s freedom. In the 1930s the unions were struggling for existence, and the policy was to accord them special privileges. In 1960 unions are a powerful and established entity. The widespread corruption revealed by the McClellan Labor Rackets Committee, and the fact that Communists have infiltrated some powerful unions, help to indicate why freedom of association guaranteed by “right to work” is important to Christian workers.

Curiously, the mounting concern evidenced in the drive for voluntary unionism holds only scattered support from Big Business, today often indifferent to the coercive power of Big Labor over the worker’s rights. Although farmers and small businessmen (and some major industries) protest compulsory unionism, Big Steel and Big Motors and other giant industries give evidence of welcoming compulsory unionism because it provides a convenient and efficient way of handling labor negotiations. But the price of exalting expedience over virtue, and of submerging individual rights in the collectivity, will ultimately prove as costly to Big Business as to Big Labor.

Alongside their dissatisfaction over NCC’s tilt toward organizational compulsion and against individual liberty, many laymen and some churchmen are indignant that the ecumenical body committed its constituency on an issue of economic debate. They find in the General Board’s policy statement another evidence of ecclesiastical readiness to speak authoritatively on highly debatable politico-economic particulars (touching which clergymen have no special competence), while blurring into generalities many of the doctrinal particulars for which the Church has a special basis in divine revelation.

PROFESSIONALS DISTRESS DELEGATES AT ‘WHITE HOUSE’ CONFERENCE

The 7,602 participants at the million-dollar “White House conference” on children and youth shaped 1,600 recommendations in five days (one resolution for every four delegates). The full conference had no opportunity to vote on final recommendations of the 18 forums, and many participants grumbled that steering committee revisions, integrating the supposed conscience of the conference, no longer reflected their own commitments. Were the professionals, they asked, once again exploiting a public parley to commend their own prejudices to government and the nation?

Numerous delegates voiced disappointment because forums deteriorated easily into a propaganda sounding board for government spending. Some spokesmen, they felt, made “the dignity and worth of each individual” a cliché for implementing such programs. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Flemming lost little time in philosophically supporting certain “conference recommendations,” notably more federal aid to education. Mr. Flemming welcomed “public support” for making government a more “active partner” in meeting social wants.

Broadly speaking, delegates fell into four groups: 1. The professionals, mainly from the social sciences and related fields; 2. Special interest groups, bent on using the findings in programs they represent; 3. Lay people without organizational affiliation appointed in their own states to governor’s committees and commissions; and 4. The young people themselves.

Because standards of American life had sagged in the past two generations, most lay leaders seemed hopeful that moral and spiritual values would prove a chief concern. Many wanted the conference to express itself in a charter or code that would recall the nation to the values it had honored in the past. This was not accomplished. One reason was that, as work group recommendations appeared, they were sent to smaller committees in which professionals with social science backgrounds were influential. Conference expressions were couched in social science jargon, and dignity was conferred on behavioristic philosophy, social science research techniques, and programs shaped by social science methodology. Conference desires were thus controlled, some complained, and representative views dissolved, while the theories of professionals were implemented under the façade of popular demand.

Despite youth protests that the suppression of religious teaching in public schools promotes ignorance of moral and spiritual realities, leaders invoked the doctrine of “church-state separation” to defeat any move toward the study of religion in public schools. In Forum 11a recommendation that religion become a part of high school study was voted down by religious people in the adult audience pleading for separation. Religious considerations were repeatedly ruled out as not germane. Social science methodologists were still depicting all values as environmental responses and therefore relative. Authoritarian standards, especially standards of morality which are biblical in nature, were dismissed.

The move toward an interfaith perspective broke down for several reasons: 1. Religious special interests persisted. The Roman Catholic drive became apparent before the conference began. 2. The inability of divergent traditions to communicate with each other, due to lack of understanding or to distrust. 3. The feeling that an eclectic view is itself a form of particularism catering especially to the humanistic theory of values. 4. Fear of dogmatism in any form (except the liberal dogma that “all dogmatism is dangerous”). 5. A diplomatic nicety that restrained delegates in the interest of “American homogeneity” from strong expression of convictions, lest this violate the canons of brotherliness.

AFL-CIO PUTS BUTCHERS ON A LEAN PROPAGANDA DIET

The Butcher Workman, a magazine circulated to the 375,000-member Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, AFL-CIO, has done a disservice to its constituency by editorially distorting the thrust of an address made by J. Howard Pew to the National Council of Presbyterian Men (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 11 issue). Some Church leaders, chafing under censure, likewise are twisting lay criticism.

In this address Mr. Pew scored the corporate church making pronouncements in the realm of economics and politics. However, the Butcher Workman implies that he spoke against “the elevation of all people to a better status in life” and insinuates that he is one who would “buy” the economic views of the Church.

AFL-CIO exploitation of the partisan pronouncements of certain Church spokesmen is not mentioned.

All this highlights the Church’s grave responsibility to give our tortured society a leadership which is spiritual, and which will lead capital and labor alike to the healing stream of the Gospel.

THE ‘OFFENSE’ OF THE CROSS

To the unregenerate mind the Cross will always be an offense. But for man to bypass that which was to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness is to bypass the way of salvation itself.

Wherein lies the offense of the Cross?

The offense of the Cross centers in the fact that the sin with which all men are infected is so serious in nature and in effect that nothing less than the death of the Son of God could have made atonement for that sin.

Paul tells us that the preaching of the Cross, with its full implications, is to those who are perishing folly, but to those who are saved the power of God.

He further tells us that the meaning of the Cross must be preached in simplicity so that the Holy Spirit may take this “foolish” message and lead men to faith in the wisdom and power of God.

When we strip away the unbelievable wordiness of theological controversy today, we find that the burning issue has to do with man’s attempt to bypass the offense of the Cross.

This “offense” is variously translated. In the King James Version we read: “the offense of the cross”; while Phillips speaks of “the hostility which preaching the cross provokes.” The Berkeley Version has it “the offensiveness of the cross.” In the RSV we read: “the stumbling block of the cross”; in the Amplified New Testament, “the cross … a stumbling block”; and Williams translates it “the hindrance done by the cross.” The word used in the Chinese is “t’ao ien”—“disturbing,” “offensive.”

The love of God, as revealed in the Cross, can never be overstated. At the same time this love can never be apprehended until we explore the reason for the Cross, namely, that man’s condition is one of such complete alienation from God because of sin that nothing less than the suffering, blood, and death of God’s Son could provide the remedy.

We rejoice in the wonder of John 3:16. But we are prone to overlook the words should not perish which are a part of that marvelous declaration. For man the alternative to Christ’s atoning death is to perish.

But this has always been offensive to the unregenerate heart. Even within the Church there are those who, stumbling over the Cross, emphasize only one aspect of God’s love and try to lead men to Him without their facing up to the iniquity of their own hearts which separates them from God. This approach only too often leads us to the attitude that we are doing God a favor by joining the Church and sharing in its program.

There needs to be a renewed emphasis on this matter of sin and our salvation from it. I do not imply that any of us can fully perceive our sins as God sees them; but unless the prospective church member is confronted with the reason for the Cross (the enormity of sin and the price of redemption), the condition of his heart, if he is unregenerate, continues as a barrier to God.

There are two “prices” which every man must understand—the price which Christ paid for our salvation, and the price or cost of discipleship. Only as man realizes the first in some measure, can the second become to him a vital reality.

To approach the Cross with philosophical concepts alone makes for problems, for the Cross cannot be explained in these terms. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal the spiritual truths that lie at the heart of this central event of all history. Without the Holy Spirit, the offense of the Cross remains. It is the Spirit-filled witness and the Spirit-directed decision that transforms the folly of the Cross into the most glorious event of time, and is the only way man can stand unashamed in God’s holy presence.

Groups, techniques, study classes, and discussions have eternal relevance only as they cut through the objections, reservations, and evasions of human pride and confront the sinner with his lost condition out of Christ. The temptation to win others to ourselves or our own man-made concepts is a very real one. Our task as Christians is to bring others to the One who alone can make them whole.

There is a theory on the part of some that the Gospel should never be used to produce guilt complexes in people. Why not? It was because of our guilt that Christ died. The Cross can only be explained in terms of guilt and penalty. True, there are some who try to do otherwise, but wherever its offense is explained away, the witness of the Church is thereby weakened.

Not for one moment do we suggest that effective Christian witness consists in dangling sinners over the brink of an eternity separated from God. But to point up man’s lost condition is certainly part of the Christian witness. Without this there is no meaning to the Cross and no Gospel to preach. The love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness of God are indeed constraining influences, but God is also holy and just. He is of purer eyes than to behold evil. Nothing unclean can ever come into his glorious presence.

Unregenerate man is already lost; he is condemned already, and he needs to know it. Then, and only then, can the height and depth of the love of God come into clear relief. Then only can we understand the wonder of the Cross. Only as we understand the depths from which we are saved, can we appreciate the steps God took to make our salvation possible.

David expresses this thought in these words: He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Accept the offense of the Cross and this too becomes our song.

How easy it is to bypass the offense of the Cross in pastoral psychology, counseling, evangelism, and education! How great is the temptation to try to make the way of salvation palatable to man! The danger of ignoring the Cross and the reason for it because it is foolish or offensive is very great.

There is today a rightful emphasis on “identification” as a means of winning men to Christ. This is good, provided the one doing personal work identifies himself as a sinner saved by God’s grace. But identification can become a handicap where unconsciously or otherwise the prospect is won to faith in another individual and not in the living Christ.

It is natural to recoil from hostility. We want to be liked and controversy is unpleasant. In most areas of life hostility and controversy can and should be avoided. But when it comes to the cross of Jesus Christ, both will always be present, for here we have the ever-recurring conflict between darkness and light, between good and evil.

At the cross of Christ man makes a momentous decision; either he accepts and rejoices in the “foolishness of God,” or he rejects that in favor of the wisdom of this world.

L. NELSON BELL

CENSUS

Pastor Peterson was deep in his armchair reading the telephone book. The church register was open beside him. He explained that he was preparing a sermon on Psalm 87. When I looked uncomfortably blank he reminded me that this was the Psalm behind the hymn “Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.”

The census year had led him to reflect on the numbering of the people of God. Psalm 87 describes the glorious counting of the Gentiles among the citizens of Zion. At the moment, however, he was comparing the mainly Anglo-Saxon names of the church register with the cosmopolitan variety of the phone book. He had been scribbling some verses:

O’Bannon, Shannon,

Maglioni, Gray, Brown

Are names now numbered

In the census count down.

Miss London, Naples,

Mr. Paris, France, Rome

Are all on record

In their U.S.A. home,

Along with others

Somewhat harder to spell,

Onuskanych and

Zyzniewski as well.

Each nose is counted

Every name is spelled out—

The Szuszczewiczes

Are inscribed without doubt.

The rolls of heaven

Must be stranger by far;

His book of mercy

Who has numbered each star

Is filled with names from

Most outlandish places,

The gathered harvest

Of the scattered races.

For Wu and Suki,

Mbuyong, O’Brien

They too are reckoned

With the sons of Zion.

I told the pastor that I rather preferred Newton’s poetry on the psalm, but that I would look forward to the sermon.

EUTYCHUS

THE ONLY IRRELEVANCY

In directing Roman Catholics not to vote for communists in Italian elections, I believe that all Americans will cheer Pope John XXIII, rather than condemn His Holiness, as Dr. Glenn L. Archer attempts to do, by indirection, in his Open Letter to me in your issue of March 14, 1960.

Is Dr. Archer suggesting that the fine Protestant Ministers of our country would fail to instruct their flocks against communism? If so, Dr. Archer does not share my high opinion of the hundreds of Protestant Ministers with whom I have worked in various public causes and services during the last quarter of a century.

For Dr. Archer to read into the Vatican’s opposition to communism—an opposition which all loyal Americans applaud—the mischievous analogy that His Holiness would interfere with Senator John Kennedy, or any other Catholic candidate for high office in our government, is a deplorable exercise in semantics. It will be recognized as such by any thinking American. It will also be recognized as an expression of bigotry designed to split Americans apart, at the exact moment when our nation is face to face with a gigantic communist conspiracy to overthrow it. This is the time when all of us must join together as Americans and resist those who unwittingly serve the communist design of “divide and conquer.”

It was exactly on these grounds that I predicated my column attack on your publication’s “Bigotry or Smear” editorial. When I telephoned my neighbor and friend, the distinguished Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, and read your alarming editorial to him, I expressed my American belief that some leading Protestant clergyman should express an immediate reaction to the bigotry that had been expressed in your editorial.

Not only did Dr. Sockman agree with me, but he dictated these exact words to express his reaction: “We must keep the forthcoming Presidential campaign above religious partisanship and vote for candidates purely on the basis of their proven records as Americans.”

Dr. Archer charges that this cannot be construed as Dr. Sockman’s reaction. That silly answer needs no denial from me. Dr. Sockman read my column, in which I quoted his reaction, and if I had misquoted him, this outstanding Protestant Minister and American instantly would have corrected me.

Dr. Archer says that Senator Kennedy’s war heroism, outlined in my column, is wholly irrelevant. I suggest that in assaying the Americanism of any candidate, the matter of his war record is of vital importance, just as it is reassuring to all of us that Richard Nixon had a fine Navy record in World War II.

Incidentally, Vice President Nixon recently gave us a shining example of American rectitude when he sharply corrected a Republican who suggested that Senator Kennedy would be “soft” on communism. I’m sure every American glowed at that sort of behavior!

The only thing that is irrelevant is the religion of Richard Nixon or the religion of John Kennedy. Let us vote for or against candidates on the basis of their proven loyalty to our form of government, and on their ability to discharge the duties of the office they seek.…

I have never questioned either the religion or the color of any performer, in twelve years of our weekly TV shows. As a Catholic, two of my closest friends among professional performers, who have appeared frequently on our stage, are the fine pianist, Roger Williams, whose Dad is a Protestant Minister, and the delightful southern singer, Betty Johnson, whose brother is a Protestant Minister.

We have a staff of 130 men who work on our show 52 weeks a year. I wish you to believe that I could not, if my life depended on it, identify more than four or five of the total of 130, in terms of the religions they profess. From their names, I imagine that not less than 90% of these 130 men on my show are professed Protestants. Each of them is answerable only in point of ability. I’d discharge anyone on my staff who proposed to ask these men their religious affiliations.

During World War II, when I assembled groups of stars to entertain the wounded in Army, Navy, and Air Force hospitals all over our country, to supply Protestant, Jewish and Catholic chaplains with the monies they needed desperately to service the wounded men of their religions, I also organized at each hospital Chaplains’ Funds. The Protestant chaplains at such hospitals as Halloran, St. Albans, Thomas England General Hospital, and other installations, will tell you that they shared equally in the monies I raised.

In today’s mail, I received a letter from Dr. James Uhlinger, Pastor of the Wesley Methodist Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. I met this fine Minister while we were in Moscow last July, where we represented the United States at the request of our State Department. Pastor Uhlinger told me that in Moscow he had been delighted to meet a Worcester friend, Father Dion, the only Catholic priest stationed in Moscow. The friendship of these two men, one a Methodist Minister and one a Catholic Priest, seemed to me to be the most wonderfully effective expression of America that we could offer to the Communists.

If you saw our TV show from Russia you will recall that I emphasized our elation at the discovery that the anti-God and anti-American propaganda in Russia had fallen flat. It was heartening to discover that the Russian people, as distinguished from the relatively small group within the Communist party in that country, had resisted the bigoted viewpoint of their masters. With the help of God, all of us in America must resist bigotry in any form, and form our judgments of other Americans purely on the basis of their individual abilities and their dedication to the common good.

This was dramatized recently in Baltimore, when Maryland’s Governor J. Millard Tawes, a Mason, presented to me, a Catholic, a Masonic award, before an audience of Shriners who had assembled to pay me the honor which I will never forget.

ED SULLIVAN

New York, N. Y.

THE DIALOGUE

In the interests of fair play, I would like the privilege of equal space to comment on C. Stanley Lowell’s review (February 1 issue) of American Catholics: A Protestant-Jewish View (Sheed and Ward). I am willing to pass over in silence Mr. Lowell’s dislike of the chapters written by the Protestant contributors. It is his privilege to disagree with us, and he has clearly availed himself of it.

What I am not willing to pass over in silence are his disparaging remarks about the Catholic editor of the book. Mr. Lowell, in a remarkable burst of omniscience, says, “It would appear that the editor must have called the writers on the phone and said: ‘Look, will you be a good fellow and give me 3,000 words on what you think of American Catholics? You take history.’”

The most impressive thing about this statement is its solid disregard for the facts. I would like to acquaint your readers with a few of them. I first received a full letter from the editor, outlining the project. We had several exchanges before I took on the assignment. I was told about each of the other contributors. I was allowed to read the Catholic “response” before it was published. I was given several opportunities to add to my own manuscript. The editor deliberately decided not to remove repetitions in the various chapters, on the sound conviction that if independently-written chapters stressed similar “fears” about American Catholicism, Catholic readers would realize that there must be some substance to them. If the book therefore seems to Mr. Lowell a “hodgepodge,” he must attribute this to the inadequacies of the Protestant contributors and not to the Catholic sponsors.

But there is a more important point. Mr. Lowell does not simply cast aspersions upon the editorial ability of the Catholic editor, but goes on to impugn his integrity by declaring that participants in the Catholic-Protestant dialogue (of which the book is clearly an example) “must (sic) sign a loyalty oath (sic) to accept as infallible (sic) the Courtney Murray-John Cogley line on what the Roman church teaches in regard to religious liberty.”

This is a pretty categorical statement. Perhaps it is only meant to be cute hyperbole. It is certainly irresponsible hyperbole. And it must be countered with another categorical statement: the editor of the symposium exacted no “loyalty oath” from any contributor. There was no hint, threat or exercise of any censorship. He gave us complete freedom, in a Catholic-sponsored volume, to say whatever we chose about Catholicism—and many things are said that must cause pain to Catholic hearts.

As for the “infallibility” business, let me make three further categorical statements: (1) I do not believe John Courtney Murray is infallible. (2) I do not believe John Cogley is infallible. (3) I do not even believe John XXIII is infallible. Every contributor to the volume, save Father Weigel, accepts these three statements, and even he accepts the first two of them.

It is important that books be critically reviewed, but it is equally important that books be responsibly reviewed. No good purpose is possibly served by the irresponsible and false allegations I have quoted from Mr. Lowell’s review. These can only widen gaps that are already too wide. I found more love of Christ and love of truth in the editor of American Catholics, with whom I naturally disagree about many basic things, than I find in the whole of my fellow-Protestant’s review.

ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN

St. Andrews, Scotland

I do feel that the group centering in Union Theological Seminary represents a segment of Protestantism which is notoriously soft and uncomprehending in its confrontation of the aggressive designs of the Roman Church on our free culture. I feel that the “dialogue” between Protestants and Roman Catholics which is carried on largely under the aegis of this group is carefully rigged in favor of the Roman position on state aid. It is evident that any person advocating strict construction of the Constitution in regard to Catholic subsidies is systematically excluded. In this dialogue facts are consistently sacrificed to the obsession that kind words must always be spoken of the Roman Church.

Those who advocate holding the present money line between the state and the church are simply not invited to these sessions which become a “love feast” where it is assumed that subsidies ought to be provided for church institutions, and the discussion on this subject, when it comes up at all, is likely to be pitched to the proper amount which should go to the Roman Church. Men like Will Herberg, John Cogley, F. Ernest Johnson, John Bennett continually engage in these sessions of mutual congratulation without ever hearing a statement as to the distinctive church-state position which Protestant groups have predominantly followed in this country. The Catholics who appear on these programs like Cogley, Fr. Murray, William Clancy, etc., constitute a rotating panel of men who are used by the Roman Church to make graceful and gracious appearances advertising “what Catholicism is really like.” Fr. Murray and other priests who habitually participate in “the dialogue” have been ordered by their superiors not to participate if persons representing the POAU Supreme Court position on church subsidies are to appear.

This just means that any real dialogue is out of the question since it is rigged and loaded in advance so as to be a monologue. This was the inspiration for my remarks about the “oath of loyalty.” While I did not mean this in a literal sense, of course, I feel that it constituted a sound figure of speech, as also the word “infallible.”

You will be interested to know that William Clancy has even taken the position in Christianity and Crisis that since I insist on quoting papal encyclicals on the subject of religious freedom, I exhibit poor taste and should be barred from the dialogue. Virtually the same position in regard to POAU has been taken by this journal in a number of sharp attacks on POAU.

You ask what can “clear the air.” What can clear the air, it seems to me, is the insistence on a genuine and realistic dialogue if there is to be one. Such a dialogue must rest on the frank recognition that Protestantism confronts Romanism in a classic, unresolved and unresolvable tension. So long as Protestants are what they are and the Roman Church remains the dogmatic monolith it has permitted itself to become, there can be no resolution of the tension. Theologically, the only resolution possible would be in Rome’s renunciation of its false claims and abandonment of its innovations which outrage the Gospel. Useful dialogue can commence only at the point of open and frank acknowledgment of unresolved and unresolvable tension. As Dr. Van Dusen has helpfully suggested, the confrontation of Roman Catholicism should be in the same manner as the confrontation of Judaism—or any other non-Christian faith. As to the political phase, the viewpoint that church institutions and programs should be voluntarily financed and denied state subsidies should no longer be refused a hearing.

Such a dialogue would be real dialogue. It would be an actual confrontation without sham and posturing. Then there would be no more rigging of the rules, no more exclusion of those who “don’t play fair with the Catholics.” When this is achieved—and you can do much to achieve it—the day of the phony dialogue will be over and the genuine dialogue will have begun. If Roman Catholics are ordered out of the dialogue because their terms and control are jeopardized, then its death would be constructive.

C. STANLEY LOWELL

Protestants and Other Americans United

Washington, D. C.

Protestantism has so many forms; it includes so many theologies; it is divided into so many denominations that cannot serve as a guide to lead the contemporary world out of its present confusion. If in Romanism we find a neo-paganism, in Protestantism we discover an unprecedented religious anarchy and scepticism. It seems to me that Protestants and Roman Catholics alike have been engaged in quarrels for the past four centuries to such an extent that they have forgotten the original Ecclesia of Christ, the One, Holy, Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic Church; the Church of the martyrs and the saints; the Church which has suffered the bloodiest persecutions ever experienced in the history of Christendom, even in the twentieth century, for Christ.

You see, it is not sufficient for a religious denomination or Church to have great names in its theology and letters. A living Church is one which may not include big names but which produces what the Christian Church is supposed to produce! “A tree is known by its fruit” (Mat. 12:33). Probably, it is high time that Protestants and Roman Catholics alike turn to the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church and discover the Christ of the undivided Christian Ecclesia.

DEMETRIOS J. CONSTANTELOS

St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church

Perth Amboy, N. J.

Liberalism is the death rattle of the Church.… We may feel that the Roman Church has placed an unwarranted burden upon her members by making them receive as essential to salvation non-scriptural dogmas but nevertheless in spite of all this the Roman Church has remained true to the historical facts of Christianity and to authentically proclaiming the dogmas of the Incarnation, Atonement and Resurrection.

ROBERT M. COLLINS

St. Thomas Episcopal Church

Morris, Ill.

There has been no mention made of the fact that a President, Catholic or otherwise, has many, many appointments to be made, and many of them are of vital importance. Our late President Roosevelt, by reason of his extended term of office, had the privilege of appointing about 375 out of 525 Federal Judges—making most of them young men in their early 40’s, so that they would be in office for the next 30 years. Any lawyer will tell you that Federal Judges have almost unlimited power, and there are about 50% of the cases that can be determined either way, and ample authority found for it, and once decided, it is very difficult to secure a reversal. Then there are hundreds of other appointments.…

ERNEST H. PENDELL

Tryon, N. Car.

Will you please, please, please tell me why every writer in every religious and every secular publication scrupulously avoids even mentioning the fact that we are, at the same time, electing a Commander-in-Chief of all of our Armed Forces???…

FLORENCE M. STANDISH

San Francisco, Calif.

In terms of wealth and world influence the Vatican ranks with the major powers of the world.… Representation at this crossroads of the world would be extremely advantageous to us in the U. S.… An envoy should be sent to the Vatican. Diplomatic relations should be officially established. All Vatican representatives in the U. S. should be registered (and labeled) as agents for a foreign power.

T. EDSEL WARREN

Arcata, Calif.

My reading of late has included many books and/or treatises to the effect that unless we are very careful:

1. The “sects” are going to take us over. 2. The Baptist Church is out to control all. 3. The Communists just about have us. 4. The Catholics think it is now their time.

At times it seems that any of the above may happen. Then, I remember I am a Christian. That always brings out the best in me.

M. CLARKE GARRISON

Hot Springs, Ark.

ISHTAR IGNORED

In reference to your editorial concerning Lent (Mar. 14 issue), I have not the slightest intention of giving any observance to this pagan practice this year or any year for that matter. You omitted a reference to the goddess Ishtar, which would have pleased a great many of your readers.

WALTER WEAVER

Washington, D. C.

Historically the basic concept of Lent was not “a time of prayer and fasting in memory of our Lord’s passion and death.” It was originally the period of intensive training and instruction (such as is found in the first six chapters of the Didache) for converts from heathenism in preparation for their Baptism at Easter. To such classes for catechumens older Christians were urged to come as a refresher course. All believers looked forward to the glorious day of Easter when the great good news was celebrated.…

MONTGOMERY HUNT THROOP

South Orange, N. J.

The narrative of II Kings spans three troubled centuries from Ahab’s death (c. 853 B.C.) to Jehoiachin’s release from his Babylonian prison (c. 560 B.C.). The importance of this book can scarcely be exaggerated. First, it records the last days of Elijah and the ministry of Elisha (chaps. 1–13); secondly, it describes the fall of Samaria (chap. 17) and Jerusalem (chaps. 24–25); thirdly, it provides a clear picture of the historical and religious context in which the great pre-exilic prophets labored; and fourthly, it furnishes part of the background for the New Testament antipathy between Jews and Samaritans by showing the hybrid nature of the Samaritan people and their worship (chap. 17:24–40).

CHRONOLOGICAL PUZZLE

The problem of harmonizing the various chronological data in II Kings is a major one, especially for the period from 740–716 B.C. For instance, a comparison of 2 Kings 15:27, 30; 16:1–2; 18:1 will result in the discovery that Ahaz was 26 when his 25-year-old son, Hezekiah, began to reign! The difficulties are compounded when an attempt is made to synchronize the history of the divided monarchy with the fixed dates in Assyrian inscriptions, for example, Ahaz’ dealings with Tiglath-pileser III in 734–732 B.C. (2 Kings 16:7 ff.), the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. (2 Kings 17:6), and Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701 B.C. (2 Kings 18:13 ff.). E. R. Thiele in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (University of Chicago Press, 1951) has grappled with these and many more problems and has proposed a helpful solution. The culprit was apparently Pekah who in 740/39 usurped the throne of Israel from Menahem’s son Pekahiah (2 Kings 15:25). Perhaps to enhance his prestige, Pekah claimed the regnal years of his two predecessors as his own, thereby crediting himself with 20 years’ rule instead of eight. When the scribes of Judah synchronized the reigns of their kings with those of Israel, they used Pekah’s reckoning. Apparently a later scribe, unacquainted with Pekah’s ambitious claims, edited the synchronisms of 2 Kings 17:1; 18:1, 9, 10 with hazardous results. Thiele’s discovery of “Pattern Twelve-Thirteen”—the addition or subtraction of 12 or 13 years depending on the nature of the synchronism—has proved exceedingly helpful in harmonizing the biblical dates with themselves and with the Assyrian fixed dates. John C. Whitcomb, Jr. has compiled a concise and useful chart of the Old Testament Kings and Prophets (Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1959) by which at a glance one can correlate events in Israel and Judah with Near Eastern history.

CONFLICT OF CULTURES

The period in question was a junction of three ways of life: the ways of the nomadic herdsman, the settled farmer, and the city dweller. Herdsmen lived in close-knit clans, traveling together for mutual protection and roaming from place to place in search of forage. Israelites were encouraged to remember that the patriarchs were herdsmen (cf. Deut. 26:5: “a wandering Aramean was my father”). The conquest of Canaan brought a transition to a more settled way of life in which many of the clan customs were perpetuated. However, as Israelites left their villages to dwell in the Canaanite cities, clan bonds tended to break. The immoral and spiritual corruption of the sophisticated culture plus ruthless commercial practices were an offense to those Israelites who loyally clung to the covenant laws and customs. (There is a helpful description of the cultural tensions in chapter three of R. B. Y. Scott’s Relevance of the Prophets, Macmillan, 1953.)

Naboth’s refusal to sell or barter his vineyard is a graphic illustration of the strong tie between a true Israelite and his land (1 Kings 21:3). Property was not a saleable commodity in ancient Israel but was part of the inheritance passed from father to son. Jezebel’s ruthless scheme to do away with the recalcitrant Naboth typifies the Canaanite contempt for the deeply-ingrained traditions of Israel. Elijah and Elisha, like their successors Amos and Micah, were advocates of the old order, supporters of the covenant, and sought to safeguard the rights of the poor and underprivileged. When Jehu’s bloody coup (2 Kings 9–10) claimed Jezebel among its victims, observers noted that Elijah’s grim prophecy had been fulfilled (2 Kings 9:36–37). Such a fate was worthy recompense for her flagrant disregard of Israel’s ancient laws. Elisha’s sensitivity to these social problems is seen in his concern for the widow whose creditor threatened to enslave her two sons (2 Kings 4:7).

More important than this social tension is the religious conflict—the battle between Baal and Jehovah, symbolized in Elijah’s contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). There are good reasons for this conflict. Baal was represented in idolatrous form in a multitude of shrines throughout the land. These idols were so false a representation of deity that the prophets called them “lies” (cf. Amos 2:4). Like the Canaanite god of fertility, Baal was credited with the responsibility for the grain, wine, and oil—the staple products of Palestine (cf. Hos. 2:5, 8). A jealous God could brook no such brazen usurpation of his power and authority as Lord of heaven and earth. The drought predicted by Elijah (1 Kings 17:1), the consuming fire (1 Kings 18:38), the cleansing from leprosy (2 Kings 5), and the floating axe head (2 Kings 6:5) are among the miracles calculated to demonstrate God’s total sovereignty over nature.

Baal tried to compete with God in the arena of history as well. Injured Ahaziah sent messengers to Baal-zebub, god Ekron, to find out if he would recover from his wounds (2 Kings 1). Many of the ancient peoples held that to predict the future was to control its course (cf. Num. 22:6). For this reason all types of divination are sternly opposed in the Mosaic law (Deut. 18:9 ff.). For the prophets of Baal to forecast the outcome of Ahaziah’s injuries would be a seizure of the rights of God to determine the outcome of this and all other historical events; hence Elijah’s trenchant opposition to Ahaziah’s plan.

The practice of sacred prostitution in Canaan is well attested. The yearly cycle of fertility in agriculture was attributed to the sexual union of Baal and his consort, Anath or Ashtart. The worshipper of Baal could aid the productivity of his land by engaging in sexual ceremonies with cult prostitutes. By this act of sympathetic magic he took part in the cosmic intercourse which gave annual birth to crops and flocks. Hosea (4:13–14) informs us that this practice was common in the Northern Kingdom, while 2 Kings 23:7 indicates that the Jerusalem temple sheltered sacred harlots. We need only to add the mention of human sacrifice (cf. 2 Kings 17:17) to complete the awful picture of perverted worship and warped religion which evoked prophetic censure and divine judgment.

The famous Moabite Stone alludes to a series of conflicts between Omri’s dynasty and the Moabite kings, especially Mesha, the author of the inscription. He claims to have triumphed over Israel so thoroughly that “Israel perished forever.” This grossly exaggerated account is possibly to be correlated with 2 Kings 3:4–27 which mentions the retreat of the Israelitish troops who apparently were panicked by the gruesome sight of Mesha’s heir being sacrificed upon the wall. This offering to the god Chemosh (cf. 1 Kings 11:33; 2 Kings 23:13) coincides with the view expressed in the Moabite Stone that Moab’s victories and defeats were dependent on Chemosh’s blessing or wrath.

The revolt of Moab was made possible by the series of battles between the Arameans (Syrians) and Israel, which distracted and weakened the Northern Kingdom (cf. 1 Kings 20; 22) and cost Ahab his life (1 Kings 22:34–35). A detailed account of the turbulent relationships of Israel with the Aramean capital of Damascus is given by M. F. Unger in his Israel and the Arameans of Damascus (Zondervan, 1957). This survey will help to disentangle the perplexing power politics of this period: at times Judah and Israel joined forces against the Arameans (cf. 2 Kings 8:25–29); on occasion the various states allied themselves to withstand the threat of Assyrian invasion (cf. the inscription of Shalmaneser III and 2 Kings 16:5 ff.).

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III gives a different picture of Jehu from that in II Kings. The hard-driving (2 Kings 9:20), swash-buckling destroyer of the house of Ahab (2 Kings 10) is portrayed kneeling before his Assyrian lord. Shalmaneser has unwittingly helped to illustrate the verdict of 2 Kings 10:31: “But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord … with all his heart.” Assyria, no less than Egypt, was a broken reed, an unworthy substitute for the Lord’s rod and staff (cf. Hos. 5:13; 12:1). Menahem (c. 752–742) and Pekah (c. 740–732) failed to learn from Jehu’s example. Both were forced to capitulate to Tiglath-pileser III (called Pul in 2 Kings 15:19) although Pekah and his ally, Rezin of Damascus, tried to resist. Ahaz of Judah (c. 735–715), fearful of the coalition between Israel and Damascus, ignored Isaiah’s instructions (Isa. 7) and joined the list of kings who contributed to Assyria’s welfare (2 Kings 16:7 ff.) and received credit for their contributions in Tiglath-pileser’s annals.

When Hoshea courted Egypt and withheld tribute from Assyria (2 Kings 17:4), Shalmaneser V laid siege for three years (c. 724–722 B.C.) to Samaria, the last Israelitish stronghold (most of Israel had been conquered earlier by Tiglath-pileser III). Whether it was he or his successor, Sargon II, that took the city is not quite clear. Second Kings makes no mention of Sargon II, whose annals attribute the fall of Samaria to him. Thiele (op. cit. pp. 122 ff.), following A. T. Olmstead, concludes that Shalmaneser V was Samaria’s conqueror and that Sargon’s scribe had incorrectly claimed the victory in order to increase Sargon’s prestige. The mass deportations and importations which help to account for the Jewish hostility toward the Samaritans (2 Kings 17:24 ff; cf. John 4:9) are part of a program by which Tiglath-pileser III and his successors tried to weaken local and national loyalties in an attempt to forge a world empire whose citizens pledged their troth only to Assyria.

The tide of Assyrian aggression did not ebb after the inundation of Israel but flowed south. In 701 B.C. Sennacherib (c. 705–681) ravaged Judah, capturing (according to the Taylor prism) 46 walled cities and numberless villages. Sennacherib’s inscription describes the siege of Jerusalem—Hezekiah, “like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem”—but is silent as to the outcome. Second Kings 19:35 tells why. The angel of the Lord decimated (perhaps by a plague as Herodotus seems to hint) the Assyrian army. Sennacherib’s silence is not surprising: warriors ancient and modern are loathe to chronicle their setbacks. Sennacherib has left a detailed pictorial account of his attack on Lachish (2 Kings 18:14): siege engines are rolled up earthen inclines; archers, slingers, and spearmen follow the engines which are manned by shielded archers.

When Josiah fell at Megiddo (c. 608 B.C.), the last and best hopes of Judah perished with him (2 Kings 23:29). Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, gained his independence from Assyria (c. 626 B.C.), and with help from Medes and Scythians he destroyed Nineveh (612 B.C.). His son, Nebuchadnezzar, defeated the Egyptian army at Carchemish in Syria (605 B.C.), and Judah’s days were numbered. Twice, at the instigation of Egypt, Judah’s kings rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar (despite Jeremiah’s protests; cf. Jer. 27:12 ff.) with devastating results. The city survived the Babylonians’ first punitive attack (c. 597 B.C., cf. 2 Kings 24:1 ff.) in which Ezekiel was captured (Ezek. 1:1–2); but the second onslaught (c. 587–6 B.C., cf. 2 Kings 25:1 ff.) brought the total eclipse of the Southern Kingdom. Zedekiah, blinded, bound, and bereft of his sons (2 Kings 25:7), plodded to Babylon, a tattered remnant of David’s dynasty. D. J. Wiseman’s Chronicles of Chalden Kings, (British Museum, 1956) gives the Babylonian accounts of some of Nebuchadnezzar’s exploits.

THEOLOGICAL EMPHASES

Hilkiah’s discovery of the book of the law (2 Kings 22:8) paved the way for a return to the principle of canonicity. Ruled usually by royal whim and occasionally by prophetic word, the people of Judah led by pious Josiah pledged their loyalty to the ancient covenant contained in the new-found book (2 Kings 23:1–3). The watchword of the great eighth century prophets had been “Back to Moses.” Undoubtedly a remnant had responded. Josiah’s reform, in contrast, was an official act recognizing the binding authority of the Mosaic law. The detailed account of Josiah’s reform (2 Kings 23:4 ff.) is an index of the extent to which corrupt Canaanite practices had infiltrated Israelitish life and worship. Only a wholehearted renewal of the covenant relationship could be a successful antidote for such poison. Both revelation and response were necessary: the book of the law reminded the people of the objective divine authority necessary for their spiritual welfare, and their pledge of homage to the covenant was their only hope of salvation.

But the people had passed the point of no return, though not all would be lost, as a perplexed Habakkuk learned (Hab. 2:4). Josiah’s tragic death was the earnest of pending judgment. The message of II Kings is clear: righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Internal corruption—flagrant and constant—brought in its wake external domination. Assyria and Babylonia were hired razors (Isa. 7:20) wielded by a God whose holiness had been outraged (2 Kings 23:26–27). If II Kings puts more stress upon correct religion than upon moral rectitude, it is because social righteousness best stems from a proper relationship to God. This involved loyalty to the true sanctuary at Jerusalem and sincere use of the means of worship prescribed in the law. Their abject failure left no course but judgment which was thorough but not total. Even in the dark pages that close the books, one detects a faint glimmer of hope: the release of Jehoiachin (2 Kings 25:27 ff.) seems to augur of a better day. The God of the covenant is faithful, though his people prove faithless.

The books of Kings are part of the preparation for the King. Each ruler was judged by the standards expressed in the Davidic covenant (2 Sam. 7:12–17) and the Royal Psalms (e.g., 2; 20; 21; 45; 72; 110; 132) which clarify the king’s role as God’s anointed ruler and representative. Each king fell short, though Hezekiah and Josiah are singled out for praise (2 Kings 18:3; 22:2). As God’s adopted son, the king was to rule with righteousness and justice, if there were to be internal prosperity and external security. The nation’s judicial, economic, military, and spiritual well-being were all dependent on him; and he, in turn, was to be totally dependent on God. Failure to exercise or even recognize this responsibility brought the fall of the monarchy and heightened the prophetic longing for the King on whose righteous shoulder the government would rest with Messianic majesty.

TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING

In addition to the books mentioned in the article on I Kings (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 20, 1959), the following works should prove helpful: N. H. Snaith, I–II Kings in Interpreter’s Bible; James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East—An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton University Press: 1958), a condensation of the more important materials from his two larger works; John Bright, History of Israel (Westminster Press, 1959); D. J. Wiseman, Illustrations front Biblical Archaeology (Eerdmans, 1958), a collection of outstanding pictures with commentary; and W. F. Albright’s classic Archaeology and the Religion of Israel.

DAVID A. HUBBARD

Chairman, Division of Biblical Studies and Philosophy

Westmont College

A recent edition of a leading Methodist journal reports: “Methodist membership is failing even to keep up with the population growth of the United States, and lags far behind the membership gain of the other major Protestant denominations. Methodists are slowly becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the population of the United States.” When one probes the reasons for this condition, he inevitably becomes aware of the widening trend toward ritualism and liturgy within the Methodist Church. The ritualist controversy was one of the major issues at the General Conference in 1952. It may well become so again at the Denver meeting of the 1960 General Conference.

Years ago R. N. Merrill, in the Methodist Review, said of the high church tendencies within Methodism, “We are hardly sure whether we have lulled the Church to sleep or have dressed it for burial.” Even Harry Emerson Fosdick has been quoted as saying, “Throughout the history of the Church, Christians have tried to make their Christianity easy. They have done it by ritualism and sacrament.” Certainly one could draw upon many illustrations to show that when spiritual life and righteousness disintegrate, ritualism is apt to receive more attention. The situation in the Russian Orthodox Church before 1917 was not an accidental development.

PRESENT WEAKNESSES

Roy L. Smith, long-time editor of the Christian Advocate, in his volume Why I Am a Methodist, lists what he considers the 10 present weaknesses of the Methodist Church. Two of the weaknesses are “ease of attaining membership” and “formality of worship services.” He says, “As Nehemiah went back over the history of Judah he came upon a very interesting discovery that Moses had never ordered the observance of elaborate ceremonies.… Two facts are plainly evident to almost any observer of modern Methodism: the increase of ritualism and the need of a new baptism of spiritual power.”

It has been claimed that John Wesley was a high churchman who leaned toward ritual in worship. It is true that Wesley drafted a comparatively simple form of liturgy in his younger days, but it fell into disuse, and there is no allusion to it in records after 1792. None of the great Reformers, not even Luther, placed a heavy emphasis upon form in worship. One of the most significant results of the Reformation, in fact, was the spiritualizing of worship by the drastic elimination of religious formalism. Can it be said of Wesley that he was one who insisted upon vestments, ornaments, candles, lights, incense, gowns, and printed prayers? Were these the stuff out of which he created the class meetings and societies that turned England upside down?

DIFFERENT ORIGINS

There are many fine Christians who enjoy and prefer liturgical forms of worship. Historically there are denominations which have always majored in these forms of worship. Ministers and laymen who prefer such ritual worship are privileged by living in a free country to unite with the denomination of their choice. They should not attempt to ritualize a church whose origins were cradled in a revolt against weak, barren, and empty formal worship. In an article entitled “Shall Methodism Go Gothic?” Bishop Selecman said, “If cathedrals could have saved the country, Europe would have been saved centuries ago.” And if I may quote one more Methodist, Dr. F. C. Hoggorth has pointed out that “the major prophetic protest as heard in Amos and Isaiah was against the turning of religion into a pageant with no connection with life. It is elaborate ritual—apart from life—which has long been the taproot of European tragedy.”

Let the liturgical revival flourish, but let it flourish in its own environment. And let the Methodist Church seek more earnestly to follow Jesus Christ, whose only requirement of worship was that it be “in spirit and in truth.” Let her remember the common people who love their church for what she is, and not try to become something else.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

“After the sermon John Taylor stood in the Churchyard, and gave notice as the people were coming out, ‘Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o’clock.’ Accordingly at six I came and found such a congregation as I believe Epworth never saw before. I stood near the east end of the church, upon my father’s tombstone, and cried, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink: but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’”

So we are introduced to the famous scene of Wesley’s week of “Tombstone Sermons.” It is worth considering what he was standing on, for his father’s epitaph runs as follows:

As he liv’d, so he died

In the true Catholic Faith

Of the Holy Trinity in Unity,

And that Jesus Christ is God incarnate,

And the only Saviour of Mankind.

When we ask whether Wesley has anything to say to those who seek a revival of the true power of the Christian faith in the world today, we have found a place to begin. The prophet of revival stood with his feet planted upon the scriptural, orthodox, and traditional doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and universal free Grace.

Despite the great economic and social differences between eighteenth century England and the world of today, there is a striking intellectual similarity. In reaction against the religious strife of the previous century, and under the influence of the first movements of modern science, the educated classes were seeking “a reasonable religion.” The England in which Wesley’s father lived witnessed a decline of spirituality and of religious conviction, and a growth of unorthodoxy. Associated with this there was, on the credit side, a gradual ebb of ancient superstition, brutality, and intolerance. It was the Age of Elegance, and the Age of Reason.

AGAINST THE TIDE

It is most significant that when at length God worked a revival of religion, he chose as his chief instrument a family which had swum against this tide of unbelief, and which during a period of reduced theology had remained faithful to the ancient creed. One is not claiming that it was Wesley’s strict churchmanship or his orthodoxy that generated the revival, but the fact remains that God laid his hand of approval upon a man such as this. Surely it will be so again. If in this matter we may learn from Wesley, we then conclude that the hope of revival is in firm dogmatic Christianity and not in any “new theology” adjusted to the presuppositions of what passes as modern thought.

Many conservatives will say, “This is just what we want to hear!” Therefore, another side of the question must be brought to mind. It may be claimed that in every age the revival and renewal of Christianity consists in a return to its fixed, original, and authentic principles—to the religion of Scripture with its witness to the facts about Christ, and to the creed of the ancient and undivided Church which is the Mother of us all. However, revival is never a mere return to the past. It is a return to a new, deeper, and more comprehensive understanding of “the faith once delivered to the saints.” This was certainly the case with Wesley. He was a conservative, but a progressive and flexible conservative.

THE ARMINIAN EVANGELICAL

As a high churchman, Wesley was brought up an “Arminian,” that is, an anti-Calvinist. Thus in the Wesley of “the heart was strangely warmed,” in the high churchman turned evangelist, we see brought together that which in the previous century had commonly been held separately. In days when upholders of universal free Grace were mostly stiff traditionalist churchmen, and when evangelicals were mostly Calvinists, John Wesley was the Arminian evangelical. He made a clear and strong witness to salvation by divine Grace, yet unentangled in predestinarian speculation. This synthesis has become the chief contribution of Methodism to theological understanding.

It is interesting that the Wesley whom we see in retrospect as the reviver of traditional orthodoxy in a day of widespread unbelief appeared to the men of his day as a liberating influence. He was the venturesome thinker of “strange new thoughts,” although from the viewpoint of the ages they were not really new. The true “old time religion” is the confident reaffirmation of historic facts and fixed principles when preached by men who are alert to the mental climate and the language of their day.

WESLEY AND THE BIBLE

Many will ask, “What would Wesley have to say about the Bible were he to return today?” It is not easy to say for certain, but the answer I propose is an example of the principle I have laid down. It is clear that Wesley was in his day an upholder, though perhaps not an absolutely uncompromising upholder, of the doctrine of the literal inerrancy of Scripture. This does not by itself prove very much, for in his time everyone, even unbelievers who ignored the Scripture, assumed that divine inspiration and literal inerrancy were closely associated. We may say with complete confidence that Wesley would have today no sympathy whatever with views of the Bible which banish the authentic and historic portrait of Christ. In the face of much modern radical criticism, he would stoutly defend the substantial trustworthiness of the gospel account of the birth, life, words, works, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord. He would say that these are to be understood as real history, and that the whole validity of the Christian faith depends upon this. He would have no comprehension whatever of the notion that some of these mighty events may be true as ideas in the faith of the Church, but not true as facts. However, the present writer judges, in the light of Wesley’s general mentality, that he would not today insist that the authentic and historic portrait of Christ was drawn and recorded in a manner exempt from the normal processes of literary composition. He shows himself well aware that what one makes of the Scripture depends to a great extent on the soundness and reason of one’s tradition of interpretation.

THE CHURCHMAN

Were Wesley to return today, we can hardly doubt that he would be a hopeful observer of the present “conversations” between British Methodism and the Church of England. He struggled all his life to keep Methodism within the Church of England, and to teach his followers to love the Book of Common Prayer. Today he would live in hope that the time has come when constructive steps may be taken to realize his original aim. He would deplore as hindrances to the work of God the unconscious but wounding condescension of some Anglicans, and likewise the defensive inhibitions of some Methodists. He would teach that the wide extension of ecclesiastical fellowship is the way to spiritual cross-fertilization, and that this in turn is God’s channel for spiritual renewal.

Wesley was not the greatest preacher of the revival. He is remembered as its greatest Churchman and disciplinarian. Without the closely-knit Society, he rightly said, the fruits of the preaching would be a “rope of sand.” Supremely God gave to him the gift of government, and he would say today that the divided sects of Protestantism need the gift of government, of wise and strong ecclesiastical discipline, if they are to bear effective witness today. This is not everywhere a popular message, for the practical effect of it is to disturb and upset the conventional routine and the vested interests of the familiar and cozy ecclesiastical organizations of Methodism.

We leave on one side all hazardous speculations as to what would be Wesley’s modern denomination. It is not too lightly to be assumed that he would necesearily be a Methodist! Two things however are certain. He would be in earnest about binding the churches in fellowship. And he would be ardent to unite them in practical evangelism.

How Much More God

Man spends his strength on granite and on steel,

He builds his structures reaching for the sky.

Above their puny pretense, quite alone,

The timeless mountains stand aloof and high.

Man writes his name in symphony and song,

Along the path where weary mortals plod

He seeks articulation. There remains

More music in the silences of God.

Man flings his feeble flutters into space

And prides himself on progress and on change.

The silent stars, eternities away,

Maintain their secret orbs remote and strange.

Man breaks the alabaster of his heart.

But all the precious ointment, sacrificed

To voice his human love, is lost beside

God’s love, unspeakable, in Jesus Christ.

HELEN FRAZEE-BOWER

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Dealing with a Holy War at a distance of four centuries is perilous business. With a pen and not a camera as the medium, partisanship is almost inevitable. Lights tend to be heightened, shades darkened, events and individuals judged in isolation or by modern standards.

This applies especially to the Scottish Reformation. Great and deep was the evil; proportionately violent was the remedy. It came late to this backward little country which had barely been touched by the Renaissance. Luther and Henry VIII were both dead, and even Calvin’s course was nearly run before reform swept through the land where Hamilton and Wishart, harbingers of a new day, had paid the price of defiance to Rome.

Quintin Kennedy, no rebel himself, lamented the church’s corruption in 1558 and told how vacant benefices were coveted by great men: “If they have a brother or son … nourished in vice all his days, he shall at once be mounted on a mule, with a sidegown and a round bonnet, and then it is a question whether he or his mule knows best to do his office. What wonder is it … the poor simple people, so dearly bought by the blood and death of Christ, miserably perish, the Kirk is slandered; God is dishonoured.”

Knox and his colleagues ridiculed priestly pretensions, tore aside the veil and exposed the tricks of the scene which lay behind. More positively, they taught four chief principles:

THE POSITIVE PRINCIPLES

1. Holy Scripture is the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. Claiming to hold the key of knowledge, Rome obscured it in a dead language and stressed those utterances of Fathers, councils, and popes which furthered her own ends. The Reformers declared that such things were of value if they coincided with Scripture, that the Gospel was for all, and that even the poorest and meanest should have free access to God’s Word in the vernacular.

2. Man is justified by faith alone. Although it is inaccurate to suggest that the Roman church completely set aside the work of Christ as the ground of forgiveness and salvation, human merit was so presented as to depreciate our Lord’s sacrifice, and to sell heaven and eternal life for money. “Nae penny, nae paternoster,” said the Scots. The new-old proclamation was of Jesus Christ as an all-sufficient and all-justifying Saviour. The free gift of eternal life against Rome’s merchandise of souls (what Luther called the article of a standing or falling church)—that was what Knox felt his vocation to preach “by tongue and living voice in these most corruptible days.”

3. The minister is simply a teacher of the Gospel, a servant, and a steward. The priest professed to repeat Christ’s sacrifice for both living and dead, to stand between God and man, and to forgive or retain sins. As his power increased, boosted by fear, ignorance, and superstition, so the vision of Christ was obscured. The Reformers taught that the function of Christ’s pastors and teachers was to preach the Gospel, expound Scripture, tend the flock, and as stewards administer the laws which Christ appointed in his Word.

To John Knox

Gentler spirits have lived

in Christendom,

More gracious messengers preached

The Word of Christ

without a-dinging the pulpit,

But God knew what He was doing

when He chose you

to build his Church.

He knew the temptations to compromise,

the dulcet voice pleading in tears

the soft hand of scheming sovereignty.

You were keen as steel,

As deaf as ice:

God’s man

for God’s work

in God’s time.

SHERWOOD ELIOT WIRT

4. The people have a voice in the election of pastors and office-bearers. Rome expected the surrender of judgment, reason, and conscience to priests often of outrageous reputation. The Reformers held that Christian people are Christ’s flock, that offices and ordinances are appointed for their good and are effective only as they promote the instruction, spiritual welfare, and prosperity of the people who were to be consulted in the election of ministers and lay-readers. This latter principle was observed at the election of the first superintendent on March 5, 1560.

So the kirk held to the Scriptures and to its new Confession of Faith, cast out “Satan and his ministers,” settled pastors, subdued the bishops and other “insolent oppressors,” and dismissed for defiant nonconformity the whole faculty at the University of Aberdeen (still the least Presbyterian of Scots towns).

TROUBLE AND TRAGEDY

Then trouble came. Among the highest-ranking nobility, few had identified themselves with the cause of reform. Many of them, on the other hand, having “greedily gripped to the possessions of the kirk,” refused to acquiesce in Knox’s idealistic schemes and to allow the church’s lands and revenues to pass to the ministers, the schools, and the poor.

Thus no new state arose to partner the new church in a Christian commonwealth. Therein lies the tragedy of John Knox. Blamed, moreover, for making use of worldly allies, for employing every kind of stratagem to achieve his aims (a naive accusation by a church no stranger to such tactics), defamed by some who know him only as the man who made a queen weep, Knox is often remembered rather as a destroyer of idolatry than as the builder of a church. “What I have been to my country,” he prophesied, “albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth.”

Another persistent fallacy is the concept of Knox as the prototype of Presbyterianism. He had no love for bishops, but also no fanatical devotion to presbytery. The Confession of Faith clearly indicates that in the house of God all things are to be done decently and in order, but that there was “no one policy nor order in ceremonies appointed for all ages, times, and places.”

This was partially forgotten with the advent of Knox’s successor, Andrew Melville, sometimes described as the “Hildebrand of presbytery.” Gradually there emerged in the new church an ecclesiasticism scarcely less pretentious and autocratic than that of Rome. It led Melville and his colleagues to make claims on the state which may have been practicable in Calvin’s theocracy, but which did not and could not fit the circumstances of James VI’s Scotland. “God’s sillie vassal” never forgot the overbearing ministers who surrounded his earlier throne. Reviving the Byzantine theory of Divine Right, he taught his son to regard himself as God’s vicegerent and contrived to restore in Scotland a full-fledged episcopacy as more amenable to royal influence. Thus was precipitated a conflict which was to end only in 1688 with the fall of his House.

The first Reformers in Scotland, battling against Romish errors, asserted the claims of Christ’s prophetic and priestly offices, and preached that “none but Christ saves.” Their seventeenth century successors, resisting Erastianism and contending for His kingly prerogatives, declared that “none but Christ reigns.”

It was an evil time. The Reformed church was still virtually in a state of siege, with the shadow of Rome a perennial bogey often espied behind episcopal vestments. Antinomians were a further threat—“… fantastical men who, under pretence and cloak of Christian liberty, would abolish and cast out laws and judgments.” The Stuart kings, bent on their impossible theory, alternately wooed and bludgeoned. Prudence whispered compromise, but the Rutherfords, Guthries, Camerons, and Renwicks would have none of it. The Covenanters are often cynically dubbed “martyrs by mistake,” particularly as the intervening centuries have pronounced it unfashionable and immature to display strong religious feeling. For us in 1960 it is mean work to forget those who strove to give us the spiritual freedom we take so much for granted.

After the Stuarts went into exile, presbytery was triumphantly re-established under William of Orange, though the Cameronians mourned a “defective” settlement. Parliament ratified the Confession of Faith, and episcopacy in Scotland received a deathblow.

In theory the Establishment should have lived happily ever after. In fact we cannot deny an Episcopalian historian’s verdict: “The earlier annals of Presbyterianism show that it required no extraneous aid to create dissension in its ranks; and its subsequent history affords ample illustration of the same divisive tendency.” Glasites and Marrow Men, Original Seceders and Relief Synod, Cameronians, bizarre sects and heresy-hunts—all confront and bewilder and shame us during the eighteenth century.

As old controversies faded, new differences arose within the Establishment. Knox and Melville led the church from a medieval feudalism in religion back to the Bible; evangelicals and moderates led it from the Old to the New Testament.

The Stuarts meanwhile took a typically ostentatious farewell of British history when, on the death of Charles Edward in 1788, his brother, a Roman cardinal, proclaimed himself king as Henry IX—and even Scottish Episcopalians disowned him.

The moderates fashioned the kirk into a great political institution but played down that cherished Reformation principle which gave the people a voice in the election of ministers. Battle was joined over the vexed question of patronage, to maintain which system the civil power was enlisted in a number of notorious cases. The Disruption of 1843 became a lamentable necessity, and what Scotland owes the Free Church can never be fully assessed.

The ensuing years saw a secession from the Free Church and a number of unions involving the Establishment and other Presbyterian bodies which culminated in that of 1929. The national church now has a million-and-a-third members, while the total strength of the four smaller Presbyterian churches probably falls short of 40,000 (though their influence is disproportionately great). The original seceders of 1733 acceded in 1956 amid great rejoicing, but they were characteristically minus one congregation which was admitted to the remnant of the Free Kirk.

Three recent developments should be noted:

1. There is a revival of Romanism in Scotland. Increasing fifteen-fold over the last century, baptized Romans now number 750,000. Their communicant membership in Glasgow exceeds that of all the Presbyterian churches added together.

2. Presbyterian-Anglican reunion negotiations were characterized by the scrupulous courtesy and thoroughness one expects of the General Assembly, bedeviled by an ill-informed “popular” press campaign which adjured patriots to remember Bannockburn and Knox, and inevitably doomed to failure by an Anglicanism which made episcopacy the condition of intercommunion rather than the basis of union.

3. The Lewis Revivals and the Graham Kelvin Hall Crusade have shown that there are signs of a religious re-awakening. That the kirk has not forgotten its spiritual heritage is seen in this year’s Quartercentenary celebrations to which a word from Samuel Rutherford is singularly pertinent: “Your noble fathers, at the hazards of their lives, brought Christ to this nation, and it shall be cruelty to posterity if ye lose Him to them.”

We Quote:

A BALANCED JUDGMENT—“On the professional religious front, the picture is baffling … (including) the infatuation of highly placed churchmen with political power; their failure to grasp the meaning of the free society, and their effort to put the church into political programs hostile to it; their ambiguity toward Communism. I deliberately use neutral terms here: ‘ambiguity toward Communism,’ but in the light of the recent controversy surrounding the Air Force Manual one is obligated to be more specific. Among other charges it is alleged by the Manual that there are Communists among the clergy. This allegation is categorically denied by a spokesman for the National Council of Churches. Each side in this controversy fired its shots through a smoke screen, and the general alarm was exploited by the unstable elements who feed on this kind of thing.… But we can get the current fracas into better focus if we go back a few years and draw upon the knowledge and honesty of Reinhold Niebuhr. In the August 19, 1953 issue of The Christian Century Niebuhr wrote an article titled ‘Communism and the Clergy.’ The piece was occasioned by a statement of Bishop Oxnam which made a sweeping denial of Communist influence in the churches. ‘Such a statement causes difficulties,’ writes Niebuhr, ‘because there are in fact communist sympathizers and fellow travelers in the church. I wonder whether Bishop Oxnam ought not to have admitted this more freely.…’ Niebuhr goes on to assert that ‘It must be affirmed that there have never been many explicit Stalinists in the churches.… Nevertheless there are a few and we ought to admit it.’ How does the seemingly incongruous union between Stalinism and Christianity occur, we ask, and Niebuhr answers, ‘… the pathetic clerical Stalinism could not have developed except against the background of a very considerable Marxist dogmatism in the “liberal” wing of Protestant churches.’ But even though it published Niebuhr’s admission and explanation, The Christian Century jumps into the present controversy with a denunciation of the Manual’s allegation, referring to the Communism charge as ‘… this false and defamatory attack on clergymen and churches …’ (3/2/60). Thus the person who tries to make a balanced judgment is beset on the one side by those who see Communists everywhere; and on the other, by those who deny that there are Communists anywhere!”—The Rev. EDMUND A. OPITZ of The Foundation for Economic Education, in a vesper sermon at Beloit College, Wisconsin, March 6, 1960.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

To most people John Knox and the Scottish Reformation are almost synonymous. They feel that he was the man who both originated and carried the Reformation through to its triumph in Scotland so that for the last four centuries Scotland has been a stronghold of Presbyterianism. The trouble with such a view is it does not realize that the Reformation in Scotland as elsewhere was the work of more than one man. While Knox was important for the effectuation of the major action, he himself realized, as one may see by even a superficial perusal of his History of the Reformation in Scotland, that the religious revolution came as the climax to a long historical development which only reached its peak in the year 1560. Thus to understand Knox’s part in the Reformation, one must go back a good many centuries in Scottish history.

Some of those who have attempted to explain the Reformation in Scotland have sought its origins in the by no means Protestant Columban Church of the sixth century, but there seems to be little connection between the two. From the days of Kenneth MacAlpine in the eighth century, the Scottish church became increasingly “Romish” in character until by the middle of the twelfth century practically all vestiges of the old Columban Church had disappeared. As one looks at it in 1200, one can see little difference in doctrine, worship, and government between it and the continental branches of the medieval church.

The first step in the direction of a break from Rome may have come during the War of Independence (1296–1328). Throughout Robert Bruce’s struggle with Edward II of England, the pope sided with the English king and used every means to make the Scottish clergy do the same. He was, however, completely unsuccessful, for the clergy stood with their monarch who was both excommunicated and placed under a papal interdict. When peace between England and Scotland was restored, the Scots were received back into the fold; but the antipapal feeling, developed during the struggle, seems never to have entirely disappeared. In the fifteenth century this attitude continued. Monarchs such as James I enacted laws forbidding the taking of money to Rome and the appealing of law cases to the papal court. Similarly when political troubles disturbed the country and the pope tried to interfere, he was told very firmly to mind his own business. Scottish nationalism and antipapism went hand in hand. Although the latter was primarily political, it undoubtedly helped also to weaken papal ecclesiastical and spiritual authority.

A SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Probably the most important reason for this situation was that Scotland during the fifteenth century, like a good many other countries in Europe, was experiencing something of a social revolution. With the expansion of trade, which began in Western Europe about 1450, the Scots began to develop a middle class which in turn gradually linked up with the lower nobility. Both these groups, nationalistic and individualistic in their outlook, were restive under the church’s attempted control of their lives, while at the same time it was failing so obviously to meet their spiritual needs. Here was ground for the sowing of the Protestant seed.

That this element in society was prepared to revolt against the old doctrines in favor of more evangelical teachings is indicated by the hearty reception it gave in Scotland to the works and missionaries of the “heretical” Englishman, John Wycliff. His teachings infiltrated Scotland early in the fifteenth century and continued to cause the ecclesiastical authorities trouble and difficulty down to the time of the coming of the Reformation itself. The Lollards, as his followers were called, were persecuted, even burned at the stake, but still the movement grew and expanded despite all that the church could do. Particularly popular among the townspeople and the gentry, Wycliffism laid the groundwork for sixteenth century Protestantism.

This became evident once Lutheranism began to invade Scotland. By 1525 Protestant books had appeared in the east coast ports, and before very long some of those who had been Lollards had accepted Luther’s more clearly expressed evangelical doctrines. Very much disturbed at the spread of the new ideas, the ecclesiastics employed their usual tactics of forcible repression, the first martyr being Patrick Hamilton, burned in 1528. The merchants, however, continued to import Lutheran books with the result that the evangelical views gained an ever-increasing number of adherents. Furthermore, many of the clergy themselves, by the low moral level of their lives, only tended to emphasize the correctness of the Reformers’ judgments on the Roman church.

King James V (1513–1542), while at first apparently not violently opposed to the new ideas, gradually gave increasing support to the church’s anti-Protestant campaign. Married to Mary of Guise, a member of one of the most vigorous Roman Catholic families of France, and dependent upon the church for a considerable part of his revenue, he could do little else. This situation was intensified after his death by the accession of his very young daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, as his successor. The first regent, the Earl of Arran, was at first sympathetic to Protestantism; but under pressure of the church he changed his attitude. In 1548 he sent the young queen to France for her education, and in 1552, again under pressure, he went so far as to resign the regency in favor of Mary of Guise. Thus from about 1544 on, the civil government increasingly aligned itself with the old church’s repressive anti-Protestant policies.

Had Lutheranism continued to dominate the Protestant forces in Scotland, what might have happened is hard to say since Luther had not provided any revolutionary organization for his followers. In order to succeed, the Lutheran movements seem to have needed at least the neutrality of the state. Just about this time, however, a new force entered the picture in the person of George Wishart, who had apparently received his training in Switzerland under John Calvin. He came ready to lay down his life for the cause, and in 1546 he made the supreme sacrifice in the presence of the Archbishop of St. Andrews. Yet while he died apparently without accomplishing anything, he did in truth begin a veritable revolution. He had succeeded in rousing, and to a certain extent organizing, the Protestant forces so that they would be ready to resist oppression. Equally important, he seems to have given them the first Scottish statement of faith in a translation of the confession of the French Swiss churches. The Reformation was beginning to take shape.

THE APPEARANCE OF KNOX

It was during Wishart’s missionary activities that John Knox first appeared on the scene. He tells us that he accompanied the preacher as his bodyguard, carrying a two-handed sword. Wishart sent him away before his arrest, but when a group of nobles captured St. Andrews Castle and killed the archbishop after Wishart’s martyrdom, Knox joined them. Up to this time Knox seems to have been only the tutor of a nobleman’s sons, but the men in the castle now persuaded him to accept a call to the Christian ministry. His preaching to them and his debates with the St. Andrews cathedral clergy soon came to a close, however, for in 1548 he and his companions were forced to surrender to a French fleet and were carried off to France. After serving for a time in the French galleys, Knox obtained his freedom, finally ending up in Geneva as pastor of the congregation of English-speaking refugees who had fled from persecutions imposed by the English Queen Mary Tudor (1553–1555).

Meanwhile, the Reformation had been making headway in Scotland. Despite efforts of both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, Protestantism had extended its influence, particularly in the eastern shires. The gentry and townsmen of Fife, Angus, and the Mearns had accepted the new doctrines, while in the west the Lollard country of Ayrshire, and even the Campbell country of Argyll, had begun to swing over. Yet while this was taking place, there seems to have been a genuine reluctance to come out in open rebellion against the church and the government. Leadership of the movement had fallen into the hands of such men as the Earls of Cassillis, Argyll, Glencairn, and Rothes, who apparently felt that they could accommodate their evangelical views to those of the Roman church. Sometimes for political, sometimes for economic, and sometimes for religious reasons, they seem to have thought in terms of compromise.

The consequence of this attitude was uncertainty and lack of cohesion among the Protestant forces. Therefore, it was decided that the best thing to do was to call Knox from Geneva. He arrived in May, 1559. In 1557 he had spent a short time in Scotland encouraging the brethren, but now he returned for good and the result of his appearance was an immediate acceleration of the Reformation’s pace.

THE STRUGGLE WITH ROME

Knox’s importance after his return from Geneva lay in his ability to clarify the issues involved in the struggle with Rome. With his Genevan background, he could see the situation as the more provincial Scots could not. Consequently, he set the sights of Scottish Protestantism on bringing Scotland as a whole to an acceptance of the Reformed faith. This meant a long-drawn battle, the end of which Knox himself did not see, but which nevertheless he believed to be the true objective. By his inspiration and under his direction, the first stage was reached when Parliament in August of 1560 accepted the Calvinistic confession, prepared by Knox and three other ministers, and made it the creed of the Scottish church.

Thus when one thinks of John Knox and the Scottish Reformation, one must realize that while others planted, he in a sense reaped the results of their “blood, sweat, toil and tears.” The ground was already prepared that his labors might be successful. He was in the providence of God an instrument used to bring to fruition a long process of history. And in this there is nothing strange, for every reformer and great apostle in the Church comes in the fullness of time to bring to completion the work of those who have gone before. While the Reformation in Scotland owed much to Knox, like every other such movement, it also owed much to each faithful Christian who had preceded him and striven in his own place and circumstances to serve his Lord and King. This is the secret of true reformation.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.