Page 5828 – Christianity Today (2024)

It has been said that the success of the American Revolution acted as a “seal of divine approval” on the “liberal theology” of politically active ministers such as Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy. But it seems to me that it is time to repossess the important historical truth that evangelical religion, the religion of the Great Awakening, being vigorously experimental and not bound to formal religion, also helped to promote the American Revolution.

It was through the Great Awakening, through the revivalism of the 1740s, that religion was reestablished as a major ingredient in the American philosophical heritage. The philosophical leader of the movement was Jonathan Edwards, and although Edwards was not the first revivalist in the sense that the first religious stirrings occurred as a result of his ministry, Edwards gave philosophical form to the “New Light Awakening.” This “Awakening” helped to prepare the way for the secular revolution in 1776 by creating among the common people a passionate sense of community love and enlightenment, i.e., an emotional sentiment about man’s right to freedom of conscience and a struggle, partially successful, to obtain it. This emotional awakening, as the time of the civil revolution approached, helped supply the ideals for the greater struggle for political freedom, as the New Light Fellowship thinking became the focus not only for religious liberty of dissent but also for the civil liberty of all people.

Jonathan Edwards gave to declining Puritanism a new and powerful impulse: a new philosophy that drew upon an entirely different source of Enlightenment thought by contrast with American secular sources of authority. Edwards emphasized God’s “disinterested benevolence” which eventuated in “love to being in general,” by contrast with the eternal divine decrees stressed by traditional Calvinists. It was Turretini, Mastricht, Hume, and Hutcheson, and only secondarily Cudworth, Locke, and Newton, who inspired his philosophy.

The result of his emphasis on God’s loving character was immediately apparent to his listeners. The reaction to his first published sermon, “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” which appeared in 1731 when he was twenty-eight, has been called “sensational.” As his biographer S. E. Dwight relates: “Rare indeed is the instance, in which a first publication is equally rich in condensed thought, or in new and elevated conceptions.” Dwight goes on to describe the occasion of Edwards’s preaching and the reaction:

In July, 1731, Mr. Edwards being in Boston, delivered a sermon at the public lecture, entitled, “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” from 1 Corinthians 1.29, 30. It was published, at the request of several ministers, and others who heard it, and preceded by a preface, by the Reverend Messrs. Prince and Cooper, of Boston. This was his first publication, and is scarcely known to the American reader of his works. The subject was at that time novel, as exhibited by the preacher, and made a deep impression on the audience, and on the Reverend Gentlemen who were particularly active in procuring its publication. “It was with no small difficulty,” say they, “that the author’s youth and modesty were prevailed on, to let him appear a preacher in our public lecture, and afterwards to give us a copy of his discourse, at the desire of diverse ministers, and others who heard it. But, as we quickly found him to be a workman that need not be ashamed before his brethren, our satisfaction was the greater, to see him pitching upon so noble a subject, and treating it with so much strength and clearness, as the judicious will perceive in the following composure: a subject, which secures to God his great design, in the work of fallen man’s redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ, which is evidently so laid out, as that the glory of the whole should return to him the blessed ordainer, purchaser, and applier; a subject which enters deep into practical religion; without the belief of which, that must soon die in the hearts and lives of men” [Sereno E. Dwight, The Works of President Edwards, Carvill, 1830, I, 118].

Edward’s first discourse marked the commencement “of a series of efforts to illustrate the glory of God, as appearing in the greatest of all His works, the work of man’s redemption,” says Dwight. These efforts gave form to the New Light divinity, creating the Edwardean philosophy that sought to distinguish the empirical and experimental basis of benevolence, of love to God, viewed as the “true religion,” as compared with natural religion; “experimental religion” as compared with formal religion; “evangelical religion” as compared with conventional faith. The issue was man’s loving God, i.e., recognizing the glory of God’s grace for man. Many of the ministers who either heard or read “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence” were not as enthusiastic as Dwight recounts. For, as Herbert Schneider relates, “to have the Calvinistic orthodoxy—the doctrine of absolute and arbitrary decrees, the doctrine of original corruption, the doctrine of determinism, damnation, and redemption—revived, not as a covenant for a holy commonwealth, but as an ‘inward’ or ‘sensible’ revelation of the love to God was both refreshing and disconcerting” (Herbert W. Schneider, The Puritan Mind, University of Michigan, 1930, p. 197).

But this is what Edwards did. Edwards remained orthodox except that his Calvinism was invigorated by a “new light,” the light that flowed from a religion of the heart, or the “affections,” rather than a religion that emphasized human belief, a religion of the head. The heart of true religion, he stated, “is holy affection. Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched.” This touching of the heart by God, said Edwards, these “inward exercises” of the heart, are verified “experimentally” as true religion, being “the power of godliness in distinction from the external appearance or the form of it” (“A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” [1746], in Clarence Faust [ed.], Jonathan Edwards, Hill and Wang, 1935, p. 214).

The affections for Edwards are the vigorous and “sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” According to Edwards:

God has endued the soul with two faculties: one is that by which it is capable of perception and speculation, or by which it discerns, and views, and judges of things; which is called the understanding. The other faculty is that by which the soul does not merely perceive and view things, but is some way inclined to them, or is disinclined and averse from them; or is the faculty by which the soul does not behold things, as an indifferent unaffected spectator, but either as liking or disliking, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. This faculty is called by various names; it is sometimes called the inclination: and, as it has respect to the actions that are determined and governed by it, is called the will: and the mind, with regard to the exercises of this faculty, is often called the heart [ibid., p. 209].

It was the exercise of the affections that represented a new philosophy concerning the role of the faculties (the understanding and the will) in religion. What Edwards meant when he said that the mind, with regard to the exercises of the will, is called the heart, is that the heart (i.e., the emotional or sentimental powers of the soul) is basic in experimental, genuine religion. Religion is a matter of the heart; it is a life to God in which the emotions and actions, not the understanding, play the ultimate part.

By his new epistemology, Edwards asserted the exercise of a new spiritual sense, a sense that he called a “divine supernatural sense” yielding a new “power of godliness” that converts man’s affections by an act of grace. The human heart thus “consents” to Being. The spirit of God is given to the “true saints to dwell in them, as his proper lasting abode; and to influence their hearts, as a principle of nature, or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action” (ibid., p. 232). The exercise of this new supernatural sense did not involve a regeneration of will but an exercise of “new principles of nature.” By a principle of nature Edwards meant the “foundation which is laid in nature, either old or new, for any particular manner or kind of exercise of the faculties of the soul; or a natural habit or foundation for action, giving a person an ability and disposition to exert the faculties in exercises of such a certain kind; so that to exert the faculties in that kind of exercises may be said to be his nature” (ibid., p. 236).

The chief of “the affections and fountains of all other affections” is love, that is, the disinterested benevolence of and to God. And the essence of true religion consists in a person’s consenting to the love of God; in true religion “beings consent to Being in general,” in the operation of a new supernatural sense in the hearts of men. And without this “holy affection there is not true religion; and no light in the understanding is good, which does not produce holy affection in the heart: no habit or principle in the heart is good, which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good, which does not proceed from such exercises” (ibid., p. 221).

From love arises a hatred of anything that is against love or contrary to what we love. From the various exercises of love and hatred, “according to the circ*mstances of the objects of these affections, as present or absent, certain or uncertain, probable or improbable, arise all those other affections of desire, hope, fear, joy, grief, gratitude, anger, etc.” From the vigorous love to God proceed all other religious affections: “Hence will arise an intense hatred and abhorrence of sin, fear of sin, and a dread of God’s displeasure, gratitude to God for his goodness, complacence and joy in God … and a fervent zeal for the glory of God” (ibid., p. 220).

This teaching gave form to the philosophy of religion of the Great Awakening. Just as religion had played a prominent role in the establishment of most of the colonies (though its influence steadily declined with each generation), the revivalism of the period represents the resurgence of religion as a force in the people’s emotional experience. Revivalism became a force able to shape social development because, thanks to Edwardean philosophy, its intellectual structure also appealed to the emotions, and thus gained new impact; its principal theme was liberating individuals, awakening men and women to a personal appreciation of “holy love” or disinterested benevolence to Being. This “inner” religious experience supplanted the “external” awakening through an institution and also mere evangelical preaching, by emphasizing the individual’s responsibility both morally and religiously. It called for the adoption of new and untried ways of religious expression and feeling and, in effect, represents the beginning of the Americanization of pietism as a revolutionary awakening.

That Edwards’s philosophy of piety was not political is manifest in that the focus was on the glory of God. In other words, his philosophy of a “divine supernatural sense” was the means of generating a sense of spiritual community. The ideas of the disinterested love to God became that source of religious life and social morality. It was a holy love, giving his philosophy a different kind of focus than the republican philosophy of the liberal clergy.

But let me hasten to say that the Edwardean philosophy was no less social than that of the liberal clergy, though not political. It had a democratic power rivaling that of liberal politics. And it is from this perspective, the perspective of the egalitarian emancipation of the New Lights, that one can view the Great Awakening as having more than just limited religious ramifications. For it was by the religious revivals that extended throughout the American colonies between 1740 and 1760 that a religious pluralism was generated, and more importantly, the pluralism—i.e., development of a large body of religious dissenters—was based on a philosophy that was every bit as democratic as that of its secular critics. Although it was not republican, it was a form of personal illumination or enlightenment that indirectly had an impact on the moral and political character of our nation.

“Equality was the beneficiary of the Great Awakening,” said Clinton Rossiter. And indeed it was: true religion was open to all who would love. The New Light preachers endeavored a leveling among the religious classes that affected the sentiments of tens of thousands of common people. The evangelical churches practiced no exclusiveness (which was, by the way, to some degree still being practiced by the liberal clergy), and as Wesley Gewehr has commented, the “bringing together for religious worship men and women from all social ranks on an equal plane” could not help but to act as a powerful leaven in the transformation of the American society.

The case can be stated in another way. Just as the “moral sense” philosophy of Jefferson sprang from the individualistic American social and political milieu rather than the “moral government” philosophy of the Old Lights or the Standing Order so Edwards’s philosophy was drawn from the “religious sense” of the individual rather than from ecclesiastical polity: Edwards emphasized love to God as the source of religious and social morality. But his philosophy, when given a social focus, was just as democratic as Jefferson’s. Edwards emphasized holy love over commonwealth love, making the first determinative for the latter: he made a distinction between civil and religious morality, between, so to speak, the holy city and the secular city, emphasizing membership in the first, though not at the expense of the other, and concluding that the commonwealth would be secured by the awakening of its souls.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

That 1973 marks the 400th anniversary of Martin Chemnitz’s Examen Concilii Tridentini is likely to be little remembered. Who, after all, was Chemnitz? (A few World War II GI’s may remember that they had the German city Chemnitz—now renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt by the Communists—in their sights when the controversial pull-back order was given.) And what was the significance of his Examination of the Council of Trent?

Even most Lutherans have probably never heard of Chemnitz. Yet he was chief architect of the Formula of Concord (1577), the document that did more than anything else to heal the sore divisions in the Lutheran church after Luther’s death (1546) and is still a confessional standard for some Lutheran bodies. Perhaps Chemnitz was not the creative genius Martin Luther had been, but he was an uncommon man for an uncommonly difficult time. The tides of the Reformation had peaked, and the Counter Reformation had set in. Chemnitz, as no other, kept the Reformation cause on course in the second half of the sixteenth century. His opponents knew his worth and mettle. “You Protestants have two Martins; if the second had not come, the first would not have endured” is the way his Catholic contemporaries assessed the brilliant theologian of Braunschweig.

But what present bearing has Chemnitz’s exhaustive response to the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent? David F. Wells argues in Revolution in Rome that Vatican II “erected a tombstone” over the myth that Rome never changes. “Both the spirit and the doctrines of Catholicism are changing,” he says, and therefore “the future is not in the hands of the conservatives and even less under the control of Pope Paul VI.” Some of the Protestant observers at Vatican II shared the view that there was a new openness in Rome, profundity of scholarship on display, especially in biblical studies, and a refreshingly evangelical and ecumenical outlook. Perhaps none spoke more earnestly and lovingly for reunion in Christendom than the late, widely esteemed and scholarly Augustin Cardinal Bea.

Part of the problem is the difficulty of explaining or defining exactly what Catholicism is. Do “progressives” like Hans Küng, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Gregory Baum, Cardinal Leo Suenens of Belgium, and Edward Schillebeeckx speak for Rome? Without question they excite considerable response, at least among Catholic intellectuals. And when their views are translated downward, it seems that what they are saying is what many people in the pew wish their church would say and do.

On the other hand, articulate voices within Catholicism doubt that the church’s mind is really being heard through the “progressives.” In Has the Catholic Church Gone Mad? (Arlington House, 1972), John Eppstein, an aroused Catholic layman and British journalist, provides a provocative counterfoil to Wells’s analysis. Eppstein delves directly into many troubled areas. He deplores quite frankly the “shenanigans” of avant-garde theological gadflies, comes up with evidence that Vatican II upheld the papal right to hand down irrevocable decisions infallibly, and, dismissing the notion that the pope’s power devolves on him “from below,” “from the consent of the Church,” asserts the old position that his office “devolves upon him from above,” as “the successor of Peter.” Such thinking, according to Eppstein, “has a truer ring in the ears of the ordinary Catholic than the notion of the Pope as simply primus inter pares which the advocates of the ‘Conciliar Church’ have been propagating as a step to corporate reunion.” For a parting shot Eppstein poses a proposition that seems to set Catholic thinking back into its regular channel:

Whether the calling of the Vatican Council was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or whether, as it seems to the uncommitted historian judging by the results, it was an act of monumental imprudence, Paul VI, confronted with its aftermath, has undoubtedly deserved well of his people [159].

What Eppstein means is simply that, except for a few minor changes that do not affect papal authority or the corpus doctrinae, Rome is unchanged.

Obviously such an interpretation is open to debate. However, nothing seems to lend as much credibility to Eppstein’s position as does the current debate between Küng and Rahner over infallibility in the papal teaching office. Küng’s Infallibility? An Inquiry (Doubleday, 1971) termed it “the neuralgic point” and a historical blunder. Rahner, refusing the role of sorcerer’s apprentice for having conjured up more than he could handle in his erstwhile disciple (Küng), has rallied more than a dozen redoubtable “progressives” to his side in defense of papal authority and infallibility (Zum Problem Unfehlbarkeit, 1971). Under Pope Paul VI’s careful, patient, but firm prodding, the church’s leading theologians have dutifully acknowledged the protective umbrella of papal supremacy, jure divino.

Changing times have brought about contemporaneity in such things as biblical studies and translations, new liturgical forms, use of the vernacular in the Mass, greater congregational participation, “both kinds” at certain times in Communion, freer, more generous relations with “separated brethren,” relaxation of fasting rules, and, just recently, permission for lay persons, including women, to distribute Communion wafers. Yet authoritative voices, from the Vatican on down through the bishops and the universities, remind us that there have been no changes in the fundamental articles that were the rupture points at the time of the Reformation. Examples of these are: that the justification of the sinner depends on his interior renewal and subsequent performance of good works; the whole doctrine of the church, its nature and power, particularly the power vested in the hierarchy as rulers in the church; the sacraments as the means of dispensing “sanctifying grace” under the sacerdotal, jurisdictional authority of the church and its priesthood. No part of Trent’s decrees and canons on these central issues has ever been retracted.

The “siege-mentality,” once so typical of Catholic defensiveness on Trent, has, it is true, been lifted in favor of open and frank dialogue. Yet Vittorio Subilia, professor of systematic theology at the Waldensian Seminary in Rome, insists in The Problem of Catholicism that “the so-called new line in Catholic ecumenism differs from earlier lines in its dogmatic pre-suppositions only circ*mstantially and superficially, and not at all in depth.” This would appear to bear out the shallowness of some of the theological gymnastics of recent times, particularly the efforts to prove that Reformation standards like sola Scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide belong as much to Rome as to the Reformation churches, and that Luther stood closer to Aquinas on sola gratia, for example, than he realized. In fact, “by clever documentation,” avers Klaas Runia, “Luther is made to look like a Catholic and the Fathers of Trent like Lutherans” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “The Church of Rome and the Reformation Churches,” June 18, 1964).

Salvation by grace alone had become, obviously, a not entirely unambiguous concept. Catholics were claiming it for Aquinas as urgently as Lutherans for Luther. But the fundamental difference remained nonetheless. For Aquinas the concept was wrapped up in theologia gloriae, theology of glory (man ascending progressively to the beautific vision through the enabling “sanctifying grace” of God infused into the sinner through the church’s ministration of the sevenfold sacramental system); for Luther it was completely theologia crucis, theology of the cross (God in his forgiving grace coming to sinners in his Son, pronouncing them righteous freely and fully for Christ’s sake, solely on account of the Saviour’s meritorious suffering and death). Man’s salvation, or justification, in no way rested on performance, not even when prompted by “sanctifying grace,” said Luther; it rested on promise, offered freely in Word (Gospel) and Sacrament (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and was to be received, therefore, alone by faith apart from the works of the Law. The believer’s life blossoms with many good works, Luther emphasized; but just as emphatically he pounded home, on Scripture’s authority, that “thereby am I not justified.” Werner Elert credits Chemnitz with making it crystal clear in his Examen that there was no bridging of this difference between Trent and the Reformation position on the sinner’s justification before God (Structure of Lutheranism).

Hence the contemporary relevance of Chemnitz’s work. Chemnitz was not, of course, Trent’s only challenger. Among others was John Calvin, who wrote a crisp, incisive rebuttal. But none could match Chemnitz’s magnum opus in breadth and penetration. It was begun in 1565 and was eight years in the making. When it appeared in 1573, it was immediately recognized as the definitive work, a sharp sword piercing to the marrow of the issues dividing Rome from the Reformation.

“Luther’s greatest student” never actually sat at the master’s feet in any of his courses at Wittenberg. Born in 1522, at Treuenbrietzen, a small town halfway between Wittenberg and Berlin, Chemnitz had brief contacts with Wittenberg and its famous mentor. But at first his interests lay in quite a different direction. He distinctly remembered Luther’s sermons at the Stadtkirche in Wittenberg, however, along with the last disputation (for a doctoral candidate) that Luther chaired, in 1545. Ruefully Chemnitz admitted in later life: “I did not hear him with due attention.” Not until several years had passed did he turn to serious theological study, mostly through the influence and guidance of Melanchthon.

A fortuitous appointment as librarian at the ducal library in Königsberg gave him the necessary time, tools, and quiet for an intensive, self-directed program of study. Chemnitz concentrated on the Holy Scriptures, working always in the most scholarly fashion from the original Hebrew and Greek; on the early church fathers; and on the writings of Luther. In his own words:

My method was this. First, I read the biblical books through in their order, comparing all the various versions and expositions, old and new, which were in the library, and if I met anything that seemed memorable or remarkable, I made a note of it on paper arranged for this purpose. In the second place, I read the writings of the Fathers, from the earliest antiquity, and what engaged my attention was entered into my notes. In the third place, I diligently read those recent authors who pointed out the fundamentals of the purified doctrines, and chiefly those who wrote polemical treatises on the controversies of our time, the arguments of the Papists, Anabaptists, Sacramentarians, and from what foundations the explanations and solutions were to be taken, and what solutions were best. The notes I made of all these things in my memoranda I still have and often inspect with great delight and profit [for Chemnitz’s autobiographical notes, as well as a fuller account of his life, see the author’s From Luther to Chemnitz on Scripture and the Word, Eerdmans, 1971, pp. 115–40 passim].

Königsberg was Chemnitz’s “tower experience.” For a short time, 1553–54, he was back in Wittenberg, lecturing on systematic theology at Melanchthon’s request and in his place. Shortly thereafter, having qualified for the pastoral and preaching ministry, Chemnitz assumed duties in Braunschweig that soon led to the superintendency of the territorial church, a post he held till the end of his life, 1586. A leave of absence in 1567 allowed him to complete a doctorate in theology at the University of Rostock.

Administrative duties never dulled Chemnitz’s scholarly bent. In constant demand for Gutachten (position papers on sundry theological questions), he also initiated through regular lectures for the clergy of his territory what probably was the first in-service theological-enrichment program. These lectures were published after his death as his Loci Theologici and became the model of all the great dogmatics of the silver age of theology in the seventeenth century. His work on Christology, De duabus naturis in Christo (recently translated by J. A. O. Preus, The Two Natures in Christ), has been called the greatest piece on Christology since Athanasius. Also from his prolific pen came a fine Harmony of the Gospels, a Gospel Postil (sermon book for home use), and a brilliant little handbook, or enchiridion, on doctrine for pastors and laymen. Before the publication of his monumental Examen in 1573, he had already produced a shorter response to the Jesuits, who were just beginning to make their influence felt.

But for the Church at large, Chemnitz’s enduring place in history was to rest on his answer to Trent. He knew that council had scored deeply, not least through the interpretive commentary of Payva d’Andrada, one of the periti (experts) present at the closing sessions and a spokesman for the Jesuits, though not a Jesuit himself. Chemnitz was convinced that only a thorough, definitive work would suffice against Trent’s devastating assault on Reformation theology. The result was his Examen, beautifully, brilliantly arranged and written; in his usual clear, unambiguous style (even his original Latin is a pleasure to read!); expertly supported in all parts by sound biblical exegesis and other references; evangelical in tone throughout, and polemical only when necessary. The splendid Berlin edition of 1861 puts the whole of the Latin text, 1,000 double-column pages, under one cover. The first volume of an English version is now available from Concordia Publishing House, translated by Fred Kramer, 1971, covering chiefly the following topics: Scripture, traditions, sin, free will, justification, faith, good works.

Chemnitz had given the world what has to be recognized as one of the greatest summaries and defenses of the evangelical faith ever written. Even his opponents were awed. One chronicler of the period, C. G. H. Lentz, notes that many Catholics, including Jesuits, were won over by Chemnitz’s masterly apologetic for the evangelical faith. Rome has never successfully mounted a reply, apparently content to let time pass it by as long as Protestants are satisfied to do the same.

Evaluations from the Protestant side vary and are scarce in recent years, chiefly, no doubt, because the work was “hidden away” in Latin. Those familiar with it divide on its present significance. R. Mumm (Die Polemik des Martin Chemnitz gegen das Konzil von Trient, 1905) judged it a masterpiece but a historical monument, of no contemporary import. Wilhelm Pauck, disagreeing completely, said that in his judgment Chemnitz showed for all time “that not Protestantism but Roman Catholicism could justly be accused of having fallen away from the teachings and practices of the ancient church” (The Heritage of the Reformation).

Catholic interpreters themselves divide on the meaning of Trent’s famous dictum that unwritten traditions should be received and venerated “with an equal affection of piety and reverence” as the inspired Scriptures themselves. Josef Geiselmann and Georges Tavard, among others, have tried hard to soften the sharpness with which Trent set Scripture and tradition side by side as dual authorities: Trent’s meaning, they claim, was to emphasize as “coinherence” of Scripture and tradition through and under the living voice of the church. They try to make Trent sound like a supporter of sola Scriptura.

A few Protestant scholars—for example, G. C. Berkouwer (The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism)—have been willing to grant considerable credence to this view. However, the Catholic scholar Heinrich Lennerz disagrees totally with these reinterpretations and affirms simply that Trent did indeed speak of a two-source basis in the sense that Chemnitz scored so severely.

The rightness of this latter, traditional view is borne out by the frank avowal of Joseph Lortz, ranking Catholic historian of our time, that Trent made it absolutely clear, above all else, that “the church was anchored in the papacy” (Geschichte der Kirche). This appears to strengthen the opinion Protestants have shared for a long time that neither Scripture nor tradition but the church itself or the papacy is still the final source of authority for Rome.

Heinrich Bornkamm notes that on the Scripture/tradition question Rome has not budged an inch. “The fundamental rift,” he affirms, “lay in the question of the teaching authority of the church and still remains there”; therefore, “this is where all discussions of individual Catholic and Reformed doctrines, which have or ever can be held, end” (The Heart of Reformation Faith). Accordingly, it is incredible that a scholar of Lortz’s reputation, as well as other Catholic “progressives,” should completely ignore Chemnitz’s Examen, the most incisive, thorough, and unanswered work on Trent!

For that matter, heirs of the Reformation deserve equal chastisem*nt. No serious study or dialogue involving Catholic/Protestant participants should dare to bypass Chemnitz’s great work. To do so is to risk shallow, superficial theologizing. Gerhard Ebeling, usually remembered for the devastating effect of his “new hermeneutic” on biblical content and text, has quite rightly pointed to this weakness. He states:

Careful testing is needed to show whether on the Catholic side the modern interpretation of the relation between Scripture and Tradition in the sense of sola Scriptura, really represents a movement towards the Protestant conception; or whether it should not be regarded as a subtle intensification of the Confessional opposition. Similarly, the question might be raised whether on the Protestant side the serious attention being paid to the problem of Tradition really involves the surrender of the Reformers’ sola Scriptura [The Word of God and Tradition, Fortress, 1968, p. 107].

Few men were as sensitive and attuned to what belonged to the essential and true unity of the Christian Church in his day (or ours, for that matter), as Chemnitz. His utter commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture makes unconscionable any charge that he was merely subjectivist, intellectualist, or, worst of all, rebellious. Chemnitz bowed before God’s Word in a dutiful, servant-like manner like that of Luther. He lived out of the content of God’s Holy Word—what God had there said (Deus locutus) and was even now saying (Deus loquens)—as few men before or after him have done. Not only will Catholic/Protestant dialogues be lifted to a higher plane and a truer bearing point, but so will Christian theology itself, by a fresh look at Chemnitz’s Examination of the Council of Trent.

Debtors owe more than their respects on the 400th anniversary.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

During Dr. Bell’s last visit to the CHRISTIANITY TODAY offices in Washington, six weeks before his death, he exhorted the staff to keep open times in their schedules for Bible reading and prayer. With characteristically gentle urgency he emphasized the importance of regular personal devotions and warned of the perils of neglect. He testified how much it had meant in his own life to commune with God regularly. It was not enough, he intimated, simply to attend the devotional period for CHRISTIANITY TODAY employees at the start of each day. Perhaps he realized that among younger Christians today there may be some subtle skepticism about the value of the prayer life. Whatever the reason, he felt constrained to call it to the staff’s attention. But he did it discreetly and lovingly, without giving offense or sounding judgmental.

That was just like L. Nelson Bell. Through his lifetime he stressed basics, especially in the realm of theology and ethics. He voiced apprehension whenever he saw tendencies to depart from the fundamentals. He had no time for ecclesiastical sophistication if it involved risking the traditional foundations of the faith. It was a trait he shared with many evangelical leaders.

What separated him from many other influential Christians, lay as well as clergy, was the unusually kind, positive way in which he was able to express his urgency. He was strong-willed, so much so that as a young ball player he had written into his contract that he would not play or travel on Sundays. But he was also very gentle. He was a man of intense compassion as well as integrity. He never harassed.

Dr. Bell’s own devotional life was exemplary. He was usually up by five, and sometimes earlier, to study the Scriptures and to pray. He felt it was the only way to start the day. A nurse remarked that as a surgeon he even “opened his patients” with prayer. He had a long prayer list and prayed for many people each day by name. Much of this reliance on intercession is borne out in John C. Pollock’s biography of Dr. Bell, A Foreign Devil in China. Dr. Bell’s favorite hymn was “All the Way My Saviour Leads Me.”

A person of prayer tends to be highly disciplined, and that is the way it was with Dr. Bell. He worked hard. He always walked quickly and ate quickly. With both pen and scalpel his output was phenomenal: his writings have yet to be counted, but it is estimated that in practicing medicine and surgery he treated about half a million people during his lifetime. While in China as a missionary surgeon he not only saw those who came to his hospital but went with a male nurse to the local jail each Sunday to give medication.

But again this is characteristic of many successful people. What singles out Dr. Bell was that he knew when to quit, and when to relax and enjoy a bit of fellowship with others. In the early days of CHRISTIANITY TODAY he would come from North Carolina every other week and spend three or four days in the office. On the days he was there he would stop in at a nearby pastry shop after lunch and buy an afternoon treat—distributed promptly at 3 P.M.—for the entire staff. In the evenings he would take in a movie or a ball game. And he was never so busy that he would fail to exchange pleasantries and inquire about the welfare of those around him.

The basic theological tenet he championed above everything was regeneration. His priority was always evangelism. As he reiterated in his sermon as retiring moderator of the 112th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (see August 10 issue) Christianity seeks man’s immediate welfare, but “beyond all else it seeks to bring the prodigal back to his Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.” Dr. Bell himself experienced the second birth at the age of eleven during an evangelistic service at his church. He would much rather never have had the first birth than to have missed the second. On the day before his death he spoke from a text often used in evangelism, Revelation 3:20.

The memorial service for Dr. Bell, a ruling elder, was highlighted by an eloquent yet candid tribute by the Reverend Calvin Thielman, pastor of Montreat Presbyterian Church. He called Dr. Bell the best-known and best-loved Presbyterian layman in the world, and he observed that “the fruit borne in a man’s own family is the most telling testimony of his own effectiveness.… Any of us could look at Dr. Bell’s family with admiration.”

Thielman was able to introduce a bit of humor and sense of joy into the service. Many a clergyman presiding over a funeral strives for the joyous element that is appropriate when an aged Christian has gone to be with his Lord, but few succeed. Dr. Bell would have appreciated deeply the way the somber spirit was dispelled, though he may have been somewhat self-conscious at the accolades. At a dinner in his honor several years ago Dr. Bell expressed thanks with the observation that “an ounce of taffy is worth many tons of epitaphy.”

Dr. Bell was a humble man all his life, despite his accomplishments, and this too had an impact upon others. His humility underwent some testing late in his life when his wife became an invalid and he took on a number of additional chores around the house. Thielman noted that he was the first moderator in the history of the church who an hour before his election was still at home doing the dishes.

Dr. Bell was born in the Appalachians, died, and was buried there. He was a mountain of a man who loved the mountains, perhaps because they symbolized confidence to him and he was a Christian who was sure of his ground. To his dying day he underscored the trustworthiness of the word of God as the source of individual assurance. He was absolutely certain of the immortality of the soul.

Billy Graham tells of answering the telephone in Dr. Bell’s home the morning he died. It was Ada Gilkey, religion reporter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar, calling to interview Dr. Bell for a story. She wondered why another man would be at his telephone and asked if Dr. Bell were available to speak to her. Graham, who had been a bit at a loss for words at first, finally replied that Dr. Bell had gone home to heaven. The startled reporter was then taken aback herself and said the first thing she could think of: “Are you sure?”

Her doubt, of course, was about his death and not his destination. Dr. Bell leaves many, many people around the world who are sure of their own destinies because of his life and testimony. Appropriately enough, the column of his chosen before his death for reprinting in this issue deals with the Resurrection.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Christianity Today is the lengthened shadow of two men: one is L. Nelson Bell, the other Billy Graham. Together they had a vision for an evangelical journal, transdenominational, theologically orthodox, intellectually competent, and irenic in spirit. Dr. Bell did the footwork, wrote the letters, worked at the financial undergirding and acted as publisher. But that is only a part of the heritage he left when he died August 2 at the age of seventy-nine.

The professional man. By vocation Nelson Bell was a surgeon. And he was a good one. During a quarter of a century in China at a large Southern Presbyterian hospital he performed thousands of major surgical procedures. By necessity he was the “compleat surgeon.” Hard work, persistence, courage, and years of experience made him a skilled practitioner of the surgical art. He was a fellow in the American College of Surgeons.

When Dr. Bell was forced out of China, where he served from 1916 to 1941, he continued his practice of surgery in Asheville, North Carolina. Many of the city’s surgeons had been called to the colors in World War II. Nelson Bell helped to fill the gap and was as busily at work as in China. And as in China, he was known for his Christian testimony and respected for his surgical skills; patients traveled hundreds of miles seeking his ministrations. After some years he was felled by a coronary attack that eventually led him to retire from the practice of medicine and go on to other pursuits.

The family man. Dr. Bell told me recently that after fifty-seven years of marriage his love for his wife was greater than ever before. It was richer, deeper, and more rewarding, strengthened in recent years by the nursing care he gave unstintingly (his wife is confined to a wheelchair by a disease of the hip joints).

Nelson and Virginia Bell reared four children. All are dedicated Christians. Rosa Bell Montgomery, the wife of a scientist, lives in New Mexico. She contracted tuberculosis in China and was being treated in a sanatorium when God laid his hand on her body in a miraculous fashion. She was healed and has remained healthy ever since. Ruth Bell married Billy Graham, and there are those who say that what Billy is and has accomplished is in large measure due to Ruth’s Christian life, wifely competence, and spiritual and prayer support of her husband. Virginia, the youngest daughter, is married to John N. Somerville and has served as a missionary to Korea for many years. The Bells’ son, Clayton, is a minister of the Gospel. Recently he was called to the Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, one of the most important pulpits in the denomination.

Nelson Bell’s children looked up to him as a fair father, a good example, a standard-bearer, and a disciplinarian when it was needed. At the Bell homes, in China and in the States, love, warmth, and filial devotion were normative.

The Christian man. Nelson Bell learned of Christ at his mother’s knee. His love of Christ was reinforced by his love of the Word of God. He was a faithful student of the Scriptures and a man of prayer, filled with the Holy Spirit. He witnessed just as easily with a scalpel in his hand as with a Bible. Nelson showed the fruit of the Spirit in his life, and even those who opposed him theologically respected and admired him. He practiced what he preached; his life was conformed to Christ. For years he taught a Bible class in his church in Montreat that was aired over a local radio station. He involved himself in community affairs, and scores of people in North Carolina can testify to his compassion, concern, and giving of substance and self on their behalf.

Dr. Bell was deeply convinced that the mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel to every person. He passionately held that morality cannot be legislated. He had little patience with the so-called social Gospel, which he thought emasculated the real Gospel and conceived of social action as the mission of the Church. Some accused him of lacking a social conscience. His life and ministry were the best answer to this absurd charge. He served the people of China in a social as well as a religious sense. He bound up torn bodies and brought health and healing to thousands. But he did it within the context of the saving Gospel. To him service to humanity sprang out of the redemption he had found in Christ. He was a biblical humanitarian who exalted Christ and his salvation as the greatest need of mankind. Yet whether men accepted or rejected the Christ he presented, he used his medical skills for their healing.

The journalist. Nelson Bell got his start in journalism by writing letters. He wrote to his mother regularly and at length concerning his missionary life, and these letters formed a large part of the primary material from which his biography A Foreign Devil in China was written. During his ministry of medicine in Asheville he took on two ventures in Christian journalism. He was the founder of the Presbyterian Journal, a magazine devoted to the activities of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. His association with this magazine was to cause him some pain in the last several years. Because of a rising tide of theological liberalism in the denomination, some conservatives started a movement to create a new denomination. Dr. Bell was convinced that the movement was based on the wrong issue at the wrong time. The Journal was in the forefront of the battle to start the new denomination, and Dr. Bell’s conviction led him to resign from the board and stop writing for the paper. This was a painful step for him; many of his good friends were associated with the movement he felt constrained to leave.

The second journalistic endeavor was CHRISTIANITY TODAY. This magazine was, as I have said, the brainchild of Billy Graham and Nelson Bell. Dr. Graham was so heavily committed to his evangelistic ministry that Dr. Bell took over the exhausting labor of getting the journal off the ground. He wrote hundreds of letters, interviewed scores of people, brought the staff into existence, located the offices in Washington, acted as publisher, wrote the “Layman and His Faith” column—one of the most popular parts of the magazine—and solicited funds to keep the magazine afloat. A member of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s board of directors and its executive editor, he served the magazine from its inception to the day of his death.

I can testify personally that in my five years as editor I had no finer friend, no better advisor, no one more interested in the well-being of the enterprise, no one willing to do more than he in furthering the work at hand. His retirement from the practice of surgery in 1956 gave him greater freedom for his journalistic work until recent years, when the illness of Mrs. Bell and, during his last year, his position as moderator of the General Assembly of his church kept him in Montreat.

The churchman. Nelson Bell was a Southern Presbyterian. He loved his denomination and served it faithfully. He was involved in its boards and agencies as well as its institutions. In 1972 he became moderator, the highest post in the denomination. He did nothing of a political nature to be nominated for the post and nothing to get himself elected. His church was convulsed by the battle between liberal and evangelical forces. Dr. Bell’s health was precarious: he had suffered several coronary attacks, was experiencing fibrillation rather regularly, and had a diabetic condition. But he asked God to give him one more year of service to the church. He had expressed the opinion to some of us that he might die before the year was out but that he was willing to die in the harness for the church he loved.

God let Nelson Bell finish his term and live for a few weeks longer. During that year Dr. Bell had given the job all he had and then some. He was on the go constantly. Although it is far too early to evaluate the results of his labors, we do know that the cause of evangelicalism was furthered during this past year. There have been shifts in the denomination’s boards and agencies that bode well for the future. But whether the denomination has turned the corner toward full orthodoxy only time will tell. Perhaps I may lift a quotation from The Year of Decision 1846, written by Bernard DeVoto some years ago. He described President Polk in terms that could well be applied to Dr. Bell in his service as moderator:

His mind … was powerful and he had guts. If he was orthodox, his integrity was absolute and he could not be scared, manipulated, or brought to heel. No one bluffed him, no one moved him with direct or oblique pressure. Furthermore he knew how to get things done, which is the first necessity of government, and he knew what he wanted done, which is the second. He came into office with clear ideas and a fixed determination and he was to stand by them.

That is the kind of man L. Nelson Bell was.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

L. Nelson Bell is at home with the Lord, and knowing that we rejoice though we miss him sorely. We will continue his column, “A Layman and His Faith,” using some of his earlier contributions until we announce his successor.

Earlier this year we started a program that now will be called the L. Nelson Bell Visiting Lectureships. Gifts in his honor will be used exclusively for this purpose.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is reprinting Dr. Bell’s outstanding farewell sermon, “Counterfeit Christianity” (published in our August 10 issue), and his personal tract-testimony “I Say It Now.” Details are given elsewhere in this issue. In due season his book, While Men Slept, which has in it many of his “Layman” columns, will be reprinted and made available to our readers.

I commend to your prayers Mrs. Bell, who is frail in body but sturdy in spirit. A recent visit with her brightened my day and lifted my spirits. How dearly she and her husband loved each other! And how expectantly she waits for the time when they will be together again!

Returning to england a few years ago after some thirty years in America, theologian Norman Pittenger recorded in the Expository Times a few of his impressions on the state of the Church and the study of theology in Great Britain. Among the surprises he found upon his return to Cambridge was a strong, intellectually respectable conservative evangelicalism. He commented:

With not many exceptions this movement does not appeal to the “theological elite” on the North American continent: there are only a few distinguished Biblical and theological scholars there who might be described by the name. But in Britain one seems to find a fairly considerable number who have written books admirable for their scholarship even when one disagrees with their conclusions: and here I must mention some names, such as F. F. Bruce and J. I. Packer, to note two quite different types of thinkers.

Anyone who knows the current theological scene in North America and Britain knows that what Pittenger observed is true. Evangelical biblical and theological scholarship in the United Kingdom is today stronger than it has been in more than a century, and it is very much in the mainstream of academic discussion. By contrast, North American evangelical theology, though growing in strength, has made relatively little impact on the academic theological community.

True, theological liberalism, which has dominated the academic scene in North America, has tended to ignore evangelical theology on principle. Yet this is only part of the explanation. I see no evidence that theological liberals in the U.K. have been any more sympathetic toward evangelical theology: it is simply that they have been forced to come to grips with evangelical scholarship because of its presence and influence in the Academy. I’m afraid North American evangelicals have mainly themselves to blame for their failure to influence theological scholarship significantly. The root of the matter is, I believe, the isolationist spirit of North American evangelism.

First, North American evangelicals have generally been isolated from the universities, the centers of intellectual influence in our society. The vast majority of evangelical scholars have been associated with Christian colleges and seminaries; few of those who have chosen careers in secular universities have been teachers of theology or religious studies. By contrast, British evangelical scholarship has been primarily associated with the universities. There are today few if any faculties of theology or departments of religious studies in Britain that do not have at least one evangelical scholar; in North America, scarcely any major universities have evangelical professors of religion.

Second, North American evangelicals have tended to isolate themselves from theological dialogue. They have commented on, surveyed, and taken potshots at liberal theological thought; but, with only a few exceptions, they have not made contributions to scholarship that have been of such a high academic standard as to demand general attention by scholars. Furthermore, they have generally failed to take part in the meetings of the major learned societies concerned with biblical and theological research. By way of contrast, in Britain, many of the standard theological reference works have been written by evangelicals, and the same scholars regularly present papers to (and sometimes serve as officers in) the major societies.

Thirty years ago the situation in the U.K. was quite different. It is unlikely that Professor Pittenger would have had any contact with conservative evangelical scholarship before he left England as a young man: it simply did not exist, or it was scarcely visible. What led to the change?

Two organizations, both linked with the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, are largely responsible for the present strength of evangelical theology in Britain. The first is the Theological Students’ Fellowship, founded in 1933. The TSF appointed a full-time director of the TSF in 1962. The present director is David Wenham, a young New Testament scholar.

The TSF seeks to establish groups, or at least contacts, in theological colleges and in universities with departments of religious studies or theology. It now has active contact with approximately fifty-two of the seventy-four existing institutions (excluding Bible colleges and Roman Catholic institutions). In addition, the TSF seeks to get solid evangelical literature into the hands of theological students by publishing bibliographies, setting up book tables, and circulating the TSF Bulletin. The TSF also holds conferences for students, featuring lectures by leading theologians.

A second organization that has contributed immensely to the vitality of contemporary evangelical scholarship in the U. K. is the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical Research. Begun informally in 1938 and founded on a more permanent basis in the early forties with the establishment of a lectureship series at Oxford and then a residential study center, Tyndale House, at Cambridge, the TFBR aimed “to maintain and promote Biblical studies and research in a spirit of loyalty to the Christian Faith as enshrined in the consensus of the Historic Creeds and Reformed Confessions, and to re-establish the authority of Evangelical scholarship in the field of biblical and theological studies.” Among its activities were to be: (1) encouraging younger scholars to engage in serious biblical research; (2) involving itself in contemporary biblical research; (3) promoting the claims of biblical studies to a permanent and influential place in the national system of education; and (4) creating opportunities for discussion and cooperation among like-minded scholars in the British Isles and also with similar groups in other parts of the world.

When the TFBR began, there were only a few evangelical scholars in the British universities who were even remotely connected with the teaching of theology, and they were teaching languages rather than biblical studies or theology proper. Today more than twenty-five members of the TFBR occupy chairs or lectureships in biblical, theological, or closely related fields, not to mention the dozens who teach in theological colleges and the many others who have been influenced by the fellowship but have never been members. In addition, there has been a steady stream of important commentaries, reference works, and monographs produced by TFBR members and published by Tyndale Press; the TFBR has also published an important series of Tyndale lectures and, more recently, the Tyndale Bulletin.

North American evangelicals should be both encouraged and challenged by the impact their British counterparts have made on theological scholarship. The same thing could happen, if God wills, on our continent. But it probably will not happen apart from our concerted effort.

As a proposal I would urge, first, the setting up of a group similar to the British Theological Students’ Fellowship. This could ideally be done under the auspices of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. But it could also be organized by a small group of theologians and theological students. For a start the TSF Bulletin and other existing materials could be distributed and regional conferences arranged. This would fill a tremendous need among students with evangelical backgrounds and experiences who are studying at theologically liberal seminaries or secular departments of religious studies. In a few years’ time it would probably be possible to publish a North American edition of the TSF Bulletin.

Second, I would like to see evangelical theologians in North America begin to make a concerted effort to reestablish the authority of evangelical scholarship in the world of biblical and theological research. This would mean they would have to stop writing “tracts for the times” that play to the evangelical gallery and start producing works of solid scholarship that are not primarily apologetic in intent but rather are positive contributions to scholarship. This means they should also begin participating in the meetings of the major academic societies, such as the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion (which meet jointly), and exposing the conclusions of their research to the criticism of those who work from different traditions and presuppositions. To encourage this interaction, I would like to see the Evangelical Theological Society revert to its former custom of meeting at the same time as the annual meeting of the AAR/SBL and to become a part of the Council for the Study of Religion, which includes Roman Catholic as well as non-confessional scholarly societies.

I can see signs of a bright future ahead for evangelical scholarship in North America. But the sooner evangelical scholars stop thinking in terms of immediate demands and popular causes and begin to think in terms of what is really strategic, the brighter will be the dawning of the new day.

As evangelist Billy Graham and Atlanta police chief John F. Inman finished lunch together on the second day of Graham’s recent Atlanta crusade, an urgent message arrived for the chief. A police officer and a Black Muslim newspaper vendor had been killed in a downtown gun battle and several others had been wounded. The police had been called to stop Muhammad Speaks peddlers from allegedly harassing blacks into buying the papers (Black Muslim policy prohibits hawking to whites); tempers had flared into a shoot-out.

The incident was the latest in a series of bad news for the sect. A grand jury was investigating possible links between the slayings of seven Hanafi Muslims in Washington, D. C., and the Philadelphia Black Muslims (see February 16 issue, page 53). Rumors were rife that a feud had broken out between rival factions of the Muslims following the slaying in Boston of Hakim A. Jamal, the leader of the Malcolm X Foundation. Jamal, related to Malcolm by marriage, was a scathing critic of Elijah Muhammad, the Chicago-based prophet-leader of the Nation of Islam, official name of the Black Muslims.

Muhammad’s life expectancy (he is 75) probably threatens the peace and continuity of leadership more than do rumors of defections: who will lead the “Lost-Found Nation” when he dies? It may be that lower-level leaders are jockeying for position even now.

But Black Muslims themselves, as well as others in the black community, still entertain the possibility that the government was conspiratorially involved in these deaths, even as “Black Journal” again raised that question in a telecast this year about Malcolm’s death. Malcolm died eight years ago, but that was before Watergate and the Ellsberg papers. Suspicious blacks point out that whites in authority would profit most from a loss of confidence in Muslim leadership, and they cite numerous instances of alleged harassment by the authorities.

(Newspaper salesmen have been jailed on minor charges, they say. Police helicopters have hovered over the Muslims’ University of Islam in Los Angeles during classes. A Kansas City FBI agent has, according to press reports, admitted watching Muhammad’s son Nathaniel for ten years. And in New York a black policeman revealed to WNEW-TV’s audience that he had infiltrated the Muslims for more than three years for surveillance purposes. He was, he claimed, at one time a bodyguard for Malcolm X. In return, Black Muslims in New York recently expelled from membership all black policemen, some of whom have been sect members for as long as fourteen years. A black news service said the expulsion order, having come from Muhammad himself, is believed to affect Muslim policemen in other cities as well.)

Black Muslims are growing and consolidating, but it is difficult to determine how many there are. Estimates range from several hundred thousand to 1.5 million, the latter figure attributed to Walter Turner, a non-Muslim who is Muhammad’s press-relations director. It is unlikely that a million active followers could fit into the seventy mosques or Temples of Islam in seventy cities (up from forty-four temples five years ago), but if one defines

UNEARNED

Some of those diploma mills that offer honorary degrees for a fee (clergymen and religious educators are a fertile field) are apparently making a bid to appear more honorable—or at least to have more class. London Institutes Ltd., a British correspondence school, in a full-page ad in the Diners Club magazine offered a selection of ten honorary degrees, starting at $25 each (Diners Club and American Express cards accepted). Then the London Institute for Applied Research jumped into the ad game offering ten degrees—but with a price tag of $100 each. It placed its ad in Intellectual Digest.

“members” loosely to include those who look favorably and with a sense of loyalty toward the Chicago Mecca, then perhaps even the larger figure is conservative. Muhammad, aware that his greatest appeal in the past has been with the brothers in the street, has now begun actively proselyting middle-class blacks. Especially noticeable is the growing number of educated professionals in the movement. Not to be overlooked, on the other hand, is the strong following among prison inmates.

The Black Muslims seem to be more and more a part of the mainstream in the black community, their identity increasingly viewed culturally rather than religiously. Pastor A. Kendall Smith of New York’s Beulah Baptist Church invited Farrakhan, the Muslim minister, to preach in his church in a show of black solidarity. “The minister has been invited because he is my brother,” Smith told his congregation. “He has been invited because he has a message of truth. I want my people to know Mr. Farrakhan personally and not accept the distorted image projected by some media.” Farrakhan responded that he was a Christian as well as a Muslim. “If I preach Jesus, you may find I love him as well as you. You may find I love him a little bit better than you,” he commented.

A group of 10,000 attending the National Association of Black Social Workers in New York in April praised Muhammad and presented him their highest award “for outstanding past, present, and future contributions to the progress of black society.” Additionally, scores of name black entertainers have signed to perform benefits for hospitals and other causes.

Black Muslims, who have not received any minority business funding from the government, are a showcase of black economic enterprise. There are long-established ventures in clothing, foods, farming, dairies, and real estate. A 200-bed hospital is under way for blacks in Chicago. A $2 million “sales and office” building that also includes medical facilities is nearing completion in Chicago. Housing (Arabic-styled) valued at more than $1 million has been completed. The Nation has built a large hangar at Gary, Indiana, to service its own planes and to serve the general aviation trade. And there’s a nationwide trucking service.

Recently the Muslims opened their forty-second school, in Cleveland. These Universities of Islam, as they are called, apply strict discipline and offer surprisingly high-quality instruction by degreed teachers. Most have all grades from kindergarten through high school, and some offer college-level training.

For Black Muslims the rising African awareness in the black community has meant the adoption of Arabic and African names, use of Arabic-African traditions and marriage ceremonies, and promotion of Arab as opposed to Jewish political causes.

Muhammad sought and got nearly $3 million in loans and grants last year from Arab countries to help fund a new $4 million temple in Chicago, a sort of endorsem*nt as an in-the-family group.

Although categorically different from fundamentalist Christians in belief, Black Muslims resemble or go beyond them in certain cultural patterns. They adhere to extreme conservatism in dress. (A complaint was filed with the Human Relations Commission against the Philadelphia General Hospital for suspending a Black Muslim nurse because she refused to wear a uniform she considered “too revealing.”) They preach abstinence from all drugs, alcohol, ritually unclean foods, gambling, and illicit sex, and they practice political isolationism (Muslims cannot fight for civil rights, integration, or other social causes, and they won’t join picket lines for any cause.)

Contrary to popular belief, the Black Muslims are integrated—with other non-white minorities. There are Mexican-American ministers in both Los Angeles and Oakland, and an official says Black Muslim membership includes Asians, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, West Indians, Mexicans, and others.

In Muslim teaching, the original man was black, and the present order was created by him. The white and yellow races arose through the genetic efforts of a black scientist named Yakub. The white man was permitted to rule for 6,000 years; the reign ended in 1914, and white civilization will self-destruct any minute. The movement’s founder, emigrant W. Fard (or Farad), who founded a mosque in Detroit in 1931, is seen as an incarnation of Allah. Elijah, who took over when Fard died in 1934, is on a level with Christ. Adherents consider themselves gods of sorts—an abomination to orthodox Islam.

Argentina: A Vision For The Church

Revival and growth along both institutional and non-institutional lines are very much a part of the current Christian scene in Latin America. Correspondent Faith Sand Pidco*ke, a missionary in Brazil, recently traveled to Argentina to study a renewal movement there. The following account is based on the report she filed.

Through the South American evangelical grapevine, ministers in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru have been hearing that something is happening among Argentine churches. So nearly 200 of these ministers traveled to Argentina for a recent conference with about 200 Argentine pastors to take stock of the nameless but rapidly growing renewal movement in that country.

The movement has its roots in a charismatic-style prayer group of fifteen pastors and missionaries representing a number of denominational backgrounds that sprang up in 1967 in Buenos Aires. In their quest for deeper spiritual fulfillment the men invited Assembly of God pastor Juan Carlos Ortiz to address them at a retreat on the gifts of the Spirit. (Most of them had already privately received the tongues experience.) Recalling that retreat, Ortiz says a love was spawned that revolutionized the churches served by the men. But, he claims, “we are not a charismatic movement; we are a renewal movement. Our vision is the church.” (Ortiz says he was later forced out of his denomination for being too ecumenical and having services that were too “ordered.”)

In their interpretation of that vision, the movement’s ministers replaced the democratic structure of their churches with a “theocracy,” where Christ is head and where the pastors, in submission to Christ and to one another, wield authority over the congregations but in conjunction with the counsel of local “elders.” This has led to a de-emphasis of denominational issues and relations, and in turn—with tongues—it has resulted in the ouster of pastors from such groups as the Methodists, Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and even the Assemblies of God. The Anglicans, Mennonites, and Catholics, however, have allowed their men to be involved. (Catholic priests are among those in the weekly meetings of the movement’s leadership.)

Another element in the vision is the establishment of a discipleship structure. Each pastor “reproduces” himself by discipling cell groups of five or six persons at a time who are then to do likewise. Churches are thus led almost naturally into social involvement. Because of the cell-group structure, leaders can learn quickly when financial or physical problems beset a member. A rather common occurrence is a holiday get-together to help a member build a house. Also common are special offerings to help someone who has pressing needs.

Says ex-Methodist minister Alberto Hiluca: “In seminary we were taught good works and brotherly love, but it wasn’t until I became involved in this renewal movement that I saw it really in action.” Others say that church services now are the occasion for “true” worship. And many credit the renewal for transformation of family life among members. Indeed, the necessity of right family relations was a prime topic at the pastors’ conference in Argentina (the minister must be a good husband, a good father, and a good minister—in that order).

A delegation of forty-one from Chile told of the difficulty they had in getting permission to leave their country to attend the conference. In fact, they said, there was a “miraculous” last-minute change of heart on the part of the chief official. But before leaving they were required to exchange all their money at a rate resulting in a 50 per cent loss. The other pastors at the conference took up an offering that more than paid their way back home.

Comments correspondent Pidco*ke: “These people have the good works and the brotherly love of the liberals, the evangelical doctrine of the fundamentalists, and the mystical worship and praise of the Pentecostals. In short, they’ve put it all together.”

Home Evangelism, U.S.S.R.

Neighbors of Reform Baptist I. D. Kushnerchuk in the Soviet central Asian city of Frunze allegedly resent very much religious services held in Kushnerchuk’s apartment. Five hundred residents of the area gathered recently one evening to hear city officials and block-committee members attack Kushnerchuk’s illegal religious activities.

Kushnerchuk is said to be an organizer of the unregistered Baptist work in central Asia, Kazakhstan, and Siberia. On Saturday and Sunday he opens his Frunze apartment to gatherings of sixty to seventy, many of them children and teen-agers. The meetings are made attractive to youth by string and brass ensembles. During the services, Kushnerchuk reportedly distributes mimeographed hymns and sermons. He summarizes foreign religious broadcasts, apparently from transcripts, and distributes religious literature urging freedom of conscience.

On weekdays Kushnerchuk is persistent in evangelizing in his neighborhood and in the State Harvest Procurement office where he works. He invites nonbelievers to his weekend worship services, ignoring the alleged indifference shown him by many neighbors. The school vacation period is used as a time of recruiting children and youth into taking active part in services. Fines for breaking the laws on religious practice have been levied against Kushnerchuk several times.

The meeting closed with a warning to Kushnerchuk and his wife to cease their illegal activities. They were told that stricter measures will be taken if they persist in violating Soviet law.

ANGELO COSMIDES

Religion In Transit

Pastor David Bailey of First Baptist Church, Okawville, Illinois, pledged to his congregation that if membership grew to 100 or more he would “shout the news from the rooftop.” It did and he did. From the roof of the church he proclaimed that membership had reached 107.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair has apparently abandoned for now legal attempts to prevent daily prayers in Congress and Sunday services in the White House. She has not appealed a federal-court decision to dismiss her case.

Ninety-eight-year-old Parsons College, a liberal-arts school in Fairfield, Iowa, that was Presbyterian until it gained renown in the sixties as “dropout U” (for its policy of accepting students—for a stiff price—who couldn’t make it elsewhere), has folded. It listed $16 million in debts in a bankruptcy action.

Super-aggressive evangelistic pastor Jack Hyles of Hammond, Indiana, reports that his Hyles-Anderson College closed out its first year with 367 students, “the largest first-year enrollment experienced by any Christian college in America.”

Death: Anglican Church Women, 88, the national women’s organization of the Anglican Church of Canada, at a three-day meeting in Ottawa in mid-June, of complications involving women’s liberation.

Missouri’s 137-year-old anti-abortion law (it allowed abortion only to save the life of the mother) was voided by a federal court.

Governor and Mrs. George C. Wallace and singer Pat Boone were among the participants in a “Bibles For the World Spectacular” sponsored by the Auburn (Alabama) University Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It was the first in a projected series of rallies across the nation to raise funds for mailing New Testaments to every telephone subscriber in the world, a project of Rochunga Pudaite of Bibles For the World, a mission organization in Wheaton, Illinois. Alabamans were asked for $60,000 for Bangladesh.

United Methodists currently have 950 foreign missionaries, down from 1,300 four years ago. Personnel are available but funds are lacking (the foreign division had a $650,000 deficit in support last year), according to officials.

In its first annual report on investments, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Canada’s largest Anglican diocese, said it owns $10.7 million worth of securities. The local Catholic archdiocese reported it had over $5 million invested in stocks and bonds.

The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod at its annual meeting defeated a proposal to permit women to serve on church boards of elders, but also refused to rescind its 1972 action giving women the right to serve as deacons. The 400 delegates from twelve southeastern states also voted against abortion for convenience.

An American Lutheran Church grant of $10,000 originally allocated for the American Indian Movement but later diverted to the National Indian Lutheran Board was redirected back to AIM by the NILB Executive Committee.

A survey for Ebony shows that blacks as a whole are strong believers in personal morality, the monogamous family unit, and economic self-sufficiency, but they are split down the middle on whether integration is preferable to separation. “The internal values of the black community are characterized by a strong commitment to the basic Protestant Ethic,” the researchers concluded.

The 400-member Charismatic Communion of Presbyterian Ministers is changing its name to Presbyterian Charismatic Communion to accommodate lay members. Meanwhile, 300 Episcopal clergy have formed the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship with cleric R. H. Hawn of Denver as executive secretary.

The predominantly black National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. has at last established a ministerial retirement plan, with an initial outlay of $2 million. Participation is voluntary.

Personalia

United Presbyterian Arthur R. McKay, former president of the Colgate Rochester Bexley Hall Crozer seminary complex in Rochester, New York, is the new pastor of the 2,000-member Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. McKay also was once president of Chicago’s McCormick Seminary.

World chess champion Bobby Fischer has become disenchanted with Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, according to some reports. The eccentric Fischer, reportedly in seclusion in Denver with an ex-member of the church, has been a backer of the church but has not been baptized into its membership.

Presbyterian missionary pilot George Glass recently discovered Brazil’s tallest waterfall while flying in the northern state of Bahia. Now officially named Glass Falls, it has a drop of 1,320 feet.

In what may be a first, the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, has as an elder-elect a 16-year-old girl: Becky Taylor.

Living Bible paraphraser Kenneth N. Taylor received Christian Endeavor’s highest citation for distinguished service to youth at CE’s fifty-second international convention held in Indiana.

Named as new evangelism director of the Southern Baptist Convention: C. B. Hogue, 45, Oklahoma evangelism executive. He succeeds Kenneth Chafin, now a Houston pastor. (He is not related to noted SBC evangelist Richard Hogue, also an Oklahoman.)

Liberian president William R. Tolbert during his recent tour of the United States spoke at worship services in Baptist churches in Brooklyn, Dallas, and San Francisco, and delivered the commencement address at Bishop College in Dallas. At home in Liberia, President Tolbert serves as pastor of Zion Praise Baptist Church in Bentol City and as president of the Liberian National Missionary and Educational Convention.

Smith Falls, Ontario, pastor Donald A. Timpany was elected president of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec at the denomination’s annual assembly, held in Hamilton, Ontario.

World Scene

Methodist bishop Mortimer Arias of Bolivia says Methodists in his country have given top priority to evangelism, church growth, and congregational life.He adds that U. S. missionaries are “needed and useful.”

Missionary radio is getting through. Radio Lumière in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, sponsored a quiz contest based on a Saturday health course it broadcast for school children. The contest, limited to fifth and sixth graders, drew more than 22,000 responses.

Attacks against alleged “political activities” on the part of religious believers are still going on in Yugoslavia’s government-controlled mass media. A Zagreb radio report cited especially “insistence on the observance of religious feast days by religious communities.”

Assemblies of God missionary Olga Olsson on a recent tour of Romania found a spirit of revival sweeping many churches there. Services lasting up to five hours were packed with overflow crowds standing outside doors and windows, she says. Her report confirms an earlier account in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

More than 300 turned out for an interdenominational National Convention of Christian Education, the first in 125 years of evangelical mission work in Colombia. It was held in Medellin on the campus of the 480-student United Biblical Seminary of Colombia, which sponsored it in conjunction with the land’s evangelical churches and missions.

Immediate repeal of Britain’s liberal Abortion Act of 1967 was called for in a close vote of the ruling body of the Episcopal Church in Scotland (Anglican).

Secular newspapers in Britain fueled a furor over the way bishops are selected in the Church of England (the monarch appoints them through the prime minister) after a diocesan advisory committee’s nominees were ignored in the appointment of bishop of Chester Gerald Ellison, 63, as bishop of London. The Church Times, an independent Anglican journal, backhandedly slapped the committee for leaking the news and, in effect, told the secular papers to cool it.

Pope Paul may be concerned about the burgeoning Pentecostal movement in his church. At a recent public audience he commented: “We should reflect on whether certain groups in search of the Holy Spirit, that prefer to isolate themselves to avoid both the directing ministry of the Church and the anonymous crown of unknown brothers, are on the right road.”

Pressing Preus

One of the largest secular press corps in recent memory to cover a denominational meeting turned out for the big showdown convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in New Orleans (preceding story). More than forty daily newspapers were represented, as were the wire services, national news magazines, and several radio stations. (Also covering: staffers from about forty religious periodicals.)

Just as the LCMS proceedings were getting under way, the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) convened its brief annual meeting. The RNA, composed of more than 100 U. S. and Canadian reporters who cover religion in the secular press, had voted the Missouri Lutheran seminary controversy the top religion news story of 1972; therefore the site and time for the RNA meeting was a natural choice. (Barring unforeseen developments, the ongoing LCMS controversy is likely to be voted top story again in 1973 by the RNA.) At its meeting, the RNA gave its James O. Supple Memorial Award for reportorial excellence to Charles Wilkinson of the Hamilton, Ontario, Spectator, the first Canadian to be so honored. Betty Brenner of the Flint, Michigan, Journal was runner-up. The Harold J. Schachern Memorial Award for excellence in weekly religion sections went to the Denver Post, whose religion editor is Virginia Culver.

Most of the RNAers were on hand for a press conference with Preus following his reelection as LCMS president. Preus, who feels he has not gotten a fair shake from the press in general, nearly walked out after being badgered by columnist Lester Kinsolving, who coined the uncomplimentary “Chairman JAO” in earlier columns critical of Preus.

Preus indeed has a press problem. Liberals tend to identify with liberals, and most secular reporters are liberally inclined. But, says William MacKaye of the Washington Post, “liberals seem to be more honest and open about what is going on, so the reporter is bound to be more sympathetic.” Refuting MacKaye, another reporter insists that liberals in power circles are just as secretive but “are smoother operators.” There have been occasions when the press was hard on liberals, too. For example, MacKaye points out, reporters incurred the wrath of Presiding Bishop John E. Hines at the Episcopal convention in South Bend after they carped about politicking by liberals and the less-than-honest accounting of money channeled to certain black causes.

There can be other factors that color attitudes of both the reported and the reporters. Sometimes those on the losing side of a vote vent their frustrations and resentment on the press, mistaking fuller coverage of the winning side with bias. Reporter David Runge of the Milwaukee Journal, an inactive Missouri Lutheran, was the object of a hate-letter campaign by Preus supporters after he ran several articles on LCMS affairs, and there have been letter-writing campaigns to editors asking for the scalps of reporters under them—all of which hardly contributes to the cause of objective reporting in the future. But some anti-Preus writers seldom if ever look in personally on Preus and LCMS affairs and do not bother to hear him out; Preus probably has reason to question their fairness.

James L. Adams of the Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, believes that many reporters viewed the LCMS proceedings as another Scopes trial involving primarily academic freedom and other apple-pie issues. “Understanding the root issues requires a theological sophistication that most secular reporters don’t have,” he says. “They do have an awareness of politics, and this comes through in their reporting, especially if they don’t like what they see.”

At any rate, Preus appears in a less favorable light than Concordia president John Tietjen and his faculty in the stories by another James Adams, religion writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which covers the LCMS headquarters beat. Yet Preus has something to glow about. After his reelection, the rival St. Louis Globe-Democrat in a prominent editorial congratulated him for his “impressive victory” and wished him “every success” because the LCMS “needs the type of strong leadership he can provide.”

None of the press people at New Orleans could remember when a major daily last did something like that.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Christian Reformed Church

“Constitutional” but non-practicing hom*osexuals were granted full membership—including the right to hold ecclesiastical office—by the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) at its annual meeting held recently in Grand Rapids. The 148 synodical delegates, representing the CRC’s 718 churches and 155,000 members, defined a “constitutional hom*osexual” as “biologically or psychologically” predisposed to “erotic attraction for the same sex.” The Synod declared that explicit hom*osexual practice “must be condemned as incompatible with obedience to the will of God as revealed in Holy Scripture,” and summoned its churches to “exercise the same patient understanding of and compassion for the hom*osexual in his sins as for all other sinners.” The biological and/or psychologically predisposed hom*osexual (male or female) was said to reflect the brokenness of our sinful world,” and for his “disordered sexuality … may himself bear only a minimal responsibility.” Such hom*osexuals, if Christians, should be “wholeheartedly received by the church as a person for whom Christ died,” and “not tempted by rejection and loneliness to seek companionship in a ‘gay world.’”

The synod also addressed itself to the rise of neo-Pentecostalism within its churches. According to John Stek, professor at Calvin Seminary, “There are a dozen Christian Reformed ministers who quietly claim to have had charismatic experiences.” The doctrine of a “second blessing” baptism of the Holy Spirit was rejected as unbiblical, but both clergy and laymen who claim such experiences are to be accepted as long as they do not press their claims in such a fashion that would violate other teachings of Scripture or the peace and unity of the church.

In other actions the synod:

• Appointed a new committee to study the question of women and ecclesiastical office.

• Adopted a $10,000,000 denominational budget.

• Elected Dr. Leonard Greenway, first-time synodical delegate, as the president of the denomination.

• Reasserted that biblical revelation can be defined only as saving revelation.

• Adopted declarations that defined church office in terms of service and function.

• Rejected a proposal that marriage is constituted solely by a couple’s mutual pledge to fidelity (a view advanced by the Toronto-based Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship) and that divorce is warranted for any form of infidelity, whether physical or spiritual.

• Favored amnesty for all conscientious objectors.

JAMES DAANE

Canadian Presbyterians

The 99th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada heard that the denomination’s total membership had declined by 11 per cent in the past eight years and that the total number of congregations had declined by 100. But with membership at 179,267, it’s still Canada’s third largest Protestant body, though well behind the United and Anglican churches. In recording the loss, the report pointed out that 126 churches were closed or amalgamated, and twenty-six new congregations begun.

In seeking to resolve contention over the common use of church buildings by Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, the delegates voted to commend the practice “where it would meet an urgent need, or where such action would serve as a unique expression of common witness to the community.” Twentieth-century disciples of John Knox who might object to alleged Romish idolatry found themselves on the receiving end when the Assembly’s Committee on Church Doctrine directed similar criticism toward those who opposed such joint use of facilities. Declared the committee: “The Reformed Faith is the great enemy of idolatry and since we of the Reformed Faith recognize no holy men, holy places, nor any holy things, the equating of the church building with the Church rather than with the people assembled to hear the word is idolatrous.”

In other action, a resolution proposed from the floor by Waterloo minister Walter F. McLean called on Canadians to boycott certain brands of instant coffee as a protest against “forced labor” in Angola. The resolution charged that 125,000 Africans in the Portuguese province were forced to work for as little as $7.50 per month in plantations that produced the coffee, and that a 30 per cent export tax maintained 62,000 Portuguese troops in Angola. The resolution passed, and new moderator Agnew Johnston was asked to visit the companies involved to protest Angolan work methods.

LESLIE K. TARR

After several years of skirmishes, the War of 1812 ground to a halt in early 1815 when Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson emerged victorious over the British in the bloody Battle of New Orleans—two weeks after the peace had been signed (communication was slow in those days). The outcome amounted to a standoff: neither side won the war; the situation in the land was as it had been at the beginning.

That will not be true of the aftermath of the “second” Battle of New Orleans, slugged out in July in the civil war between conservatives and moderate-liberal forces in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). The conservatives won a decisive victory that will affect the LCMS for years to come, and some significant changes in the theological lay—and law—of the land are imminent. The immediate future, however, will not be peaceful. There will be further clashes—possibly in civil court—and some head-rolling, at least at the Synod’s Concordia Seminary at St. Louis, as the conservatives seek to secure their position under the determined leadership of LCMS president Jacob Aall Ottesen Preus, 53.

Old Hickory himself would have been impressed by the way the conservative forces unfolded their battle plan at the LCMS biennial meeting, probably the most tumultuous in the LCMS’s 125-year history. The plan went something like this:

1. Ensure that a majority of the nearly 1,100 voting delegates are conservatives; 2. Appoint the right people to the all-important floor committees, which draw up the proposals and recommendations to be voted upon; 3. Reelect Preus; 4. Elect conservatives to all of the vacant denominational posts, including the boards of control over LCMS schools; 5. Require that doctrinal statements be binding on all LCMS members; 6. Elevate Preus’s evangelical statement of belief, upholding biblical inerrancy and containing rejections of specific liberal views of the Bible, to officiai doctrinal status; 7. Declare the faculty majority at Concordia to be guilty of false teaching in light of the Preus statement; 8. Set up procedures to deal effectively with erring teachers; 9. Fire Concordia president John H. Tietjen if he does not resign as requested; 10. Change the rules so that conservatives can prevail over the faculty in determining Tietjen’s successor; 11. Dismantle the liberal machinery.

With but minor variations the entire plan was carried out.

The roots of the New Orleans confrontation go back to the summer of 1969, when Tietjen accepted the presidency of Concordia, and Preus was elected to his first four-year term as LCMS president, defeating incumbent Oliver R. Harms. Conservatives had complained that Harms was looking the other way in the presence of creeping liberalism within the denomination.

(It is difficult to affix labels. LCMS “liberals” would be considered theological “conservatives” in, say, the United Church of Christ. Rare is the LCMS liberal who rejects Christ’s divinity, blood atonement, or physical resurrection. The basic conflict is between those who follow the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation, which allows for flaws in scriptural content, and those who adhere to the historical-grammatical approach, advocating the inerrancy of the Bible. The former camp often assigns new definitions to familiar old precepts; thus what is really being said is not always clear. Further, the LCMS liberals attach prime significance to “the Gospel,” from which the Bible derives and to which it is subservient. The conservatives start with the Bible, which reveals the Gospel.)

Tietjen, 44, was formerly public relations director for the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A. (LCUSA), and before that a pastor in Teaneck, New Jersey. A graduate of Concordia and Union seminaries, he was hired by Concordia—the world’s largest Lutheran seminary and America’s third largest Protestant seminary (enrollment: about 800)—more for his promotional and administrative prowess than for theological expertise.

Preus was president of the smaller, more conservative Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, before assuming the top LCMS post. Earlier, he served a pastorate in Minnesota and was a college and seminary professor. His father was once governor of Minnesota.

Following his election, Preus vowed that LCMS schools would not be permitted to teach that the Bible has errors. (A stated responsibility of the LCMS presidency is the supervision of doctrine within the Synod.) Almost immediately groups began to polarize around Preus and Tietjen. In September, 1970, Preus appointed a Fact Finding Committee (FFC) to investigate Concordia, where his brother Robert holds forth as part of a conservative minority of four or five professors amid a faculty of nearly fifty. As the, FFC interviewed faculty members, liberals collected the signatures of 1,000 LCMS clergymen (there are more than 7,000 clergymen in the three-million-member LCMS) and 400 laymen to protest the inquiry. Concordia’s Board of Control, which became more liberal in the 1971 LCMS elections, objected to the FFC’s alleged trespassing. A struggle ensued in which the contract of untenured Old Testament teacher Arlis Ehlen, 41, was eventually terminated.

In March, 1972, Preus issued his now-famous “Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles,” which were rejected by Concordia’s faculty the following month (see April 14, 1972, issue, page 42).

Last fall Preus issued a 160-page “Report to the Synod” that dealt with the FFC’s findings and listed charges against the faculty. Tietjen responded a few days later with a thirty-five-page “Fact Finding or Fault Finding?” rejection of the Preus report on grounds it was not an accurate description of the faculty’s doctrinal position. Tietjen labeled the report “unfair, untrue, sub-biblical, and un-Lutheran.” The faculty followed with a 200-page reply.

In quick order, the Concordia, Springfield, Board of Control endorsed the Preus statement, and the St. Louis board gave its faculty a clean bill of health. The forty-member council of LCMS district presidents tried in vain to effect a ceasefire—and to keep the powerful conservative-dominated Committee on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) from judging faculty statements. Perhaps unknown to the presidents, the CTCR and the Seminary Issues Committee (SIC) were at work as early as February drafting the devastating statements that emerged in New Orleans.

(Under LCMS law, the Synod’s president appoints the members of all sixteen convention committees, whose main task is to draft recommended action on the hundreds of overtures or requests from churches, districts, boards, and individuals. Preus loaded the committees with his backers, relegating several leading liberals—serving sort of ex officio—to the relatively unimportant sundry-matters committee.)

Meanwhile, liberal and conservative activists were organizing grass-roots support and deluging delegates (advance lists were leaked to both sides) with reams of literature. The liberal thrust was led by Pastors F. Dean Lueking, 45, of suburban Chicago and Bertwin L. Frey of suburban Cleveland, with a big assist from campus minister Richard Koenig of Amherst, Massachusetts, editor of the independent Lutheran Forum. They organized district captains, lieutenants, and task forces on theological issues, and published special convention guides.

The conservatives were led by Balance, Incorporated, whose president is Robert Preus. Balance kept everybody informed through its publication, Affirm.

The year 1812 was again recalled as charges of gerrymandering flew. (Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812 redistricted a county to his political benefit.) Each circuit, or cluster, of churches in an LCMS district is entitled to two convention delegates. A circuit may be composed of from seven to twenty churches. Affirm published figures showing that in some predominantly liberal districts there was a decrease in the number of churches and communicants but an increase in the number of delegates over the last biennial meeting. For instance, the English District, a non-territorial entity that spans the nation and is the chief liberal stronghold, showed a decrease of two churches and 4,136 communicants but a 30 per cent increase in delegate strength (from thirty-four in 1971 to forty-four this year), according to Affirm. When the moment of truth arrived, however, the conservatives commanded the floor with about a 60–40 majority.

The first major order of business was the election. The conservatives by a 572 to 463 vote defeated a last-ditch move by the liberals to change the by-laws in order to place the name of popular radio preacher Oswald C. J. Hoffmann back into nomination. Hoffmann—who would have been a peace-in-the-Synod candidate—had been nominated by 1,172 congregations (Preus by 2,678) but he withdrew, he said, because he could not comply with a requirement to state in advance whether he would serve if elected. Preus went on to poll 606, or 57 per cent, of the 1,057 votes cast in a field of nine—a first ballot victory. Liberals rallied unsuccessfully behind missions executive William Kohn, who got 340 votes.

The conservatives swept the slate in scores of other offices. Howls went up from the liberal camp over a voter’s guide issued to delegates by Affirm. All of Affirm’s recommended candidates except two of six floor nominations were elected. Several delegates demanded an investigation.

Monumental parliamentary haggling developed as the major SIC and CTCR measures came to the floor. Several times there were nearly 100 persons waiting at the microphones to debate, amend, raise points of order, or ask questions. Frustration mounted, patience wore thin, and tempers ripped loose as the week progressed. The conservatives finally pushed through a rule change that permitted shutting off debate by a simple majority vote instead of the usual two-thirds.

A resolution that makes synodical doctrinal statements “binding” on all LCMS members was fought stubbornly by the liberals for two days. Preus himself waded into the fracas, declaring:

We must retain our synodical voice and keep the authority of Synod to bind its spiritual leaders to the understanding we have of our faith and to empower our officials to act when departures from our Biblical and Confessional position is violated.

The measure passed 653 to 381.

Next came a resolution to recognize Preus’s 1972 statement of doctrinal principles to be scriptural and Lutheran “in all its parts” and is “therefore a formulation which derives its authority from the Word of God and which expresses the Synod’s position on current doctrinal issues.” Further, the proposal raised the statement to binding doctrinal status.

The earlier resolution was “a platform,” pronounced Koenig. “This is the gallows.”

Attempts by the liberals to refer the measure to the Council of Presidents, as the venerable Oliver Harms suggested in a conciliatory plea, failed. After it was adopted (562 to 455), Milwaukee pastor Sam Roth, a liberal floor leader, announced that opponents of the statement would march in protest to the podium to register their negative vote. Hundreds fell into line, including a number from the advisory and visitor galleries, singing “The Church’s One Foundation” and slapping down their signed protests (see photo, next page). Preus sat nearby staring at them as he sipped from a paper cup of ice water. He remarked later that it was “a most devastating experience—seeing many of my friends and former students.”

Another lengthy resolution charged Concordia’s faculty majority with holding a position of false doctrine that “cannot be tolerated in the church of God” and called for repudiation of it by the LCMS. Tietjen and three of Concordia’s professors were given time to respond to the charges. Tietjen led with an eloquent and resounding testimony of personal faith in Christ and insisted that the faculty’s position had been misrepresented and misunderstood all along, a claim disputed by committee members and representatives of the faculty minority. After prolonged debate, the delegates voted 574 to 451 to refer the issue to the now conservative-dominated Board of Control.

Another SIC resolution called for Tietjen’s resignation. The committee replaced it with one referring the matter to the procedural provisions of the handbook, newly revised to give greater clout in discipline matters. In effect, it merely transferred the execution to a more private arena. The delegates approved 513 to 394, rejecting suggestions that they apologize to Tietjen for the appearance of the measure. “I have been grievously wronged,” exclaimed Tietjen. He disclosed that Preus and SIC chairman Lewis C. Niemoeller had met with him privately at the convention and asked for his resignation, but that he had refused because his calling is from God. He predicted that he would soon be out of a job. But, said he, “I forgive you,” and he asked that committee members keep their eyes on Christ. At that, hundreds of delegates surrounded him in an ovation. Many donned black armbands.

Will he resign or will he force Preus to fire him (raising sticky legal questions)? In a press conference, Tietjen admitted he is “wondering if God is trying to tell me something through the Synod’s actions.” A likely replacement is CTCR executive secretary Ralph Bohlmann, 45, former professor of systematic theology at Concordia.

Will there be schism? Tietjen said he would have no part of such a move, and at a final general meeting of their side, Lueking and Frey instructed their forces to sit tight, provide support for those who may be ousted from Concordia, and begin organizing for 1974. A meeting was set for Chicago later this month to devise strategy. (In an interview, Lueking glumly predicted conservatives would have the upper hand for at least ten to thirty years, and that a number of the liberals may eventually move to another Lutheran body, something Preus thinks they should do as an act of honesty right now.)

A resolution to declare altar and pulpit fellowship with the American Lutheran Church to be in a state of suspension was tabled. Recommendations to severely restrict participation in LCUSA and to dismantle the rather liberal English District by 1977 plus scores of other matters left hanging were referred to the LCMS board of directors for action where by-laws permit.

During the War of 1812, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry sent back word from a battle on Lake Erie: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

It’s the kind of message Preus himself could have sent from New Orleans.

Some of my acquaintances think that being an editor-or professor-at-large (that is, loosed from captivity) is a life of ease in Zion.

But most of my 750,000 flight miles have been logged en route to conferences, lectures, or editorial duties; none has lifted me aloft for the sheer pleasure of being airborne. Some tasks have carried me within half a day of timeless wonders of the world—the Taj Mahal, for example—with no opportunity for even a glimpse of such tourist delights. Some tasks, however, have afforded memorable lodgings with windows on the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the old city of Jerusalem, the Parthenon, the Swiss Alps, the Bay of Naples, crimson Mount Aetna, to name just a few majestic sights. Almost everywhere, besides the privilege of ministering in Christ’s name, there has been the added invigoration of meeting fellow Christians.

The worst frustration I’ve encountered as a supposedly experienced traveler befell me recently on the way to Australia, where I was scheduled for a busy fortnight. Returning from Tel Aviv to Washington after the World Bible Conference, I hurriedly unpacked, signed and posted literally hundreds of letters, repacked, and two days later was once again airborne, this time for Los Angeles en route to Sydney. When I arrived at the Los Angeles BOAC desk barely an hour before 9 P.M. departure time, I learned with dismay that Australia requires a visa.

This meant an overnight delay in Los Angeles, a morning trip downtown to the Australian consul, and a return to the airport in time for Pan Am’s 7 P.M. Friday departure. Allowing for the International Date Line, that would still get me to Sydney at 8:30 A.M. Sunday for an 11 A.M. preaching service (after immigration and customs procedures and transportation from the airport).

I found the Australian consulate courteous, efficient, and even apologetic. For there was another snag: Australia, alas, requires a totally blank page for its visa, and every page of my passport was covered in whole or part by immigration stampings.

The next six hours were as exasperating as they were expensive. The new U. S. passport office, outside suburban Hawthorne, is beyond the reach of effective public transportation and, for efficiency, veritably out of this world. To insert blank pages in my passport took the agency between three and four hours. The brusque office clerk warned me initially that it might take an hour or two; periodically after that she informed me that the process was under way. During the final hour of waiting, I was assured that the assistant supervisor himself was looking to the matter. Knowing something of the high efficiency of the national passport office in Washington, I can only be grateful that in Los Angeles my colossal requirement fell neither to lower nor to higher officials than the assistant supervisor, or I might still be waiting. Had not a young college literature professor—with whom I struck up a conversation about C. S. Lewis’s writings—waited to drive me back to the Australian consulate downtown, I would likely not have made it there before closing time for the long weekend.

All this waste of time and energy could have been avoided. For one thing, the Australian travel agency should have told me I would need a visa. But I myself, as an experienced traveler, should have remembered to take nothing for granted, for embarrassment lurks heinously in the wings of human presumption. Moreover, a good personal secretary—which I lack—would omnisciently have saved for the Lord a full day thus despoiled by the prince of the power of the air.

Pan Am, which for many years I preferred to fly abroad but more recently have not—in part because of one unforgettable meal served between Saigon and Singapore—assured me that its Sydney arrival record is excellent. Although we were a half hour late out of Los Angeles and Honolulu, the pilot—a Southern Baptist lay preacher—made up enough time to land us at Sydney only a few minutes late. And my six-feet-two frame had meanwhile providentially inherited a seat at the Boeing 747 exit door where I like to stretch out on the floor for some precautionary rest against a woolly mind.

Traveling is sometimes perturbing, but it also has its pleasant surprises. Once after several busy weeks in Rome my wife Helga and I slipped away to Florence for a few days of rest and registered at a modest but delightful locanda on a small side street. The next morning I sauntered out on a few errands. Helga could hardly wait for my return. “Guess who called, and squeezed a Cadillac through our alleyway,” she said, handing me a calling card from the U. S. deputy consul in Florence. An appreciative reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (which I then was editing), he invited us and a dozen members of the local missionary task force for dinner with him that night.

I was curious, of course, to know how he had searched us out. As it happened, the deputy consul had recently been in Rome, where a fellow American had mentioned our Rome-to-Florence travel plans. All that was necessary then was to alert the police to watch for names and passport numbers on the city’s hotel tourist registrations. Passports, gratifyingly, can bring unexpected pleasures as well as unforeseen problems.

Hanging on to one’s possessions while traveling can sometimes be a problem. I recall one member of a particular evangelical tour party who periodically crossed himself like a Catholic, but under the most unpredictable circ*mstances. Curiosity got the better of me, and I questioned him about the ritual. This triangular maneuver was helpful, he replied, especially when leaving a hotel, to make sure he had forgotten neither his fountain pen, his passport, nor his glasses.

Once I was assigned a room in a first-class Paris hotel for which the desk clerk could supply no key. It had vanished, he explained; the previous occupant had kept it, and there was no duplicate. I protested that the previous occupant could then return, and that I had no intention of surrendering my portable typewriter, among other things, to a new owner. After extended importunity I finally got a different room. The incident so upset me, however, that when I later went for a walk I unwittingly left my wallet containing $200 on the dresser. Frantically hunting down a telephone, I asked the hotel manager to pick up the wallet for safe keeping. Later I rewarded him with a bill that could have bought several dozen duplicate keys but probably didn’t.