Theology
Dorothy L. Hampton
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My only child is a little girl of nine. She is tall for her age and extraordinarily pretty, with large dark eyes that sometimes seem to look right through you. So attractive is she that people have come to me in the supermarket and exclaimed over her—and then they have stopped in mid-sentence, for it suddenly strikes them that she is different. And indeed she is. My little girl is mentally retarded. Her I.Q. is between 50 and 60, classing her with the trainable group of the retarded.
I write therefore as the mother of a retardate, but more than that, as a mother who has put her heart and her life in Christ’s hands. I have read articles by directors of Christian education or by volunteers teaching church classes for the retarded, but I have never seen an article by a parent of a retardate who is willing to speak openly to her fellow Christians about what it is like to mother a defective child.
Three out of every hundred persons are mentally retarded. This means that, in a state such as mine, one out of every eight persons is as closely related to a retardate as mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, or aunt. Here is heartache. Only 3 per cent of the mentally handicapped are institutionalized; the remaining 97 per cent are at home, many of them without adequate schooling, recreation, friendship, and church life. Some may say, “But I honestly don’t know any retardates.” Nevertheless they are with us—perhaps hidden, perhaps mildly retarded and “passing” in the community, but all needing the evangelical church and what it can offer.
There are several stages through which one goes upon learning that one’s child is mentally handicapped. For those who do not know that Christ controls all that happens in their lives, there is usually a harrowing time of guilt and self-examination. Parents ask themselves again and again, “What did I do to give birth to such a grievously handicapped child?”
As a Christian I went through this for a mercifully short period, when it had to be all or nothing. Yet even with the most scripturally grounded believers, the human element of what may be called a built-in psychological mechanism is not wholly canceled. When a mentally handicapped child is born, this mechanism may lead to bewildered questioning. Parents cannot help asking, “Lord, why me? How can I live with this? What shall I do?”
From The One To The Many
Some unfortunate parents never progress beyond this stage. To the great detriment of themselves and their handicapped child, to say nothing of any other children in the family, they remain preoccupied with “I,” “me,” and “us.” Most parents of retardates, however, pass out of this stage to a second, in which their thinking is all directed toward the child involved. Here the normal reaction is to ask, “What can I do to help my child, only mine?” Some parents, unfortunately, remain in this second stage, and are almost as useless to themselves and to the child as those still in the first stage. Hopefully, most parents pass into a third stage, that of asking, “What can I do to help all mentally handicapped children?” Only then, they realize, can they help their own child.
Some parents pass through these stages rapidly, others slowly, and some never through all three. Nor does being a Christian exempt parents from these experiences. But, as my husband and I know, many Christians are able through the grace of God to reach the third stage more rapidly than others. For ourselves, we learned that when parents are told their child is mentally retarded, they suddenly realize that if all they believe and have professed is really true, then it mustbe sufficient now in this moment of soul-searing truth. Christians who have faced with God this hardest of problems understand why their faith is powerful, why it is built on agony and sacrifice instead of upon mere platitudes and kind sayings.
If my faith offered only some practical guides to everyday living, I would not be able to write this. But for Christians who have such inescapable problems, it means everything to know that we have a hereafter to count upon for us and our children. We have a God who is all-powerful, all-loving, and in control. We know that our children are provided for in God’s eternal plan, that not just a great man but the incarnate God himself said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).
Loving The Unlovely
Surely among “the least of these” are the retarded, for who is more lowly than they? Perhaps the most comforting fact of all is that Christ loves the unlovely. Many retarded are unlovely; their features are ugly. Some have crossed eyes, some have heads malformed from birth injuries; others are palsied, and still others are so handicapped that they are living vegetables. What has helped most as I have felt the anguish of knowing that my little girl is retarded is to realize that the retarded are part of the Lord’s plan and that his love encompasses them as much as it encompasses the most gifted children.
All of us (Christians included) have a great deal to learn about the problem of retardation. Every retardate has parents and often brothers and sisters who desperately need Christian friendship, Christian love, a church home, and genuine acceptance. How sad to hear it said in an open meeting about church classes for the retarded, when conservative evangelical churches are mentioned, “Oh, they don’t care. They won’t do anything but sit in their ivory towers and criticize!” How cruel it is to know that, with some exceptions, this is true.
Why is it true, not only concerning retardation, but also in respect to alcoholism, mental illness, and the underprivileged poor? Why are some evangelicals letting their liberal friends do most of the works of compassion, while they argue about immersion versus sprinkling and whether Christ will come before or after the tribulation—and all the time souls in the agony of despair over a mentally retarded child, an alcoholic or mentally sick relative, are perishing all around them? While Christians who have knowledge and understanding of the power that alone can save souls and ease burdens quibble over how separated they are, there is intense spiritual suffering going on in the very blocks where they live. And somehow they are strangely uninterested in helping. If this seems overly severe, let me ask this: Why is it only now becoming the “in” thing to assist the retarded and their parents? Where have we (and I include myself) been?
It is time to come down out of the clouds of theological controversy and spiritual pride and to take our share of responsibility for the unfortunates of society. Our great-grandparents did it for the slaves. We can do it for the “least of these,” Christ’s brethren.
What then should Christians do? Let me offer some suggestions based upon experience. First, they must realize that retarded children and adults need to feel wanted and that church life is important for them. “But,” someone says, “their mentality in most cases limits their understanding of doctrine.” Such a statement overlooks the wonder of the Gospel. Most retardates understand something about death; many can understand, to a limited degree, the concept of an all-powerful Being; many understand wrongdoing; virtually all can understand love—the quality they need more than any other. Thus many mentally retarded persons are able to understand something of the central truth that Jesus is God and that he loved them enough to die for them. And after all, what else is there? This is the magnitude of the Gospel and its magnificent simplicity.
I believe that my little child understands this great truth. Whether she is or ever will be at the age of discernment I may never know; but she loves Jesus, and she knows that he loves her. And if she could not grasp even this, I would still know that he loves her.
A teacher of a primary-level church class for normal children told me recently how a rather severely retarded child entered class the day the Gospel story was told. Instead of being a behavior problem as the teacher feared, the child sat very still. At the end of the lesson, the teacher gave a simple invitation to accept Christ. The retarded child stood up asking over and over, “Can I? Can I?” There were tears in that teacher’s eyes as she said that she knows our Lord is as happy over that little one as over any other.
Not Only For The Child
Secondly, Christians must understand that it is not enough to say, “Let’s have a nice church class or Sunday school class for the retarded,” and then, after doing this, to think that nothing more is needed. Every retardate has a family, and these are often in greater need than the retardate. What about the parents and others in the family? This is what pastors and congregations must ask when they decide to do something for the retarded. What of the teen-aged brother of the little mongoloid in the special class? Is this adolescent made welcome and shown that his church understands? Does the congregation realize that mongolism is not hereditary and is not the result of some hidden sin of the parents?
Churches must do more than begin classes for the retarded; concern must also be shown for their families. Evangelicals might well follow the example set by some of more liberal theology and start group therapy classes for parents, never forgetting that the greatest therapy comes through personal knowledge of Christ as Saviour and Lord.
Only those who have a defective child will ever know the terrible need for acceptance, the deep desire to be treated like other families. The cruel stigma against the retarded has been tolerated far too long. Human beings seem to accept any handicap so long as it does not limit the one thing we need above all else—the mind. The words of Milton’s sonnet, “On His Blindness,” apply also to mental retardation: sight is not the only “talent which is death to hide.” Even more essential is our ability to reason, to express ourselves in spoken and written language, to think.
Today in an inarticulate but eloquent plea the retarded are calling for help. It is to the lasting credit of our late President Kennedy, whose oldest sister is mentally retarded, that he heard that plea and led the movement resulting in the first legislation in our national history designed to help the retarded.
Emotional response is not in itself sufficient. Response must be informed. This means that Christians must lake the trouble to learn the difference between retardation and mental illness. They should know what facilities their communities offer for therapy and schooling for all retarded. They should be aware of the need for greater educational opportunities, more job openings, additional legislation in the field of retardation, and institutional reforms. They should find out what parents’ groups are available where fathers and mothers of retardates can meet others with similar problems. Above all, they should know that retardation can happen to any family, that it is no respecter of education, social position, or economic status. With such knowledge they will have something concrete to recommend when a young couple comes to church in the crisis of having just learned that their child is mentally handicapped.
Progress But No Cure
Parents of retarded children can become victims of the most callous medical quackeries—money-draining schemes that claim miracle cures. The parents must be helped to realize that there is no cure. There can in some cases be great progress for the retarded child. Nevertheless, retardation is a condition, not an illness to be cured. Apparently our Lord meant for the retarded always to be with us, needing our help and understanding.
All children take their cues from their parents and the adults around them. Normal and gifted children must learn compassion for their unfortunate brothers or sisters. They should be told that handicapped children may be coming to church or Sunday school, that this is how God made these children, that they are to be helped and loved. Normal children will surprise parents and teachers with their matter-of-fact acceptance and eager willingness to help. The real hope for the retarded is regrettably not in this generation but in the next. If young people hear about retardation in the community and ask, “What can I do to help?” instead of saying, “Poor things, poor, poor things,” then progress will be made.
Retarded children have emotions. My child loves, she gets angry, she gets upset. She knows when people accept her openly for what she is; she also can tell when they feign sympathy. In addition to those who have already heard the call to help “the least of these,” many more professionally trained persons—teachers, medical researchers, therapists, recreation directors, counselors—are needed. So much can be done for the retarded, many of whom, when trained and supervised, are able to lead useful and happy lives as part of the community.
Here is a call to Christlike service for evangelical youth. Such service entails more than professional skill; it can mean helping parents of retardates to a sure trust in Jesus Christ that will take them through the deepest valleys of despair.
The Newly Open Door
The task of assisting parents who have older retarded children may be especially difficult; they will not always respond happily or even graciously. Perhaps years ago when they needed a church, none was ready to welcome them. They may ask, “Why is the church now opening its doors to us and our children?” The best answer is a positive program. It is important to schedule classes for the retarded at the same times as regular church services. Some churches offer classes for the retarded on Saturday or another weekday. This has two serious flaws. It prevents a group of parents from going to church on Sunday, because there is nothing on that day for their handicapped children; it also means that there are whole congregations of adults and children who will never see these mentally retarded children among them on Sunday as part of the Lord’s flock.
Too long have most Christians lagged in assuming their burden for the unfortunate and the handicapped. We who have mentally retarded children need more than sympathy and tears. We need what committed Christians have to offer us in knowledge of sins forgiven, in courage for living, and in a blessed hope for the future. Let Christians to whom much has been given give of themselves and of their bounty to help the unfortunate. Let them give in love.
To do this is no concession to a social gospel. The second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is part of the faith. Christians can no longer forget the young father and mother in that hospital room who have just been told that their baby is retarded and may always be a child in mind. To these can be given understanding and hope for eternity. While they cannot be offered immediate happiness, they can be shown that there are things more important than mere happiness.
Some of us are crossing our Jordans sooner than others. We parents of the mentally retarded have heavy burdens. But when you free our souls by giving us the joyous knowledge that Christ is God, that he died for us and for our children, that he cares for us, that he loves the unlovely, that he is with us day by day, then there is nothing we will not strive to do for our children and all of “the least of these [Christ’s] brethren.”
Dorothy L. Hampton (A.B., Barnard, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) is the wife of Clyde R. Hampton (A.B., Columbia; LL.B., Colorado), an attorney in the legal department of the Continental Oil Company. Mr. and Mrs. Hampton are active in the work of the Metropolitan Association for Retarded Children of Denver, of which Mr. Hampton was the first chairman.
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Pierson Curtis
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The Christian, like any other human being, needs recreation. After days and weeks at the desk he finds, like Charles Lamb, that the wood has entered into his soul. And she, even more, needs an out from her seven-day round of meals, beds, dishes, vacuum cleaning, and children.
They both need periodic refreshment, preferably together, and best, as a family. Golf, squash, tennis, a basement hobby, often are escapes for one. Family ski-trips may help in the winter. And the car is always with us.
But for a complete change of scene, a source of happy family memories, and a freshener of the spirit, give me camping trips—properly equipped and planned. And I don’t mean just public-camp stops on a motor tour.
Of course, to sit in a rain-beaten tent with three nothing-to-do children and an I-told-you-so wife—or husband—is not a source of happy memories. But if you have proper rain gear and waterproof minds, a trip through wet woods can be a lovely and rewarding experience. If, in addition, you have cached in a dufflebag a few paperbacks like The Guns of Navarone to read aloud, a game or two, and something special to cook on the emergency two-burner, a rainy day can be something to tell about later. And it builds resilience and an enviable state of mind.
Or, if you are just trying it out, you are doubtless near that lifeline, the car.
Of course, if you have two left hands which are all thumbs, camping is not for you without a guide. But let us suppose that you are resourceful and have a healthy sense of adventure, and have had either experience or the briefing of dyed-in-the-wool campers. Also, that you have borrowed or bought a suitable tent and other equipment, and that you know something of the country you intend to visit.
To illustrate three things that camping can do for a family, let me, as trail man for a Maine girls’ camp for thirty summers and as the father of a started-camping-young family, take you on a few trips.
1. A lean-to at three thousand feet off a trail in the White Mountains, the first flush of day showing through the firs to the northeast. The scent of balsam beds under our sleeping-bags. Firewood ready under a plastic sheet. In a few minutes fire is leaping and water from the spring is heating. An hour and a half later, with sleeping bags airing on a line under the shelter and dishes washed, we are heading up the trail for a trip along the ridges. A bay lynx scuttles off from a spruce partridge he has been tearing and climbs a balsam. After a mutual look-see, we leave him there.
2. A dirt road along a lonely Nova Scotia beach. Driftwood crackling between two rocks. Seagulls sailing by. Air-mattresses ready on the station-wagon floor and under a tentfly beside the car. Canadian T-bone steaks. And then the sunset across the water, and a lighthouse winking.
3. A night under the stars in an open field lent us by a farmer. “Of course you can sleep out there. But wouldn’t you rather come in?” To wake briefly at two in the morning with the winter constellations blazing across the sky. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man …?”
4. Five miles in from anywhere, beside a mountain stream in a great slanted valley. We have taken two easy days to carry in, and slept one night under a huge slanted rock. Even Cynthia, aged five, has carried her six-pound sleeping bag on her little packboard. Now we are camped for three days by a rocky pool of the cloud-fed stream. The children make a water wheel, gather balsam for their beds, sit around the campfire, help to cook. We take short exploring trips together, go wading and swimming, watch the sparks zig upward, go to sleep with the firelight flickering against the shelter cloth, doze off to the voices of the rapids.
5. Canoes upturned safely back from the river edge. We have paddled and floated ten miles downstream, around bends, under overhanging trees, down sunny reaches—kingfishers flashing across ahead of us and turtles slipping off half-submerged logs as we pass. We have swum whenever we felt like it. Now the river sweeps silently and sleepily by under the stars, and a crescent moon rides halfway up the sky.
6. Colorado—the dirt road along the Rampart Ridge—a beaver pond reflecting aspens turned to gold—great snow patches still in the high pockets of the mountains.
7. Katahdin under a full moon. After a day over the Knife Edge, down Pamola to Basin Pond and back to our camping spot high up Hunt’s Trail, the family decides during supper to go down the several miles to the car by moonlight. After four hours of sleep we break camp and start down. For the first part of the overhung trail we pick our way with flashlights. But as we come out on the open lumber road along the Sourdnahunk, we look back at the moon-silvered slopes above. In a clearing beside the stream we pass a camp of boys asleep. As the first grey of dawn lightens the sky, the mountains flatten to black silhouettes. Then a gleam of gold edges them. We see a fox catching grasshoppers in a grassy meadow.
I could go on to scenes in the Canadian Rockies by glacier-fed streams or lakes, or to small islands along the Maine coast reached by sail or power-boat.
But what about the discomforts, the unnecessary effort, the bugs, the mosquitoes, the snakes, the wet? Is it relaxing or beneficial to leave the comforts that make life easy? Why not be comfortable at home or in a lakeside cottage with screens and beds and electricity? “I can endure hardness for a good cause, but why punish myself for fun?”
The second gift of camping is, I reply, the bracing effect of overcoming difficulties. “Comfort,” says Kahlil Gibran, “is a stealthy thing that enters as a guest and becomes a master.”
Our great-grandparents felled trees for their cabins, cut their own firewood, and warmed themselves at open fires. They carried their water from dug wells or springs, washed clothes and dishes by hand, baked their own bread, plucked their own geese for feather-bedding. The children walked to school. Perhaps it gave them something—iron.
(One word of warning: the iron should not be mostly mother’s. If she is left to plan the meals, buy and pack supplies, do all the cooking away from the gadgets she is used to, roughing it will be roughest on her.)
We need something of the primitive occasionally to counteract our usual dependence on oil burners, deep freezes, and Beautyrest mattresses. Not that we can call modern camping very primitive—what with canned goods, package mixes, air mattresses, and gasoline stoves. Compared with the difficulties our ancestors took for granted, we have it easy.
Finally, besides the back-to-Eden urge that drives some of us to the woods and lakes and mountains, and besides the urge to prove ourselves, to show that we are not tied to our comforts, we have also a feeling that it is good to get away from the works of man to the works of God.
A week or two away from neons and traffic and TV may help us to see with the writer of the Hundred-fourth Psalm the One “who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.… He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills.… He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.… O Lord how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.… The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.”
Tribute To Baby Bird
How far from what it will be
Is the featherless baby bird.
The open beak
Now larger than its wings,
A tottering head
That awkwardly sustains
Its own wide open jaws.
Raw, new-made need
That gives no forward glimpse
Of radiant plumage,
Or of will-be flights.
For this the mother bird
Flies tirelessly from food to nest,
For this unpretty tribute
Weak and wide-mouthed faith.
Bird patience
In a patterned miniature of God
When needs like these
Unfeathered, wide-beaked birds
Reflect for us
Our groaning emptiness,
Our cries which are no more
Than bird, or child-like
Trustful asking.
RUTHE T. SPINNANGER
Pierson Curtis, a graduate of Princeton University and a secondary-school teacher of English for over fifty years, is a camper of long experience. He has given talks on camping procedures before the New England Camp Directors Association and the Southern Camp Directors Association and has served as a guide in Maine.
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Robert Elmore
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Music is the Christian art par excellence. From that awe-inspiring moment in the past when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, to that wondrous time in the future when Christians will join in the song of the redeemed, the Bible is full of references to music. Our Lord himself, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks of joining in praise “in the midst of the congregation.”
With this in mind, it is little short of amazing to me that the art of music should be so lightly esteemed among many evangelical Christians. In many of our churches music is approached and used almost as entertainment, and light entertainment at that. Some may be inclined to deny this statement or to take offense at it. But before you stop reading, consider a moment. What is the ordinary gospel hymn? Is it a noble melody, well harmonized, wedded to a text expressed in words of beauty and power? To ask the question is to answer it, regretfully, in the negative. Worthy hymns are, like everything that is worthy, in the minority. I have the distinct impression that a good many of our popular hymns are written to sell, not to save; for their bounce, not their blessing.
There seems to be a feeling in some evangelical circles that if music is really deep, it is suspect and perhaps subversive and therefore not to be used in church. There are even ministers who feed their congregations with the strong meat of the Word and at the same time surround their preaching with only the skimmed milk of music. My brethren, these things ought not so to be!
Leaving, for the moment, the place and use of music in our church services, what about its place and use in our personal lives? It is my conviction that many Christians are missing much blessing and inspiration by leaving great music out of their scheme of living. The deprivation may well be more significant today than in the past, for most of us have more leisure time than ever before.
Some may have the notion that to appreciate great music one must understand its technicalities. This is simply not true. To appreciate, enjoy, and benefit from music all you have to do is listen to it! A musical friend may give you advice about what to listen for, or you may find a good book on music appreciation that will help you. Yet these aids, while pleasant, are not at all essential. What I say is literally true: all you have to do is listen.
But the word “listen” needs clarification. In these days when our ears are assailed, whether we like it or not, with canned music (usually mediocre) in restaurants, stores, and even airplanes, we tend to push music aside without really paying attention to it. Thus listening has become, for many, a lost art. But when I suggest that you listen to music, I do not mean that, after putting a record on the turntable, you will then begin to read the paper, do the dishes, or converse with a friend. Instead I mean that you will sit quietly, and with every bit of mental energy you possess concentrate entirely on the music. This will not be easy at first. In fact, listening can be just as tiring as any other mental activity. But if you desire the rewards, you must pay the price in honest, intense concentration.
Uphill To The Best
If your musical diet has largely consisted of the light, sugary, sentimental kind of music, typified by certain of the popular gospel-hymn arrangements or by the prevalent secular “mood” music so often heard today, you will find the going, temporarily at least, all uphill. One of the great virtues of the good gospel hymn is the immediacy of its appeal. This is not in itself a bad thing. Straightforward appeal is indeed the virtue of the popular song. And there are also pieces of great music that speak so very simply and directly that their message is at once grasped and enjoyed. Yet unlike lesser music, these pieces are wonderfully durable; repeated hearing year after year does not wear them out.
Let us not, however, deny ourselves the enrichment of much of the greatest music merely on the basis of its seeming obscurity. In general, the music of immediate appeal is somewhat like a handkerchief box: all the beauty is on the surface, and there is no depth. Very often the music that on first hearing seemed strange and uninteresting will become more and more beautiful with each hearing as you further penetrate its beauty. Great and good music is part of God’s truth, and is to be enjoyed among his gracious gifts to us. Without question, music is one of the “things [that] are true … honest … just … pure … lovely … and of good report” of which the Apostle speaks in Philippians 4:8. On repeated hearing, the layman can get a great deal from Bach, Brahms, Mozart, and even from contemporary composers whose idiom may at first seem strange.
After all, what does any artist, musical or otherwise, do? He tries to communicate some aspect of his own experience. If this is a deeply felt experience, sharing it can be helpful and moving to the rest of us. Some men are very great composers because they felt deeply, lived intensely, and had the technical expertise to express in music some of the inmost life of the soul and spirit. Every time I play the Sonata on the 94th Psalm by Reubke (a little-known composer whose principal legacy is this one masterpiece, since he died at the age of twenty-four), I am aware that he is expressing in tone the spiritual state that the old mystics called “the dark night of the soul.” Through music he is saying things that are incredibly deep and moving and that could not be put in words.
What has just been said of Reubke brings us close to the very raison d’être of music. There would be no need for music if it did not go beyond, above, and beneath words in its communication. This applies to vocal as well as to instrumental music, for if a composer chooses to set a text to music, the reason must be that he feels he can intensify its meaning and deepen its significance. Great music, then, is simply the deep thought of the composer expressed in tone. It may be a composition for organ, for piano, or for any other instrument or combination of instruments. It may be a piece for solo voice or for a large chorus. The composer sets his music in the medium he thinks will best serve it. And we as hearers have the privilege and responsibility to listen to what he has to say.
Coming back to the place and use of music in worship, let me observe that we are missing much blessing if we do not seek to use the best, for who can deny that only the best is good enough for God? There is, of course, variety in respect to the best. Granted that there are some “best” gospel hymns that speak with integrity to the heart, do not the profound utterances of, say, a Johann Sebastian Bach, who expressed out of his heart the deep things of God, also have a place? The one is very easily grasped. And nobody should condemn a true but simple hymn because even a child can understand its message. The other is not so easily grasped. Dare we condemn it merely because of this? Are we to deny ourselves the rich experience of entering into the spiritual insights of Bach’s great Christian mind simply because to do this takes time and effort?
Music in evangelical circles is in something of a predicament. We hear third-rate music in church; therefore we tend to enjoy the same music in the home. Our children are raised hearing in church and home only this kind of music, and the cycle perpetuates itself. But this could be changed.
An Ennobling Melody
Stop at a record store today and buy, for example, a good recording of the Brahms First Symphony. If you are timid, do not even listen to it all at once. Try the slow movement first. This is not deep; it is merely heavenly. Oh, it may not seem quite so accessible as “In the Garden” or “Ivory Palaces,” but I promise that after two or three hearings you will be humming bits of it. Or try the last movement. You will find a tune there so vigorous and so ennobling that you will wonder why nobody ever put words to it and made it a hymn, as has indeed been done to tunes of other of the masters. Its very virility may spoil you for some of the lesser stuff that you have been putting up with.
After a few weeks of this, you will be won over. You may even go to your church organist and ask him to play, if not a Brahms symphony (since that requires a large orchestra to do it justice), at least something of comparable musical value. And there is plenty. Bach, Mendelssohn, Franck, and Brahms, to name only a few—all wrote magnificently for organ, and their music is highly appropriate for use in church.
But listening to music is not the only way to enjoy it. Even more rewarding is the experience of making music. Of all the uses of leisure, very few are more enjoyable and worthwhile than the practice of music through singing or playing an instrument. Aside from the example of a consistent Christian life and a sound education, parents can give children few more lasting gifts than the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. And, contrary to American custom, let boys as well as girls have their chance at lessons; significantly enough, all the great composers have been men. Only a tiny minority of children will become professional musicians, and very few indeed will become highly accomplished amateurs. Talent is inevitably selective, and the gifted alone will continue. Yet even limited experience of making music is beneficial.
Moreover, adults should not rule out their participation in music. Many a man or woman finds joy in even very modest competence on an instrument. And membership in church choirs and in some fine choral organizations enables one to take part in bringing alive the glorious pages of such works as Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, or Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
Let us stop feeding our musical sensibilities on ashes. In our lives and in our worship let us have music that is worthy of the Lord who bought us with his precious blood. He is the Author of life, and he is the Master Composer whose music flows through the men he has inspired. Let us rejoice in the gift of music, and let us learn to use it more fully to the glory of God.
Robert Elmore, organist of the Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, holds the degree of Mus.B. from the University of Pennsylvania (where he served as associate professor and vice-chairman of the Department of Music), L.H.D. from Moravian College, and LL.D. from Alderson-Broaddus College. He is also an Associate of the Royal College of Music and a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (England).
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John C. Cooper
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I can’t claim to have lived all my life by Bacon’s dictum: “Some books are to be tasted, some swallowed, and some chewed and digested,” for I was in the university before I learned it; but by some Platonic intuition I have been chewing on books since I was six years old. My “taste” in books is hopeless: I simply like all kinds. In the absence of other fare I have read (and reread) the Marine Corps Manual (during a largely bookless hitch in the USMC, Korea, 1950–1952), the backs of cereal boxes, postmarks, and even sign boards. Time and again I have resolved to stop simply reading and begin to concentrate in the area of philosophy and theology, but my resolution has never been strong enough to enable me to walk stolidly by a paperback rack or a second-hand bookstore. Even as I write, the dust of an ancient bookstore’s 50,000 volumes clings to my clothing. I spent a delightful day digging until I found exactly seven treasures, priced at 30ȼ to $1.50 each. I know I must settle down someday, but age thirty seems much too young. Every week, dozens of new books come to my desk, and I can’t resist trying to read them all.
While doing all this “chewing” on books, I have been interested in the reflection of Christianity in literature as well as its influence upon it. Sometimes I’m not quite sure where reflection begins and influence ends and vice versa. After majoring in English as an undergraduate I went on to seminary; there I tried my hand at expounding the religious implications of modern drama, since I also like to read plays. I read my way through the productions of English-speaking playwrights from 1880 to 1958, and finally settled down with Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O’Neill. I still can’t spell “O’Neill” without looking it up somewhere, so I suppose I didn’t learn much. But I enjoyed it. I tried to analyze W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot along the way, and ended up scribbling poems, “informed by a Christian conscience,” myself. I was surprised that anyone would print them, and upon seeing my creations live on paper I became incurably hooked on writing, on top of reading. It seems natural to me, now, that a person would wish to add to the supply of that which he dearly loves—in my case, words. Work at the Lutheran School of Theology for the S.T.M. under Dr. Arthur Vööbus and my present sentence at the University of Chicago’s graduate program in Christian theology haven’t yet served to quench my appetite for books and writing.
The Literary Diet
In a more serious way let me turn now to the thought that prompted this essay—our “digestion” of books—and, as I am a Christian, some of the significance of our present book diet for the Faith. One does not have to share Marx’s views on the primacy of economic factors to see the glimmer of truth in: “A man is what he eats.” Nor does one need a degree in literary criticism to comprehend the weight of this: “Mentally, we are very largely formed by what we read.” Our literary diet does significantly mold our lives. Those who remain at the comic-book level betray it in every area of their lives. Those who never see through the emotionally biased writings of the editorial pages reflect it in their conversation and in the way they vote. Those who subsist on a diet of sexual looseness and mayhem reveal that, too. God forbid that I be misunderstood at this point. I am not proposing a board of censorship, administered by church or state. I am saying that the Christian community has paid too little attention to the ink-and-paper food its people take in seven days a week. A kind of mystical blessing of all reading matter, effected by hearing the Bible read once a week, is no protection at all against the adulterated view of creation we readers are apt to gain every day.
A few cases in point. I just finished Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. After Thaïs and Penguin Island by Anatole France, I didn’t think anything could shake me by a cracked reflection of the Church’s image. However, the day of serious satire on the Church’s life and teaching has long passed.
Quite frankly, the Church isn’t taken seriously enough by writers today to warrant the kind of counterpropaganda Anatole France and others dished out generations ago. In Lolita Christianity is laughed off, just once, and forgotten. In Chapter 18, Charlotte (after being seduced and proposed to) insisted that she would commit suicide if she ever found out that Humbert didn’t believe in “Our Christian God.” He answered that he believed in “a cosmic spirit”—and she was satisfied. And that, for Christianity, is that. Of course the horrible satire resides in the fact that Humbert was marrying Charlotte only so as to be in a position to seduce twelve-year-old Lolita.
God Bless Everybody
This ignoring of Christianity is exactly what I found in my study of modern drama. The total lack of any relevance of the Church to human problems is clearly summed up in a bit of horseplay in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when “Reverend Tooker,” who is interested only in a bequest for a stained-glass window from the still-living “Big Daddy,” enters the scene. (It should be noted that there are two versions of Act Three of “Cat,” but my criticism holds true for both.) When the family hatred begins to come plainly to the surface—the fact that neither son ever loved the father—Reverend Tooker “slips away” with a “God bless everybody” aimed shotgun fashion at the suffering group. That neither Gospel, pastor, nor Church has any help to offer for the ills of humanity seems to be the considered opinion of many of the keenest critics of our present-day world. T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr notwithstanding, most of the books and plays we taste, then chew, and finally swallow because of their interest and artistic merits see no help for man coming from the Christian Church.
It would only prolong this essay unnecessarily to do more than mention two other vital works that call in question our modern ethics. These books are On the Beach, by Nevil Shute, and The General, by Alan Sillitoe. Both of these novels point out the agony and ultimate frustration of every creative impulse of civilization by ruthless use of force and nuclear weapons. Neither book is relieved by reference to some pacifying or curative influence of religion-in-general, much less Christianity.
Perhaps my reading has given me spiritual indigestion. Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, with its chilling sequel, Brave New World Revisited, and all their parallels have also given me a physical chill. But I think the most undigested bit of reading fare, the true source of the ghost in my particular vision, is the Holy Scriptures. I am galled by the ignoring of the biblical message because so much of it is keenly relevant to our day and needs merely good translation (which we have) and a clear proclamation (which we largely lack). Much of the message of social justice and ethical living given by the ancient prophets is applicable to today’s problems without any “demythologizing.” All we need is a clear historical transference to our own times.
A Modern Message
The greater part of the message Jesus brought is so clearly “modern” that most preachers can leave the question of kerygma and mythos to the scholars. But our modern prophets have dragged their critical apparatus into the pulpit and into print and have built a solid wall of “specialization” between themselves and the public. It is not without reason that the lay thinker has turned away unaided, and a little amused. What galls me is not that the secular writer overlooks the biblical message, but that the agents sworn to unfold its meaning have performed so miserably. I remain convinced that there is balm in Gilead, but it is not applied seriously to the sprains of life by ministers or laymen. This neglect of the Gospel is of such long duration now, and is so widespread, that the Gospel message has simply faded out of sight.
George Gordh, in his recent book, Christian Faith and its Cultural Expression, says that Christian faith as a whole exists in three dimensions: First, as a way of looking at the world and its meaning—at man and his significance. Secondly, as a set of attitudes—towards nature, towards oneself, towards others. Thirdly, as a set of expressions, in the way Christian men create art, write books and poetry, engage in actions, associate with one another, and use their minds. Gordh says it is in this last respect that Christianity has served as an element in the forming of Western culture. My own research, in the literary and philosophical areas, bears this out. But my contention is that the mainstream of Christianity has abandoned this Christian self-expression in our time, at least insofar as that expression communicates to the world outside the fellowship. I believe the many dialogues and retreats and publicity blurbs and new church buildings of today are private conversations of the church, by the church, and for the church only. (I would rather say “by churchmen,” etc., for this is nearer the truth. I feel that “churchmanship” is one of the enemies of Gospel-communication, and a distinct mark of Christianity’s “ghetto mentality” in the twentieth century. I doubt if the apostles were “good churchmen.” From my own research, I feel sure that Paul was not!) By and large, the mainstream denominations are closed corporations, not nets designed to catch all kinds of men. And we can hardly help someone we can’t catch hold of long enough to speak to.
That, in my opinion, is why Christianity is being spit out, instead of chewed and swallowed, today.
John C. Cooper, who is assistant professor of philosophy at Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina, holds the A.B. degree (cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of South Carolina; the B.D. degree from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina; and the S.T.M. degree from the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago.
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Grant Reynard
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This essay comes out of the experience of a working Christian artist who has for many years admired and enjoyed the great schools of religious painting and the moving and beautiful compositions of the master composers. My earliest recollections go back to my boyhood in a little Nebraska town and to the small Presbyterian church where my mother and father sang soprano and tenor parts in the quartette. Many a night I fell asleep while choir practice was being held downstairs, where a framed print of Millet’s “Angelus” hung over the Estey organ. Toward Easter the quartette was augmented and sang “The Seven Last Words,” In December I was lulled to rest as the choir rehearsed “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.” Later I pumped the organ in church and thrilled to the organist’s dexterous conquering of the difficulties of Bach on the wheezy old instrument.
As my voice changed, I drifted away from music to graphic art, copying Millet’s “Angelus” and the Charles Dana Gibson drawings in magazines. My voice returned to an unstable tenor; but when I went off to study art at the Chicago Art Institute and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, I tried voice coaching and learned solo parts in The Messiah and Elijah.
During these Chicago days, and as I was later becoming established as a painter in the East, my wife and I lost our way spiritually. I had gone through a phase of Unitarianism, a trial at Christian Science, and even an experiment with crystal-ball séances. But one evening an older artist, a devout Quaker, came to our apartment and quoted that striking supernatural passage from First Thessalonians about the Lord himself descending from heaven with a shout. So arresting was his faith in such an event that we began to attend a little chapel he recommended.
The place was small, but the pastor was so devoted an evangelical with such real Christian faith that soon we were on our way to a true knowledge of the Bible. I heard again the hymns of my youth, sung by dedicated people and played as written by a young lady who had not gone to a class in “how to play for gospel singing” and who refrained from the embellishment of arpeggios up and down the suffering piano. A lady near me sang one of the hymns that took me back over the years; I was a child again, and all the simple truths of the Sunday school, the remembrance of music and worship and faith, swept over me in that chapel. We found the Lord there. So it was that I, a painter, was helped to know Christ through the sister art of music.
A Christian artist of considerable ability said recently that he believed it impossible to create fine Christian painting in this modern age. I do not agree. The low estate of Christian art stems from the fact that very few talented artists undertake to paint Christian subjects and that most of those who work in this field lack the power and dedication to make masterpieces. There is no question that our speed of living, the distractions of our mechanized and science-geared age, do not tend to encourage work in the fine arts. But given the talent, the character to manage and drive that talent, a man of godly integrity and genius could surely respond to the biblical challenge and create his masterpiece even in these times.
The early Christian works, from the great Byzantine mosaics, the frescoes, the astonishing flowering of Italian painting in Duccio, Giotto, Mantegna, Massacio, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and the masters of Flemish and German painting, would seem productions of such towering strength as to discourage men from following them. Let us look, however, with particular admiration at Rembrandt, an artist of gigantic stature despite the lack of papal or baronial sponsor. Here was a man who gave up a career of painting portraits at fat fees and died a pauper, but who was his own master, beholden to no mortal, and a creator of supreme art in three mediums. His biblical drawings, his etchings, his paintings—each of these alone stamps him as a master. To cite only two paintings, his “Supper at Emmaus” in the Louvre, and his “Head of Christ” in the Metropolitan Museum have the sublime light, the character of Christ, his humanity, and his absolute Deity powerfully wrought into living masterpieces.
The painter who has talent and is a Christian will find inspiration and take fire from Rembrandt. He will also say, in the light of the great early masters and in comparison with Rembrandt, “We in our day are pygmies.” But let us not be downhearted. Let the ambitious young Christian painter start the day with a time in Cod’s Word, believing and asking God’s help. Let him spend much time with the masters through the museums, or, if he has no access to the originals, with fine books of reproductions of the masters and with large reprints in color. These will help him toward his goal of painting a work of Christian art.
Virtuosity Without Spirit
Such work as that of Salvador Dali will scarcely benefit the Christian artist. Dali is a realistic draftsman with a cold color sense and a gift for self-advertisement, and is, after Picasso, probably the most publicized artist of our day, greatly praised by a certain kind of art criticism. But to me his technical virtuosity creates a religious painting entirely earthy and totally devoid of the spirit that raises the ordinary into the sublime. He astonishes me, but he neither transports nor deeply moves me.
In contemplating the works of lesser-known contemporary painters, I hesitate to speak of their weaknesses. The sentimental heads and figures of Christ that we find in homes, churches, and Sunday schools, so lacking in strength and depth, make me feel that we do better to know and visualize our Lord only through his Word. But who may say or know what spiritual help these weak productions have been to many people? Shall we criticize the chalk talks, with colored lights imitative of Hollywood illuminating phosphorescent paints, accompanied by a running evangelistic commentary? Souls have been saved through such programs. Yet the level of art there displayed could be raised.
How may the glaring lack of taste in graphic art that so often characterizes the rank and file of Christians be remedied? Let me suggest a couple of answers to the question.
First, Christians should be encouraged to go to art museums to study great pictures on biblical themes. If evangelical churches organize roller-skating parties and picnics, why not sponsor fellowship in the arts? This process of attaining a measure of good taste in the Christian use of art will take time, but God will assuredly be pleased at any use of our leisure devoted to bringing inspiration, dignity, and reverence to the worship of our Saviour Jesus Christ through a better quality of art.
Christ As Seen In Art
A wonderful field of enjoyment is open to the Christian who will seek to gain a fuller appreciation of the art of religious painting. What a wide diversity of ideas great artists have shown in their depiction of our Lord! The Byzantine mosaics and the early Italian painters show him as an archaic, stern person. Their primitive style moves us to a feeling of awe as we look at these rigid presentations of the Saviour with no tenderness or compassion in his nature. However, one must feel in them an impressive majesty, an unapproachable other-worldliness. The sculptured Christs enthroned upon the facades of Gothic cathedrals look down from their ancient niches superb in the magic sense of life given to stone by these unknown craftsmen-sculptors.
Then there are the great painters of Italy—the primitive authority of Cimabue and Duccio, passing into the early Giotto and Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca with the coming of tenderness into Christian art without loss of strength, and moving on through Mantegna, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Veronese, who portray the gamut from the Christ of humility to the regal, lordly Christ of the Venetians; the portrayals of the crucified Lord, the depositions, the pietas of early French painting, northward to the superb Flemish Van Eycks, Rubens, and the Germanic Albrecht Dürer. All these almost countless delineations of the Saviour bear the stamp of nationality. The Italian, French, Flemish, and German painters make him one of them. El Greco, despite his Greek origin and Italian training, identifies Christ with a tortured Spanish school.
Strangely, the Bible does not describe in detail the Lord’s physical appearance. Yes, he is “a man of sorrows” and he weeps; his feelings are disclosed, but not his physical features. It is as though God desires that we worship his Son for his Deity and his Saviourhood alone.
Secondly, and perhaps more important, there is the personal practice of art. Those who have even the slightest desire to try their hand at making pictures should not hesitate to do so.
During my years of teaching and lecturing on art in universities and colleges and before women’s clubs across the country, people of all ages have come to me with questions about what they might do, how they could begin to draw or paint and thus satisfy their creative urge. This very urge is an indication of talent. (Somehow the word “urge” has been strangely neglected in definitions of talent.) There are varying degrees of ability; but whether the talent is great or small, there are endless rewards and enjoyments ahead for those who keep trying. Nothing stimulates appreciation so much as realizing just how artists have created their works.
Everyone has pencil and paper; endless subjects are all around us. It is a good plan to begin with objects in the home, to set up a simple still life—an orange on a round plate for study in circles, curves, and ovals, or a small oblong box or book for practice in long and short straight lines, angles, and square corners. If one hesitates to go it alone, all bookstores and art shops have inexpensive beginner’s manuals to start one on his way.
Religious pictures should not be undertaken unless there is a compelling urge in that direction. God’s world is alive with hills and trees in praise of him, with home life, children, cats and dogs and birds. Despite feelings of inadequacy, the courage to persist brings its reward. We learn by our mistakes. Searching for ways to improve by doing the subject over and over spells progress.
Those who find that they lack the industry and vitality to continue toward professional excellence will not have wasted their time. For the rest of their lives they will see nature in a new light; their sense of color will be better, and their enjoyment of museums and prints and books will be much keener and more understanding.
Whether the artist be a professional or a beginning amateur, he must never forget that it is not nature that is put down on paper or canvas. God has created nature in great perfection; we can only draw or paint in symbols that reveal our ideas and feeling about nature. One cannot put a tree down upon paper, but he can learn to draw lines describing its trunk which, through long practice, will enclose something as solid-looking as the tree itself. There are no lines in nature; we invent them. Later one may add tone and color to his tree, a minor miracle if he has genius.
Some years ago at one of my lectures in a Virginia college a farmer’s wife became excited as she watched me do a demonstration of painting. She had never painted anything except kitchen chairs. But she bought some paint and canvas boards and began to paint familiar people, animals, and the scenes she knew so well. On my second visit to Lynchburg I was delighted to see her pictures, finding her style to be that of a pure primitive. I advised her to avoid teachers and continue to do things she loved; later I was able to interest a New York art dealer in handling and selling her work. Here is an unusual and special talent. Few will be like her, but many may have great enjoyment in drawing and painting the subjects that are of interest to them.
Christians will do well to spend more time in raising their level of art appreciation. Art, whether that of the great masters or the humbler efforts of lesser talents, belongs to those things God has given us to enjoy. And in its truest integrity it exists for the glory of God. We need architecture that fittingly houses places of worship, music that worthily praises God the Father and brings men closer to God the Son, pictures on the walls of our homes that, while not necessarily religious, are examples of good art. We need Christian artists of dedicated talent who will extend their horizons in humility and devotion to the true praise of the Giver of talent, who is best honored by the faithful use of his good gifts.
Words For God On The Soviet Stage
During my concert tour of the Soviet Union in 1962, I had two unusual opportunities to carry God’s Word to godless Russia. The first occurred in Leningrad where I sang the Mephistopheles role in Faust. As the curtain came down and I walked off-stage into the wings, the male and female chorus began to applaud and shout the Russian equivalent of “Bravo, comrade!” I stopped, feeling somewhat embarrassed before this palm-pounding praise, and raised my hand to say in full operatic voice: “Thank you, but praise Almighty God, not me.”
The second such incident came at the climax of the tour in Moscow when I sang the title role of Boris Godunov before a Bolshoi Theatre audience that included Premier Khrushchev. At the end of the opera, Boris exclaims, “Forgive me, forgive me”—and falls dead. But suddenly I decided to do a little more. After saying the regular words, I smiled, raised my eyes, and added, “Oh, my God, forgive me.” As I performed it, Boris Godunov finds the peace of God when he dies; in the performance that evening before thirty-five hundred Russian music-lovers the opera ended on a high religious note. That is why, I feel, for the first time in the history of the Bolshoi there was sudden inspired applause even as Boris fell rather than after the final curtain had rung down.
A decade ago, I found the greatest friend in the world. I found Jesus Christ. And the thing I want to tell everybody is that Jesus Christ is not just a philosophy to live by. He is that same living Person who was resurrected nearly two thousand years ago.—JEROME HINES, from the book Faith Is a Star, written and edited by Roland Gammon. Copyright, ©, 1963 by the Southern Baptist Convention Radio and Television Commission. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton.
Grant Reynard is an American artist whose versatile career includes distinguished achievement as painter, etcher, illustrator, lecturer, and museum head. He holds the L.H.D. degree from Baldwin-Wallace College and is represented by works in the Metropolitan and Fogg Museums (New York), the Library of Congress, the Newark Museum, the Addison Museum, and the New York Public Library. He is president of the Montclair (N. J.) Art Museum and is a National Academician.
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Color of skin usually separates the foreign missionary from those to whom he preaches. The significance of racial differences in mission work is analyzed in the article by Ross Coggins which begins on the opposite page. In the News section is found a report on last month’s meeting of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism.
Dr. Ralph P. Martin brings us up to date on the efforts of scholars with respect to the key subject of the Kingdom of God.
How far should evangelicals go in politics? Our lead editorial (p. 24) examines various facets of legitimate social concerns for Christians.
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The atheist ideology officially promoted in Communist countries is merely a “temporary phase of communism,” according to Professor Joseph L. Hromadka, dean of the Amos Comenius Theological Faculty in Prague.
At a meeting in Cologne, Germany, several weeks ago, Hromadka argued that “what the West often considers as a danger to the Church is in reality rather an opportunity, because in these countries atheists can be confronted with Christianity.”
Frequent target of Western churchmen because of what they call his continuing defense of the Czechoslovak Communist regime, Hromodka was one of several speakers at a three-day conference arranged by the so-called Prague Peace Conference, sponsors of the Communist-backed All-Christian World Peace Congress to be held at Prague in June.
Other speakers included Professor H. Bandt of Greiswald in the Soviet Zone of Germany; Dr. Heinz Kloppenburg, onetime leader of the Evangelical Church in Oldenburg; and Professor Heinrich Vogel, a member of the faculty of East Berlin’s Humbold University.
Bandt said he regretted that churchmen negotiating with the Soviet Zone authorities were often considered Communists by the West. He said that at first the Church regarded the Communist state as merely temporary and did not bother to pursue active contact, “but now we must reckon on having to finish our lives under socialism and the Church’s situation can only be improved through negotiations for which we need the confidence of Western Christians.”
Kloppenburg, one of the vice-presidents of the Prague Peace Conference, described Prague as a “place of dialogue between Christians separated by the Iron Curtain.” “The conference,” he said, “is no East bloc within the World Council of Churches, but a service to the whole of Christianity.”
Meanwhile, one of Hromadka’s assistants, Dr. Milan Opocensky, echoed the Czech theologian’s viewpoint in an address last month at the nineteenth Ecumenical Student Conference in Athens, Ohio:
“We didn’t choose the situation in which we live in these days. We believe that we have been put into this situation and that we are called upon to bring exactly under these circumstances the unique and special message which just God’s people can transmit into the life of individuals and of the whole society.”
Protestant Panorama
Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is postponing publication of children’s materials in its proposed new “Covenant Life Curriculum” until 1965. The delay is intended to “protect the integrity” of the curriculum, a spokesman said.
The number of Lutheran-produced broadcasts aired around the world each week has climbed from 2,000 to 2,700 during the last two years, according to estimates released last month by the Consultation of Lutheran Broadcasters. The estimates show a decline, however, in the number of telecasts per week during the same period—from 600 to 460.
A Baptist church was dedicated last month in the old Canaanite city of Acco, now the modern Israel city of Acre. The church has twelve charter members.
Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission will establish an office in New York “to become more fully involved” in the industry. Dr. Gene W. Carter will direct the new center.
A fifty-year-old Polish congregation in Brooklyn, New York, dedicated its first church building last month. The church borrowed $7,500 from the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, with which it is now affiliated, to purchase the building.
Deaths
DR. PHILIP E. HOWARD, JR., 65, former editor and president of The Sunday School Times; in Vero Beach, Florida.
DR. HUGO G. KLEINER, 66, chairman of the Board for Higher Education of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; in Buffalo, New York.
THE REV. R. LEE COLE, 84, former president of the Irish Methodist Conference and a noted historian; in Dublin.
Miscellany
First Baptist Church of Walterboro, South Carolina, was destroyed by fire last month with total loss estimated at $422,000. Baptist Press reported the building was covered by insurance up to 90 per cent of value.
British and Foreign Bible Society dedicated a new headquarters building in Madrid. The society first started work in Spain about 130 years ago, and resumed operations early in 1963 after being closed down for eight years because of government restrictions.
Hungarian churches have been advised that their 1964 state subsidies will continue at the same level. A 25 per cent cut was to have taken place under an agreement worked out in 1948 with Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholics, and Jews.
Personalia
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Negro Baptist minister who has become the world’s foremost integration leader, was named “Man of the Year” for 1963 by the editors of Time Magazine. He is the first Negro so chosen and the third religious figure (the other two: Mahatma Gandhi for 1932 and Pope John XXIII for 1962).
Dr. John Coleman Bennett elected president of Union Theological Seminary, New York.
The Rev. William F. Fore named executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission.
The Rev. Carroll Simcox will become editor of The Living Church, independent Episcopal weekly.
The Rev. Norman H. Temme named director of public relations for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
The Rev. Richard W. Cooke named acting administrator of the National Sunday School Association.
Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton is leaving his chair of theology at the Catholic University of America to take a pastorate at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. The change is for reasons of health, church officials said, noting that the 57-year-old priest suffered a heart attack some time ago. Since 1944 Fenton has been editor of the conservative American Ecclesiastical Review.
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Addison H. Leitcr
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In the October issue of the Princeton Seminary Bulletin there is an address by Dr. William Hamilton, professor of Christian theology and ethics, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. The address, entitled “The Sense of Loss,” was given at the annual Summer Institute of Theology at Princeton last July. Professor Hamilton has some very remarkable things to say about the loss of the church, the loss of the body (a very new slant for me), the loss of the family, the loss of privacy, and the loss of the future. The spirit of the article is not polemical; the author sort of gets at you in spite of yourself.
In the December 6 issue of Time Magazine, the lead article of the religion section has to do again with the Vatican Council; its title is, “What Went Wrong?” The Vatican Council seems to have come to a kind of grinding halt, and about the only thing that is being said so far is that more of the Romish services will be in the vernacular. There will be other things around the edges, I am sure; but once again the Curia is apparently too strong for the personality of the Pope, assuming that Pope Paul VI is as enthusiastic for ecumenical matters as was the late Pope John XXIII.
Relevant to this slow-down at the Vatican Council are some words from Professor Hamilton on “the loss of the church.” He sees “the increasing alienation of the regular lay Christian from the denominational and ecumenical thinking of the day.” Let me quote at length: “… some of the most impressive and high powered thinking going on in Protestantism today is working on the problems of Faith and Order. The subject matter of these discussions is correct, profound, and utterly unable to touch the ordinary lives of men and women who are in the world today. Thus it is a theology that has lost its way, forgotten its business, busy, deep, and empty. The modern Protestant American may have read somewhere that the great new fact in our time is the ecumenical movement. But he doesn’t believe it, and he shouldn’t” (italics mine—the “he shouldn’t” is most surprising).
To look in another direction, there is a book under the editorship of Robert McAfee Brown and David H. Scott titled The Challenge to Reunion: The Blake Proposal Under Scrutiny. I have read two reviews of this book, one by Walter Wagner and one by Norman V. Hope, and they both sum up objections to reunion in the same words: bustle, bigness, bishops, and bureaucracy. This volume makes clear that there is some disenchantment about the ecumenical movement in general and about the Blake-Pike proposal in particular.
Another book, and a very good one, is Institutionalism and Church Unity, edited by Nils Ehrenstrom and Walter C. Muelder; it is reviewed by Henry P. Van Dusen in the November, 1963, issue of the Union Seminary Quarterly Review. This particular book was preparatory material for the Faith and Order Conference held last July in Montreal. In this study, according to the emphasis of Van Dusen’s review, there was one “notable document” under the title of “The Non-Theological Factors in the Making and Non-Making of Church Union.”
Reference is also made to a comment of Professor C. H. Dodd of Cambridge: a letter “concerning unavowed motives in ecumenical discussion.” To quote Dr. Van Dusen, “One recalls the catastrophic impact of Dr. Dodd’s forthright testimony that many years of participation in Faith and Order discussions had led him to the recommendation that, each time a crucial theological issue was resolved a new theological issue emerged to frustrate progress, and thus to the conclusion that the intractable issues were probably not theological at all but at a more fundamental and deeper [sic] than theological level.” If there are such things as non-theological matters, and if there is anything deeper than theology, we can go along with the idea that settling matters of Faith and Order, if they can be settled, will not necessarily lead to union. Other things seem to prevail. No one who is willing to talk about the matter can deny, for example, that the race issue was highly decisive in plans for uniting Northern and Southern Presbyterians in spite of everything else that was said on Faith and Order.
Getting back to that article in Time Magazine, I was thinking long and hard on the gesture toward church union genuinely made by John XXIII and responded to by Protestants with almost girlish glee. The more I thought of it the less I thought of it, and I went along with Time’s query, “What Went Wrong?”
Once when I was a boy a high school track coach told me how to win a race: “Just get in front and don’t let anybody pass you.” Volleyball and tennis are very simple games. You just knock the ball back one more time than your opponent. I was bowling last night, and all I needed to get a strike every time was to curve into the pocket between one and three. I am impressed by these simplicities, but somehow they don’t always work.
I am not being naïve when I suggest that the union of the churches is simple in the same sort of way. Everyone is proud of his objectivity, tolerance, and rational thinking; and yet, try as I do, every time I think the problem is perfectly simple, somebody turns it into nonsense.
For example, let us take up the simple problem of the position and power of the pope. This may or may not be a “non-theological factor” or an “unavowed motive,” but it will do for a start. We point out immediately that along with 217,000,000 Protestants in the world there are 137,000,000 Eastern Orthodox who do not believe in the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. Now these 350,000,000 people must have something that bothers them about this pope business. According to Rome, the pope’s spiritual titles are “Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, and Sovereign of the State of Vatican City.” So Rome and we divide. Now let’s get together.
We can begin very simply with an exegesis of “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” Now all we have to do is agree that Peter founded the church in Rome and was the first pope and had the right to pass the office on; and, just in passing, all we also have to do is to get used to the idea that Peter, of all the disciples, could have accepted the ring kissing, the kneeling, and all those parades.
This idea of the pope seems very basic to all the Roman Catholics and utter nonsense to 350,000,000 non-Catholics. So let us clear up this problem first, and then go on. It is as simple as that.
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The single-engine Piper, its white wings glistening under the tropical sun, swoops low over the British Guiana jungle. A streamer of gauze floats to earth, weighted by a sprig from a sandpaper tree. Tied to the branch is a note advising villagers that the plane, with an American doctor aboard, will land at a nearby airstrip later that day. The word spreads quickly, and soon there is a line of patients awaiting Missionary Aviation Fellowship’s flying clinic, latest product of the age-old liaison between Christianity and the healing arts.
The young doctor on the British Guiana run, Franklin B. Davis, was one of nearly 500 physicians and medical students who spent the last days of 1963 taking collective stock of their witness at the third International Convention on Missionary Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois.
“It’s not where you are, but what you are that makes you a missionary,” a surgeon told ICMM delegates in Wheaton College’s venerable Pierce Chapel.1Wheaton President V. Raymond Edman was awarded the first honorary membership in the eighteen-year-old CMS for his “valuable counsel and faithful guidance” and “because of the role played by Wheaton College in the advance of Christian medicine.” But reports of medical staff shortages from Hong Kong, Lahore, and dozens of outposts in underdeveloped countries left many a doctor delegate uneasy about his comfortable stateside practice. Understandably, high-income physicians and their wives seldom jump at the chance to trade a fashionable split-level in the suburbs for a shabby but in a remote jungle compound.
In somewhat of a compromise measure, the 3,500-member, evangelically oriented Christian Medical Society, which sponsors the convention, is recruiting “short-term” missionary doctors. The short-termer usually pays his own way, and he may spend as little as two or three weeks abroad. Some, however, take along their families and are away for a year or more. Missionary boards by and large welcome short-termers.
Another avenue of service given considerable attention during the four-day convention was that of the “non-professional missionary.” The term is applied to Christian doctors and other lawyers who find overseas employment with non-religious organizations (e.g., the Peace Corps and other U. S. and foreign government agencies, the United Nations, oil companies). Doctors so employed are missionaries only to the extent that they can witness through their jobs and through religious activities pursued in off-duty time, if circumstances permit.
Although a few missionary boards have medical vacancies ready and waiting, the financial barrier stands in the way of any large-scale recruitment of salaried personnel. Christian medical efforts overseas, like most missionary enterprises, represent sacrifice from relatively few.
Davis’s wife told a convention panel of a low-income Christian family who have been living in a “shack” for years, saving pennies for a down-payment on something better. They decided instead to put the savings toward a new missionary plane and have now assumed full responsibility to pay it off.
In the whole world there are probably no more than 1,000 missionary doctors, according to J. Raymond Knighton, executive director of CMS. Bona fide mission hospitals are estimated between 300 and 400. Most acute medical needs are in Africa, where (not counting the more developed countries of Egypt and South Africa) there is only one doctor for every 20,000 persons. Current U. S. ratio is one to 750.
Protestant missionary doctors differ sharply whether the practice of medicine in needy areas is a spiritual ministry in itself or whether it is merely a legitimate method of winning a hearing for the Gospel. Knighton says that within the last decade opinion has shifted to a marked degree. More doctors, he declares, now consider their professional calling as service to God as well as to men, apart from whatever direct evangelistic confrontation their practice may make possible.
A number of missionary doctors at the convention reported that their medical efforts are sometimes hamstrung because of prevailing religious and cultural practices, particularly in underdeveloped countries. Millions of Muslim women, for instance, suffer needlessly because they regard it a violation of religious scruples to be treated by a male doctor. In Africa, the widespread practice of female circumcision is a major health problem, with adverse effects in subsequent childbirth and in resulting emotional attitudes. Illiteracy itself is an impediment to medical progress. So are the general suspicion of Western medicine and qualms about surgery and blood transfusions. Poor sanitation is perhaps the worst enemy of all.
Preceding the convention was a “Missionary Health Workshop,” the first ever held. It attracted representatives from thirty-eight mission boards, including those from Methodist, Southern Baptist, United Presbyterian, and Lutheran agencies. An evaluation committee proposed (1) continuing study of missionary health problems under auspices of CMS, and (2) “personality and emotional evaluation” of all missionaries and missionary candidates.
World Evangelism
The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches convened in Mexico City, December 8–20. More than two hundred delegates, advisors, staff members, observers (including some Roman Catholics), and press correspondents from all over the world attended the conclave.
This was the first international missionary meeting since the Ghana Assembly in 1957, at which the International Missionary Council voted to become part of the World Council of Churches. The WCC’s CWME succeeds the old IMC.
W. A. Visser t Hooft, general secretary of the WCC, addressed the conference the first day and spoke against syncretism, arguing for the uniqueness of the Christian faith and stating that “tested missions defend nothing else than the right to bring the Gospel to all men,” and that “the Word of God still finds holes through which it can creep.”
The assembly received various reports and adopted a number of proposals:
1. The Theological Education Fund is to be continued for five more years, and four million dollars was voted to help improve the quality of the ministry in the younger churches.
2. The Christian Literature Fund was instituted for a five-year period, and it was agreed to seek three million dollars to support a program designed to increase indigenous writing and publication overseas.
3. The assembly committed itself to cooperation in intercontinental radio broadcasting with the Lutheran radio network, which is already in operation.
4. It endorsed and voted support to the World Student Christian Federation, which seeks to develop an adequate strategy for reaching the academic world with the Gospel.
5. It approved a report on the training of missionaries that endorsed the principle of ecumenically oriented missionaries who are less denominationally minded. Receiving as well as sending churches must decide who will serve and where, and sending churches must become receiving churches. Another committee report on education for mission stressed the need for education in local congregations. It was agreed that the World Council of Christian Education must be involved in this effort.
6. The role of lay missionaries was acknowledged, and suggestions were made for helping laymen to fulfill such a role in world mission.
7. The committee report on “Joint Action for Mission” endorsed church union, saying, “Full unity must always be recognized as our goal.” The need for joint action was stressed despite theological and ecclesiological differences.
8. A section on the witness to men of other faiths was divided over the issue of universalism, but when its report was rendered it warned against religious relativism and syncretism, singling out the temptations to “mix” beliefs and practices, the loss of conviction as to the finality of Jesus Christ, and the “sophistication that likes to feel itself at home in every variety of belief.” The need for dialogue was expressed, and one or two curious statements appeared to the effect that “the effort to approach all men of other faiths under the single category of ‘non-Christian’ and to prescribe a single approach to them all, is an ineffective beginning,” and that the Christian must have “respect for sincerity wherever found.”
9. In the section dealing with witness to men in the secular world, the received report said that “secularization opens up possibilities of new freedom and new enslavement for men.” “Reconciliation of men to God and men must in our day include not only persons but institutions and national and international life.” Christians must concern themselves not only with individuals “but also with the Kingdom of God as the destiny of mankind as a whole.”
10. The section on the witness of the congregation in its neighborhood stated that “the evidence of changed lives is often found in other areas than in a recognized congregation.… God is at work also in secular agencies.… The restoration and reconciliation of human life is being achieved … through secular agencies.…” (There was disagreement about the latter statement.) The section encouraged joint action and responsible risk in witness.
11. The section on the witness of the Church across national and confessional barriers rejoiced in the “achievements of organic unity of churches of varying traditions in what were mission fields.…” It called for men to cross all frontiers and to engage in joint action, which is only “an interim step.” We must be led, they said, “beyond our continuing division into a sacramentally united fellowship, which will make visible that we are one family in Christ. We must strive and pray for the restoration of the wholeness of fellowship that can only [some took exception to the word “only”] be received in the Eucharistic feast instituted by our Lord and that wholeness of witness that must be transmitted to the world. A divided Church is not only a scandal; it can become responsible for the death of men’s souls.”
Theological pluralism was evident everywhere. The presence of the Orthodox groups made for theological concessions in that direction, and only time will tell what form the new ecumenical theology will finally take. The conference represented what might be called the post-Kraemer era, in which his radical discontinuity concept and a denial of true points of contact seemed to be archaic. The idea of “respect for sincerity wherever found” seemed a curious anomaly if one really is to respect the “sincere” non-Christian whose religion permits him to kill infants, practice cult prostitution, and abuse women.
Church union remains the ecumenical goal and ideal, despite the fact that its attainment in the WCC will still leave more missionaries outside the ecumenical orbit than in it, and thousands of non-WCC churches will still leave a divided Christendom.
Perhaps most challenging to Reformation consciences was the approved statement (pleasing to the Orthodox communions and Romanism too) that “this unchanging calling in the changing world is expressed in the Eucharist in which the redemption of the world in Jesus Christ is offered continually for [my italics] and to the world.”
The assembly was an interesting, informative, and enriching experience, marked, oddly enough, by the presence of Dr. Carl McIntire of the International Council of Christian Churches, who staged a competitive meeting in Mexico City to highlight his opposition to the WCC.
HAROLD LINDSELL
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The meeting of the Roman Catholic pope and Eastern Orthodox patriarch.
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The first weekend of 1964 contributed a pair of significant paragraphs to the annals of church history. It marked the first time in more than five centuries that a Roman Catholic pope and an Eastern Orthodox ecumenical patriarch have met face to face. It was also the first pilgrimage to the Holy Land ever made by a Roman pontiff.
Who is the bearded Patriarch from Istanbul whose meeting with Pope Paul VI created such a sensation?
Much is known about the Hamlet-like Roman Catholic pontiff, his childhood in a well-to-do Italian family, his rise to prestige in the Curia, and the “banishment” to Milan which for the liberally-minded prelate curiously proved to be the final stepping stone to the papacy. But what about His All-Holiness Athenagoras I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, to give his full official title?
The 77-year-old Patriarch, who spent 17 years in the United States, has shown a consistent interest in efforts to secure a rapprochement between Eastern Orthodox and the Vatican. His approach has been careful and considered, however, and sometimes very slow. He knows that he represents the estimated 200,000,000 Orthodox believers around the world only in a limited way, certainly not in the much broader sense that a pope represents Roman Catholics. The ecumenical patriarch is often referred to as “the first among equals,” the equals being the other Orthodox patriarchs.
The first outstanding sign of the Patriarch’s interest in rapprochement with the Vatican was in 1952, when he made a personal call on the late Archbishop Andrew Cassulo, then apostolic delegate in Turkey. Such a visit was unprecedented in the history of the patriarchate. The same year, he was represented by a three-man delegation in Istanbul marking the 13th anniversary of the coronation of Pope Pius XII.
Patriarch Athenagoras was born in 1886 at Epirus, then under Turkish rule, but since 1913 a part of northwestern Greece. His lay name was Aristocles Spirou. His father was a well-known physician.
The man who was to become ecumenical patriarch studied at the Theological School in Istanbul, and while still a student was appointed secretary to an archbishop. His duties took him to various parts of the Balkans where he came into contact with French, English, and American nationals during World War I. Later he was transferred to Greece, where he was secretary to the Archbishop of Athens for four years. On becoming a priest, he abandoned his original name of Aristocles and took Athenagoras, which means, literally, “a man speaking in Athens.”
After a seven-year stay in the Greek capital, Athenagoras was made Metropolitan of the Greek island of Corfu, and in 1931 was appointed to a post in New York. In the course of a busy life devoted to expanding the strength and resources of the archdiocese, he made many friends among Americans of all walks of life, two of them being former President Truman and Archbishop (now Cardinal) Richard Cushing of Boston.
His office in New York was the one now occupied by Archbishop Iakovos, that of the head of the Greek Archdiocese of North and South America. He served in the post for 17 years until he was made the 268th to occupy the ecumenical throne.
Archbishop Iakovos, interestingly enough, accompanied the patriarch to the Holy Land for his meeting with the Pope. It was in March, 1959, that Archbishop Iakovos had an audience with Pope John XXIII. To that audience he brought a letter from the Ecumenical Patriarch which, in effect, was the first effort toward establishing a Roman Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.
In his present role, Patriarch Athenagoras has given practical evidences of his interest in the ecumenical movement. Anxious to establish contacts with ecclesiastical leaders, he made a series of visits in 1960 to the Holy Land, and to the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Ecumenical Patriarchate had become affiliated with the World Council of Churches. In September, 1961, Patriarch Athenagoras convened the Pan-Orthodox Conference at Rhodes, Greece, which was attended not only by prelates from all the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Churches, but by Protestant and Catholic observers. At the conference, plans were formulated that may eventually lead to a full-scale Pan-Orthodox Council.
Last June, Patriarch Athenagoras attended celebrations marking the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the famous monastic colony on Mt. Athos in northern Greece. From there he went on a tour throughout Greece, during which he had a meeting with the local Catholic bishop.
In his modest patriarchal offices in the Fener section of Istanbul, Athenagoras I daily receives a constant stream of visitors, many of them from the United States.
In supporting a quest for Christian unity, Patriarch Athenagoras has insisted that he is not speaking of theological unity but rather of a unity that would have two aims:
“In its negative sense,” he explained, “it would disarm hatred, distrust, and bad propaganda between church groups. In the positive sense, unity would promote contacts on the common principles of Christianity and how they should be propagated.”
January 4
At 5:14 a. m. the lights went on in the papal chambers overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. As dawn broke, Pope Paul VI emerged from the Consistorial Hall where he had bid farewell to cardinals and he climbed into a limousine for the 16-mile ride to Fiumicino Airport. Crowds cheered him along the way, and a group of dignitaries including Italian President Antonio Segni were on hand at the airport to give him a sendoff. It was almost nine o’clock before his specially-outfitted Alitalia jetliner could get off the ground.
The flight to Amman, Jordan, took three hours and twenty minutes. He was greeted there by King Hussein, the monarch of Jordan who is a Muslim, and a crowd estimated as high as 20,000. A 21-gun salute boomed across the field and a group of girls sent 15 white pigeons aloft. As the 66-year-old Pontiff started out in a motorcade to Jerusalem, Hussein, an aviation expert, got into a helicopter and flew cover. Earlier, the king had gone to the control tower and personally talked down the Pope’s pilot through a low ceiling and gusty winds.
The motorcade stopped at the Jordan River and the Pope walked to the bank near the point traditionally held as the place of Christ’s baptism. While there, the Pope dipped his hand in the muddy water.
A papal address had been scheduled at the Damascus Gate entrance into Old Jerusalem, the part of the Holy City in possession of Jordan. But crowds were so thick by this time that the Pope was unable to deliver his speech. He got out of his car, nevertheless, and made his way on foot along a traditional route of Christ’s journey to the Cross. He was jostled repeatedly on the Via Dolorosa (Street of Sorrow) and had to pass up some of the Stations of the Cross without prayer. A number of papal aides expressed concern for his safety.
(The following evening a papal aide reportedly disclosed that a 14-year-old girl had been killed in the melee.)
Another potential hazard awaited the Pope at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as he was saying mass. A fire broke out in two cables suspended on a scaffold. All the electric lights in the sanctuary went out, and the only illumination was from altar candles. A man climbed the scaffolding and a soldier handed up his red and white Bedouin head dress to smother the blaze. Then the cables were parted with a stick and the fire was extinguished. The mass was not disrupted.
The Pope ended the day with a prayerful evening visit to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was flood-lit for the occasion. The day’s events had reinforced Rome’s deepest traditions (e. g., Catholic visitors are offered 100 days off Purgatory if they say the “Our Father” in the garden). But perhaps the most offensive incident for Protestants was the waving and strewing of palm branches by the crowd—presumably a gesture reminiscent of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. The Pope had come “to encounter the Lord,” but he also assumed the role of Christ’s vice-regent. A radio commentator in Israel got carried away in alarming proportions, saying that the Pope “today occupies the place that Jesus occupied when he was on earth.”
January 5
Pope Paul traveled north from Jerusalem and crossed the border into Israel, where he was greeted by President Zalman Shazar. The two exchanged kind words, but Paul avoided specific mention of the state of Israel, which is not recognized by the Vatican.
The Pontiff then traveled to Nazareth and celebrated another mass. He ended an address with a series of expressions, “Blessed are we, if …” Although he mentioned service to the poor, he failed to respond to a request from a Franciscan priest that he mingle among the poor of the area. The priest, Pere Gauthier, is in charge of a mission to the poor and is outspoken in his view that Roman Catholic funds used to erect the Church of the Annunciation should have been diverted to hungry communicants.
The Pope then drove to the Sea of Galilee and again wet his hands along the shore. Subsequent stops were at Mount Tabor, Mount Zion, Cana of Galilee, and Capernaum. NBC correspondent Irving R. Levine noted a new interest in the Scriptures as a result of the Pope’s visit. “Obviously the best handbook for this tour is the Bible,” he said.
A Message From The President
U. S. Peace Corps Director R. Sargent Shriver met Pope Paul VI at Nazareth and delivered a letter from President Johnson. It was one of a series of stops by the late President Kennedy’s brother-in-law in which he is delivering messages to heads of state.
The letter to the Pope included a handwritten postscript in which Johnson expressed a desire to meet with the Pontiff. Johnson also was reported to have asked prayer for his own work and that of the United States government in behalf of peace.
Shriver said at a news conference that the Pope responded warmly to the suggestion of a meeting. If there was any talk about possible time and place, this was not immediately disclosed.
En route back to Jerusalem, Paul detoured to Hadera along the Mediterranean Sea. He returned to the Jordanian sector of the Holy City via the famous Mandelbaum Gate. In his last few minutes on Israeli soil he delivered a brief speech defending the late Pope Pius XII against “unjust accusations” that he did not do all in his power to prevent the massacre of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It was an obvious reference to the controversial play by the German Rolf Hochhuth.
Meanwhile, Patriarch Athenagoras had arrived in Jerusalem, Jordan for the historic meeting there with the Pope. The dramatic confrontation took place in a simply-furnished ground floor room in the residence of the Roman Apostolic Delegation, where the Pope was spending the night. The two met in a sentimental embrace which the Pope called a symbolic “kiss of peace.” It was the first face-to-face encounter of a Roman pope and an Orthodox ecumenical patriarch since 1439, when Pope Eugene IV and Patriarch Joseph II met at the Council of Florence. The initial meeting between Pope Paul and Patriarch Athenagoras lasted 29 minutes.
January 6
The Pope rose before dawn on his last day in the Holy Land. Last major stop on his pilgrimage was at Bethlehem, where he once again asked for peace and unity among Christians. Jordan Radio said he sent pleas for peace to 224 world leaders.
During the morning he held a second meeting with Patriarch Athenagoras, this time at the villa of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Like the initial encounter, it last about half an hour.
Then it was back to the airport at Amman for the jet flight to Rome. In a departing admonition, the Pope quoted the Apostle Paul from Acts 20:32, the King James Version of which is:
“I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”
Sidelights
First sign that the papal-patriarchal confrontation would set off a new chain of ecumenical activity came from Metropolitan Athenagoras of Thyateira. Late in December, as representative of Patriarch Athenagoras, the metropolitan had an audience with Pope Paul VI in which he delivered a formal address calling for a “pan-Christian conference.” Its purpose, he said, would be “to discuss in love and conviction how to combat sin, how to protect the Church and the peace and freedom of the world threatened by a common enemy, atheism and tyranny.” …
During a stop at the Rhodes airport en route to Jerusalem, Patriarch Athenagoras said, “The idea of a meeting originally came from the Pope.” This word surprised many observers, for the Patriarch was the first to make public any specific proposal for a meeting. In view of the Patriarch’s revelation, it seems legitimate to assume that the Pope already had the meeting in mind when he announced plans for his pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the close of the second session of the Vatican Council. Immediately thereafter Patriarch Athenagoras issued his appeal for a Christian summit.…
The Patriarch also made these comments while in Greece en route to Jerusalem: “The ice is broken. Soon a new era will begin in the history of Christendom. New shapes and forms will emanate, as well as new methods of Christian church contributions to world peace.” “I am engaged in a great endeavor which should not be judged from only one result.” …
Liberty magazine of the Seventh-day Adventists recently attributed to Patriarch Athenagoras the following statement: “Humanity has had two periods of youthful vigor. One at creation, one at the advent of Christ. Soon will begin the third for both humanity and Christendom through the union of Christians.” …
Vatican sources said the Pope would call a consistory to tell cardinals about his pilgrimage and to impart to them his “divine inspiration” from praying at sacred shrines.
Orthodox Jews asked the Ministry of Education in Israel how to explain all the tumult to children, who ordinarily hear virtually nothing about Christianity.… A crash program of improvement at sacred sites took place in the weeks prior to the Pope’s arrival.…
The Protestant Reformation flatly denied the importance of pilgrimages and sacred sites and discouraged visits to holy places, for which Rome claimed thaumaturgical powers on the ground that the incarnate God sanctified certain places, to which something of divinity became attached, so that a partial absolution of sins was assured by the Roman Church to pilgrims to sacred sites. Protestants held that the glory of God is equally present in all places. In recent years, due to archaeological and historical interest, and a tourist interest made possible by modern transportation, Protestant attitudes have changed somewhat. But strictly speaking they do not make pilgrimages and while they show historical reverence at the sites they do not regard them as sacred in the Roman Catholic sense.…
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem was reportedly disturbed because Patriarch Athenagoras had not consulted him about a meeting with the Pope in the Holy Land.… The proposal is believed to have been made because Patriarch Athenagoras sensed an opportunity for meeting the Pope on “neutral” ground. It is highly improbable that the Pope would ever have traveled to Istanbul or the Patriarch to Rome for such a meeting.… The understanding in Orthodox ranks that the ecumenical patriarch consults with other patriarchs on major decisions is believed responsible for the fact that the prelate from Istanbul has not had a representative at the Vatican Council. Consent for such representation apparently was lacking from some Orthodox bodies.…
Some observers voiced the hope that the Pope’s pilgrimage might bring a measure of reconciliation among Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land.…
The Pope crossed the border from Jordan to Israel near Megiddo, one of King Solomon’s fortified cities and site of many ancient battles.… Megiddo is in the valley of Armageddon, where the Book of Revelation locates the last great battle of the world.…
Chief object of the Council of Florence (1438–45) was reunion with the Greek Church. Commissions consisting of Latins and Greeks in equal numbers centered negotiations on the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened bread in Communion, the doctrine of purgatory, and the primacy of the pope. Latin views ultimately prevailed, and the Greeks even accepted papal supremacy, though in vaguer terms than originally proposed. A complicating factor was that the Greeks sought support from the West against the Turks, who were advancing on Constantinople. A decree of union was signed on July 5, 1439, but Orthodox synods refused to ratify it.…
As press correspondents poured into the Holy Land from all over the world, the available accommodations became more austere. But there were no reports of anyone sleeping in a stable.
Cautious Comments
Protestant leaders queried by Christianity Today on events in the Holy Land were generally cautious.
Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman, regular speaker on the International Lutheran Hour, declared: “Unfortunately the deep doctrinal divisions of Christianity will not be solved or overcome by the resolution of personal differences or by demonstrations of personal friendship between leaders of the church. We pray that the time will come when genuine differences in doctrine can be discussed by Christians fully and frankly with each other in an atmosphere of genuine Christian love and warmth.”
Dr. Paul S. Rees, vice-president of World Vision, said: “Unquestionably, we are witnessing the opening of new windows of outlook on the part of the Roman and the Eastern branches of Christianity. Those of us who are in neither tradition may well entertain serious doubts as to how fruitful these conversations may be, but the fact that leaders of these groups, notably Roman Catholic leaders, are taking a fresh look at Holy Scripture should prevent our being completely negative or pessimistic.”
Dr. Robert A. Cook, president of the National Association of Evangelicals: “One is not surprised.… It fits into the pattern of ecumenical outreach within the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church.” Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., who earlier made a we-would-come-if-invited statement, expressed no surprise that Protestants had not been invited, indicating that lengthy preparations would have to precede such a meeting. As to talks between Pope and the Patriarch, Blake commented simply, “I think that meetings of Christians are good.”
Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs of the NAB, said that “apart from enhancing the new public image of the Vatican” the main purpose of the conference was probably “the promoting of friendlier relations and the procuring of more cooperation between the Orthodox church and the Vatican.”
In London, Dr. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, had predicted that during the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land “Christians everywhere will pray for unity in truth.” In a Yuletide message, Ramsey said the Anglican church “desires the friendship” with the Catholic church that “lies in the brotherhood of one baptism.” “We believe that an important practical step will be to discuss together those matters concerning baptism and mixed marriages where there is injury and trouble.”
For some evangelical leaders the remarkable phenomenon of a Muslim state and a Hebrew state, which both evade the claim of Jesus Christ, paying tumultuous homage to the Pope, called to mind John 5:43: “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”
Violence In Cyprus
Two Greek Orthodox monks and a boy novice were killed and three other monks were wounded on New Year’s Day at the Galaktrofousa monastery south of Nicosia in an outburst of fighting between Greek and Turkish Cypriot factions.
A raid on the monastery by shotgunarmed Turkish Cypriots broke a tenuous calm that had followed a cease-fire and temporary end to violence in Cyprus.
Worldwide expressions of concern over the troubled Cyprus situation—an eruption of long distrust between Greek and Turkish communities stimulated by Turkish Cypriot fears that proposed constitutional amendments would jeopardize their rights—included issuance of a communique by the Council of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.
Turkish radio said the council met under the chairmanship of Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, supreme leader of Eastern Orthodoxy. The communique lamented the “deplorable events which took place in Cyprus and which caused so much innocent bloodshed and death.”
The communique expressed “indignation … profound sorrow and hope that peace and tranquility will be restored as soon as possible.”
Serving both as spiritual and political leader of Cyprus is Greek Orthodox Archbishop Makarious III, ethnarch and president of the island republic.
The outbreak of violence followed the archbishop’s proposal to amend the constitution to remove what he considered obstacles to the functioning of the government.
The proposals were seen by the Turkish community, which numbers some 120,000 compared to about 425,000 Greek Cypriots, as a threat to their influence.
Archbishop Makarious became the first president of Cyprus when the island achieved independence in 1960. Before that, he led the struggle for sovereignty, bitterly opposing British rule.
Born Michael Christedoulos Mouskos, the son of a peasant in the Cypriot village of Ano Panayia, the 50-year-old archbishop became a novice monk at the age of thirteen and later studied law and theology at Athens University.
He studied theology for two years at Boston University under a World Council of Churches’ fellowship and then was elected Metropolitan of Kition in Cyprus. In 1950 he was elected archbishop and ethnarch of Cyprus.
Scripture With A Schedule
Two days before his inauguration last month, President Chung-Hee Park of the Republic of Korea attended a special Sunday morning Christian service arranged by Christian members of his cabinet. The event stirred up a flurry of rumors that he might become a Christian.
At the time he assumed power two years ago after a coup d’etat, Park had stated, “My father and mother were Buddhist, but I am nothing.” There is little real evidence to indicate that he has changed his mind.
However, one of his close co-workers is the Minister of Defense, Sung-Eun Kim, a devout Presbyterian layman, who persuaded Park to ask for the special preinauguration service at an ROK army chapel. It was attended by high army, navy, and air force officers, government officials, and Christian leaders from virtually all denominations.
An ROK army chaplain preached forcefully to the President-elect on “The Invisible Foundation,” and an army officer, in the name of Korea’s more than one million Christians, presented him with a Bible, urging the newly elected president to read it “ten minutes every morning upon rising, and ten minutes every evening as you go to bed.”
SAMUEL H. MOFFETT
Civil Marriages In Maryland
With the new year Maryland became the last of the fifty states to authorize civil marriages by circuit court clerks.
Legislation passed last year by the state legislature replaced a Colonial law which held that only clergymen could perform marriages.
Supporters of the measure, including Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish leaders, felt it would end the hypocrisy involved when non-believers were forced to go through a wedding ceremony performed by a clergyman.
The new law allows divorced persons unable to remarry in a religious ceremony to be united by a designated civil servant for a $10 fee.
Gunplay
Four persons died last month in an attempted robbery of the rectory of a small Roman Catholic church in Ottawa.
Two youths—brothers—were surprised in the rectory by a housekeeper. Her screams brought men running from the adjoining church, where mass was being celebrated. The youths opened fire and soon the rectory was surrounded by police armed with rifles, riot guns, and tear gas.
Detectives entering the house found the bodies of another housekeeper, a woman who resided in the rectory, a man who had been attending the mass, and one of the gunmen. Police said the youth, twenty-one, shot himself in the head after being trapped in the rectory. His seventeen-year-old brother was captured and jailed.
A seventeen-year-old girl from Frederick, Maryland, was fatally wounded when her uncle accidentally shot her with a muzzle-loaded musket as they rehearsed a church play. The play scheduled to be presented by the Baptist Bible Church concerned hardships endured by a pioneer family traveling west at Christmas. A state trooper said a paper cap apparently ignited an old powder charge that had been left in the weapon.
Olympic Opportunities
Missionary organizations in Japan hope to set a record of their own at this year’s Tokyo Olympics: plans now call for the distribution of over 20 million tracts and Bible portions. American evangelist Kenny Joseph of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), in a report prepared for the Japan Times, said the planners are “taking their cue from St. Paul, the converted Christ-hater turned missionary who often used athletic terms to make his point.”
The Olympic Christian Testimony Committee, which is coordinating activities, will seek to capitalize on an unprecedented upsurge in the use of English in Japan.
In a year-end news roundup, Joseph made these points:
—New “religions” or sects are making a big impact on postwar religious life. One militant sect, called Soka Gakkai, claims three million members and has placed fifteen men in the Japanese Diet. The report states that the sect aims “to become a third world force and ‘capture’ Japan in ten years.”
—Over 100 million gospel tracts have been distributed in Japan since World War II. The Japan Bible Society sold over 31 million Bibles, Bible portions, and tracts during this period and estimates that one out of five Japanese have read parts of the Bible. The Pocket Testament League has distributed 13 million Gospels of John since the war, and the Gideons have placed a million New Testaments in hotels, schools, and hospitals.
—Plans have been announced for a “new evangelical revision of the entire Bible patterned after the American Standard Version.”
—The Lutheran Hour enrolled the 400,000th member in its Japanese correspondence course, and the Lutherans hope this year to produce ten telecasts for Japan.
- Catholicism
- International
- Orthodox Church (Eastern/Oriental)