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The Church In the World
By E. G. Homrighausen

"THE BLACK MANIFESTO": WHAT DOES IT SAY TO CHURCH AND SYNAGOGUE?

The Black Manifesto and its dramatic thrust into the white world of church and synagogue is perhaps the most startling and revealing event that has happened to them in our time. While the churches and the synagogues have complimented themselves on their numerous and varied benevolences towards the black man, they have now been rudely shocked into an awareness of the radical dimensions of the black man's plight and pain which require a more realistic diagnosis and a more profound solution.

The Black Manifesto issued from the National Black Economic Development Conference (NBEDC) which was convened in Detroit. The NBEDC was sponsored by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which is a creation of ten Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish national agencies aimed to coordinate financial support and strategy policies for community organization, community development, and indigenous economic development efforts. Seven hundred responded to the Conference invitation. James Forman, an official of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), read his Manifesto to the Conference and called for an immediate vote. The vote was 187 in favor and 63 opposed. Since then, in spite of some dissention in the ranks, the NBEDC has continued to operate with James Forman as its spokesman.

Mr. Forman has presented his Manifesto to a number of individual churches, denominational agencies and assemblies, institutions, church headquarters, and church councils. The message has been disseminated throughout the world.

The Manifesto contains a hard-hitting, angry, blunt introduction, specific demands for reparations amounting to one-half billion dollars from churches and synagogues, and twelve ringing calls to action by which these demands are to be implemented.

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The responses of the churches, synagogues, and churchmen have ranged from hostile condemnation to silent remorse, and from stunned offense to an admission of the justice of the demands. The first confrontation took place at Riverside Church in New York City during a Sunday morning service of worship at which communion was to be celebrated. Mr. Forman entered the service, read six specific demands on the Riverside Church, against the wishes of the preaching minister. Because of its location in a black community, its Rockefeller association (capitalistic) and endowment, its proximity to the center of Protestant power (the headquarters of the National Council of Churches), and its symbolic character, Riverside Church was the object of Mr. Forman's confrontation. He closed with these words:

Our patience is thin.
Time is running out.
We have been slaves too long.
The Church is racist.
The Church has profited from our labor.
We are men and women, proud black men and women.
Our demands shall be met.
Reparation or no Church!
Victory or Death.

To date, very little money has been forthcoming from churches or synagogues. Mr. Forman has received considerable support from black churchmen and some whites, and much publicity and attention at home and abroad.

The Riverside Church announced through its preaching minister, Dr. Ernest T. Campbell, that while it would not suffer its services to be interrupted and would resort to a court order to prevent its recurrence, it understands the anger and the hurt of black people who feel rightly or wrongly that they have to resort to such tactics to call attention to their grievances. It acknowledged that reparations or restitution are rightfully implied in true repentance towards the wronged brother. Dr. Campbell also announced that the church would give a fixed percentage of its annual budget to aid all poor people, but it would not give the money to Mr. Forman's organization. He urged other churches, synagogues, foundations, business organizations, and government agencies to do likewise. He rejected the Manifesto's call to a total revolution, and warned that rigid intransigency in black extremism or white establishment only makes the situation hopeless. He noted that "the new tactics are shocking and abrasive; they are designed to get attention and arouse people from lethargy...Let us react to the need and not conufse the issue by over-reacting to the tactics."

The Manifesto received almost unanimous rejection from Jewish spokesmen. The General Assembly of The United Presbyterian Church voted to study a campaign to raise $50 million for the poor, to grant $100,000 to IFCO, and to donate some land in New Mexico to Mexican -Americans. The New York diocese of the Catholic Church rejected the concept of reparations and denounced its political way of life." Generally, there were adverse reactions against the preamble, but sympathy and understanding were expressed by many who were "reached" by the complaint inherent in the Manifesto. Moderator George Sweazey of The United Presbyterian Church termed Mr. Forman"the most disturbing critic of the churches from the extreme militant point of view." But he concluded, "We needed to hear him, to listen thoughtfully to him, to try to understand what he represents."

The Manifesto may be criticized and even rejected because of its abrasive rhetoric, its inflammatory accusations, its dangerous impatience, its blunt demands, its easy financial solution to the problem, its call to violence in advocating total social change, its sacrilegious disturbance of the church's worship.

What what does it say? And why have the church and synagogue been singled out for confrontation? Because the represent and control considerable financial and political power; they talk much about love and justice but practice a double standard of ethics; they tend to substitute a rational discussion fro an active involvement; and because they want renewal but refuse its demand for costly discipleship.

Every Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jew ought to read the introduction and the substance of the Manifesto honestly and listen to what the Spirit is saying through it to the church and synagogue about the pained anger and the inescapable reconciliation involved in the situation.

"CAN THE WORLD BE SAVED?"

A recent issue of The New York Times Magazine carried an article by LaMont C. Cole entitled, "Can the World be Saved?" This reader was surprised that the Times would publish an article on such an evangelical quesiton! However, the article turned out to be a provocative disucssion on the possibility of "saving" the natural environment of this planet as a habitation for man's survival.

The disucssion was alarming in many respects. The thin band of atmosphere containing nitrogen and oxygen which encircles the earth is being slowly poisoned by technological pollution. Industrial man in upsetting the ecological processes that keep natural elements in balance. Excessive combusion is producing carbon dioxide that could eventually decrease drastically the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, raise the sea level 300 feet, and bring on a new ice age.

Poisonous smoke and smog are even affecting Cleopatra's Needle in London, and treasured monuments in Venice, Florence, and other centers of culture.

A jet plane, for instance, releases over 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide every ten minutes it flies. With hundreds of jets in the air every day, how long will it take for the rate of combusion to exceed the rate of photosynthesis, and we start running out of oxygen? What about the destruction of millions of acres of green plants, the overdevelopment of land, and the use of pesticides?

The "salvation" of the world for man's habitation was dramatically expressed recently when large numbers of fish in the Rhine were killed by an unidentified pollutant. And now DDT, whose discoverer, Paul Müller, was awarded a Nobel Prize, and which did so much to check malaria, typhoid, and encephalitis, is being outlawed by several states (Arizona and Michigan) and countries (Denmark and the Netherlands) because of its harmful effects upon food, the atmosphere, and even mother's milk. Worst of all is the fact that DDT is irreversible in its effects. It interferes with the reproducitive processes of certain marine and bird life, and its full consequences are not yet known.

Related to the adverse effects of DDT is the destructive drive to increase the economic product. This results in cutting down great forests for lumber, inundating beautiful valleys for dam construc-

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tion, making rivers and lakes into cesspools of industrial waste, and filling the air with dangerous pollutants. Once nature was viewed as a wilderness to be feared and fought; now man's very success in conquering nature is forcing him to take a second look at nature without which he cannot enjoy the complete life-or survive!

Mr. Cole pleads for an understanding between the natural scientists and the social scientists. The dichotomy between the thinkers and the doers should be overcome. Those who want to get on with the work of industrialization and those who insist upon thinking through the consequences of such action should engage in dialogue.

This problem has a theological aspect which needs to be considered and articulated. Biblical theology regards the earth as God's creation; in it he delights; in it his glory is revealed. Man and nature belong together. The earth and its fruits are gifts of God not to be squandered, plundered, or desecrated. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of the redemption of nature. While medieval groups had a high regard for nature, e.g., St. Francis and the monasteries, modern Christians have tended to follow a theology of historical human salvation with little reference to nature. The new situation demands a new theology of nature and a new ethic of concern for the use of the earth's resources for mankind. And it will demand a new hard look at the ethics of an industrial drive that is is more concerned about raising the national economic product than about the stewardship of the good earth which belongs to God and is to be used reverently and responsibly for the health and welfare of all people.

This issue calls for united thought and action involving competent laymen who are knowledgeable about these technical matters and who are theologically informed. The shape of the new theology that is emerging will have to consider the place of the natural world, including air and space, river and sea, as well as culture, in its concept of "salvation."

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP STATISITCS AND RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT

Americans have always shown a great deal of interest in church membership statistics. While there has been a slight decline in membership in recent years, there is still much comfort taken from these measurements of the religious situation. The Gallup Institute of

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Public Opinion has come up with several astonishing findings: 1) that the proportion of adults who attend church in a typical week is greater here than in ten other countries of the Western world where a similar poll was taken; and 2) that in 1968, 43 per cent of all adults, fifty million, in the United States attend church (Catholic or Protestant) every week.

This is a slight drop from the 48 per cent in 1955, but it still indicates a rather persistent voluntary loyalty on the part of millions of adults towards the church. Percentages of church attendance in other countries range from 42 per cent in the Netherlands to 14 per cent in Norway and 5 per cent in Finland. The decline has been more pronounced among Roman Catholics than among Protestants, and among young adults in their twenties.

To be sure, Finnish statistics have to be understood in the light of the fact that Lutheran faith and piety are part of national culture; therefore, attendance at services of worship is not to be evaluated as it should be in the United States where churches are voluntaristic and unsupported by the total community.

It may be helpful to compare these statistics with a study recently made by Rodney Stark and Charles Y. Glock, entitled American Piety: The Nature of Religious Commitment (California). Theirs is a serious attempt to replace speculation and statistics by a studied appraisal of actual religious commitment among Protestant and Catholics. In their survey, they used beliefs, practices or acts of devotion, experiences, knowledge, and consequences as criteria for judging religious commitment. Their study contains many interesting findings. Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans, and the sectarian Christians showed least erosion of faith in orthodox beliefs. Protestant Episcopalians are least prone to wander from one denomination to another, whereas Congregationalists have usually come from other denominations.

The researchers also probed into convictions of Christians on such subjects as exclusive salvation, the importance of ethical practice as compared with orthodox beliefs, the necessity of engaging in pious acts, the place of the Bible in personal faith, and other matters. They found no pat religious consensus among Catholics or Protestants.

What was their overall assessment? They are cautious about conclusions, but they do affirm that "the evidence leads to two conclusions: the religious beliefs that have been the bedrocks of Christian faith for nearly two millennia are on the way out; this may be the

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dawn of a post-Christian era." But the authors also state that in spite of the fact that some leading theologians may affirm that God is dead, the vast majority of church members have remained unshaken in their traditional faith.

The authors discovered that clear convictions are the source of strong and effective religious institutions and actions. They raise one rather significant question about the religious situation in the United States: where can the churches find a substitute for orthodoxy to dynamize their life and work? To substitute an ethical for an orthodox Christianity does not produce the dynamic. The current popular "ecumenicity" does not provide it. The "New Theology" is too formless. Liberal churches are "way stations" that lack organizational soundness. The major question raised by these sociologists is: how can the so-called traditional churches, based historically upon orthodox doctrine and practice, continue if that faith is being eroded?

Even though this survey does not interpret the "interpretations" of "orthodox" doctrines held by those interviewed, and even though the church in history has survived by the faith of its people who were dynamized by a simple, rather unsophisticated "orthodoxy," this study does pose problems which strike at the heart of the Christian community in our time. What is the relation of church statistics and attendance to religious commitment? Can religious commitment be equated with opinions about older orthodox doctrines and traditional pious practices? Perhaps we need some serious study on the nature of church membership and attendance and on the nature of Christian commitment.

GENETICS: MAN'S NEW FRONTIER

Man is passing through a multiple revolution: social, ethical, political, technological, theological. The dramatic landing of two men on the moon is an epochal aspect of a long series of achievements by which man has conquered his environment, created new situations in which to live, and posed new problems for his nature and destiny. He has increasingly become a more fascinating, complex, and problematical subject. There is no stopping his ingrained persistence to pioneer in all directions even though it brings on issues that tax his capacity to handle. Father jean Danielou is quite apropos in his observation, "Nothing is more congenious to the biblical

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vocation of man than the work by which man transforms the material world. In this sense we can say that nothing is more biblical than technology."

However, in man's pioneering he has now probed into an area which goes beyond changing the material world and his environment. The most disturbing yet fascinating exploration is being done in biological and medical research, through which the structure, synthesis, and operation of the DNA and RNA molecules may be affected. This science of genetics may alter man's genetic structure and bring about changes in his nature which will affect posterity. A recent author has written a book entitled, The Second Genesis (Prentice-Hall), the implication of which is that man is on the verge of entering a new stage of evolutionary development. Biologists and chemists, especially the molecular biologists, have penetrated the secrets of human life. The story of these explorations is interesting and alarming. Many of these scientists affirm they are on the threshold of a breakthrough in the "creation" of life.

The practical application of such knowledge has been widely publicized: incurables can be kept alive in a sentient form and "unfrozen" when their terminal disease has been conquered; animal and human transplants, and even artificial organs, can be banked and used when needed; and substitute organs can be grown in laboratories from cell tissues for later transplantation. Sperm banks could eliminate the need for reproductive sex; artificial wombs could grow babies to order; manipulation could eliminate hemophilic and diabetic elements from the genetic stream; drugs could be used to alter perception and emotional states; and deliberate mutations could be introduced to improve the human species. It may even be possible to raise the I.Q. of humanity, speed up the learning process, breed out criminal tendencies, and create a species of "cyborgs" who would be like humans, capable of doing human chores, but devoid of distinctive human qualities!

What response can be made to these challenges? The "first" creation is certainly not static; indeed, man is to have dominion over the world of nature, and his own nature as well. He is to share in God's continuing creative processes. Jesus Christ healed the sick and conquered the powers that dehumanize man. Man is to use his freedom as a grateful son of God in applying knowledge for his health and welfare. What is wrong with an attempt to improve the

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human species and eliminate from its life-stream elements that would dwarf and cripple life?

The deeper questions remain. What are the limitations in the manipulation of life? What is the aim, or telos, of man's dominion over human life? When does knowledge about man become dangerous in its use? Is the prolongation of human life the ultimate aim of medicine? What is the relation of personality to the body? Who will determine when and what manipulations are to be performed? And is it permissible to make experiments on human beings when the full results of such manipulation are not known? Can the soul be synthesized? Is parenthood really possible if babies are grown in laboratories? And above all, what is the meaning of life in an age of molecular manipulation?

It is evident that we are confronted with a new situation which involves the medical profession, the biologists, and the theologians. A start has been made by the Ecumenical Institute which convened a group of biologists, pharmacologists, professors of medicine, and theologians last year, the results of which are published in the World Council of Churches STUDIES, NO. 6. (Pope Paul VI's encylical "Humanae Vitae" also deals with the problems raised by the use of drugs.) Hans-Reudi Weber, editor of the Bossey findings, Experiments with Man, concludes his introduction by calling them "a contribution to an interdisciplinary conversation which must continue."

No agreement was reached at this consultation, but much was said about natural law, the theology of hope, the sinfulness (brokenness) of man, the theology of creation, and man's role in continuing creation. But it was evident that the biomedical experts were looking for ethical guidance in their research. And it was also evident that the theologians realized that while classical theology has a contribution to make to the discussion, it must be formulated in recognition of current biomedical research, which means "theology-in-dialogue."

THE CHURCH AND THE CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The unrest in college and university communities goes beyond student protests and campus riots. The cultural ferment in society

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has invaded the quiet precincts of academia, and sooner or later the expanding population and program of the college and university will tax their structures and procedures to the breaking point. It seems ironic that these institutions which are dedicated to new ideas should be so conservative in adjusting themselves to their new situation.

Higher education has become a major influence in American culture. Enrollments have increased from 3.5 million in 1960 to 7 million in 1968. The prediction is that it will reach 9 million in a few years. Even more, higher education is engaged in civic, governmental, industrial, and military service. It is increasingly involved in international and intercultural concerns. The size and complexity of programs have made universities into multiversities and bureaucracies; they have become increasingly disunited and impersonal; and they have become overwhelmed with administrative detail, internal tension, public relations, fund-raising, and involvements with government and business.

Much of the unrest on campus is rooted in the cultural ferment among youth. To be sure, youth is normally restless, but today's youth are quite unique. They are unlike their kind in history. Dr. Margaret Mead says that young people who are rebelling all over the world are like "the first generation born in a new country. They are at home here." They live in the post World War II era. Their elders are the isolated generation.

Student unrest issues from many sources. Youth read provocative authors; they admire adventurous heroes; they come from backgrounds of affluence; they are reared in a permissive atmosphere; they are economically liberated. The most restless are interested in the arts and the humanities.

No longer the "silent" generation, they have been called the "grim" generation. This grimness may be a reflection of "the grimness of contemporary life, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the pressure of grades, or the frustration experienced when values tumble," writes Robert E. Kavanaugh.

Youth protest against the depersonalization of life in a scientific culture. They criticize the hypocrisy, the inconsistency, and the ineffectiveness of the older generation. They decry the social injustices of an affluent industrial order. They are concerned about peace. Since the campus community is their home during four or more

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crucial years of their lives, they protest against its emphasis upon quantitative educational standards, its impersonal student-faculty relations, its poor teaching methods, its tie-in with the military, and its lack of concern for people in its immediate community. They feel their education is not sufficiently existential and relevant. They want a larger share in the administration and curricular development of the university.

Youth on campuses are now joined by faculty members who are equally critical of conditions in academia. Some faculty members find it impossible to bridge the generation gap. Some are frustrated by "the competing demands made upon them by their disciplines, teaching duties, research projects, and committee responsibilities." Like many students, some feel that they have little to do with the policies and government of the institution. And some chafe under the confinement of departmental procedures and academic disciplines.

The National Council of Churches in its study of higher education calls on churches and Christians to listen to what young people are saying. It states that the crisis in the colleges and universities is not unlike the moral and social crisis in our culture. It lies in "the breakdown of a common fabric of purposes and assumptions that bind the institutions together as communities with a common commitment to human ends. The use of police force in some campus situations was indicative not so much of the need to uphold proper authority as of a breakdown of understanding and communication with respect to the grounds of authority in the academic community. . . . This is no time for emotional reactions, snap judgments, and calls for legislative or police action that leads to forceful restraints, punitive measures, and coerced obedience."

Church, college, and university are partners in providing a higher education for a growing number of youth. This segment of society holds promise for the renewal of church and society. The revolutionary spirit of the vast majority of campus youth must be understood, appreciated, and guided by a wise, firm, and open administration and faculty, so that the next generation will be informed and equipped concerning the complex ethical and theological issues of our time in an academic community that is conducive to learning. The church's greatest contribution to higher education is in its men and women of intelligence, integrity, and sensitive human concern who serve in this strategic arena of life.