15Oct

Varieties of Christian Thought on Creation

Coincident to reviewing the old story of Jacob’s Ladder, I am teaching a small group that is taking on the opening chapters of Genesis. This surely ranks among the most contentious areas of Scripture. We don’t advocate a particular view here, but offer the following information as a helpful resource.

Michelangelo (1465-1564), “The Creation of Adam”

Varieties of Christian thought on Creation, with Sources of Further Information

I. Young Earth Creationism:

—Teaches that the Universe is young, being created by God in six literal days.
—Clearly an orthodox Christian position, and the view dominant until the advent of Darwin and modern geology’s clues that the earth may be very old. Currently, it is held by about 30% of Americans. Recent proponents include:
—Ken Ham, “Answers in Genesis”: https://answersingenesis.org
—Dr. Henry M Morris, Institute for Creation Research: http://www.icr.org/homepage/

II. Old Earth Creationism

Gap Creationism:

—Teaches six literal 24-hour days, but there was a gap of time between two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis, which the theory states explains many scientific observations, including the age of the Earth.
—Thomas Chalmers, a divinity professor at the University of Edinburgh, popularized the Gap theory. He first lectured on it in 1814.
—Popular in late 1800s to 1940s, associated with the Scofield Study Bible which took this position.
—Arthur C. Custance, a Canadian physiologist and anthropologist, wrote a privately published book, Without Form and Void (1970), arguing for the gap theory. This book is considered the strongest and most able defense of the gap theory available.
—The most thorough refutations of the gap theory come from rival creationists. They point out the absurdity of supposing that billions of years exist between the crack, as it were, of the first two verses of Genesis (https://ncse.com/cej/8/3/formless-void-gap-theory-creationism)

Day-Age Creationism:

—Holds that the six days referred to in the Genesis account of creation are not ordinary 24-hour days, but are much longer periods (from thousands to billions of years). The sequence and duration of the creation “days” may be paralleled to the scientific consensus for the age of the earth and the universe.
—Dates as far back as St Augustine, who argued that the days of creation can’t be literal since the sun wasn’t made until day 4.
—Hugh Ross, Canadian astrophysicist, is a proponent, and founded “Reasons to Believe”: https://www.reasons.org

Progressive Creation:

—In this view creation occurred in rapid bursts in which all “kinds” of plants and animals appear in stages lasting millions of years. The bursts are followed by periods of stasis or equilibrium to accommodate new arrivals. These bursts represent instances of God creating new types of organisms by divine intervention.
—Accepts “microevolution” but rejects “macroevolution”.
—proponents include Dr. Robert Newman, astrophysicist and theologian. He writes a nice overview of some of the implications of the different views of origins,
https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1995/PSCF9-95Newman.html

IV. Evolutionary Creation / Theistic evolution

—Fully embraces evolutionary theory, but believes that there is a mind behind it all, namely God
—Dr. Francis Collins, head of Human Genome Project and subsequently named director of the NIH. Founded BioLogos: https://biologos.org
—Howard J. Van Till, Professor emeritus of Physics and Astronomy, Calvin College, author of The Fourth Day.

V. The Framework Hypothesis:

—It starts from Biblical interpretation, and is compatible with many of the above views of creation or evolution. In this view, the “days” in Genesis have nothing to do with historical time; they are literary devices, employed by God in order to communicate the story of the creation in terms that we can understand.
—The activities of the six days of creation are arranged into a “framework” of two triads (days 1-3 and days 4—6), with parallel types of activities in each triad.
—Dr. Arie Noordzij of the University of Utrecht was the first proponent of the Framework Hypothesis in 1924. Nicolaas Ridderbos (not to be confused with his more well-known brother, Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos) popularized the view in the late 1950s. It has gained acceptance in modern times through the work of such theologians and scholars as Meredith G. Kline, Henri Blocher, and Bruce Waltke (Wikipedia)
—The framework view has been successful in the modern era because it resolves the traditional conflict between the Genesis creation narrative and science.

Intelligent Design: Not explicitly Christian, But it is consistent with Creation

—Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”
—ID presents two main arguments against evolutionary explanations: “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity”. Complexity is an argument for design.
—ID aims to be a scientific theory (and is, on the face of it), but arose initially out of a textbook controversy, and is seen as being closely associated with Christians and Creationists.
—Dr. Steven C Meyer, biologist who then earned PhD in history and philosophy of science; founder of “Discovery Institute”: https://www.discovery.org
—Dr Robert J Marks, (b. 1950), Baylor University, “has emerged as the public face of intelligent design.” (“20 Most Influential Christian Scholars”) His colleague William Dembski at Baylor is a mathematician who wrote The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence.

Jacob’s Ladder and Cosmology

NGC-604 Nebula, located in M33 Galaxy; The destruction of an old star provides the materials for the birth of new stars.

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28:12)

The recently observed feast of St Michael and All Angels (or “Michaelmas”, Sept 29, 2018) reminded me of something. The Old Testament reading from Genesis 28 conveyed the eerie and interesting story of Jacob’s dream of a nexus between Heaven and Earth, which occurred while he was on the run—he was a fugitive fleeing for his life after tricking his brother Esau. God showed him a vision of spiritual emissaries ascending and descending upon earth, and reassured him: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go”. When the terrified Jacob awoke, he thought,

”How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

A few years ago I was participating in a very interesting observatory experience atop the peak of Mt Lemmon in Arizona. My family shivered under blankets and looked at distant galaxies and nebulae through the very powerful telescopes operated by the University of Arizona.

Later, our astronomer gave what was clearly supposed to be an inspiring pep talk. First he tried to drive home the nearly unimaginable immensity of our universe. Our sun is one of 250 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is one of at least a couple hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. We are latecomers to an evolutionary process that has been ongoing for billions of years before our arrival on the scene. Our matter, the stuff of which we are made, was forged out of the explosive destruction of older stars. Our bodies, while we still draw breath, are furthermore bathed in, and replenished by, cosmic particles blown off by ancient supernovae. While this reflection may tend to make one feel insignificant, like a mere lonely speck in the vastness of the greater Cosmos, we can take some heart: “We are made of the same stardust,” he concluded, “and therefore in a very real way, we are connected to each other.”

Well-meaning as this is, the stardust platitude is a cold comfort to offer people in exchange for trading in Theism. (I don’t believe that embrace of the insights of science demands a rejection of God, but some do). Scientific materialism, as a worldview, offers little psychological benefit beyond the existentialist’s “freedom” of finite beings facing oblivion—you are a cosmic accident, so suck it up and and you can be your own “God” for a little while. Nothing actually matters, and no rules really apply to you. There is no Creator. Nothing is all that special about Earth or your place in it. There is no afterlife. You will be long forgotten by fellow humans, probably within your lifetime, but —“Hey, stardust!”

Christianity teaches that while humans indeed are small, this is not the entire story. We have a dignity that we don’t even begin to comprehend, and don’t deserve. Whatever else can be said about the mysterious account of “Jacob’s Ladder” it is this: Our world is indeed loved and cared for by the God of the Universe. We are more than just bits of congealed stardust in a forgotten and remote part of the Cosmos. Behind the scenes, powerful emissaries from the spiritual realms travel back and forth, signifying that God desires and maintains a connection with us. (Maybe we will learn that we are only one of trillions of worlds teeming with sentient life, but we are by no means abandoned). If God has this kind of connection with the remote and diminutive planet Earth, then take heart! He knows and loves you!

Praise be to God!

17Sep

Metrical Psalms? There’s An App For That

Once all the rage in Reformed churches, translations of the book of Psalms set to rhyme and meter were once commonplace. The first book of any kind published in Britain’s New World colonies was the Bay Psalm Book, printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (A copy of this book owned by Boston’s Old South Church was sold a few years back at a Sotheby’s auction for a staggering $14,165,000).

Some metrical psalms have survived the ravages of time to remain in present day hymnals, including “Old Hundredth” and a version of Psalm 23. The text of the former, from the 1561 Anglo-Geneven psalter, may be familiar to you:

All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell,
come ye before him and rejoice.

The Church of Scotland adopted a psalter in 1650, in collaboration with the Westminster Assembly, the full official title of which is The Psalms of David in Metre According to the Version Approved by The Church of Scotland. The “1650 Psalter”, or “Scottish Metrical Psalter”, borrowed extensively from prior versions, including 269 lines of the “Bay Psalm Book”. This 1650 edition is still used in parts of the Scottish Highlands and in some Presbyterian churches elsewhere.

A website devoted to hymnody and old psalters, Music For the Church of God, said this about the Psalter:

In spite of its age and sometimes quaint wording, the Scottish Psalter still retains great power even today. If one had to use only one metrical Psalter, this one would be a good choice.

Now, a developer has created an app that contains all 150 psalms, matched to several optional tunes (with MIDI tune player), and commentary by Scottish theologian John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787). I commend this app to you as a great way to get acquainted with this treasury of faith.

Get it for iOS in the App Store.

Android here.

Kindle store (Kindle Fire) here.

14Sep

The Scariest Words in the New Testament

Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
(Matthew 7:21-22)

“Lord, lord” is a phrasing that doesn’t correlate well with an English equivalent. The use of repetition gives emphasis to the word “lord” (Greek Kyrie, “lord/master”).

…the reduplication of the title “Lord” denoting zeal in according it to Christ.
(Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary)

Elsewhere in the Bible, this kind of repetition in addressing someone demonstrates a high degree of familiarity, even of intimacy. Jesus is no mere acquaintance here. He isn’t just the guy down the street. Those approaching him on that great and terrible Day of Judgement see themselves as insiders. They claim to have done great and mighty things for Jesus. They are prophets of the Lord!

Yet Jesus sees through them, their deeds are found lacking, and they are rejected. And they are rejected quite harshly. Jesus answers these “insiders” by saying, in essence, “Really? You say we’re best buds? Um, no, I don’t believe we’ve met. Get lost.” The late theologian R. C. Sproul called this passage “the most terrifying passage in the New Testament”: “In the final analysis it isn’t do you know Jesus? The question is, does Jesus know you?” (podcast “Build on the Rock”, available at iTunes).

Many questions are raised here. Are these false disciples actually “ex”-disciples, or apostates? Can lapsed believers lose their salvation? Some controversy within Christianity exists as to whether a person can truly experience “saving faith” and then fall away later. I won’t attempt to settle that debate here. Furthermore, that doesn’t seem to be the real issue in this passage.

The immediate context of this passage is the “Sermon on the Mount”, in which Jesus has much to say about hypocrites, those who do good works for show and self-aggrandizement. They are actors with two faces. They pray loudly. They give large sums to the Lord’s work, making sure that their coins rattle and clink loudly as they are poured into the collection. They make themselves look miserable during fasts, so that others don’t miss the fact that they are fasting. They are narcissists within the community of faithful. This taints their good deeds. They may lay claim to being prophets, but false prophets they are–“wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

It would be tempting then to say that works are unnecessary: “Empty works are bad, so merely believe in God in your heart, and all will be well.” But Jesus doesn’t let people off that way. He is not contrasting deeds with non-deeds. The passage which immediately follows the frightening disowning of many seemingly zealous followers, also clearly stresses good works. Two kinds of doers of good works are contrasted, not merely those who do works vs those who don’t.

The question is, on what kind of foundation are those works built? Are they built on love for God? Are they built upon love of self?

Jesus praises those who hear, and then do the will of their lord. For them the word of the master sinks in, and is taken to heart. It produces a response of love that results in good works. Neither the empty works of the faithless, done for show, nor empty words of a profession of faith, devoid of works, are sufficient evidence of a heart that has been really touched by God.

Jesus here connects the hearing with doing, much as James did later in his discourse on the relationship between saving faith and works:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
(James 2:14-26)

Where the heart is–where our faith is–there good deeds will follow. “By their fruit ye shall know them” says Jesus elsewhere. As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon once stated:

ONE of the best tests by which we may try many things is to ask, “How will they appear at the day of judgment?” Our Lord here says, “Many will say to Me in that day.” He used no other word to describe that memorable period because that terse, brief expression suggests so much—“in that day”—that terrible day—that last great day—that day for which all other days were made—that day by which all other days must be measured and judged. I pray, dear friends, that we may, each one of us, begin to set in the light of “that day” the things that we most prize. The riches upon which you have set your heart, how will their value be reckoned “in that day,” and how much of comfort will they afford you then? As for the way in which you have been spending your wealth, will that be such as you will remember “in that day” with satisfaction and comfort? Value your broad acres and your noble mansions, or your more moderate possessions, according to this gauge of their real worth—how will they be valued “in that day”? And as to the pursuits which you so eagerly follow, and which now appear so important to you that they engross the whole of your thoughts, and arouse all your faculties and energies, are they worthy of all this effort? Will they seem to be so “in that day”?

04Sep

RIP John McCain

I have spent time in the company of heroes, I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling cruelty until further resistance is impossible, break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more. All these things and more I have seen. And so will you. I will go to my grave in gratitude to my Creator for allowing me to stand witness to such courage and honor. And so will you.

My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies. You will know.

(John McCain, 1993 Commencement Address at the U.S. Naval Academy)

28Aug

Luther’s Gift of Music

Martin Luther and his family by G.A. Spangenberg (1866) Musée de Leipzig

“Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.” (Martin Luther, 1483-1548)

The reformer Martin Luther was not merely a scholar and theologian, but also a talented musician and composer. He sang and played the lute (as pictured above). As the father of the Protestant Reformation, he pushed for music instruction throughout Germany. He guided and shaped music as an expression of the reformed faith. We can give him credit for many of the musical innovations we now take for granted, such as congregational singing of hymns.

Luther collaborated with Johann Walter, singer, composer, and choirmaster to the Elector of Saxony, and together they published the first Lutheran hymn books. These hymns were instantly popular and spread quickly and widely. Among the most popular German publications in the middle of the 16th century were the Achliederbuch (1524), Enchiridion (1524), and Geystliche Gesang Buchleyn (1524). The Rev Kurt Egbert wrote:

Luther’s hymns were very popular and were sung at home, in the fields, in the marketplace, on the way to work and at group gatherings of various kinds. In the churches the singing was led by the choir (not accompanied by the organ). As hymnals were made available to the congregations, the hymns were often sung antiphonally. The stanzas were divided between the congregation, choir and organ. This is a practice which only recently has become fairly popular in Lutheran churches after a long period of neglect.(The 1983 essay “Martin Luther, God’s Music Man” is available here)

Luther’s reform of music initially allowed the use of as much or as little Latin as each church saw fit. He imported Roman Catholic music freely, often changing or translating the text into German. In 1523 he undertook to write a German version of the Mass.

He often wrote powerfully of music’s ability to elevate the human spirit. In Luther’s famous 1538 Foreword to Georg Rhau’s Collection, “Symphoniae iucundae”, his joyous thoughts crescendo to a passion that looks beyond this world to a heavenly dance:

I would extol the precious gift of God in the noble art of music, but I scarcely know where to begin or end… This precious gift has been bestowed on men alone to remind them that they are created to praise and magnify the Lord. But when natural music is sharpened and polished by art, then one begins to see with amazement the great and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music, where one voice takes a simple part and around it sing three, four, or five other voices, leaping, springing round about, marvelously gracing the simple part, like a folk dance in heaven with friendly bows, embracing, and hearty swinging of partners.

An explosion of musical creativity continued in the Lutheran churches for the next few hundred years. Riches of beauty flowed from the pens of such luminous composers as Dietrich Buxtehude, Samuel Scheidt, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Felix Mendelssohn. The Anglican Church, receiving Luther’s insights, evolved its own beautiful musical traditions in the capable hands of William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and others.

Among the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, Luther’s enthusiastic embrace of music stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of some of the others. To be sure, Luther felt that music should serve the word—he advocated singing one note per syllable, for example—but he didn’t eliminate music. Many of the reformers who followed Luther took a dimmer view of music. Some banned organs and other musical instruments in their churches, and even eliminated music altogether in favor of the spoken word. In Geneva, John Calvin permitted only the a capella singing of metrical psalms. While I will not denigrate the faith, devotion, and spiritual insights of the other reformers, music in the Protestant Church clearly owes a deep debt to Martin Luther.

As a recent essay summarizes:
For Luther to “say and sing” was a single concept resulting from the inevitable eruption of joyful song in the heart of the redeemed. In contrast to some other reformers who saw music as always potentially troublesome and in need of careful control and direction, Luther, in the freedom of the Gospel, could exult in the power of music to proclaim the Word and to touch the heart and mind of man. (Paul Schilf, PhD at Christ Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls)

I recall that when I was a junior in college I visited an Anglican church whose worthy choir was performing Anton Bruckner’s “Os Justi” (not a reformed work, of course). As the treble voices soared, the man next to me muttered, “You would have to have ears of wax not to be moved by that.” Martin Luther expressed a similar sentiment:

“A person…who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”

25Jul

The art of the Czars and the Art of Willful Blindness

It is fascinating how an object can embody the best and worst of us. Take this lovely and delicately decorated piece of Russian art. Shown below is an ornate chalice commissioned by Catherine thd Great in 1790. The craftsmanship and beauty are an homage to something higher and better, to God. The Czars under whom this art flourished were, of course, famously cruel and despotic.

This article isn’t about Czars, but rather about events that took place later, in the 1930’s. The art tells us also about a more banal, if no less sinister, form of evil. The reason I saw this little gem is that literally tens of thousands of priceless pieces of art were lifted from Russia during the dark days of Joseph Stalin, by another Joseph, to whom we shall return in a moment.

I have read the fascinating little 2009 book by Tim Tzouliadis called The Forsaken, An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia. This book chronicles the tragic fates of thousands of Americans who migrated to Russia in the 1920’s, in hopes that the Communist experiment might offer them a better life, or because work relocated them there (in the case of an auto factory that Henry Ford moved to Gorky). Upon arrival, their passports were immediately confiscated by Soviet officials. During the purges and horrors of the 1930s, most of these Americans were arrested and either summarily executed with a bullet in the back of the head, or sent to gulags where most of them died of disease and starvation.

The Americans were by no means alone in this nightmare. An internal report by Nikita Khrushchev stated that from 1935 to 1941 the NKVD had arrested 19 million citizens, of whom 7 million were shot immediately. (Tzouliadis, p.159)

The terrified American emigrants tried to turn to the American embassy for help. As the book put it:

In Moscow, the American diplomats understood very well that low-level negotiation with the Soviet Foreign Ministry was entirely useless, given the fact that the entire Commissariat was petrified of the NKVD and were themselves frequent victims of the Terror. Clearly more forceful intervention was required at the very highest levels of government. Had the diplomats been willing, action might still have been taken, and the lives of the American emigrants might well have been saved.

But what was abundantly clear was that if this was about to happen, the “captured Americans” needed a heroically protective figure to intervene on their behalf—someone with the courage of Oskar Schindler or Raoul Wallenberg—someone willing to lend sanctuary, to hand out passports, to speak to the president, and to kick up a very loud and very public fuss in a time of peril. Someone, in short, who might hold a protective hand over them when their lives were so evidently endangered.

What they got instead was Ambassador Joseph Davies. (p. 106)

Joseph Davies was happy to praise the Soviets and turn a blind eye to the plight of the Terror victims. He even attended some of the “Show Trials”, and wrote favorably of the proceedings, even as most foreign press and even his own staff differed:

“Ambassador Davies was not noted for an acute understanding of the Soviet system, and he had an unfortunate tendency to take what was presented at the trial as the honest and gospel truth. I still blush when I think of some of the telegrams he sent to the State Department about the trial…”

“I can only guess at the motivation for his reporting. He ardently desired to make a success of a pro-Soviet line and was probably reflecting the views of some of Roosevelt’s advisors to enhance his political standing at home.” (Charles E. Bohlen (1973) Witness to History, New York: Norton. Page 52)

His wife at the time was the heiress and multimillionaire Marjorie Merriweather Post, founder of General Foods. She and her husband lived in the manner to which the richest woman in the world was accustomed. They entertained lavishly at the newly renovated Spaso House in Moscow.

At night, Marjorie’s sleep was disrupted by the noises attending the activities of the secret police.

Only years later, after their divorce, did Marjorie Merriweather Post reveal how she had listened to the NKVD vans pulling up outside the apartment houses that surrounded the Spaso House gardens. In the middle of the night she had lain awake listening to the screams of families and children as the victims were taken away by the secret police. (Tzouliadis, p 120).

Every night she also heard a lot of gunfire emanating from the basement of a nearby Moscow building, due to prisoners being executed. She confronted her husband about this chilling sound and he soothed her by telling her that it was probably just construction noises from the expansion of the subway.

This insomnia perhaps could have been part of the reason that Davies and his wife endeavored to spend most of their time away from the embassy, traveling the world, and sailing the Baltic on their luxury yacht, the “Sea Cloud”. They also scoured the land buying up at discounted prices the art that the Bolsheviks had confiscated from Orthodox churches and the Romanov government. Marjorie had an eye for art, and built from scratch one of the largest private collections of Russian art outside of the Hermitage. The scope of the purchases was breathtaking. In one letter, Mr. Davies recounts the excitement of art collecting:

As usual we cannot resist them [the commission shops] and have been having somewhat of an orgy again of picking up these interesting souvenirs. (Tzouliadis, p118).

Much of the interesting souvenirs, representing this great heritage of art is now on display at Hillwood, the mansion that was Marjorie Post’s final home in Washington, DC. This priceless horde is a testament to the best and worst of humanity.

29Jun

100 Years of Communism: Secret Police Infiltration of the World Council of Churches

The World Council of Churches has long been under attack, and many may remember a scathing 1993 article by Joseph Harriss published in Readers Digest, “The Gospel According to Marx”, which alleged that the WCC was under the thrall of the KGB. Though dismissed at the time as a “rehashing of old issues”, subsequent data shows that he was correct. The WCC has been recently exposed as being heavily penetrated by the KGB during the 1970s and 80s, according to a book based on now public Bulgarian secret police archives. In 2009 historian Momchil Metodiev detailed the relationship between Bulgaria’s communist government and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. His work has been summarized in a review by the Bulgarian Institute for the Study of Recent Past.

Relying upon now declassified archives from the Bulgarian secret police, his book Between Faith and Compromise” details decades-long efforts to destroy and control the Church as a force in Bulgarian society. Of interest to me is the cynical manipulation of the World Council of Churches by this and other atheist Communust governments that sought to infiltrate and control ecumenical councils. Depressingly, they appear to have succeeded.

Participation of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in ecumenical organisations (the World Council of Churches, Christian Peace Conference and Conference of European Churches) was initiated, implemented and guided by the communist state, mainly by State Security.
…participation of the Bulgarian church in ecumenical organisations was not inspired by the idea of interdenominational dialogue and co-operation. Rather it was inspired by the communist state, which wanted to infiltrate the World Council of Churches and push it into the ranks of international organisations that could be used for communist propaganda, especially in the so-called Third World.
Churches from the socialist countries (with the exception of Roman Catholic churches) joined the World Council of Churches in 1961. In the late 1950s, the WCC already had become an “object for penetration” of the Bulgarian State Security services. They also selected the first Bulgarian participants to attend ecumenical training courses in the early 1960s.

This led to an “alternative power center” within the church in Bulgaria. A lay leadership emerged that was in sync with the Bulgarian (Communist) secret police.

The loyalties of this group were also well-known in the World Council of Churches. Despite this, the WCC, manipulated by the representatives of the socialist countries, regularly criticised the policies of the US and Western European countries regarding the Third World countries. Only once, at the Assembly in Nairobi in 1975, was there an unsuccessful attempt to criticise the violation of religious freedoms in the Soviet Union.

Much can be said about these organizations, but I’ll leave it at this. As Mark Tooley, director of the anti-communist Institute on Religion and Democracy writes: “Books like Metodiev’s, based on research in communist archives, increasingly are confirming that the WCC and other religious groups did follow the KGB’s script during much of the Cold War. The question is, as the WCC continues his far-left advocacy, whose script does it follow now?” (FrontPageMag.com).

26Jun

Christians Inhabit Two Worlds: Quote from Harry Ward

“Those who have taken Christianity seriously have never been comfortable citizens; They inhabit two worlds–the one that is and the one that ought to be.”

–Harry F Ward

17Jun

Communist Infiltration of Protestant Churches

“Dr Harry F Ward, for many years, has been the chief architect for Communist infiltration and subversion in the religious field.” (Former communist Manning Johnson, 1953, Testimony before House Un-American Activities Committee).

In a year that marks both the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and 100 years of Communism, we will examine a nexus between these two mighty movements. In the early 1900s, a large number of clergy had Marxist leanings and were easy targets for manipulation by communists, despite the atheism of the latter. Dr. Paul Kengor, author of Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century is quoted as saying:

When I started researching this book, I asked Herb Romerstein, the veteran investigator of the communist movement, and himself a former communist, which group of Americans were most manipulated. He unhesitatingly answered “liberal Protestant pastors.” He called them “the biggest suckers of them all.”

Harry F Ward

One of the more prominent of these early communist sympathizers was the Methodist Harry F. Ward. He trained at Northwestern University (BA 1897) and Harvard (MS Philosophy 1898). Returning to the Midwest he became a pastor of a Methodist church in the slums of Chicago, where contact with stockyard workers increasingly radicalized him. He joined a fledgling labor union in solidarity with his parishioners. He began preaching sermons that emphasized political and economic themes. In 1905 he took a sabbatical during which time he read the works of Karl Marx. The following year he founded the Methodist Federation for Social Service, joining with like-minded Methodist pastors to promote social change. He taught at Boston University in 1916, and later became a professor of ethics at New York’s Union Theological Seminary (from 1918 to 1941), where he was instrumental in distributing communist literature, according to Comintern archives. He influenced a generation of pastors.

Of Ward’s Union years, an interesting glimpse is provided in a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous theologian and martyr under the Nazi regime, who had trained at Union. Ward was depicted as “decidedly more ideological than any of his Union colleagues”:

Ward and Niebuhr would take dramatically different turns in the decade ahead: Niebuhr abandoning pacifism for Christian realism, and eventually becoming a Cold War anticommunist Democrat; Ward, meanwhile, hunkering down, as he saw things, in the trenches with Jesus and Marx, a defender of the “Soviet spirit” against all its enemies. . . . In the classroom, Bonhoeffer listened closely as Ward enunciated his singular version of Pascal’s wager: Christians had the world to gain from living “as if” there existed an ethical God weighing every human action in the balance. This meant, at least for Ward, a socialist revolution. (Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vintage, 2015, p 124)

From 1920 to 1940 he was the national chairman of the ACLU, the role for which he is best remembered today. He is also one of the fathers of the ecumenical movement. Along with prominent socialist theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, Ward was instrumental in founding the Federal Council of Churches in 1908, which was a precursor to the current National Council of Churches.

Kengor, who based his work on declassified communist archives, writes of Ward in the Catholic World Report:

One of the more eye-opening early documents now declassified from the Comintern Archives on Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is a four-page December 1920 letter that lists liberal college professors targeted by the Soviet Comintern and American Communist Party. On the list is not only Ward, listed with Union Theological Seminary, but other professors from seminaries or religious colleges, from Mount Holyoke to Trinity College. The liberals are listed by Comintern officials as sources to get their materials on the shelves at seminary and college libraries.

Ward made several pilgrimages to the USSR, where he was given the full Potemkin-village treatment. The progressive pastor was smitten, returning to write more than one book on the marvels of the Motherland. In 1935, he published The Soviet Spirit, a valentine to Lenin and Stalin, which the “Daily Worker” and “New Masses” promoted loudly. The “Daily Worker” did a full-page profile of Ward’s book, along with a glowing feature on the good reverend. The hardcore atheists were enamored of the Methodist minister. As for New Masses, it offered a free give-away of The Soviet Spirit as a complimentary gift for buying a one-year subscription.

In the 1950’s Ward’s name came up in connection with the infamous McCarthy hearings. Former American Communist leader turned defector, Manning Johnson, gave the testimony noted above. He was asked if Ward was a communist. Johnson answered in the affirmative.

“I would say that he is the Red dean of the Communist Party in the religious field.”

Johnson named an organization headed by Ward as a Communist front, namely the “American League Against War and Fascism”. This organization was created by the Communist Party central committee and per Johnson was involved in activities including sabotage, fomenting resentment against law enforcement, conducting espionage for the Soviet Union, and infiltrating and subverting churches, seminaries, and youth organizations. All sensitive information conveyed to this and other front organizations were reported to the Communists in Russia. The end goal of using front organizations was to attempt to radicalize millions of people in support of Communist ends.

Harry F. Ward was selected to head the American League Against War and Fascism. The party conclusion was that because he was a minister, he would be able to draw in churches, and secondly, that he would be able to draw in labor because of his imposing record as a clergyman of some standing and note.

In other words, they considered him the ideal head for the organization. It was proven a good decision because the American League Against War and Fascism was able, through exploiting the antiwar and anti-Fascist sentiments among the clergymen and among church people generally to involve millions of people in supporting the program of the American League Against War and Fascism.

… The majority of the ministers in the American League Against War and Fascism were involved by Harry F. Ward, and the organization which he was connected with, known as the Methodist Federation for Social Action; also the People’s Institute of Applied Religion, and other Communist-front organizations operating in the religious world. The Methodist Federation for Social Service later became the Methodist Federation for Social Action.

The Methodist Federation for Social Change

The secretary of the Methodist Federation, Ms. Winnifred Chappell, was also named as a Communist, and wrote an article in June 1934, that called for workers to refuse to make goods for their governments, and to join in “a joyful international Soviet to supply their own and each other’s needs.” Another prominent member of the Methodist Federation was Jack McMichael, former head of a major Communist front organization known as The American Youth Congress. He was himself later called before the HUAC committee where he vehemently denied being a Communist.

Johnson’s testimony about the Methodist Federation continued:

The Methodist Federation for Social Service or the Methodist Federation for Social Action, headed by Rev. Harry F. Ward, whom I have already identified as a party member, was invaluable to the Communist Party in its united-front organizations and campaigns. It was invaluable because through it the party was able to get contact with thousands of ministers all over the country.

… They had the contact, a wealth of
contact, established and built up over the years with ministers in every section of the country who were easily and quickly involved in various united-front activities, consequently giving these Communist-front movements an aura of respectability the like of which they could not get except for the tremendous amount of faith people have in religion and the church.

Mr. Manning’s full testimony is available at the Internet Archive.

The influence of The Methodist Federation for Social Change is well attested: MFSA attained the height of its growth just following World War II under the leadership of Jack McMichael. By 1950, the MFSA was highly influential in the Methodist Church. While the MFSA had only 5,800 members compared to 9 million in the entire Methodist Church, this membership included half of the church’s 16 bishops, as well as having representatives in all the major seminaries at the time.(Wikipedia). The Methodist Church would be scandalized enough by the MFSA to formally cut ties, though it has persisted as an independent organization and remains a force within Methodism, proclaiming today its mission: “to mobilize, lead and sustain a progressive United Methodist movement, energizing people to be agents of God’s justice, peace, and reconciliation” (MFSA website, accessed 2/28/2018).

Testifying about the MFSA in 1953, Communist Party founder Benjamin Gitlow revealed that its objective “was to transform the Methodist Church and Christianity into an instrument for the achievement of Socialism.” (HUAC transcript is available at Archive.org).

The National and World Council of Churches

As noted earlier, Harry Ward was instrumental in founding the Federal Council of Churches, a precursor to the National Council of Churches, and by extension the World Council of Churches. For decades, the latter organizations were led by Ward’s pupil and fellow member of the MFSS, Bishop Bromley Oxnam (1891-1963).

Oxnam studied under Ward at Boston University (also assisting him in grading papers, and babysitting his children). Oxnam became a socialist–though apparently never a Communist–calling the industrialized capitalistic world “unchristian, unethical, and anti-social”. (As an aside, he apparently also was not one for theological disputes, hilariously referring to them as “one monkey with a mirror flashing it in the eyes of another”). (See Brookhiser, “The Earnest Methodist” in First Things, 1992). Oxnam became president of DePauw University in 1928. Oxnard rose rapidly through Methodist ranks, eventually becoming Bishop of Washington, DC.

The National Council of Churches became the subject of scrutiny in the 1950s. The Air Force Reserve had raised concern, and Secretary of the Air Force Dudley C. Sharp defended his allegations:

…in view of the Secretary’s repudiation of the information conveyed respecting the National Council of Churches of Christ in America, the chairman issued a statement to the effect that the leadership of the [N.C.C.] had hundreds or at least over a hundred affiliations with Communist fronts and causes. Since then we have made careful, but yet incomplete checks, and it is a complete understatement. Thus far of the leadership of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America, we have found over 100 persons leadership capacity with either Communist-front records or records of service to Communists causes. The aggregate affiliations of the leadership, instead of being in the hundreds as the [H.C.U.A.] chairman first indicated, is now, according to our latest count, into the thousands, and we have yet to complete our check.

As an aside, I can remember growing up in small town America and hearing people grumble about the NCC’s left wing agenda. I know of people who left their churches because they “didn’t want to send any tithes to the National Council of Churches.”

In 1990, after the Romanian Communist regime fell, the World Council of Churches issued a tepid apology for its silence on the human rights abuses suffered by Christians under Communist regimes. Rev. Emilio Castro, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, said: “I think we didn’t speak strongly enough, that is clear. That is the price we thought we needed to pay in order to help the human rights situation inside Romania.” (L.A. Times).

Conclusion

As early as the turn of the 20th century, Harry Ward and other zealots for the “Social Gospel” articulated by theologians like Walter Rauschenbusch were turning their attentions toward the abolishment of capitalism and eventual establishment of a world socialist government. They were easy marks for Communists who used them to infiltrate and subvert Protestant Christianity. Their efforts had enormous impact upon the “mainline denominations” such as the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians. These groups have continued to drift leftward ever since, and have paid a price, losing as much as 50% of their membership (see this piece from The Gospel Coalition).

In fairness, I must state that not all socialists were Communists, and not all persons identified as Communists, even under oath, necessarily were such. Ward wrote once, “As for myself, I belong to no social or economic faction. In answer to that question I usually say, I am neither Communist, nor Socialist; I am something worse than that–I am a Christian.”

Some leftists, while sympathetic to socialism and progressive political positions, nonetheless opposed Communists within their organizations. Many people who were Communists in the 1920s later changed their minds.

Probably most of the “red churchmen” listed above were merely “fellow travelers” with communism. They were sympathizers, rather than card carrying members of the party of Lenin. Many ministers were largely unaware of the extent to which sinister and calculating Communist agents were using and manipulating them behind the scenes.

Brother James’ Airs

Author: BrJames